What Dungeon Odyssey tries to emulate are the good old ASCII-dungeon romping titles... which, unfortunately, it fails to deliver. It doesn't have the brilliant game mechanics of ADOM (where temperature, for example, had a huge effect on some races and monsters), it doesn't have the complexity and depth of Nethack (where, when you summon a djinn due to rubbing a lamp and it asks you for a wish, you can tell it to "kill something", and it did), and it doesn't have the fun combat and storyline system of Omega (where you had a couple of "attacks" each attack action and could set them the way you want... like, first attacking with the left hand, then feinting, then a parry, and then an attack again).
What it does have is graphics, but then again, I'd personally rather play Nethack with the vga-tiles Version.
Runesword is actually quite nice, though I agree on the "hard to get used to" magic system - it reminded me a lot on the old Ultima-herbcollections. Also, I found the combat system to be... strange, indeed. I think it got something to do with the perspective, it's rather hard to figure out which "field" the critter is standing on exactly. All in all, despite having less fancy graphic, I very much prefer the Exile series to it, though it has a more simplistic skill/character system. The module-editor in Runesword is superior to that of Blades Of Exile, though.
All in all, Runesword is definitely worth it's low price. I'd stay clear of Dungeon Odyssey though and rather check out the "basics".
That's just my own opinion, which anyone is encouraged to share or discard as he or she wishes, of course.