Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Frumple]

Which is a position that pretty much no roguelike player holds. At the very least, the hard majority of RL lovers completely ignore that "Like Rogue" bullshit

Some roguelikes trace themselves back to Rogue. Some don't. Most are just borrowing the name as a shorthand for the genre in general.

If you want a fairly solid definition, the Berlin Interpretation is a good starting point.

[gimlet]

Nobody mentioned Gearhead I/II yet?  Pretty good mecha RLs, fight other mecha in dungeons/mines, cities, and space.    I LOVE the "pimp my mechas" part, and the "kit out your body with implants".  I only play the ASCII version but there is one with tiles.   Oh, you can recruit and control teammates too, and the mechanic is pretty good once you get used to it. 

[MonkeyHead]

Nobody mentioned Trancendance yet either, wihch is a slightly different RL in terms of its gameplay mechanism (real time sci fi twitch shooter) but very traditiional RL in terms of its premise.

Edit: Or ASCII-Sector...

[Delta Foxtrot]

Nobody mentioned Gearhead I/II yet?  Pretty good mecha RLs, fight other mecha in dungeons/mines, cities, and space.    I LOVE the "pimp my mechas" part, and the "kit out your body with implants".  I only play the ASCII version but there is one with tiles.   Oh, you can recruit and control teammates too, and the mechanic is pretty good once you get used to it.

Colour me intrigued. Does the first one have plot or any other reason for me to get it or should I just go for the presumably superior gameplay that is II? And how do they rank between "obvious alpha" and "polished, finished product"? What's the learning curve for someone who's only seriously played NetHack and Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup and dabbled with a half a dozen other RLs?

[Anvilfolk]

I've played both and I think both are stable, so just get the 2nd. There might be a big over-arching plot, but I don't recall it being necessary at all

[Frumple]

There's a bit of a plot to GH1, but it's fairly ignorable.

There's an overarching plot to GH2, but it's almost entirely randomized and somewhat... disconnected, because of it. It can make for some very strange theater.

Both are generally quite stable, and GH2 has a bit of player-sanity stuff added (Consolidated skills, ferex.), but GH2 is a bit more difficult (at least in a technical sense, since in GH1 you can't really die, but you can in GH2). GH1's also a bit less balanced re: combat, so it's a bit easier to make an uberbeastofdoom and rampage around. GH2's got a lot more features, though.

GH2's also somewhat more annoying to navigate, since there's not... well, sorta not... a world map; you spend most of your time in "spinners" (space colonies) and movement between those are generally through bus-type services. You can technically fly yourself around, but... wouldn't suggest it. GH1 has a world map, easy to get around.

[Rex_Nex]

Like stated, Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup. Tileset, not very complicated, difficult yet usually only because you made bad mistakes (not because of constant instant deaths), and quite fun.

[gimlet]

Yeah Gearhead I has a fair amount of plot stuff which I too mostly ignore til I'm done messing around in the world.  All the plot stuff hadn't quite been put into GH2 yet (a good amount is there and it is playable to a resolution, but again I mostly play to tool around and kick ass).  The developer stopped adding plot in GH2 and last I heard is retooling to change the plot system to use LUA instead of his homebrew plot interpreter, mainly to make it easier for other people to add content.  So actual game improvement should start up again in the not toooo distant future...

There are quests and things to do, organizations to join that will give you missions.  And the ever popular arena fighting - mecha fights or personal combat depending which town/spinner you're in.  It's definitely one of my favorite roguelikes.

Oh and Steamband is pretty decent too - it's a Steampunk themed Angband, which is a nice change for character types: at least a dozen to choose from including Dashing Hussar, Aesthete, Steam Mecha, Automaton, etc.