ToME 2

Tales/Troubles of Middle Earth (the title screens shows randomly either name) is a Roguelike with a long history, stretching back at least 10 years. Originally titled Pernband, it was a variant of the classic roguelike Angband with Pern influences -- although all Pern influences were removed following a Cease and Desist letter in the late 90s. It was then renamed and changed into a Tolkien-based variant, and development continued on it off and on for a decade.

Like its parent games and other games in the genre, ToME 2 revolves around the player character delving into a dungeon. As a fork of early ZAngband, ToME 2 inherits ZAngband's wilderness code and contains an entire world map based on Tolkien's Middle Earth, complete with multiple towns and dozens of dungeons, all with different themes. In addition, the game has a quest system, giving the dungeon crawling about more meaning than just becoming powerful enough to kill and then killing the Big Bad Morgoth.

Unlike many early Angband variants ToME 2 distinguishes itself with the sheer number of classes, races, and subclasses -- wish to play as a Vampire Troll Druid? Ok. Barbarian Kobold Monk? Done. Spectral Dwarven Axemaster of Tulkas? Go for it. Each character class / race / subrace has it's own ups and downs, and creating interesting combinations is part of the fun. ToME 2 also has a skill system that allows for further character customization by spending points in various skills.

An attempt to revamp the game, avoiding some of the development problems of the the 2.X line, started and stalled out. In the meantime, the author and primary developer got married and vanished off the face of the planet, leaving development of the new ToME 3 in doubt. Some of the players tried to continue developing ToME 3, but that ended when the original author reappeared with an alpha for ToME 4. Soon after, a script kiddy broke into the forums admin account, wiping the forums clean of 10 years of posts -- with no backups.

ToME 4 (Tales of Maj'Eyal) is drastically different from ToME 2 in flavor, looks, and gameplay and contains none of the old code.


 * Anti-Grinding: Completely averted. Want to spend a few decades loitering around at the bottom of the Sandworm Lair, looking for potions that will get you additional stats and spellbooks that you need for progression? Not only allowed, but encouraged. You do have a time limit in the name of food et all, but this is averted due to the ease of teleporting in and out of dungeons.
 * Bonus Dungeon: Several. Only a few dungeons are actually required for the main game, the rest are optional but have bosses with set drops of varying use. Playing the trope more straight is The Void, a huge dungeon with enemies that are scaled (somewhat unfairly) to your own level, and with no air -- finding an item that makes it so you don't need to breathe is a major part of the early postgame.
 * Bow and Sword in Accord: All characters can wear melee and ranged weapons at the same time due to distinct equipment slots. Every character will fill those slots, as many of the magic weapons of {excellent} or better quality carry enchantments that are useful even to characters who rely solely on spells.
 * Class and Level System
 * Evil Is Deathly Cold: Cursed items.
 * Experience Points
 * Explosive Breeder: There are several creatures that breed explosively. White lice are particularly notorious for their tendency to get out of control.
 * Final Death: There is a rare one shot item called the Blood of Life that will bring you back to life -- once -- if you die; and ultra-high level Necromancy can do this, but other than that, once you die, you're dead.
 * Good Old Fisticuffs: A combat option for Loremasters. Monks specialize in it, but Loremasters and Possessors can do it as well. Gives bonuses to dodging as long as you avoid heavy armor, but also scales very well and avoids the problems (and benefits) of weapons. In addition, Possessor forms such as, say, Dragons are technically unarmed, meaning that a Possessor with Barehand Combat skill an fight just as well in Dragon Form as Humanoid Form.
 * Level Drain: Many late-game undeads in particular are fond of draining experience points. The lost points can be restored with magic to their old maximum or regained normally by killing monsters.
 * Lost Forever: By default off, but you can disable the system that protects unidentified artifacts from being lost, causing them to be lost forever if you leave a dungeon floor with them on (the tradeoff is that you are told, explicitly, that an artifact exists on a floor you enter). In addition, any artifact that is I Ded and later lost is lost for good, even with this option on.
 * Ninja Pirate Zombie Robot: Part of the charm of the 2.X series -- the sheer number of class / race / subrace / skillpoint build combinations are nearly endless. Some are incredibly powerful. Some... aren't.
 * Randomly Generated Levels: Everything not a town or special level. Dungeons do have themes, however -- for example, the Orc Caves are, well, caves; the Sandworm Lair is a long twisty dungeon of nothing but sand (easily dug through). The "Ironman" option changes the engine to always generate "interesting" rooms -- interesting as defined by special rooms filled with instant death.
 * Randomly Drops: Very very random, although traditionally the best loot is found either on the floor of vaults or on Dragons (which can be scummed from Quylthulgs later in the game). "RandArts", randomly generated artifacts, are also worth a mention, as they can be based on any basic item in the game and have a rather large number of stats.
 * Squishy Wizard: Sorcerers lose hitpoints with every skill point they put into Sorcery, a powerful skill that allows access to all schools of arcane magic. It's worth the cost.
 * Warp Whistle: Scrolls of Word of Recall, as well as the various spell versions. Required for any dungeon dive past a few floors. Bring extras, cause they're not fireproof. (Unless they are.)
 * Weapon of X-Slaying: There are many varieties. Some of the better weapons have multiple slays in one.
 * Yet Another Stupid Death: Lots. Getting paralyzed by an eye is one of the top early ones, however, leaving you to slowly starve to death as the eye paralyzes you over and over again. Later on, anything that uses water attacks -- as there is no water resistance in the game.