ADOM (Ancient Domains Of Mystery)

As a disclaimer: I've played this game hundreds of times and have got all possible endings, including Ultras. It is a very rich game full of various things and mechanics, however it was created when there was no such thing as a game design in the world. And what suffers from it the most is what's supposedly the most attractive part of the game - the challenge. The challenge, as it is in this game, is based entirely on player's ignorance and luck. And those will be the main ways you lose: either from naive mistake of not knowing that this particular kind of monster causes paralisis when attacked in melee, or from streaks of bad luck. Which basically means that to win the game with the highest chance you have to play it in the most boring and grindy way, avoiding any risks to not let bad luck screw you over, and to eat your fill of spoilers. Because if you don't, you'll die in frustrating ways, knowing that it wasn't your tactical decision that screwed you over but either bad luck or lack of specific knowledge. On the other hand, once you start playing in the way I mentioned, by keeping in safer zones unless you're ready for more challenging ones, grinding items and stats, you are going to be bored quite soon. And then either you'll make a mistake and die a bullshit death hundred times more frustrating or get an Ultra ending feeling that there really wasn't much of a challenge for you at any point in the game. So, my feelings about ADOM are really mixed. On one hand, I remember some epic adventures that even inspired me to write short stories on game forums. On the other, hours of safe grinding and dozens of deaths in hope of finding excitement. In case you're really into genre, I personally recommend trying DCSS as a lot more refined example.

ADOM is one of the best actual Roguelike games out there. Flexible combat, lots of enemies that are there to kill you, and lots, and lots of deaths to be had. If you manage to beat ADOM in the true Roguelike mode, that's a true gaming achievement, that not many people can claim they have achieved. The modernized UI and Graphics combined with tutorial mode and Custom game option make the game more accessible for those who just want to play RPG with nearly infinite depth, and provides a hardcore challenge for those who think Dark Souls is a cakewalk. If you are going to get only one actual Roguelike into your gaming library, ADOM is one the titles you should consider.

So I play a lot of roguelikes. I really want to like this game, unfortunately after so many years of development, the game has a massive amount of issues that make it near the bottom of my list of roguelikes. Major game flaws that the developers have chosen to ignore or not address: Game will frequently cause ASCII to appear on top of your tiles. You may need to delete your dll files and reacquire to fix. The game is supposed to have mouse support. Unfortunately clicking often causes you to run completely around the map when you wanted to take 1 step. You cannot attack in place. Too often you may walk into a group of enemies and be surrounded. The lettering of items (the key you'd press to interact with an item) changes as you interact with the menu. This is very poor for roguelikes as you generally play with keyboard and it's very important that spell you want to cast or thing you pickup is on a consistent letter. Quests are not straightforward. You will screw up every quest and not understand how religion or what you're supposed to do at that statue without a guide. Terrible things happen to you if you interact the wrong way with something. It is not fun to try things because the punishment is basically death. The real kicker is when you'd like to learn something in the game. It's never straightforward. Example: Chaos Knights enter a shop, shopkeeper greets you with normal text, you go to buy something. He says you must pay for it, you try to pay but it won't let you. Nothing in the game tells you that Chaos Knights can't use shops while chaotic because NPC text isn't altered. Even better. Autopickup, a UI feature that should be game-agnostic--can just automatically kill you as it does not care when it triggers. It will tick someone off and you'll get 1-shot. I really want to like this game but it's been 10+ years and the development of this game and what I see on the forums is just completely backward. Every game I play of this is frustration.

I can't possibly be objective about the game that I first started to play as wee lad on Elementary school and still play at the time when I have kids on my own. In my biased personal opinion ADOM is the pinnacle of classical rogue-likes with so many strategies to master, things to discover and enemies to die to. If you are a fan of classical rouge-likes you don't need a review, you probably know the game and know if it's your cup of tea or not.. On the other hand, if you are looking on this game for your first proper rouge-like, let me give you a word of advice: ADOM is true classical rogue-like in the vein of (of course) Rouge, NetHack, original TOME and so on, don't let the pretty screenshots fool you, it's a brutal and unfair game where progression happens by you learning from your mistakes and improving your strategies. As DF player would say - loosing is fun. And for your struggle the game rewards you with countless secrets to find, mechanics and strategies to discover and master and maybe even ending (or three) to achieve. You can try to make the ultimate OP build to power through enemies, or you can just random roll character and see how far you can take him.. or just make something entirely different like elven farmer and see if you can get through the first cave... This all is true for rogue-like mode which is imho the most fun to play, but this version have several modes to play in, some of which even allow saving progress, so you can tailor your own challenge.. If you are not sure I highly recommend downloading the last free version of ADOM that I believe is still aviable on adom.de, though if you are looking for something to gently introduce you into rouge-like maybe also try Tales of Maj'Eyal, which is as streamlined as it could be and still be called rouge-like. All in all ADOM is the one of few games with the special place in my heart. It's a passion project of it's creator and it shows, it's one of the best, if not THE best Rogue-likes ever made.