TL;DR Tales of Maj'Eyal (or TOME) is a very well-built and versatile game that appeals to many turnbased RPG/strategy audiences, not just yourTL;DR Tales of Maj'Eyal (or TOME) is a very well-built and versatile game that appeals to many turnbased RPG/strategy audiences, not just your standard roguelike junkies (like me). Try it out.
I definitely recommend giving TOME a shot, especially considering it's free off of their main site at http://te4.org/ although the 'free' copy doesn't net you the Stone Warden class, cosmetic features (such as a wider range of character sprites and even beards on dwarven females), and Exploration mode for those who don't like the idea of losing their character to a limited life count.
For people not familiar with roguelikes, the genre is capitalized by a few strong features: Permadeath, turnbased combat, randomly generated content, and dungeon crawling. Some games, such as FTL, Rogue Legacy, or Binding of Isaac, are often called roguelites, because they feature some roguelike elements while bringing in flavors from other genres.
TOME is definitely a pure roguelike, although it has different things to accommodate those who aren't diehard fans fo the genre, but to start I want to get into the features that roguelike players will appreciate.
First, the game features an auto-explore button (default key is Z) that will literally run around the entire dungeon for you, exploring any crevice you haven't discovered yourself, and stopping the turn after a monster is found or when you are injured. Although it comes with the immediate disadvantage of losing a turn to a monster attack, this allows you to get past the 'easy' parts of the game relatively quickly after you know how to deal with them.
This amazing feature is bundled with another, to ensure you're reaching your skill level of play as soon as possible: Dungeons that are too easy for you automatically teleport you to the final room, where you can skip several floors of almost worthless loot and monsters that grant barely any EXP, so you can get straight to the climactic fight with the dungeon's final boss.
The game also features a cloud storage system for your save files off of an online account that syncs save files across every computer you have. This does not, however, make the game online-only, but instead means that when you access the internet you can play the same save file across multiple computers without having to manually transfer the file.
The few classes you start with offer a lot of choice to the game:
The Berserker dishes out massive damage with equally massive weapons.
The Bulwark plays defensively, using a sword-and-board fighting style to tank and dish out damage.
The Archer uses bows or slings and excels at taking foes out either at range or with deadly traps.
The Arcane Blade, my personal favorite, combines his choice of melee combat style with arcane forces, allowing him to dish out devastating physical attacks and powerful elemental abilities on the same turn.
The Rogue uses his stealth and traps to take out foes while remaining entirely unnoticed. Just remember to take off your light sources, as they'll give away your position quickly.
The Shadowblade functions the same way the Rogue does, but uses the arcane arts as a utility to assassinate his targets.
Finally, the Alchemist and his trusty golem sidekick are your starting magical powerhouse, using arcane magic to rain down destruction on their foes.
The classes I've listed are only about a quarter of what you can play ingame, but most of them are locked. Each class provides a unique way of playing the game, each with his own special powers and abilities. There are also unlockable races as well. I'd tell you more, but the 5k character limit won't allow me to do so, and I don't want to spoil the game to everyone reading this.
For beginners to roguelikes or more casual gamers, the Adventure game mode gives you multiple lives instead of your standard 1* present in most roguelikes, and the Exploration game mode allows you to play the game from start to end without fear of a permanent death. TOME also comes with something an unfortunately large number of roguelikes lack: a tutorial. The tutorial is actually pretty comprehensive compared to other roguelikes that take a half-hearted shot at teaching you how to play, meaning you aren't going into the game entirely clueless.… Expand
