Newbie's first impressions

[Cainehill]

Ed Kolis said:
Ah yes, the legendary nethack mode

Bah! Angband / Moria mode, not Nethack!

[Ed Kolis]

I prefer angband as well; I just thought nethack would be a bit more recognizable

[quantum_mechani]

Ed Kolis said:
I prefer angband as well; I just thought nethack would be a bit more recognizable

Meh, Nethack is obviously superior. Or ADOM. Or anything that remembers levels and has a non-insane combat system.

[Zooko]

Illwinter recommended Dungeon Crawl on their web site one time, and I got hooked on it. I really prefer it to the others that I have briefly tried, because

a. It has balance.
b. It has a consistent world (not a myriad of independently developed levels, each one attempting to be sillier than the last).
c. It has a pleasurable skill system.

Also I've written several patches to Dungeon Crawl, mostly to re-invent the personality of the god Xom.

[PCarroll]

Zooko said:
Illwinter recommended Dungeon Crawl on their web site one time, and I got hooked on it. I really prefer it to the others that I have briefly tried, because

a. It has balance.
b. It has a consistent world (not a myriad of independently developed levels, each one attempting to be sillier than the last).
c. It has a pleasurable skill system.

Also I've written several patches to Dungeon Crawl, mostly to re-invent the personality of the god Xom.

Thanks for that tip. I'd heard of the game but never tried it. Now I have, and it's very good. My wife's hooked on it too. Her only complaint is that she can't cheat by saving at critical points; it's hard losing a character you've carefully worked up to a high level.

Surprisingly, neither of us has any complaint about the interface (we're using the basic one, not the "tiled" one, mainly because I couldn't figure out how to get the tiled version to work in English--and I don't read Japanese).

My wife thinks it's great, because she has control over everything--casting a spell or using a wand or whatever, and seeing the effect.

--Patrick

[Scott Hebert]

Patrick (if you don't mind my calling you that),

I do read Japanese, as a matter of fact; if you need any help in that area, just let me know.

Scott

[Zooko]

Cool! What platform -- Windows? Let me know if you or your wife want to try my new improved Xom. :-)

[FarAway Pretender]

Very interesting thread, all of you! I don't think I've ever seen so many of my favorite games posted in one place, ever, and certainly not such a wide variety.

MoM, AoW, Heroes, Settlers of Catan, Dom 2, and so many others.

The Go example you cite is interesting. Almost all of us bring our own personal/cultural views into the gaming experience. I'm oversimplifying a little here, but let me make a few comparisons. Chess is a pretty Western game--clearly defined rules, combinations and permutations of differing abilities and weaknesses, straight and clean lines of power projecting onto the blank field of a game board, and dramatic moments of victory often come when a mighty opponent is toppled by a destructive attack.

Go is rife w/more Eastern themes. Notions of space are as important to winning the game as are the pieces. Rather than viewing space as an empty nothingness that pieces move through as they assert their power against other pieces, space is as vital a part of winning as are the pieces. The whole duality of Western thinking is replaced by the seamless integration of the whole.

Maybe I'm not expressing myself right here--I have no graduate education in Philosophy at all, but I've lived in both parts of the world, and I recognize parts of each culture in those games.

In many senses, the games we play are both a reflection and an example of our own culture's philosophies. But that is a bit far out from the original topic here!


Dom2 is a complex game, but it's a lot like an onion. Depending on the difficulty level (of SP or your opponents), you can keep peeling the onion back further and further to find another layer of challenge and understanding. From a "mastering the game system" standpoint, it's as complicated as you want to make it.

This also makes things very open-ended. Think your phalanx of Long Spearmen might do well against overwhelming numbers of low-morale militia who would hesitate to brave those long pointy sticks? You're right. Think Crossbowmen are a good match for the heavily armored Infantry of Ulm? You're right again! Want to put off attacking the Undead Trees until you've learned Fireball in hopes of setting them ablaze? That could actually be a very good idea!

Casting Lightning Bolts a good way to stop heavily armored cavalry? Yup. Priests turning undead? Correct again. Shortbowmen proving a cheap and effective way to dispatch crazed Religious Zealots who go into battle with only the Faith in their God as armor? You betcha, unless their God is a God of Air! Nimble Barbarians in loin cloths being a good match against hard-hitting but slow-moving Giants sound worthwhile? Right once more.

Not trying to beat a dead horse, but figuring these little match-up things out is a lot of fun, at least for a certain type of player. I found that one of the most pleasant aspects of Dom2.

BUT, one of the more common complaints about the game is the level of micromanagement required. Most of the folks on this forum don't mind sweating the details, but it is VERY annoying to have my star hero killed because I forgot to change his orders when I moved him to a new stack. In the endgame stage, things do get more than a bit unwieldy.

Some of these are UI issues that will hopefully be addressed in Dom3, but others are inherent in such an open-ended game that allows players to do so many things. I've sometimes wondered whether fewer provinces might solve these problems, but I suspect that would change other things?

In any event, Dom2 is a great game, but not for everybody.

[PDF]

PCarrol, did you try something like Combat Mission (if anything else exists that is "like" CM ) ?
Games are rather short and fast paced compared to Dom2 et al., and it requires some "battlefield tactics" sense more than analytical brains - surely that's why I suck at it, I was able to make strategy articles on it then get blasted by one of my readers that managed to apply it, while I couldn't !! .
Also it's graphically more rewarding than top-view 2D strat game as it's in full 3D with free camera, even if now it's not really up to date graphic-wise ...

[PCarroll]

PDF said:
PCarrol, did you try something like Combat Mission (if anything else exists that is "like" CM ) ?

Yep. I played the demo several months ago. It's apparently one of the most popular games around, but I didn't care for it. The 3D graphics that impress everybody else are a turn-off to me. I don't like things looking that realistic.