This game's name is fitting - your character has no personality or backstory to speak of, and I'm sure that a colossal minority of people who play the game as intended (i.e. permadeath) will never ever face off against the titular dark lord, so the true main character of this roguelike is the dungeon itself. Sprawling, labyrinthe, and hideously unforgiving, the dungeon lures unsuspecting players with the siren call of monsters and loot, and before they know it thirty hours have passed - I speak from experience here. The skill system also promises tremendous customizability and replay value, with a multitude of skill branches making a wide range of character builds possible, and a handy option of randomizing your skill pool for obsessively-compulsively indecisive players. Some of my characters (like my vampiric character with no melee skills) were doomed to fail from the start, while others fared far better - my best character was a mage with near-infinite MP supply who could summon dragons near-indefinitely to draw aggro while sneaking in some massive hits with his staff specialty. He made it all the way to Dredmor (and unfortunately was ground into paste with one hit).
A pity, then, that the moment-to-moment gameplay just feels really dull. The floors are huge, there is very little variety in room types, and nearly all enemies follow the same AI pattern - and while an inconsistent difficulty curve is a feature and not a bug with roguelikes, there were plenty of lull periods where I just found myself going through the motions of opening doors and summarily killing enemies, and the game fell into the roguelike cardinal sin of feeling like a chore. A good dungeon crawler tests your resource management and calmheadedness by steadily throwing challenges at you to wear you down, and while Dungeons does that pretty well, it's unfortunate that the more painful "death by a thousand cuts" was what the uninspired dungeon design (plus clunky UI) inflicted on my patience.
Dungeons of Dredmor is an odd one - it's undeniably deep, has great customization options, and is in a genre where addictiveness is a given. But the innate lack of variety in its gameplay plus the lack of any story or gameplay gimmicks/hooks mean that this game probably would mainly appeal to roguelike purists... and based on the last 35 or so hours I've spent on this, I know I'm not one.
A pity, then, that the moment-to-moment gameplay just feels really dull. The floors are huge, there is very little variety in room types, and nearly all enemies follow the same AI pattern - and while an inconsistent difficulty curve is a feature and not a bug with roguelikes, there were plenty of lull periods where I just found myself going through the motions of opening doors and summarily killing enemies, and the game fell into the roguelike cardinal sin of feeling like a chore. A good dungeon crawler tests your resource management and calmheadedness by steadily throwing challenges at you to wear you down, and while Dungeons does that pretty well, it's unfortunate that the more painful "death by a thousand cuts" was what the uninspired dungeon design (plus clunky UI) inflicted on my patience.
Dungeons of Dredmor is an odd one - it's undeniably deep, has great customization options, and is in a genre where addictiveness is a given. But the innate lack of variety in its gameplay plus the lack of any story or gameplay gimmicks/hooks mean that this game probably would mainly appeal to roguelike purists... and based on the last 35 or so hours I've spent on this, I know I'm not one.