Forum:My opinion on dNethack
So I kept hearing about dNethack, and I got curious! It seems to be a lot less popular than, say, SLASHEM, and what I'd heard made it sound a lot like a black sheep among the Nethack variants. I downloaded the Windows binary from Chris' webpage and toyed with it for about twenty minutes. I also read a lot of the wiki pages on it, and here's a few thoughts:
Some of it could be a lot better polished. I noticed a few typos, which make it feel a lot less professional. For example, the name of the neutral pirate god "deep blue sea" needs to be capitalized or it just looks really silly.
Also, there are some really laughable ideas, like giving Gnomes pointy hats (I don't think the Gnomes in Nethack were ever based on garden gnomes.) Things like this detract from the rather carefully cultivated tone of Nethack, in my opinion. On the same note, do Weeping Angels from Doctor Who *really* have a place in a Nethack variant? The same goes for monsters from Zelda and Metroid, as much as I like Metroid.
On the other hand, I *really* like a lot of the ideas that have been added. Clockwork Automaton as a starting race is fun, but I'm still unclear on how winding works. (Can your starting pet do it?) As much as I want to nitpick about tone, Pirate is absolutely delightful, especially the fact that it starts with a pet monkey. I like a lot of the DnD monsters, especially the ones that have their origins in Lovecraft. Binder seems like it'd be a bit clunky, but it shows a lot of potential as a class.
I like that the magic system seems to be moving away from the generic Vancian system of DnD and Vanilla Nethack, with the Wards being a really refreshing addition, and the Binder class having a completely different system of magical effects. Troubadors are a nice but somewhat dated touch.
I certainly like it at least as much as I do SLASHEM, but it still needs some improvement. A word to the developer: if you add the hitpoint bar from NAO, I'll be your biggest fan, I absolutely will.
JMarieStanton --- 73.203.230.118 16:20, 8 December 2015 (UTC)
