![]() But for all of its philosophy around removing tedium, the game still feels way too long. They’re almost meditative, in a way.ĭon’t get me wrong. These are activities I want to do and relish doing. These aren’t tedious chores I must do in order to win the game. You can look at all of that stuff as “tedious”, just as you might for shopping or item identification or altar sacrifice in NetHack.īut I don’t see it that way. You’ve got to break boulders and cut back weeds and cut down trees, and go fishing in the nearby river or lake. In Stardew Valley you’ve literally got to till the soil and plant seeds and water them. Even the bloody Sokoban levels which people love to complain about! All the graffiti and the Discworld books. The “monsters” who are neutral to you based on your alignment. A sense of place, of coherence and care, that DCSS lacks. There’s something I find very endearing about it even though I know what to expect. I have been playing both NetHack and DCSS for years and won both multiple times. There are no secret techniques to bypass difficulty in DCSS.ĭCSS does not simulate a very believable world, but it's better as a game. DCSS makes all traps visible, and replaces hidden traps with "sourceless malevolence", which applies random bad effects as you explore. This means you can spend a lot of time searching, or you can tediously track which tiles are safe, noting where you and the monsters walk, which is even more annoying. Nethack has hidden traps, which can be found by searching. This means there's a reason to pick up trash items, which is annoying. DCSS removes food and replaces it with an explicit countdown timer. Nethack includes food, which serves as a kind of clock, but food availability is random, so it doesn't work very well. DCSS goes out of its way to remove tedium, even at the cost of realism.Į.g. There's very little discovery involved, because the game openly tells you everything you need to know, and it's up to you to figure out how to apply that information. Simulating a world is secondary to presenting a series of interesting tactical challenges. To best enjoy Nethack, I recommend avoiding spoilers as much as possible.ĭCSS sacrifices Nethack's sense of wonder for better playability. Finding something like the technique to steal from shops is fun the first time, and then tedious every other time. The drawback is that you only get the joy of discovery once. Nethack tries to present the experience of exploring a rich and detailed world, full of interesting things to discover.
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