Overview:
- Estimated achievement difficulty: 4/10 with Mutators; 7/10 without [Achievement Difficulty Rating]
- Offline: 50 [1000
]
- Online: 0
- Approximate amount of time to 1000: 8-12 hours with Mutators [Estimated Time to 100%]
- Minimum number of playthroughs needed: Technically 5, but plan on only a couple full runs and then a bunch of partial runs of various floors for miscellaneous achievements, endings, and character unlocks
- Missable achievements: None [rogue gameplay]
- Does difficulty affect achievements: In general, no. See explanation below in roadmap
- Unobtainable/glitched achievements: None
"Difficulty" Impact to Achievements:
While there is no straightforward difficulty option in this game, there are a number of in-game ways to impact difficulty, and this section reviews what they are, how they work, and if they impact any achievements, so you know what you're free to use to make the game and achievements easier without disabling anything.
The first are ingame modifications, called Mutators, that you can activate and deactivate to make the game easier or harder. These can be toggled in the Homebase area with the person with the word MUTATORS above them. From my experience and from reports I've seen, the only Mutator that seems to have any impact on achievements is Short Game. This Mutator makes the game consist of only two levels per floor (five floors total), so it's 10 total levels instead of 15. This Mutator says right in its description that is disables unlocks related to level progression, but many people have reported that it seems to even affect achievements not seemingly tied to level progression. As a result, you should avoid this Mutator unless I specifically mention using it in an achievement solution.
Aside from that Mutator, all others can be used at will without any impact, and many make the game far easier. For example, Infinite Ammo is a massive advantage in a game where ammo is normally extremely scarce and to be saved for only critical situations. Additional, No Disasters will help significantly. Normally, on the final level of each floor, a random disaster will occur, such as missiles randomly raining down on the map, a killer robot hunting you and shooting rockets at you, purple poisonous ooze spreading around the ground all over, etc. These can make it extremely difficult to finish third floors, but you can turn them all off to not worry about them. A third extremely helpful one is Continue?, which gives you three continues per run, meaning dying isn't the end of your run. Feel free to check out others if you want to make the game easier (or harder), and use whatever you see fit.
The second topic to discuss here is Custom Characters. You can create custom characters with whatever traits and stats you want, making certain things far easier or more consistant than using preset characters. Be aware though, that there is a threshold for how many points you can assign your custom character. If you cross that threshold in stat points, the game considers your custom character Overpowered, and it won't count toward any achievements. That being said, this feature is still something that can easily be taken advantage of for a number of achievements in the guide below.
The third topic is a quick one - the toggling of traits and items available in the pool. In the Homebase, you can unlock more traits and items to show up during a run. You can also enable/disable various traits and items to prevent ones you don't want from showing up during a run. You can toggle off whatever you want (to a total limit) without impacting any achievements, so be aware of that. If you routinely see stuff you don't care for, disable next time you're back in the hub.
The final topic is Seeds. You won't unlock the ability for seeded runs until you unlock Scientist (15G) as a playable character. From then on, you'll find a scientist in the Homebase with SEEDS above his head. This works just like Minecraft, where you can enter a set seed to get the same levels, items, etc., every time on that run. The downside is that game updates, patches, etc., could impact seeds, but if nothing changes, this allows you to reliably load into set layouts to get specific achievements, and doesn't negatively impact any achievements. This will be used many times to get the miscellaneous achievements quickly, eliminating RNG pretty much entirely.
Save Exploitation:
Another thing worth calling out separately is how the save system works in this game. The game saves your progress at the start of every level, and only then. This means that you don't need to do a full run in one sitting; you can quit to the main menu and then resume your save from the floor you're on. However, this also allows you to take advantage of save abusing, if you so choose. For example, if you make a mistake or some random event happens that completely screws things up, such as getting into a massive firefight, taking a ton of damage, failing missions, or being about to die, you can pause your game and quit to the main menu. When you resume your save, you'll be back at the start of the level. Everything will be the same as last time, giving you essentially unlimited attempts to complete the level as you see fit and hopefully with minimal damage. It's also a good way to save a run if you get into a fight and see you're going to die, you can use this exploit to try the level over again and avoid dying. Note though, that if you do die, the game saves immediately and that run is lost, so you need to do this before you die.
Introduction:
With that out of the way, welcome to Streets of Rogue, a top-down game that sort of seems like a twin stick shooter at first glance, but you'll come to realize there are some serious RPG elements baked into the core of this game. When I say that, not only do I mean getting XP from various tasks to level up and get new traits, but I mean the ability to truly approach situations in a ton of different ways. Think Outer Worlds plus Hitman, and that's the type of options you can have at your disposal in this game. There are over 30 characters to play as, ranging from Soldier who can just mow down enemies with guns, to the Bartender or Comedian who can use charisma to convince people to let you do things, to the Assassin or Doctor who can silently take out enemies without alerting anyone, and many more. You can play this game like a shooter as some characters, but that won't be viable for others, where you may need to talk your way through objectives, or find indirect ways of having someone killed a la Hitman, such as broadcasting evidence of someone's misdoings to turn a gang against your target, hiring someone to do the deed for you, poisoning an air filtration system of a building, etc. This is all wrapped up in some ridiculous and hilarious dialogue. Achievements-wise, you're looking at a few runs to get the endings, replays for unlocking elevators (shortcuts) to each floor, and many miscellaneous achievements. Some luck is required, but in general it's not bad at all despite being a roguelite game. Let's get started.
Abbreviated Walkthrough:
While you could jump right in and start messing around and doing runs, I have lined out below what I feel is the most efficient method of getting this completion. My total play time for this game is around 8.5 hours according to the Xbox app, which seems far faster than average, so I will lay out how I tackled this game.
Playthrough 1: Soldier, Big Quest, Beat the Game:
There isn't much you can do or unlock in the Homebase from the start. If you want to make this as easy as possible, as noted above, turn on Mutators. In particular, Infinite Ammo, No Disasters, and Continue? make a world of difference. Start up a run as the Soldier in the elevator at the top. In each level, complete your main missions (on the left side when you press
) first, and then carefully go around and destroy the generators for his Big Quest. If you see any side missions (marked with a big 'M' on the map), feel free to do those too for extra XP, but more importantly, do those to get extra chicken nuggest (the currency you spend to unlock stuff in your Homebase). If you mess up on any level and take a ton of damage, or think you're about to die and lose the run, pause and use the save exploit discussed above to save your run and try to level again. Loot garbage cans along the way, as they often contain either money or food. Save up your money and use it to buy health items (drinks from a bartender) when needed, but remember that you'll get full health when you level up too.
Using the Soldier, you can blast your way through everything, just do it carefully so you don't aggro too many people and have them all shooting at you. Use health items only if you take a lot of damage and a level-up isn't on the horizon. When you level up, pick Traits that reduce the likelihood of being hit by enemies, let you see what syringes do, and other things that help survivability. Also important in this run is to save your grenades and land mines for the final level. We'll be using those to get the bad ending for an achievement.
One other thing to note is that, if you find cigarettes or bad syringes (ones that give negative status effectives), use these on air filtration systems on buildings. You need to do this on five cumulatively to unlock the Scientist, who is needed to be able to use Seeds in your Homebase, so this is a good time to start working on it.
Make your way through all the levels in this manner, using the save exploit as needed if you mess up, and making sure to complete the Big Quest on every level before leaving in the elevator. Once you get to Mayor Village, simply gun him down to unlock Hostile Takeover (30G) when he dies. Take his hat but do NOT go to the podium yet. First, use it to get the bad ending. Refer to The Bad Ending (30G) for getting it easily. You can also use the save exploit above to get Peaceful Takeover (30G) on this run too, by Threatening the Mayor and reloading your save if it fails.
Playthroughs 2-5: Unlocking Elevators, Custom Characters, and Win an Election:
After completing the above playthrough, you should've gotten a pretty decent amount of chicken nuggets. To make this next part as easy as possible, you're going to use those chicken nuggets to unlock two things:
With those unlocks purchase, you're now going to do four runs in a row with custom characters to unlock the elevators to each floor. Read through the strategy in Uptown (15G) for creating a custom character that makes this quite easy. At no point in these runs did I need to use the save exploit, because Bullet Breaker and Kill Healthenizer, along with the Machine Gun with Infinite Ammo, make this really easy. Ignore the Big Quest entirely. Just complete the main missions then teleport with to the exit and move on. During these runs to unlock the elevators, you actually only need to play up until Uptown (you don't need to play Uptown or Mayor Village if you don't want to, to speed things up).
While doing these runs, this is a good time to work on a few other things to make these more interesting and efficient:
With elevator access to take you directly to any floor, as well as the Scientist unlocked so you can use Seeds, this makes everything else really easy to get. First, go through whatever characters you don't yet have and unlock them using the method in the guide. You'll be able to get each one in a couple minutes.
Once you have all of the characters, refer to the miscellaneous achievements you're missing in the guide, and with Seeds and all of the chicken nuggets you've unlocked during your five playthroughs, this will be a cinch to get all of these achievements within a few minutes each, wrapping up this completion.
Conclusion:
Streets of Rogue is a fantastic game. There is so much variation with how you can approach levels, and many different aspects of different genres are combined into one. Gameplay is simple yet fun, and like good stealth/action games, can go from carefully planned to chaos with one mistake, making you think on your feet and do your best to improvise if things go south. Some ingame features make this game far easier a completion than it otherwise would be, but I encourage trying it out without most turned on, so you can get a feel for what a "normal" run is intended to feel like. Nothing in this completion should've posed much trouble, especially with Mutators, so congrats on the completion!
- Estimated achievement difficulty: 4/10 with Mutators; 7/10 without [Achievement Difficulty Rating]
- Offline: 50 [1000
]- Online: 0
- Approximate amount of time to 1000
: 8-12 hours with Mutators [Estimated Time to 100%]- Minimum number of playthroughs needed: Technically 5, but plan on only a couple full runs and then a bunch of partial runs of various floors for miscellaneous achievements, endings, and character unlocks
- Missable achievements: None [rogue gameplay]
- Does difficulty affect achievements: In general, no. See explanation below in roadmap
- Unobtainable/glitched achievements: None
"Difficulty" Impact to Achievements:
While there is no straightforward difficulty option in this game, there are a number of in-game ways to impact difficulty, and this section reviews what they are, how they work, and if they impact any achievements, so you know what you're free to use to make the game and achievements easier without disabling anything.
The first are ingame modifications, called Mutators, that you can activate and deactivate to make the game easier or harder. These can be toggled in the Homebase area with the person with the word MUTATORS above them. From my experience and from reports I've seen, the only Mutator that seems to have any impact on achievements is Short Game. This Mutator makes the game consist of only two levels per floor (five floors total), so it's 10 total levels instead of 15. This Mutator says right in its description that is disables unlocks related to level progression, but many people have reported that it seems to even affect achievements not seemingly tied to level progression. As a result, you should avoid this Mutator unless I specifically mention using it in an achievement solution.
Aside from that Mutator, all others can be used at will without any impact, and many make the game far easier. For example, Infinite Ammo is a massive advantage in a game where ammo is normally extremely scarce and to be saved for only critical situations. Additional, No Disasters will help significantly. Normally, on the final level of each floor, a random disaster will occur, such as missiles randomly raining down on the map, a killer robot hunting you and shooting rockets at you, purple poisonous ooze spreading around the ground all over, etc. These can make it extremely difficult to finish third floors, but you can turn them all off to not worry about them. A third extremely helpful one is Continue?, which gives you three continues per run, meaning dying isn't the end of your run. Feel free to check out others if you want to make the game easier (or harder), and use whatever you see fit.
The second topic to discuss here is Custom Characters. You can create custom characters with whatever traits and stats you want, making certain things far easier or more consistant than using preset characters. Be aware though, that there is a threshold for how many points you can assign your custom character. If you cross that threshold in stat points, the game considers your custom character Overpowered, and it won't count toward any achievements. That being said, this feature is still something that can easily be taken advantage of for a number of achievements in the guide below.
The third topic is a quick one - the toggling of traits and items available in the pool. In the Homebase, you can unlock more traits and items to show up during a run. You can also enable/disable various traits and items to prevent ones you don't want from showing up during a run. You can toggle off whatever you want (to a total limit) without impacting any achievements, so be aware of that. If you routinely see stuff you don't care for, disable next time you're back in the hub.
The final topic is Seeds. You won't unlock the ability for seeded runs until you unlock Scientist (15G) as a playable character. From then on, you'll find a scientist in the Homebase with SEEDS above his head. This works just like Minecraft, where you can enter a set seed to get the same levels, items, etc., every time on that run. The downside is that game updates, patches, etc., could impact seeds, but if nothing changes, this allows you to reliably load into set layouts to get specific achievements, and doesn't negatively impact any achievements. This will be used many times to get the miscellaneous achievements quickly, eliminating RNG pretty much entirely.
Save Exploitation:
Another thing worth calling out separately is how the save system works in this game. The game saves your progress at the start of every level, and only then. This means that you don't need to do a full run in one sitting; you can quit to the main menu and then resume your save from the floor you're on. However, this also allows you to take advantage of save abusing, if you so choose. For example, if you make a mistake or some random event happens that completely screws things up, such as getting into a massive firefight, taking a ton of damage, failing missions, or being about to die, you can pause your game and quit to the main menu. When you resume your save, you'll be back at the start of the level. Everything will be the same as last time, giving you essentially unlimited attempts to complete the level as you see fit and hopefully with minimal damage. It's also a good way to save a run if you get into a fight and see you're going to die, you can use this exploit to try the level over again and avoid dying. Note though, that if you do die, the game saves immediately and that run is lost, so you need to do this before you die.
Introduction:
With that out of the way, welcome to Streets of Rogue, a top-down game that sort of seems like a twin stick shooter at first glance, but you'll come to realize there are some serious RPG elements baked into the core of this game. When I say that, not only do I mean getting XP from various tasks to level up and get new traits, but I mean the ability to truly approach situations in a ton of different ways. Think Outer Worlds plus Hitman, and that's the type of options you can have at your disposal in this game. There are over 30 characters to play as, ranging from Soldier who can just mow down enemies with guns, to the Bartender or Comedian who can use charisma to convince people to let you do things, to the Assassin or Doctor who can silently take out enemies without alerting anyone, and many more. You can play this game like a shooter as some characters, but that won't be viable for others, where you may need to talk your way through objectives, or find indirect ways of having someone killed a la Hitman, such as broadcasting evidence of someone's misdoings to turn a gang against your target, hiring someone to do the deed for you, poisoning an air filtration system of a building, etc. This is all wrapped up in some ridiculous and hilarious dialogue. Achievements-wise, you're looking at a few runs to get the endings, replays for unlocking elevators (shortcuts) to each floor, and many miscellaneous achievements. Some luck is required, but in general it's not bad at all despite being a roguelite game. Let's get started.
Abbreviated Walkthrough:
While you could jump right in and start messing around and doing runs, I have lined out below what I feel is the most efficient method of getting this completion. My total play time for this game is around 8.5 hours according to the Xbox app, which seems far faster than average, so I will lay out how I tackled this game.
Playthrough 1: Soldier, Big Quest, Beat the Game:
There isn't much you can do or unlock in the Homebase from the start. If you want to make this as easy as possible, as noted above, turn on Mutators. In particular, Infinite Ammo, No Disasters, and Continue? make a world of difference. Start up a run as the Soldier in the elevator at the top. In each level, complete your main missions (on the left side when you press
) first, and then carefully go around and destroy the generators for his Big Quest. If you see any side missions (marked with a big 'M' on the map), feel free to do those too for extra XP, but more importantly, do those to get extra chicken nuggest (the currency you spend to unlock stuff in your Homebase). If you mess up on any level and take a ton of damage, or think you're about to die and lose the run, pause and use the save exploit discussed above to save your run and try to level again. Loot garbage cans along the way, as they often contain either money or food. Save up your money and use it to buy health items (drinks from a bartender) when needed, but remember that you'll get full health when you level up too.Using the Soldier, you can blast your way through everything, just do it carefully so you don't aggro too many people and have them all shooting at you. Use health items only if you take a lot of damage and a level-up isn't on the horizon. When you level up, pick Traits that reduce the likelihood of being hit by enemies, let you see what syringes do, and other things that help survivability. Also important in this run is to save your grenades and land mines for the final level. We'll be using those to get the bad ending for an achievement.
One other thing to note is that, if you find cigarettes or bad syringes (ones that give negative status effectives), use these on air filtration systems on buildings. You need to do this on five cumulatively to unlock the Scientist, who is needed to be able to use Seeds in your Homebase, so this is a good time to start working on it.
Make your way through all the levels in this manner, using the save exploit as needed if you mess up, and making sure to complete the Big Quest on every level before leaving in the elevator. Once you get to Mayor Village, simply gun him down to unlock Hostile Takeover (30G) when he dies. Take his hat but do NOT go to the podium yet. First, use it to get the bad ending. Refer to The Bad Ending (30G) for getting it easily. You can also use the save exploit above to get Peaceful Takeover (30G) on this run too, by Threatening the Mayor and reloading your save if it fails.
Playthroughs 2-5: Unlocking Elevators, Custom Characters, and Win an Election:
After completing the above playthrough, you should've gotten a pretty decent amount of chicken nuggets. To make this next part as easy as possible, you're going to use those chicken nuggets to unlock two things:
- Go to the NPC marked TRAITS and unlock the Bullet Breaker trait. This makes your bullets destroy enemies bullets, drastically reducing the possibility of getting shot
- Go to the NPC marked REWARDS and unlock the Fud Processor first, and then you can buy the Kill Healthenizer. The Kill Healthenizer gives you health every time you kill anyone, even an innocent, which is extremely handy
With those unlocks purchase, you're now going to do four runs in a row with custom characters to unlock the elevators to each floor. Read through the strategy in Uptown (15G) for creating a custom character that makes this quite easy. At no point in these runs did I need to use the save exploit, because Bullet Breaker and Kill Healthenizer, along with the Machine Gun with Infinite Ammo, make this really easy. Ignore the Big Quest entirely. Just complete the main missions then teleport with
to the exit and move on. During these runs to unlock the elevators, you actually only need to play up until Uptown (you don't need to play Uptown or Mayor Village if you don't want to, to speed things up).While doing these runs, this is a good time to work on a few other things to make these more interesting and efficient:
- On one of these runs (probably do it third, fourth, or fifth, so you have more experience with the game), go for winning the election on that run. Refer to Legal Takeover (30G) for a ton of information on how to do that. It'll be a slower, tougher run, but use the save exploit to make it doable
- While doing these runs, work on various character unlocks along the way. For example, since you'll be building up quite a bit of money from completing missions and not needing to buy anything, work on unlocking Cop (15G) across the levels. Do Bartender (15G) during another run with all the money you'll have. Do Vampire (15G) during any run where you find a graveyard, and finish up Scientist (15G) if you haven't already. The Scientist is the most important for the next steps, but any characters you can get will save time.
- If you still need any other endings that you didn't get on your first run, do them at the end of one of these runs
With elevator access to take you directly to any floor, as well as the Scientist unlocked so you can use Seeds, this makes everything else really easy to get. First, go through whatever characters you don't yet have and unlock them using the method in the guide. You'll be able to get each one in a couple minutes.
Once you have all of the characters, refer to the miscellaneous achievements you're missing in the guide, and with Seeds and all of the chicken nuggets you've unlocked during your five playthroughs, this will be a cinch to get all of these achievements within a few minutes each, wrapping up this completion.
Conclusion:
Streets of Rogue is a fantastic game. There is so much variation with how you can approach levels, and many different aspects of different genres are combined into one. Gameplay is simple yet fun, and like good stealth/action games, can go from carefully planned to chaos with one mistake, making you think on your feet and do your best to improvise if things go south. Some ingame features make this game far easier a completion than it otherwise would be, but I encourage trying it out without most turned on, so you can get a feel for what a "normal" run is intended to feel like. Nothing in this completion should've posed much trouble, especially with Mutators, so congrats on the completion!
[XBA would like to thank Necrophage33 for this Roadmap]
behind him, then do the same with the NPC facing away. Pick up the item and you're set.
while on any level, one of the stats you can see is your Destruction, and it'll show the value for the current level as well as your total for this run. It needs to reach 75 in one level. Personally, I did this without trying on the first level of my first run, playing as the Soldier and destroying the generators for his Big Quest. You can easily go around smashing windows, chairs, tables, etc., to build up your Destruction, but more than likely you'll get this without trying.
to save your character and this will unlock.
on it to drop it. Then, switch to your fists and punch the hat off the map. See my clip below of doing this. This will unlock the achievement immediately, as well as a secret bad ending.
