[Poll] Best roguelike and why

[luj1]

Tales of Maj'Eyal is great but I will always love ADOM more.

Explain please

ToME is so streamlined it's almost a Diablo game, with better combat. It's pretty hard to die unless you go out of depth or run into a particularly unlucky elite mob. The game boils mostly down to auto-explore, kill, sell loot.

Can't do that in ADOM. After I don't know how many hours I've only beaten it once, with a Drakeling Paladin. I'll probably tell my grandkids about it. I don't think the creator has even beaten the game legit. It just has such a ridiculous amount of stuff you have to plan for, with the Chaos corruption clock always ticking. It's quite a unique experience. Playing as a Drakeling, you're cold blooded, so temperature affects your speed. Getting hit by a fireball makes you take more actions, ice spells slow you down way more. There's also a fire tower and ice level that are mandatory, so you gotta plan for that. So many great items requre massive risk-reward, gambling with magic pools, or lucky item drops. One pair of seven league boots can make or break a run.

Is this the same ADOM you can buy on steam?

 

[Serus]

Tales of Maj'Eyal is great but I will always love ADOM more.

Explain please

ToME is so streamlined it's almost a Diablo game, with better combat. It's pretty hard to die unless you go out of depth or run into a particularly unlucky elite mob. The game boils mostly down to auto-explore, kill, sell loot.

Can't do that in ADOM. After I don't know how many hours I've only beaten it once, with a Drakeling Paladin. I'll probably tell my grandkids about it. I don't think the creator has even beaten the game legit. It just has such a ridiculous amount of stuff you have to plan for, with the Chaos corruption clock always ticking. It's quite a unique experience. Playing as a Drakeling, you're cold blooded, so temperature affects your speed. Getting hit by a fireball makes you take more actions, ice spells slow you down way more. There's also a fire tower and ice level that are mandatory, so you gotta plan for that. So many great items requre massive risk-reward, gambling with magic pools, or lucky item drops. One pair of seven league boots can make or break a run.

The part about Tome is not completely correct as it has difficulty levels. Sure it's just throwing at the player more of the same but you can make the game hard for yourself if you want. Comparing it to Diablo is just being a smart-ass.
As to TOME4 being streamlined. Combat mechanics (and character building) is the opposite of streamlined compared to most other RLs. It is everything else that is. TOME4's dev made a conscious decision to drop certain elements that are usually important in RLs and work on ones that are rarely done. Does it make it streamlined? In a way it certainly does but so is DoomRL/JH. Does that mean they are bad games? I don't believe it does. Don't mistake streamlining as in making everything more shit - and streamlining as de-emphasising some aspects to concentrate on others.

 

[Fowyr]

Best TOME is the Troubles of Middle Earth, versions released around 2000.
Tales of Maj'Eyal is a great decline and affront to its Angband roots.

Any good roguelike featuring guns? Cmon, i know you guys can recommend one

Cataclysm DDA. It has tens of different rounds, from .22LR to .50 BMG. A lot of weapons, various magazines, complex gun parameters. It even has reloading and round's dissasembling.

Especially CDDA, it autistically realistic in most of recipes, even in the making of chemicals. Dunno how long ago, they cut recipe for reloaded .223 FMJ rounds that called for spent .22LR casings, because some retarded fuck never heard about .223 bullet swagging.

What Nahlakh is doing here? Game was inspired by Wizard's Crown, not Rogue.

 

[Grampy_Bone]

The part about Tome is not completely correct as it has difficulty levels. Sure it's just throwing at the player more of the same but you can make the game hard for yourself if you want. Comparing it to Diablo is just being a smart-ass.
As to TOME4 being streamlined. Combat mechanics (and character building) is the opposite of streamlined compared to most other RLs. It is everything else that is. TOME4's dev made a conscious decision to drop certain elements that are usually important in RLs and work on ones that are rarely done. Does it make it streamlined? In a way it certainly does but so is DoomRL/JH. Does that mean they are bad games? I don't believe it does. Don't mistake streamlining as in making everything more shit - and streamlining as de-emphasising some aspects to concentrate on others.

I literally said TOME was great. I quite enjoyed it. It just doesn't feel as "pure" a RL as ADOM. The combat is indeed the best part of the game although I'd say once you figure out your class's main attack routine it doesn't change for most of the game. TOME classes specifically lack versatility--there's no scenario where you need to shove wax in your ears to survive a banshee scream, or throw random items to skate on frictionless ice. You need a couple of Oh Crap escape tools and that's about it. It is fun to plan your build, level up, and dominate everything. That's kind of the opposite of ADOM though, where an overpowered build is much more difficult to achieve.

 

[Grampy_Bone]

Is this the same ADOM you can buy on steam?

The original ASCII version is free, released over 20 years ago. A few years back they did the graphical version on steam. I bought it more out of appreciation for the dev than anything. I tried out the new sequel/spinoff but it didn't feel quite the same, I still prefer the original.

 

[Fowyr]

I tried out the new sequel/spinoff but it didn't feel quite the same, I still prefer the original.

It's shit with the nonbinary characters, as I remember.

 

[Whipping Post]

Alphaman and Ragnarok should be on this list, even though I know the correct answer to be ADOM.

 

[Reality]

Unreal World and Stone Soup far above the rest

I love DoomRL / Jupiter Hell but since this isn't a Felipepe poll I'd like to take the subgenre limits strictly for once

 

[Fowyr]

Unreal World and Stone Soup far above the rest

Then try CDDA with "more survival tools" turned on, generate a forest map without zombies and enjoy.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

CDDA isn't a roguelike, it's just a survival game with permadeath

 

[rusty_shackleford]

of the new roguelikes it's easily zorbus & infra arcana btw
ToME is interesting for managing to appeal to a wider range of people while still being a good roguelike

 

[rusty_shackleford]

Stone Soup

I don't even consider this a game because it's not designed to be played but designed to be beaten
everything wrong with the game makes sense when you realize it's being made by people who are adjacent to speedrunners

 

[hayst]

I added the following so you may change your votes,

Add brogue

Brogue is so well designed. Brian Walker really emphasized the strengths of procedural generation.

 

[buffalo bill]

Tales of Maj'Eyal is great but I will always love ADOM more.

Explain please

ToME is so streamlined it's almost a Diablo game, with better combat. It's pretty hard to die unless you go out of depth or run into a particularly unlucky elite mob. The game boils mostly down to auto-explore, kill, sell loot.

Can't do that in ADOM. After I don't know how many hours I've only beaten it once, with a Drakeling Paladin. I'll probably tell my grandkids about it. I don't think the creator has even beaten the game legit. It just has such a ridiculous amount of stuff you have to plan for, with the Chaos corruption clock always ticking. It's quite a unique experience. Playing as a Drakeling, you're cold blooded, so temperature affects your speed. Getting hit by a fireball makes you take more actions, ice spells slow you down way more. There's also a fire tower and ice level that are mandatory, so you gotta plan for that. So many great items requre massive risk-reward, gambling with magic pools, or lucky item drops. One pair of seven league boots can make or break a run.

ADOM really is not too hard if you pace yourself fairly slowly. Getting crowned early-ish can make most runs viable unless you get screwed by the RNG. Imo Infra Arcana and Doomrl (mainly the challenge modes, on Ultraviolence or Nightmare) are way harder, but of course very different games than ADOM.
Lol at CoQ winning this sort of poll last time and only getting 10 votes this time, even though by any internal measure it has improved since then. Obviously has more to do with politics and dev behavior than the game itself. Pretty funny almost no one even mentioning it in this thread except to call names. The people who like this game but won't defend it here are a bunch of cowards imo.
Also TOME is boring af. Decline of codex.

 

[Desiderius]

 

[notpl]

Stone Soup was the best roguelike at some indeterminate point in the middle of its life cycle. Version 0.8 to 0.13, somewhere in there. They have tried their best to ruin it since then but it's still decent, and there are a lot of great forks people have made over the years.

 

[Dadd]

Stone Soup was the best roguelike at some indeterminate point in the middle of its life cycle. Version 0.8 to 0.13, somewhere in there. They have tried their best to ruin it since then but it's still decent, and there are a lot of great forks people have made over the years.

Which forks are good?

 

[notpl]

Stone Soup was the best roguelike at some indeterminate point in the middle of its life cycle. Version 0.8 to 0.13, somewhere in there. They have tried their best to ruin it since then but it's still decent, and there are a lot of great forks people have made over the years.

Which forks are good?

I'm a big fan of bcraden, a somewhat goofy and poorly-balanced fork that feels like a teenager adding everything he thinks is cool. Lots of cut monsters and items have been added back in, you can dual-wield, a bunch of silly overpowered races, the emphasis has changed from autistic tournament speedrunning to just making the game fun again.

 

[Grampy_Bone]

Caves of Qud is decent enough. I like the atmosphere and world design, but the purple prose writing is unreadable gibberish. Also in some update they moved away from permadeath making it harder to even call a true roguelike.

 

[xuerebx]

Tales of Maj'Eyal is great but I will always love ADOM more.

Explain please

ToME is so streamlined it's almost a Diablo game, with better combat. It's pretty hard to die unless you go out of depth or run into a particularly unlucky elite mob. The game boils mostly down to auto-explore, kill, sell loot.

Also TOME is boring af. Decline of codex.

waaat? strong disagree. It's really fun unlocking classes and races and starting over (once you die out of being outclassed or making a dumb move). I mean it's subjective but I've raked 90 hours since the start of the new year, and I hadn't played a single game in 2022 as none captured my attention (+ time constraints).

ADOM is on my wishlist. The art style is what pushes me away tbh. The characters look too cartoony.

 

[buffalo bill]

Tales of Maj'Eyal is great but I will always love ADOM more.

Explain please

ToME is so streamlined it's almost a Diablo game, with better combat. It's pretty hard to die unless you go out of depth or run into a particularly unlucky elite mob. The game boils mostly down to auto-explore, kill, sell loot.

Also TOME is boring af. Decline of codex.

waaat? strong disagree. It's really fun unlocking classes and races and starting over (once you die out of being outclassed or making a dumb move). I mean it's subjective but I've raked 90 hours since the start of the new year, and I hadn't played a single game in 2022 as none captured my attention (+ time constraints).

ADOM is on my wishlist. The art style is what pushes me away tbh. The characters look too cartoony.

I only ever play in ASCII mode, yeah the art sucks

 

[buffalo bill]

Caves of Qud is decent enough. I like the atmosphere and world design, but the purple prose writing is unreadable gibberish. Also in some update they moved away from permadeath making it harder to even call a true roguelike.

at character creation you can choose whether to play with permadeath or not. I agree that giving the option is decline, but permadeath is still the default setting

 

[luj1]

ToME getting some big content updates

 

[xuerebx]

This was actually a great thread for a newbie like me to select RLs to start off with. Started off beginning of this year and played and finished TOME4, Zorbus, and DCSS. Now I'm playing Angband, and I have Caves of Qud, Infra Arcana, CDDA, ADOM, UnRea World, DoomRL and Sil-Q to try out . The only one I've played and it didn't really do it for me was Brogue.

 

[Serus]

This was actually a great thread for a newbie like me to select RLs to start off with. Started off beginning of this year and played and finished TOME4, Zorbus, and DCSS. Now I'm playing Angband, and I have Caves of Qud, Infra Arcana, CDDA, ADOM, UnRea World, DoomRL and Sil-Q to try out . The only one I've played and it didn't really do it for me was Brogue.

I sense problems at the horizon. CDDA is more an open world slash surviva slash RL - and it doesn't have any endgame. Not sure in case of Unreal. Also CDDA uses the same keyboard shortcut conventions that standard RLs use but it has a lot more complexity than most RLs. Read: it is a pain to remember all keyboard shortcuts you need. But well worth it. The game is huge. The vehicle buildng and driving "minigame" (not really minigame, it is 100% integrated into gameplay) alone could be a small game in itself and wouldn't be a bad one.

What about Incursion, despite being unfinished it supposedly is an interesting RL.

Also why not Nethack?

In addition I propose trying Wazhack. It is a weird simplified version of Nethack - but by no means simple or easy. Weird because it has very different presentation like many rogue-lites. It is turn/phase whatever based though it might look real time at first glance. Make no mistake, this one is a true RL minus the view perspective.

Don't feel the need to try Cogmind?

What about IVAN? At least for some lulz. Though it is finishable. Right? Anyone who played a lot can share a thought?

I didn't like Brogue for some reason as well.