I have hated on the term "roguelike" for years. In my mind back then, the term already referred to games like Nethack, which were everything Rogue was but with slight variations - different rulesets, classes... but the same tightly defined genre of game.

Well, that ship sailed... Now "roguelike" refers to an ever-widening group of games. But, for the most part the two traits leading people to call something roguelike are PERMADEATH and PROCEDURALLY GENERATED LEVELS.

To me this a huge mistake. I think THE defining characteristic of Rogue and its fellows is TURN-BASED PLAY. Sometimes, this is turn-based combat only. Sometimes the entire gameplay is turn-based.

It has seemed to me that the majority of things called rogulike nowadays are action realtime games. Like Binding of Isaac and Rogue Legacy - both of which are not bad games. But, because they are actiony, you can lose your life and have to start over because of bad reflexes or a slip of the thumb - which I think is anathema to the Rogue experience. Rogue was all about learning by experience and THINKING your way through the next playthrough, the next situation, the next room.

Which brings me to Darkest Dungeon. Turn-based combat. Makes the game. And the game is wonderful. Challenging, nail-biting, frustrating. Wonderful. And you can't die because of a thumb slip.

And, even though Darkest Dungeon is a very different experience from Rogue, I am quite happy to call it a Roguelike. It IS like Rogue in important ways. And the ways in which it is different are fun and refreshing.

Point is, I play Darkest Dungeon, I am reminded of Rogue in good ways. When I play Rogue Legacy I am not so much reminded of Rogue. I am more reminded of earlier action-platformers. The only reason Rogue comes up at all is when people say "permadeath" and "procedurally generated levels" - both of which are true - but the feel is not there.

Darkest Dungeon has the feel.

for more in the same vein, check out Sunless Sea

I'm gonna be honest here. *inhales* I hate FTL.
I also don't much care for the roguelike genre in general. That said, I love Darkest Dungeon. Maybe it's because your heroes are disposable commodities, so you expect them to be ground up. Maybe it's because seeing the afflictions snowball is amusing in itself.

In my opinion Tales of Maj'Ejal is pretty good, a lot more tactical depth and a lot more content than Darkest Dungeon classwise and questwise but not as visually refined.

Do not get me wrong Darkest Dungeon is really good, but I would like a mix of the depth of Tales of Maj'Ejal and the graphics of Darkest Dungeon. Perhaps they should team up^^

The thing is: the are many definitions of "roguelikes". :D

But you are right here - "roguelike" without turn based "action" smells "slighly wrong" to me.

As of Darkest Dungeon - I've heard it's a great game, have it on my wishlist, yet, unfortunately, still not bought.
Is it true that base game lost a lot of fun after introduction of DLC?

I hate FTL for ruining my dream that I'd be a great starship captain after all the countless hours of watching Star Trek :D

Seriously though, I don't hate FTL, but I got tired of it pretty quickly. Too much of it depends on luck. I really didn't see any way of defeating the final boss other than an insanely lucky run. And trying again and again and again to get that perfect run... that's not fun for me.

Yes, luck helps. But (for me) it was not required to beat final bosses and I finished FTL many times.
Was I "insanely lucky" all these times...? I tend to disagree.

Two words:

Save.

Scumming.

You haven't lived until you've run roughshod over the galaxy in a Mantis-B cruiser. Or teleported an all-Lanius assault team onto the enemy bridge and watched their entire crew asphyxiate.

But the only way 99% of us are ever gonna get there is by ruthless, relentless save scumming.

Is there a number for this rule that whenever one mentions a game they couldn't beat someone will immediately show up to tell you many times they did and using a pencil sharpner as a controller too, to make it at least a little challenging? :D In FTL? Uhm... are we talking about the same game here?

Well, I am TBS veteran and it is my fav games genre - so that probably helped me a lot more than I think. :P

Rogue was special in its day because it had an overhead graphical (for its time) view of the character's surroundings and immediate goals/threats, as well as a simplified combat interface (move to attack). The random levels were necessary because of storage limitations, but were not unique to rogue, Permadeath was the norm with all video games of the time, and in particular, is necessary if you have competitive elements, like a score board.

And yes, that ship has apparently sailed. The current generation of gamers is flooded by games claiming to be roguelike (or roguelite if they're called on it, since they just can't think of a better name for their twisted 'genre"), so they can be somewhat excused. The last 2 games added to gog.com with a roguelike tag were metroidvania games, which are pretty much everything rogue isn't: side scrolling real-time platformers with complex twitch-based attack mechanics. I also see FTL mentioned as a roguelike all the time, and it is nothing like rogue (complex real-time combat, no actual areas to explore, not even real progress as you go further to the right). FTL is, in fact, the first game I mistakenly bought because people called it roguelike (and I regret it).

That said, I believe Darkest Dungeon has more in common with the newspeak roguelike than the old definition. It has no users' manual (not even in-game, like Moria, Omega, etc.). It has complex battles, with more random than strategic elements. It punishes you for exploring, and punishes you for progress. While its permadeath mechanic can be worked around the same as with any such game (save game copying), the game tries its best to ensure that only masochists enjoy the game. I certainly regret buying it, and I use gentoo (which also seems to be designed for masochists).

I prefer that my roguelikes be like simple hack & slash dungeon crawls, which reward me when I go further. I disable permadeath explicitly for that purpose. I do not enjoy fighting kobolds all the time, and learn nothing from random overpowered enemies killing me. After being burned by multiple games here that aren't roguelike, I have finally decided to just actively avoid any game that advertises this feature.

This this this. (Although I won't say it's a mistake per se, just a different genre that has no relation to roguelikes. Arcade machines had permadeath.) Okay, here I have to disagree. A roguelike is all about learning and planning. Sunless Sea is about discovery. Once you can plan for things happening, the game loses all of its challenge. And prior to that, it doesn't really allow for strategic decision-making - without knowing beforehand which actions are meant to be retried almost without consequences and which will harm you severely on failure, "do I risk a 30% failure chance on this" is still a blind choice.

It's a good game, though.

Ehh... There are any number of turn-based games which aren't "roguelikes" at all, and arguably quite a few games which capture the essence of the genre without being turn-based. There's a lot more to it than just one specific gameplay element, which is why the genre has such a specific definition.

Games like Spelunky or Rogue Legacy are generally referred to as rogue-lites, because even the creators of those games don't claim they are true roguelikes.

Aside from turn-based gameplay, procedural content and permadeath, to me depth of gameplay and large amounts of unique content are an important element of roguelikes, and that's something most roguelites are missing.

As for Darkest Dungeon, I still haven't played it, but calling it the best roguelike ever seems like high ( perhaps excessive? ) praise. Does it have the same depth and complexity as classic roguelikes?

I'm in a similar situation to Lexor and I have the same question. According to some reviews the developer nerfed some items in the game in order to acomodate the changes introduced by the DLC. Unfortunately he also applied the nerfs to the base game, even if you lack the DLC. Which made the game too difficult. Do you have the DLC? If not how do you find the game's balance. Do you find the reviews to be accurate?

I'd be willing to get Darkest Dungeon, at it's current discount, as I love the artwork, the turn-based combat, the progression system, the Lovecraft setting, and that GODLY narrator voice, but I'd also like to be able to play the game. If it's indeed too difficult, I wait until I can also buy the DLC at an affordable price.

EDIT: In fact, the warnings from the reviews have been the only things keeping me from getting the game in the past.

Get these mods:
- FTL Extended AE (at 1.1 currently)
- Better Planets and Backgrounds

and enjoy.
You need Slipstream Mod Manager. Works on Linux too.

What these do, is allow you to "sidejump" instead of jumping towards the boss.
That means, more credits, more fights, more shops - if you survive, ofc.

Backgrounds gives better backgrounds which is obligatory.

Also I "created" two mods for FTL:
- Russian versions of FTL Extended mod, translated.
- More Weapon power mod, that gives more weapon system power slots. Not weapon slots, not generator slots - these are unaffected. So,.. 16 levels instead of 8, making possible to create completely offensive ships. The price scales accordingly, as hard to purchase as ever.

Ping me back if you want that published on GOG. gg

Labyrinth of Touhou, anyone ?