help choosing a game

[Eudoxus]

I've spent a couple afternoons playing each of Nethack, Angband, and ADOM.  In other words, I really don't know much about any of these games (or any hardcore roguelike for that matter).   I would like to choose one of them to learn really well, but I'm having trouble deciding which one.  By the way, I really hope that this question isn't asked so often on these forums so as to be really annoying to you all.  I tried searching for similar threads, but couldn't find what I was looking for.

How would you describe the differences between Nethack, ADOM, Angband, and Crawl?  Do you have any insight that could help me choose between these games?  Does one of them have better replay value?  Is one of them mechanically richer?  Or is it impossible to make a recommendation without knowing my Myers-Briggs score?  thanks for listening!

[Chex Warrior]

In my opinion Crawl has the best replay value, try that one.  If you need reasons why visit their site and read about their philosophy on roguelikes.  Try to give some minor roguelikes a shot as well check out Prospector, Frozen Depths and Rogue Survivor.

[Eudoxus]

Thanks a lot for the recommendations.  I couldn't really find anything about the philosophy/design goals of Dungeon Crawl on Linley's website, though a quick Google search led me to the Stone Soup website.  The philosophy section in Stone Soup's manual makes the game sound fantastic.  So, I guess I should play the Stone Soup version, as apposed Linley's version 4.0.0, right?

Prospector also looks really cool.  It reminds me of Star Control 2, which is probably my favorite game of all time.  Thanks again!

[getter77]

Yeah, stick to Stone Soup.

As another long shot, since you mention Star Control II, you might be WELL served to look into Transcendence and Lost in Flatspace II.

[Skeletor]

My 2 cents:

It depends on what you like the most to do.

If you like farming, go for Angband.
If you want a 100% tactics game and don't give a damn about story, immersion, etc then Crawl Stone Soup is the game for you.
Nethack is a very cool game with lot of funny and absurd logics, inside jokes, etc; too much for someone but if this is what you're searching for then it's your game.
Adom (my personal favourite among the 4 games you mentioned) contains both the aspects (partially) and has a very immersive story and world.

Oh and if you loved Doom don't forget to try also DoomRL.

[Eudoxus]

Any game that's reminiscent of SC2 is certainly worth checking out, thanks Getter.  And thanks a bunch for the descriptions, Skeletor, that was exactly the kind of thing I was looking for.  I've been playing a lot of Crawl this past last week, and I'm really enjoying it.  The user interface is spectacular.  I'll have to give ADOM another try, though, since I really like the idea of an immersive story and world.  When I played before, I must have died before I got a chance to experience much of the story.

[corremn]

ADOMs story is not that grand.  Its kind of like "Go down that hole and defeat Chaos". It does have a few NPCs though, that give you side quests and the like .

[Etinarg]

If you like farming, go for Angband.

I've recently been playing Angband again for a while, but the first few levels were kind of odd - either very deadly for new characters or quite boring. I have never been very deep into the game. Will this become better later?

[Skeletor]

ADOMs story is not that grand.  Its kind of like "Go down that hole and defeat Chaos". It does have a few NPCs though, that give you side quests and the like .

Maybe you are right, but the complexity of the world with all of its elements and their possible interactions, and always new things to discover makes Adom the deepest roguelike I ever played.

If you like farming, go for Angband.

I've recently been playing Angband again for a while, but the first few levels were kind of odd - either very deadly for new characters or quite boring. I have never been very deep into the game. Will this become better later?

No. Angband is all about maxing attributes, getting all kind of resistances, best items, etc in a long and dull grinding process.
BTW looks like there are some decent variants (e.g. UnAngband) who add many things to the vanilla game and are worth a try.

[Etinarg]

Well, I usually like item management and equipment optimization, but what I've seen in Angband there is way too much time spend with running through corridors until getting another interesting item.

Andrew Doull is a quite sharp thinker, so UnAngband should include a whole lot of good ideas. I'll take a look, thanks for the suggestion

[Omnivorous]

ADOMs story is not that grand.  Its kind of like "Go down that hole and defeat Chaos". It does have a few NPCs though, that give you side quests and the like .

Maybe you are right, but the complexity of the world with all of its elements and their possible interactions, and always new things to discover makes Adom the deepest roguelike I ever played.

Yeah I agree. However, ADOM also is the most "static" roguelike of the ones listed. I want to say ADOM is my favorite, because it's the one I got closest to when I played it alot, however after a while it gets abit boring to "create characters" (You just want to get past lev10 again in a hurry) so atm. it is Crawl Stone Soup. Oh and Legerdemain! (Google it, www.roguelikefiction.com or something)

[Xecutor]

IMO among these roguelikes Angband is the only one that can be safely played unspoiled.
There is A LOT of hidden and not-so-easy-to-figure-out-on-your-own content in ADOM.
But I guess it can be won unspoiled after many attempts.
After all it's not that hard when you get used to it.

There are A LOT of things that have SIGNIFICANT impact on your ability to win in DCSS.
There are A LOT of hidden and completely undocumented mechanics.
If you have natural affinity to math and statistics, probably you can figure it out on your own.
But I sourcedived a lot to understand WHY THE HELL MY TROLL CAN'T HIT THINGS!
I had to do some not-so-obvious choices after calculating hidden parameters.
Developers claim that there are people who ascend unspoiled.
Well. I can even believe this. Because in DCSS you rely A LOT on MIGHTY GOD RNG!
Basically by trying and trying and trying (and dying and dying and dying) you can
finally get character with some awesome near-starting equipment who is more or less safe from
so-loved-by-DCSS sudden death. Why so much about dcss?
It's freaking addictive
I have quite contradictory love-hate feeling toward DCSS.
And there is big difference between simple ascension and all runes ascension

Can't actually say much about Nethack, since I never ascended there.
But from what I read from various posts about it, there are a lot
things that almost require spoilers.

RLs to consider:
FrozenDepth
IVAN
DoomRL

[gruff]

What are the nonobvious things you did?

[Xecutor]

What are the nonobvious things you did?

Once I entered wiz mode and checked what weapon of available is best for my troll,
the best was ... katana. Not so good katana from my point of view.
Not some spiked club nor mildly enchanted tripple sword, but katana.
Can you imagine troll with katana?

The way skill leveling works is also very counterintuitive.
If exp pool is empty, you can kill your enemies by any convenient way.
But once you've got some exp in a pool, you often need to do some funny things,
if you want to increase your skills.
Have you tried to learn spellcasting by troll?
Kill things, read scroll, kill things read scroll.
I can't call all this 'natural behaviour'.

[gruff]

Katana is best because of the speed I assume?

They do explain the skill levelling in the docs, I think it's actually a pretty realistic system. Consider that a troll wouldn't naturally be good at spellcasting - he'd have to put some extra effort into it, especially if he started as a berserker or fighter. So reading scrolls makes sense as a way to practice beginner spellcasting.

The skill system is one of the things that keeps me coming back to Crawl to get murdered.

I always make a point of saving exp and levelling up in Traps & Doors at least to 4 because it becomes a lifesaver.