ADOM (Ancient Domains Of Mystery) is a game with doesn't has a story that is the same every time you play it. The game start when a young adventurer comes back from a mountain range to save Ancardia, the world of the game. The forces of Chaos want to take over this planet. You can fight against Chaos or you can join the armies of Chaos. It depends on the choices you make in the game.
The graphics are bad. As you can see on the screenshot, the graphics are made of text characters. But that doesn't takes the story down. The gameplay is very nice too.
Reviewer: hawkyns ADOM is a rather excellent Roguelike with some unique features and a few surprises for lovers of the roguelike genre.
The first thing I noticed when I played it was the detail. There are dozens of skills, attributes, and modifiers. For example, the month of your character's birth will have a heavy effect on the path you take. Being born in the month of the Falcon, for example, will give you bonuses that fit a ranger admirably, while being born in the month of the Lion will give you skills pertaining to leadership.
When you have selected a character, selected a class, and answered about a dozen questions in order to receive even more attributes, you are dumped on a world map. You are free to wander. The first place I went was down the road, to a little village. I took three separate quests. On my way traveling to the first dungeon, I was told that I encountered a wolf pack. Not wanting to be hasty, I decided to evade. No luck. So I pulled out my bow, waited until the first was in range, and then started firing. The result was like a zerg rush in ASCII. By the time the fight was over, I had no arrows, 2 hit points (out of 31), and about two dozen dead wolves. I looted what I could, picked up my arrows, and moved on. I really appreciated one thing: picking up arrows. In many roguelikes, an arrow that does damage just vanished. In ADOM, you can just pick them back up from where your enemy fell.
So I kept on going. I got to the dungeon, and entered it. The game went from a wilderness map to a traditional roguelike view. I ventured it, and immediately encountered a kobold with a bow. I killed him easily. In fact, every foe I encountered was easily defeated. About half left loot behind. I went down as far as I could, leveling up three times, then came upon a "claw beetle" that hit me four times to my one. Before I knew what was happening, I was dead.
Yeah, that's the mark of a roguelike. The permadeath here hurts, because itâs easy to put a lot of time into playing, just like nethack. When you die, suddenly you're back to square one. The annoying thing is how easily that this happen. The traps I encountered weren't very dangerous, it was the wilderness encounters that were a pain. They're hard to evade, and you face ridiculous numbers of foes on terrain hard to fight on. Did I mention that you can't leave an encounter unless all foes are dead?
Overall, I would say that it's a good game for traditional RL players looking for something new. There are few interesting and unique features, and the skill sets available makes this a must for those who love complex combat systems.
