ADOM (Ancient Domains Of Mystery)

It's an odd niche but it's one I appreciate. Mac is not the greatest gaming system and even Tales of Maj'Eyal will not work properly on my desktop. But Adom works fast, looks great, plays in a window, and has enough depth to keep me interested but is not so punishingly complex I have to keep checking an online database (looking at you, Caves of Qud). It's a nifty, charming little dungeon crawler with a few twists and sometimes that's all I want when I have some time off. There's a load of care and attention paid to enemy roster especially: check out 'memory of enemy' to see a full profile on everything you fight. Only real issue is some niceties are not present here as they might be in other RPGs. I can only really know the value of something based on the amount of sale cost it has (I assume a steel helm is better than a horned helm because it sells for more, not because it actually tells you what it more effective). Also the hunger system is a pain. You won't die of starvation on normal mode but you will go through food fast (especially when you get injured) and it is ridiculously expensive to buy. Still, variety, ease of control, exploration, a sense of advancement...it's all here. A nice light pleasant to look at windowed RPG for those times you just feel like crawling through a few dungeons.

The game is a rogue-like with good graphics (for its genre) and a reasonably high learning curve. In my last game, I was low health and hungry in a dungeon. I proceeded to kill and eat the first thing I could. I then vomited constantly until I died. 10/10, will play again. So should you.

This was the first roguelike I ever played, and it's still my favourite, and still one that I have yet to beat The biggest problem with Roguelikes is that they can be a real bother to get into because of the lack of graphics and odd/complicated commands/controls. The graphics, the new UI and all those new nifty things really makes it much easier to breach into, and enjoy. But it doesn't make the game any easier, and that's a good thing :^)

Adom was one of the first roguelikes I played 20 years ago and it is still great. This new version has some pros and cons: Pros: *Graphical mode is pretty good. I like the art style much better than for example ToME *Ability to play in ASCI mode is still there Cons: *Random crashes are really annoying. I think I have about one crash for every 10 hours played. Old ADOM never crashed. Not sure if it is this version or does GOG Galaxy affect on the crashing. *Little bit laggier than the old version. All the movements are tiny amount slower than before. It is not noticeable if you haven't played the original version. Would be five stars, but the crashing takes one star away.

There is what sounds like a mostly complete version of this game available at adom.de and I highly recommend trying that first before buying (unless you have lots of money and want to support games that have a free version). I wish I did. I played moria and then angband decades ago and my initial impression is that this one remains much closer to that game than Tales of Maj'Eyal. ToME has more options to make things easier in permadeath mode and really more options in general but also more stats, info, and story presented so it is easier to figure out what is going on. I suspect 99% of people interested in this type of game will be happier with ToME (which also has a free version you can try first at te4.org). I haven't made it all that far yet but I still ran into a rather annoying bug where mouse over in stores seems to keep the text of the first item you mouse over rather than showing the rest. The stores are just buildings where you pick up stuff and pay as you leave, so this is quite annoying.