[AIPedant]

Caves of Qud is quite good, though a bit less traditional in being a big open world vs a dungeon. There a few quirks and bugs but the game is very fun and creative, and it has excellent music. I also love the graphics but it is an acquired taste.

I played the Dwarf Fortress roguelike mode several years ago, and it was really more of a toy - nifty to play around with the mechanics but too dry and arbitrarily difficult to be a fun game. But almost all the dev focus was on fortress management, maybe they’ve spruced up the roguelike with the Steam release.

[giraffe_lady]

The permadeath mode is really not that well suited to CoQ I find. It's a long game and most playthroughs are substantially the same for the first couple hours. It doesn't have the fun "fresh start" feel of the the early dungeon in other RLs. It's a cool feature to include for experienced players though.

[Karrot_Kream]

I've played a lot of CoQ and totally see your point but isn't that the same in most Roguelikes? To be fare DCSS and CoQ are the ones I've spent the most time in my life on but in my experience with DCSS, Nethack, and Slash'Em the first few hours are pretty much the same "opening". Though it's been over a decade since I've touched most Roguelikes from my youth other than Pixel Dungeon and CoQ.

[giraffe_lady]

I don't think so really. In those others you mentioned early drops (or other random choices like altars) can have a big impact on which direction your build goes. CoQ also has a more traditional rpg approach to quests which is completely different from the others and adds to the repetition. I think ToME is probably its closest relation, also having an overworld, skill trees you can plan out in advance, reliably placed towns & npcs. And it also has a goofy relationship to permadeath.

[Karrot_Kream]

Good point yeah. I never played ToME but have read discussions about permadeath in ToME. Maybe I should turn off permadeath next time I play CoQ.