Lost Castle 2 Review — Loot ‘Em Up

Nothing satisfies me in a game quite like collecting loot. Gosh, I love loot: fighting increasingly difficult enemies and finding shiny new toys that add to my very specifically tuned build fills me with a sort of euphoria that is difficult to describe. The process gives me so much dopamine that if you told me tomorrow a giant, procedurally shifting dungeon popped up in the world full of strange and vaguely useful treasures, I would be dead to some spike trap or gelatinous cube within before the night was over.

Lost Castle 2 understands my craving for loot, and delivers it in a way few other titles do.

I first gave this multiplayer roguelike beat-’em-up a try when it released into Early Access back in 2024. Boy, does time fly, and the game that I felt was fun, if obviously underdeveloped and lacking in a few areas, has come incredibly far since then. Now it’s evolved into a very different, highly addictive roguelike that I, personally, can’t seem to get enough of.

The premise of the game is simple. Alone or with friends, delve into a series of increasingly difficult areas and engage in the familiar roguelike progression formula. Each area is capped with a boss, with each location pulling from a handful of different baddies to battle, each with their own unique move set. Every boss you defeat unlocks new gear to find in future runs as well as permanent upgrades back at camp, and the game gradually evolves over time to open up access to new areas and increasing difficulty.

Those boss fights really are one of the big highlights of the game. While the standard-formula beat-’em-up gameplay is certainly fun in the segments in between, taking on the numerous boss battles of the game is an altogether different kind of exciting. Their move patterns are clever and present a real challenge without feeling cheap. There was never a time when I felt an enemy was too tanky, too fast, or hit too hard; each defeat felt like a clear mistake was made on my part, and I was determined to do better next time. It certainly helps that each boss has a strong personality and theme, conveying so much story in their visuals alone that it carries over into the way they fight.

Another way in which Lost Castle 2 both captivates and stands out from other games in its genre is its focus on loot. Every roguelike has loot, and every roguelike has builds, but Lost Castle 2 seems to really hone in on the fantasy of finding long-forgotten relics, weapons, and armor and crafting that perfect build for your run. The loot pool is uniquely diversified, spoiling you with choice as you fill your inventory with relics, weapons, stat-boosting glyphs, and armor that combine in numerous ways to create flashy and exotic combat effects. Grab yourself a blade that increases your attack speed, boosts your weapon damage by a percentage, and has a flame-imbuing special attack for an extra bit of oomph.

Loot is diversified throughout an impressive number of weapon types, armor types, and passive items, creating an absolutely staggeringly large loot pool of items to find. While that can sometimes be a bad thing, Lost Castle 2 does the player the favor of dropping tons of items across the different types all at once and even catering drops toward the stats you seem to be building, allowing you to navigate the huge sea of loot enough to hone your build without being drowned out of your build path with too many options.

What I especially adore is that the massive wealth of items is not just a series of recolored PNGs or the same weapon with different stats, but rather a large number of completely original items to find, each with its own unique look to pair with its stats. While you will definitely have points in your run when you replace one type of weapon with a stronger version of the same weapon, every single boss you defeat adds an original variant of each weapon type to the loot pool. It will take you quite a while to discover every single unique weapon available in the game, and even longer to actually try them out yourself.

A review of Lost Castle 2 wouldn’t be complete without discussing the game’s cute, personality-packed art style. Every weapon, armor set, boss, mob, and NPC in the game is depicted in a very cute and super charismatic chibi-like style, which still manages to make more than a few enemies genuinely intimidating to behold. The game looks great, and seems to have only improved in art direction since I last played it in 2024, seemingly showing off some better lighting, improved character designs, and touched-up sprites and backgrounds. The game just oozes personality and makes excellent use of color, making each level as visually pleasing as it is fun to play through.

Lost Castle 2 can be enjoyed on your own, but I highly recommend trying the game out in multiplayer, especially if you can get a few friends to play with. The joy I had taking the game on as a party, tackling bosses together, and coordinating our increasingly wacky and flashy builds is hard to overstate. The game simply didn’t have quite as much charm in single-player, really shining in its multiplayer element, as I think was the developer’s intent. Again, while you can certainly play it alone, you simply won’t be getting the most out of the experience unless you bring a friend or three along for the ride.

Try Hard Guides was provided with a Steam code for this PC review of Lost Castle 2. Find more detailed looks at popular and upcoming titles on our Game Reviews page! Lost Castle 2 is available on Steam.