Negative character traits whether intentional or not hinders you in such a way that it isn't even remotely fun playing with such a heavy handicap and usually forces you to suicide so you can have a new hero which is an annoyance.

Characters usually come with several traits that can have both beneficial and negative traits that can range from being negligible like being unable to read text properly to borderline infuriating like flipping the entire screen upside down or distorting it. What doesn't carry over as I mentioned before are your characters because death is permanent and as your characters die you'll have the decision to choose between 3 randomized heroes. As you would expect, it's a game that definitely encourages you to grind even dedicating a class cleverly named the 'Spelunker' towards accumulating gold but thankfully you're not required to grind for too long to complete the game. Gold is the only currency in Rogue Legacy and as such governs just about everything such as how you develop your character's attributes, buying gear and the ability to unlock other classes once you die (which you will) and can only be spent before you re-enter the castle.

Rogue Legacy is a roguelite (not a roguelike) as you still retain your character's attributes, skill points and most importantly gold into your next playthrough even going so far as to giving an option into retaining the castle's map layout from your previous character's run at the price of a large gold penalty. The gratification of finally triumphing over the game was worth it though and I definitely was quick to overlooking the statistics of how many 'children' I sacrificed as the game credits rolled. It's a difficult game for sure and it's one where I repeatedly told myself 'one last try' only to be struck down again. I don't remember the last time I've had the feeling of being an addict, the feeling of getting sucked into a game vent on beating it that Rogue Legacy gave to me.

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