Wow. I'm not sure if I want to start playing it if it can be that difficult to finish. Is it worth it even if you keep dying over and over again? Can the game still be enjoyable even if can't win it?
There's a lot of depth to the game that lets you have memorable characters and experiences. Even a very short time can stick with you. I had a Barbarian that starved to death in the first room because he couldn't find the door.
I play Angband, and I used to play one based on Angband but with a Cyberpunk-esque overlay called "MacBoss". Never finished it. but I got 3 or 4 towns in once (The game is set up in various different cities- after you defeat the Boss in one town, you move on to the next. It was fun. Hard, but fun. I still play Angband every once in a while.
Haven't played any except for Nethack, which I pick up once every few years in the hopes of finally beating it. My last game was actually going kinda well until I fell into a moat in Gehennom and blanked all my scrolls, that kind of discouraged me.
As for the permanent death feature, well, I savescum shamelessly in games where it is allowed, but Nethack just wouldn't be the same if you could save. It does make the game a lot more challenging.
I never played any roguelike games (well Nethack briefly but didn't like it). But I did play the original rogue a lot.
Never did manage to finish it - most fairly good characters ended up getting killed by those damn trolls. The occasional character who was powerful enough to kill trolls typically ended up getting killed by starvation.
I'm not really into rogue-like games, I usually need a good story to keep me going. There have been a few exceptions over the years; "Telengard" on the C64 filled many late evenings for me, but there was a no death feature (start the character's name with an "sv". presumably for "save", but amazing how many guys called "sven" I wound up playing...) Also I played a lot of "Dungeon Hack" on a DOS computer. It was based on the "Eye of the Beholder" game engine and utilized 2E AD&D so it was pretty irresistible to me. It would let you shut off perma-death from the set-up menus, which was also a plus to me. More recently I tried "Sword of Fargoal" on iOS. But that frustrated me pretty quickly.
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You'll need it.
http://roguelikefiction.com
As for the permanent death feature, well, I savescum shamelessly in games where it is allowed, but Nethack just wouldn't be the same if you could save. It does make the game a lot more challenging.
Never did manage to finish it - most fairly good characters ended up getting killed by those damn trolls. The occasional character who was powerful enough to kill trolls typically ended up getting killed by starvation.
I've played Binding of Isaac for a bit, i think that may be the extent as to which i've ventured in to that genre.
Also I played a lot of "Dungeon Hack" on a DOS computer. It was based on the "Eye of the Beholder" game engine and utilized 2E AD&D so it was pretty irresistible to me. It would let you shut off perma-death from the set-up menus, which was also a plus to me.
More recently I tried "Sword of Fargoal" on iOS. But that frustrated me pretty quickly.