Roguemance

Roguemance is a 2D side-scroller where you fight creatures in turn-based battles.

I played this game co-op with my wife and we beat it on our first try in a paltry 4 hours. I should mention that I only played this game in co-op mode. It seems the single-player game might have more to offer than what I mention below.

THE GOOD:

• The combat is deceptively simple while being surprisingly interesting. On your character's first turn they have four actions to choose from. Each turn they use up one of those actions until they are left with only one option (and thus they are stuck with it), after which their options reset. This doesn't actually make any sense, but it does create battles that require a bit of planning and thinking. Combined with jumping and shields reflecting attacks, it requires some brain power and experimentation to figure out how to fight. At first, it can be tricky to avoid hurting your combat partner or healing your enemies.
• I could play co-op with my wife.
• It was fun to blow kisses at my wife's character, until I replaced the kiss ability with the weird tooth power, which is actually a massively overpowered health-drain ability.

THE BAD:

• This game is absolutely not a Rogue-lite as advertised. It's so easy that losing is nearly impossible. On my first play-through, I maxed out my HPs at the 2/3 point and had so much money I couldn't possibly spend it all.
• The fights don't get more challenging as the game progresses, but your characters do get stronger, making this game trivially easy.
• So many enemies do nothing but jump up and down!
• None of the powers are documented in the game and many of them have quite subtle effects, making them arbitrarily hard to figure out.
• Jumping and shields make the fights more difficult and interesting, but there's nothing stopping you from removing these abilities from your PCs and making fights much easier.
• The gameplay is just fighting over and over with very little else going on. Aside from fighting, you can find (1) the grey cat, who replaces one of your abilities with something random, (2) the orange cat, who runs a store where you can buy one new power at a time, or (3) a healing potion. That's it!
• At the end of the game your characters get married. That's it. There is no lead up or story of any kind. Why did Love Island get split apart? We have no idea. Why did defeating a bunch of boss monsters (each symbolizing some relationship challenge) bring the physical island pieces back together? Equally baffling.

THE UGLY:

• The way stores work is really weird. After making a purchase you have to wander to the exit and then at the exit you can apply your new ability.