ToME4 review

[jotwebe]

Well, a lot of the OP's problems have already been adressed. I sympathize with being overwhelmed by the massive variety of items.

Maybe it would help you to unlock arena mode - item drops are quite scarce there, so you use whatever you get, with none of those first world problems like "too many choices" and such. Games are short, leveling is quick, combat is fast and furious, and you will learn a lot about tactics.

[Hunter]

And I disagree with that statement about roguelikes. ToME is a particular type of large, complex roguelike, but not all are like that - far from it. And even if it were then the review should still explain what that means for the casual gamer. One can't simply say "it's a roguelike" and expect every reader to know the full context of that statement.

Perhaps the game would be better served being compared to a more general genre, like "turn-based roleplaying games." A person picks up a game -- be it Final Fantasy, Mario Bros, Age of Civilization, Angry Birds, Angband, or Zork III -- because he or she has an interest in playing it, and while the person may have a broad range of interests, he or she is likely seeking a certain form of entertainment in a given choice. If I'm looking for an FPS game with lots of shooting and sound effects, I'm going to pick Halo over ToME. If I'm looking for an intensive RPG using ASCII or graphical tile sets and involving an endless array of monsters, development possibilities and items kits, I'm going to pick ToME over Pac Man. So it's not unreasonable to at least analyze ToME in the context of turn-based roleplaying games even if one considers it a superior form of entertainment in general rather than wanting to pigeonhole it. I remember the old Dungeons and Dragons computer games, which weren't rogue-likes, but they did have the same basic set-up and met the same basic need as Angband or ToME. The similarities are pretty striking, and it was inevitable that I evaluated ToME in the context of games like those. So a comparison between them makes sense.