[Hot Take] Panta Rhei doesn’t quite stick the rogue-like landing

Panta Rhei has much going for it, but doesn’t always give it to us

I almost never play rogue-type games anymore. The idea of randomized levels and procedurally generated content is fascinating to me, how humans can produce a generative program that will always be better than what generative AI can make. But it’s almost always paired with gameplay elements that don’t fit with my personal design tastes: rogue-likes where I lose all my progress upon death or the rogue-lites that have too much of a grind to get me to the end.

There’s only been a handful of them that I enjoyed, such as Rogue Legacy, Slay the Spire or the Chalice Dungeons in Bloodborne. Each of these did something different with the genre, from unique gameplay elements and good progression balance, but this list is short, and it’s due to the issues I’ve mentioned above.

Panta Rhei seemed to fit into this small category for me. I was instantly drawn to its combat, which is reminiscent of the time powers of modern Prince of Persia titles. With a hold of a button we can reverse time, moving backwards and even hitting enemies caught in this wake, which is used to destroy things like special shields. We can even move objects to set up as traps or hold enemies in time, for defensive and offensive purposes. There are a lot of mechanics, though oftentimes it feels like too much, and I end up just shutting down from analysis paralysis. When I recover I’m either dead or near death’s door — fortunately the game gives us a few ways to recover.

Panta Rhei has a lot of paths we can take as we learn new abilities, like a metroidvania game. And like those games the map tends to circle back onto the core path. The optional paths give out the best rewards but also the hardest encounters. It’s a smart system, just one example of how they made the difficulty accessible. Another is how each run gives us a decent amount of skill points to allocate, making us attack faster, having more health and lives or increasing our core time abilities.

While Panta Rhei did fit into the rogue-like category for me for a while, its lack of polish and seemingly unfinished state prevent me from wanting to stick with it like those aforementioned games. Shoddy hit collision and at times molasses style movement, as well as content just missing from the game, results in it just missing the cutoff.

This Hot Take is based on a Steam code sent to SideQuesting by the publisher.