I have been looking for an excellent roguelike game for a while that I can really sink my teath into, and I am pleased to have finally found it. If you like turn-based dungeon crawling RPGs with interesting character development and deep, tactical combat, then I highly recommend that you give Rogue Empire a try. 

First, this is an early access review, so the game is still in development. That being said, there is a lot of content to enjoy. The game currently has 7 races and 5 classes to choose from, where each class offers a significantly different style of play. The game has a complete and well-balanced prelude (Eghoss) campaign that offers 20 levels of dungeon-crawling excitement with multiple boss fights along the way. Additionally, the main campaign is mostly complete (at least I am not yet skilled enough to reach the end of the exisiting content!) that offers a world-map to explore with a wide variety of enemies to fight and dungeons to delve into. There are places where the main campaign could use additional lore and optional side-arcs, but the developer is quite active and has indicated a desire to flesh out the world more in the coming months. Nonetheless, in its current state the main campaign has a lot of content and is more polished than most early-access titles. Overall, Rogue Empire is currently well worth the price, and with an active, dedicated developer, I expect more great things to come over the course of early access.

There are two things that I think make Rogue Empire really stand out:

First: the game has great boss fights. I personally love deep tactical combat in RPG games and Rogue Empire definitely delivers. So far, all of the bosses I have seen have unique mechanics/abilities that make the fights feel very different than fights against typical dungeon monsters. Also, when fighting a boss, it feels like the tactical decisions that I make really matter (e.g., where I position myself, and what abilities to use when). Additionally, I have been very pleased with the boss fight difficulty. I have played games where the bosses feel incredibly hard to the point of being frustrating/demoralizing. In Rogue Empire, whenever I have died on a boss fight, I have felt like the fight was fair and that I had a chance. Each boss death had been a learning experience that causes me to immediately start thinking about how I can build my next character differently to better against the boss that just killed me. 

Second: I really like the game's character progression. Every three levels the character gets a choice of several active or passive abilities. The game uses a unique system where every class has a "deck" of roughly 25 ability cards from which your options are selected. (That is, the game "deals" you out three cards and you pick one.) 

Some abilities are more common in the deck than others. For example, a passive that dramatically improves the effectiveness of shields at blocking damage is something that warrior should always have access to, and so it appears more commonly in the warrior "deck". This means that you can essentially count on seeing this core passive as an option in every run, although one game you might see it at level 3, and in another game you might not see it until level 9. On the other hand, more specialized abilities that are powerful, but only useful for certain warrior builds appear more rarely in the deck. For example, some runs your warrior will be offered a Whirlwind ability that spins forward and deals damage to all nearby enemies along the warrior's path, but in other runs you might never see this option. 

This unique progression system does an excellent job of walking the line between making every run with a particular Race/Class combination feel different (which keeps things interesting), but also gives each class a clear identity and consistency that you count on.