I want to practice my writing skills. I want to practice them HARD. What I also want is criticism from people who are capable of giving it. If I show these reviews to my family, most will look bewildered (my father would just laugh and tell me to carry on doing my MCSE) and my girlfriend would just pat me on my head and tell me how well I've done. So, I'm bringing this to you guys. I'm relying on you to genuinely criticise my writing style, my harshosity (that's a real word!) and everything else in this writing. Do you understand? Good, let's roll!
I hate myself. That's something I realised recently. It's the only thing that explains my addiction to roguelikes. My self-loathing has evolved into a masochistic torture of my own cognitive facilities in order to make myself feel better about some sort of inadequacy. I am a '90s TV star and roguelikes are my crack cocaine.
What other genre of game has such a tedious, slow and painful learning curve? What other genre forces you to lose hours (or even days) of progress in order to learn one minor lesson every single time? Is there ANYTHING that comes close to the almost self-harming experience of playing a roguelike? I seriously doubt it.
Which is why it amazes me when games like Dungeons of Dredmor come out and claim they're “more accessible” roguelikes. I admit that it's more accessible, in the same way that a drug dealer discovering you can pour coke into drinks instead of snorting it up your nose is more accessible.
It's still horribly addictive, maybe more so. The interface, the point and clicking, the general increase in accessibility caused it to induce a trance in me, a transformation from being a normal happy gamer to “KILL-SMASH-GET LOOT RINSE REPEAT HAHAHAH LEVEL UP YOU BASTARDS”. It took me back to the dark days of Diablo, when I was a mere innocent type shoving fireballs up the rectums of any demons that looked at me wrong.
And this is a good thing. The best of things, in fact, at least for the game's maker. I would happily pay for DLC for this game, and I absolutely despise that moneygrabbing bullcrap.
The crafting is something I'd like to spend a little time on, too. I feel the crafting helps even out the gaming experience quite a bit. It allows players who've had a hard time finding decent equipment to get up to scratch with some crafting items (advice to developer: put in crafting dispensers) and doesn't feel like it's been forced into the game at all.
There are, however, a few negatives with the game. Issues that show maybe making the game a lot more accessible has took up too much development time and caused a drop in variety and quite a lot of bugs. The bugs are being readily fixed, but the fact that a lot of the “special” rooms are the same regardless of level (except with, obviously, different monsters) is a bit disappointing. When I see two iron grilles, I'll know there's a vault behind them, about four traps and some water / lava and a path around. The monster vaults could do with artifacts placed in them and some “theming” (similar to the levels in DooMRL where they are fixed and unique per game), which would improve it greatly. Some of the skill trees are also kind of useless, but I'm sure that's something that will also get properly patched.
Other than that, though, I don't really have any criticism. The game's art is gorgeous (and funny), the stat screen is informative despite (or perhaps because of) the sheer amount of jokes per item and it's seriously cheap for the amount of content you'll get. Nevermind the jokes all over the game and the amazing loot system. It's feature packed with WONDERFUl.
My advice is that, whether or not you are a fan of roguelikes, you should buy this game. Immediately. It's a wonderful RPG that definitely could bring the roguelike to the masses.
Overall Rating: 8/10 (Sadly let down by some minor flaws in terms of replayability, the game is still really good.)
Value Rating: 10/10 (Cheap, good and long. Pretty much perfect.)
