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Tales of Mal'Eyal (TOME4) is a classic turn based roguelike that is still being actively developed. Like most games in the genre, it is brutally difficult, unforgiving, and has a learning curve. It is also, by far, the deepest game I have ever played. There are 35 different classes, each of which plays in a distinct way, and each of which has a huge variety of builds. Your abilities are powered by one of 12 different resources, each of which is managed in different ways, and most classes will use 2 or 3 of those. A fully powered character can have upwards of 30 different useful abilities, from a variety of sources. During the journey you will encounter thousands of pieces of loot, each of which can grant several dozen stats, as well as some unique abilities. You will have to use every tool you have to survive. The story is minimal, and is told through short letters scattered throughout the world. While it doesn't exactly break new ground, it does add some flavor to the world, and adds context to the in game mechanics. As an example, centuries ago the mages tapped into a portal left behind by long dead Lovecraftian Gods, hoping to use it as a weapon in a war against the orcs. This backfired horribly, setting off an apocalyptic event called the Spellblaze that the world is only now recovering from. There is a long simmering conflict between Angolwen, a secret city of mages hoping to use the arcane to do good, and Zigur, a city full of Antimagic zealots who think all magic is a perversion against nature and all mages should be killed. If you're a non magic using character, you can choose to join the Zigurath and get access to Antimagic abilities that help kill mages, at the cost of not being able to use arcane items. The game does have some flaws. The difficulty is erratic and a lot of the monsters you face are randomly generated, meaning you have to pay attention to tell the difference between a normal rat and a murder rat that can kill you in two hits if you're not careful. Some of the zones are poorly designed, and the last third of the game is seen as unnecessarily long. It's not beginner friendly, and is hard to get into without a guide. Still, there isn't anything I've seen that even approaches the sheer depth this game has. You can download the main game for free at te4.org and the DLC is well worth it if you enjoy the main game. (The "We need more chairs in the break room." lore sequence is a particular highlight.) There's an ingame chat function, a semi active Discord community, a relatively active official web forum, and a wiki which hasn't been updated in a while but still contains useful information. I encourage you to check it out if you're interested in this type of game.
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Mar 29, 2021 10:34
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Plus, you don't want new players to be overwhelmed with a massive number of options. Levelling is a good way to increase complexity as players get more familiar with the game.
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Oct 22, 2021 14:56
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Let's discuss one of the best romhacks ever: ALTTP Randomizer. This game is insanely good on several levels, and I haven't found anything quite like it. The basic premise is that it takes the SNES classic Zelda 3 and shuffles around all the items. This adds an almost unlimited amount of replayability to a game that is extremely well designed and holds up great after 30 years. Every run is different, one run you may get several sword upgrades early on and crush everything, only to have to scour the world for That One Item that you need to beat the last required boss. On another run you may have to face a difficult endgame dungeon with only a few hearts and no sword, utilizing other items to kill the enemies. What really makes the game unique, however, is the community. People like to race each other, either live on stream or by comparing posted times for a specific seed. When you add time pressure to this game, it turns into a massive travelling salesman problem that you have to solve in real time while also playing Zelda. You have to remember exactly where everything is, determine the best places to go to minimize backtracking and check as many chests as possible, take calculated gambles, and even utilize glitches to sequence break the game at some points. Speaking of glitches, the romhack is based on the Japanese 1.0 version of this game, which means there are a lot of them. Most are banned under standard racing rules, but there are some allowed glitches that are relatively easy to pull off and don't break the game too much. There are also "glitched modes" where you have to completely break the game in order to win, but relatively few people play them due to the difficulty of pulling off the glitches consistently. I encourage everyone to try this game out at alttpr.com, there's also a link to a very helpful Discord that will answer all your questions, except for where to find the required ROM, but anyone who uses Google should be able to figure it out. A good goal to start out with is to beat most seeds generated using default race settings in under 2 hours. Your first couple seeds will probably be much longer as you familiarize yourself with the game, but your times will drop quickly and anyone can meet that goal with enough practice. Konstantin fucked around with this message at 14:54 on Jan 6, 2022 |
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Jan 6, 2022 14:49
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