Tales of Maj'Eyal

[Felicity]

Ok, this topic is to bring some attention to a lesser known roguelike.

Tales of Maj'Eyal is a roguelike RPG dungeon crawler. Not a roguelite, a la binding of Isaac mind you.

You start the game by creating a character with the typical fantasy sets. Humans, Elves, Dwarves and Halflings that can be warriors, berserkers, rogues, archers, mages (Though you start off with only an Alchemist class) and a variety of other classes that are somewhat more unconventional. Like Psychic mindslayers.

Then, depending on your race, you start in a dungeon and you are at the meat of the game. Explore, kill, loot, level up.

Sounds simple, right? Well, it is. Until you look at your skill trees.

Every class has a unique set of skills tailored to provide unique gameplay each time. You could be the immobile warrior, using sword and board to defend against literal hordes of enemies. (I'm not kidding I once won a fight against 50~ snow giants WITH elite "boss" giants as well). You could be the shadowblade, a rogue who uses two weapons and magic to deal out tons of damage and get the fuck out before he takes any himself. Then you could be a mage who uses beam and AoE spells to carve away at the enemy crowds at the expense of being very vulnerable without any spells. Or you could be a martial arts master as the brawler. Literally punch a dragon to death.

As you level up and play the game you also get the opportunity to unlock new skills for your current character as well as new races and classes for the next playthrough, depending on your decisions. So, as you advance through the game and explore, you find a lot of new content to take advantage of.

The gameplay itself though, the tactical application of different skills in response to enemy threats on the dungeon map is what makes it interesting. Enemies have access to skills just as you do which means you have to proceed carefully or get utterly destroyed by something that catches you unawares. This game is not easy and you have to know how to make the most of your class to get anywhere. I've been experimenting with different classes and have 35+ hours in the game, on steam and off, and I've only legitimately got a character that can die to level 20 once or twice. The character level cap is level 50.

Point is, if you want a difficult, tactical RPG roguelike, look this up. You can buy it on steam for fairly cheap or you can download a free version from the games website. This version does not have several features, such as an "easy" exploration mode, the ability to change your character sprite or access to DLC, which adds a LOT more content.

So yeah, go check it. It's real gud.

[Tartar]

I don't know. I've had it in my library for a few years now but every time I try to get into it I'm discouraged by the incredible amounts of choices, items, abilities, places to go etc. I've never really been able to get into the game because of this.

Perhaps the genre is simply not for me? This may be weird, coming from someone who has played 500 hours of Europa Universalis...

[Felicity]

I've found that as you get into the game you start to learn the basics of what works and what doesn't with the various playstyles. If nothing else just dump points everywhere, experimentation doesn't hurt early on and not much later either.

For example, if you have a skill that can stun, grab it quick. Stuns, dazes, slows etc are all real useful for dealing with strong individuals.