Oh wow, so there WAS a Tome 4 thread!
I've been playing it for the last month or so, since I decided to take a break from Crawl. I'm playing b37 since they nerfed paradox users pretty hard in b38 and I kind of want to play them some more. Paradox mage is the most interesting caster I've tried in a game bar none, too bad they're so screwed by their own resource. People keep saying Temporal Warden is so overpowered, but I'm playing my Nth TW - currently level 21 Dwarf TW, no deaths, just entered Daikara, and I feel downright fragile sometimes. God damn archmages feel more durable than my temporal wardens!
All in all I'm not sure I really love Tome 4 like I do Crawl. It has a majestic combat system and nothing to do with it - I find the majority of the fights much more boring than Crawl's combat despite the greater number of things to do, there are some enemies which are utter bullshit - why hello dreadmaster! - and the game is so slow it drives me crazy. There are a ton of crashes and I guess memory leaks, since the game slows down even more after several hours of play. And yeah, I know the latest beta does alleviate some of these problems, but it does not eliminate them, and having a roguelike lag my pc is not an acceptable state of affairs.
There are also whole levels whose gimmick is annoying - Sandworm lair comes to mind very very fast. The game is also too long - I've never won it because even on the character I got farthest on - Dwarf Paradox mage, level 40-something, cleared all the orc prides, I felt so bored at the end, I stopped paying almost any attention to enemies. Not to mention the best timeline splitting abilities crash the stupid game every second time they're used. Also Farportal bosses can spawn with some hilarious talents which lead to instagib deaths - level 10 Beckon, for example.
I also don't agree with some of the equipment decisions - no potions/scrolls, but infusions and runes are fine? Also I still can't quite understand when I need to focus on defense, when on armour and when on saves - not to mention the 30 or so kinds of resistance and status effects, but this is mostly my own fault. The game certainly doesn't go out of its way to help me, though, that's for sure.
If only someone took the ability-driven combat system and stuck it in Crawl's superiour general game and level design