The Rangers in the South is a roguelike ARPG in which several generations of adventurers try to defeat a demon lord who is causing chaos in the world.
The game features permadeath, which means that once you die, everything about your character is lost, but their save items and world progression are passed on to the next generation of heroes.
So, how does it compare to other ARPGs? Are the permadeath mechanics too brutal? Is the gameplay fun? Find out the answers to these questions and more in our full review for The Rangers in the South.
The Rangers in the South
Developer: DPA Studios
Publisher: DPA Studios
Platforms: Microsoft Windows (reviewed)
Release date: January 9, 2024
Players: 1
Price: $3.99
The Rangers in the South is a gameplay-first title of sorts, where players are dropped into the world without much explanation after the introductory cutscene. Players can choose their starting equipment and then set out to explore the world without much preparation.
The world consists of five different areas, which are linearly connected and increase in difficulty as you progress through them. Later areas in the game also contain environmental hazards, which are used to keep the player on their toes.
The world map is slowly revealed as you progress through each biome, and that progress is fixed and permanent for all your characters. Each part of the world also features a handful of dungeons and magical stones, which are part of the game’s meta-progression.
Every time you defeat a dungeon boss, your current character and subsequent generations receive a permanent increase in damage dealt, while activating magic stones in the overworld does the same, but for your maximum health.
The only other main element of meta progression comes from the item pool, which is used to store items for your future characters. Everything your character currently has equipped will be lost once he or she dies, but the stashed items will survive and can be equipped by the next generation of heroes.
The game hurts itself with these meta-progression elements, as there’s no real incentive to explore the world once you’ve found the dungeons and activated the magic stones, as the map is fixed between each generation.
The game feels similar Realm of the Mad God in the way it approaches its combat and permadeath mechanics, although it fails to replicate the arcade feel the latter has, with slower combat and uninteresting enemies.
The combat is unfortunately the weakest part of the game, which is a shame because it makes up about 90% of the experience. ARPGs are already known for not requiring much brain power to play, but The Rangers in the South goes one step further because there is hardly anything wrong.
Combat usually comes down to a stomping attack, which feels like hell on your fingers after a while, especially since there’s no hold-to-attack option. Characters with higher attack speeds require you to spam mouse clicks, which takes a toll on the old wrist. The lack of controller support also hurts the game a lot, as this is the type of game that Steam Deck users would love to have on the go.
The generation system is pretty uninteresting, as you have no real classes, just different flavors of starting equipment. There aren’t many skills in the game, and each building archetype only has a handful of useful spells to choose from, so building variation doesn’t exist between generations.
Rogue legacy has been out for over a decade now, so it’s incredible to see an indie developer who somehow can’t come up with an interesting system to make every generation interesting to play.
The dungeons are meant to be the most replayable part of the game, but they all have the same tileset and copied layouts, so going through them feels like a chore rather than an exciting part of the gameplay. All of the game’s bosses, including the last one, are also just bigger enemies that don’t do anything special, making their fights unremarkable.
One of my playthroughs was cut short by the demon lord on a level 11 fourth generation character, hitting me for about 80% of my health with each attack. This may have been the game’s way of telling me I was underleveled, but running away is no longer an option this late in the game.
Needless to say, I died, and leveling another character started to feel like a chore. As far as I know there is no meta progression that increases experience gains, and it takes a long time to level up. I was able to one-shot the enemies in the final area, but would probably have to grind ten to twenty additional levels to beat the final boss, which felt miserable.
The Rangers in the South doesn’t respect the player’s time because the only way to escalate the difficulty is to make enemies move way too fast and do way too much damage. The entire game is a stat check that requires you to grind levels to beat, even though it doesn’t have nearly enough content to justify the time it takes from players.
General, The Rangers in the South is an uninteresting ARPG that doesn’t give back what you put into it. There are no fun builds to try out, every weapon feels exactly the same, every dungeon is built the same way, and all the bosses are just scaled up sprites of enemies that do basic attacks and nothing else.
Pretty much every other ARPG out there is a better time investment than this one, because your reward for beating the game is doing it again, with the enemies getting 10% stronger each time. I honestly don’t understand how anyone would enjoy such repetitive and grindy gameplay, and that’s coming from someone whose main pastime is playing MMORPGs.
The Rangers in the South does the bare minimum to be considered an ARPG and completely fails at being a roguelike. This is a game that would have benefited greatly from player input and more development time, as it feels rushed and lacking in content.
The Rangers in the South was reviewed on Microsoft Windows using game code from DPA Studios. Additional information about Niche Gamer’s review/ethics policy can be found here. The Rangers in the South is available on Microsoft Windows (via Steam).