Roguelike Recommendations?

[Arlia Janet]

I really like Dungeons of Dredmore and FTL. I'm interested in other roguelikes but the ASCII roguelikes Dwarf Fortress don't really appeal to me... I guess I'm just shallow. What I really like about Dredmore and FTL is that their interfaces are polished and fun to use while some of the other roguelikes seem needlessly clunky. Does anyone have a recommendation? Why do you like it?

[greed]

Dungeon Crawl Stonesoup is a pretty fun free roguelike and uses tiles as default not ASCII. Also very user friendly. Still hard, but you're not gonna die due to thinking that d is a dog not a dragon or spend hours trying to learn arcane controls.

There's also the PokemonMystery Dungeon games which are official Pokemon roguelikes. Like Pokemon is to regular RPGs, the Pokemon Mystery Dungeon games are kinda easy and introductory by the genre's standards though.

If what you like is exploring super hard dungeons filled with randomised treasure and enemies with heavily customised characters then SMT Strange Journey(this is sorta halfway to a regular JRPG though)and the Etrian Odyssey series for the DS or Elminage Original or Class of Heroes for the PSP are all Wizardry alikes, that is party based roguelikes with a 1st person perspective. Elminage Original in particular is nearly as arcane and detailed as PC roguelikes, it's pretty goddamned crazy.

[Kim]

Brogue. It's free.

[Arlia Janet]

Oh cool. I must have downloaded the ASCII version of Stonesoup when I tried it a while ago. I'm checking it out now. Thanks!

[synkr0nized]

If it's just the text character display of Dwarf Fortress you don't like, I know there are addons or versions out there with something that at least approaches graphics if not little sprites.

It's not my kind of game, though, so I cannot provide specific links.

[EVILNess]

I wouldn't call FTL a true roguelike, mainly since the game relies almost entirely on random chance. Dredmor was aces though.

As for other games, there are often tile sets for the big ASCII ones like Nethack.

The Mystery Dungeon Series (Of which the Pokemon entries are but a small part) are interesting. I think the most well known is Shiren the Wanderer on the SNES (Translated ROM) and the updated re-release on the DS. There was also a sequel on the Wii.

Chocobo's Dungeon 2 and Torneko: The Last Hope were released on the PSOne as well. The Chocobo one was made for younger audiences and is a bit easier than standard roguelike fare though.

[akaSM]

I've played The Pokemon Mystery Dungeon games and, if you're into Pokemon I think you'll like them also, while the main story can be easy, the post game content adds stuff that you didn't see a lot before (or even at all!), like traps and other nasty things.

Chocobo's Dungeon for the Wii was pretty fun too, again, an easy game but I really enjoyed it.

The Binding of Isaac is quite simple but fun and addicting.

[Ramary]

I second aka's Binding of Isaac pick, it is easy to pick up and not hard to play, although the game itself is still hard.

[Arlia Janet]

I have Issac. Played it for a while, but it didn't hook me like some games.

I'm not sure why FTL isn't a Roguelike. Its mechanics are slightly different, but I think it was made in the same spirit of the classic Rogue. All of these games are built with procedural generation in place. FTL has less bats and more automated spaceships.