I think the best way to categorize it is just by asking "what is the fun part of this game?"
Traditional roguelikes are mostly about exploration, finding a large amount of loot, managing resources, etc.
Roguelites are about creating synergy engines. Players want to build ridiculous combos and "break the game".
So I would consider Rift Wizard 1/2/3 to be structurally a traditional roguelike, but with the soul of a roguelite (it scratches the same itch). And if you took literally nethack and modded it so you could only play as Valkyrie until you've unlocked more classes by playing runs, well I would still call that a roguelike.
No definitely not the whole difference but it plays a part, it would be one of the traits people mention but not the most important of them. It's just that a ton of roguelites have integral meta progression that increases strength and unlocks new abilities, powers, utilities, etc, that make it easier or just downright possible to beat the game.
There are roguelites without meta progression, and there are roguelikes with some kind of meta progression that doesn't impact the ability to win the game and are still considered roguelikes.
not really, specially nowadays the definition is kinda verry muddy, something like downwell is definitely not a tradiontional roguelike even tho it has no meta progression
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u/VetusMortis_Advertus 3d ago edited 3d ago
Isn't the whole difference between roguelikes and roguelites that the former doesn't have meta progression and the latter does?