What got you hooked on ToME?

[bricks]

There are lots of reasons that I enjoy ToME, probably too many to go into. However, a few things really hooked me:

The unlock system. While it can be aggravating to try to unlock that one particular class, routine play of the game doled out the rewards in a nice way. I still remember my first unlock - entered the Hidden Tunnels totally unspoilered, and the game glitched to hell right after an Assassin Lord summoned some cronies. I was pumped that the Summoner was still unlocked even though ToME crashed, and I made it all the way to Dreadfell with my first summoner (where I was torn apart by ghoulkings, dreadmasters, and banshees).

The mystery. The story is a little sparse in places, and roguelikes aren't the best genre for story-telling, but there were little things to discover that really got me excited. The Sher'tul Fortress was really exciting to unlock.

The challenges. My former roommate and I had a lot of fun breaking down tough encounters like Urkis and Epoch. Character advancement was fast enough that we could make new attempts every few days, revising strategies and swearing up storms whenever the RNG threw us a curveball.

The itemization. I was starting to get really sick of roguelikes with unknown potions that were ten times as likely to kill me as they were to save my life. It's taken a while to get used to, but the inscription system really meshes well with the rest of ToME.

So, what hooked you folks?

[Frumple]

System and setting mostly. System up until LotR got ditched, and then the setting grew on me.

Basically, though, I like what T4 does with classes, items, races, combat... the whole shebang, mostly. It's a roguelike with most of the stuff that irritates me about roguelikes tossed right out on its collective ear, with many innovations big and small while still giving a solid ear to us ASCII fogies and remaining violently murderous. The general transparency is also a (dark)godsend.

The setting's a delicious shades-of-grey melange with plenty going for it and awesome bits sprinkled liberally. I like its moxie.

Honorable mention goes to ease of modification, especially the bits I don't like (I.e. Unlocks, which I hate with a violent passion but am okay with in T4 because it takes like three minutes to bypass and the game doesn't care if you do.). It's double-plus good that addons and suchlike are so easy to create and distribute, too. Bodes well for the future.

[Robsoie]

What hooked me first is the game system with the character development that allow so many variations of gameplay for a same character depending on the talents/skills choices.

The fabulous, intuitive and easy to use interface, no need to remember several dozen of keyboard shortcuts, everything is easy to access, ToME4 interfacing between the player and the game is simply brillant.

The story and atmosphere, giving it a nice epic "adventure" feeling, something i appreciated too with ADOM. And the world has consistency, the tons of lore found around really helps building the ToME4 world into something believable enough for immersion.

[5k17]

I generally like RPGs and strategy games, especially if they are fairly complex, challenging and not too constrictive, so I should probably enjoy roguelikes. But I usually don't. Most roguelikes are unnecessarily complicated and sometimes outright unfair. I don't want to memorize as many key bindings as fit on the keyboard; I don't want to have to order my character to eat and drink; I don't want to risk death every time I try using an unidentified item; I don't want to die because the ASCII character the game uses to represent a dragon is the same as the one that represents a rat.
Besides the lack of such elements, what I love about ToME is its variety. There are so many builds available both for the player and the enemies that the game hardly ever gets boring. There are constantly new challenges, and a vast arsenal of talents, items and runes/infusions to overcome them (if I would use them correctly, that is), but virtually none of those annoying items/skills with limited charges.

[TheRani]

I've been playing ToME on and off since it was still an Angband variant. It was Angband with a whole world outside the dungeon, and actual quests! I loved the crazy amount of character classes. I love ToME 4 because it's got so much fun stuff in it, and you can play it with a mouse! The only thing I still really miss from the old ToME is the boomerangs.

[Planetus]

What hooked me first were the unlocks. So many to go for, so many that sounded really interesting, and so many that could be gained by continual progress and new games.

What hooked me almost immediately after that was the variety of power sources and power mechanics for classes. Ok, stamina, mana, and psi are about the same, but positive/negative energy, hate, souls, gems, paradox, equilibrium, vim? They're all such fun, such variety.

[IvenGray]

1. Unlocks. I have 5 Archmages permanently dead before dreadfall, and with every one of them I unlocked something new. I enjoyed the process.
2. Tried several different classes, and the differences between them are huge, and for each class there are many ways to play. I enjoy the diversity.
3. Permanent death, and other roguelike elements. Though I've tried some other roguelike games before, but I couldn't have fun, it's the game's user-friendliness that enables me to enjoy.
4. Watching the game get to be more and more amazing. The game is promising
5. I like Darkgod.

[Grey]

The setting's a delicious shades-of-grey melange with plenty going for it and awesome bits sprinkled liberally. I like its moxie.

Hopefully you don't mean Fifty Shades of Grey... ;)

For me the hook was the originality in the gameplay and the sheer balls to try things completely different. It achieves complexity of mechanics in such different and cool ways compared with other roguelikes that don't think beyond "fantasy simulator". ToME4 is a game through and through, and the focus throughout is on the player experience. Plus great UI and accessibility without toning down the exciting difficulty.

[noxnoctum]

What got me hooked was the difficulty + interesting lore and setting (in some ways I find the "found lore" story more interesting than say a traditional RPG storytellnig ala Bioware) + the very varied classes. The excellent UI doesn't hurt either.

My only real problem with it is that I wish there was more variety to the early game in some ways since I always just try to get through it as fast as possible and always in basically the same order.

[outolumo]

Must have been the martini glass.

Back in tome 2.? I was doing a princess quest in a worm infested level in Barrow downs, when I realized that the dungeon map was of a shape of a martini glass. The Imagination! The sense of humour! DG had a follower.

Other things I liked about tome2:
- Theme. (LotR fan myself.)
- Several fairly shallow dungeons.
- Variety of different dungeons.

What I didn't like:
- Deviating from the theme (hydra hunting south of bree... the maze, quests...)
- UI. (Spellcasting, automatizer...) No mouse.

As for Maj Eyal... For me it blasts the walls out.
The Cons:
- No LotR (See below).
- Some clicheic traces of Middle Earth -likeness.

And the pros:
- Troubles of Middle Earth always had the trouble of not really fitting into the Middle Earth. I think it was better for Middle Earth, for ToME and a jackpot for the Real World to have Maj Eyal, a whole new world for DG to play with. World that would not be restricted by what someone else had laid down. Something new. Something that would allow him to freely express his own creativity. Maj Eyal.
- Story. Lore. Everything fits together.
- Creativity. Originality. (effects, resources, classes, infusion system, unlocks...)
- Balancing. Everything just works. I don't get killed by white worm mass nearly that often.
- UI. I have no numpad on this net-top, and play mostly with touchpad (+some hotkeys).

So, in the upgrade nothing was lost, but everything gained.