this game rules, i even consider it one of my favorites, but it has awful game design by conventional standards. that could be excused if it leaned into pure simulation non-game territory like it's big brother Dwarf Fortress, but it's clearly still trying to be a video game. yet it's tedious and repetitive as fuck. it's an open world game with like, less than 20 quests? most of them are apart of the main quest line--which is solid, the writing of this game rules--but being a roguelike, an open world roguelike no less, it's not exactly fun to do the main quest line over and over again with no variation. the game gives you very little ability or incentive to play any differently from just following the main quest in the exact same way every run, and there's very little compelling content outside of it. i would love if this game took cues from like, any other open world game, instead of trying to hang on to its increasingly diminishing influence from more traditional roguelikes. i hope these flaws get rectified, as this game is certainly going to be updated post-release, but they seem so essential to the design of the game that i'm not sure they will be. as of now this game is more fun as a sandbox for modding than it is as an actual video game.

if you enjoy, like, ADOM or NetHack, you'll probably love this. if you enjoy, like, DCSS or Brogue, this probably isn't the game for you. if you've never played any of those games, much less heard of them, you should probably stay away.