When comparing Cave Story vs Nethack, the Slant community recommends Nethack for most people. In the question“What are the best PC games under 100MB?” Nethack is ranked 7th while Cave Story is ranked 14th. The most important reason people chose Nethack is:
The gameplay is very deep due to the amount of skills and systems present in the game.
Specs
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Pros
Pro Gameplay and Content
Extremely fluid controls and interesting level mechanics makes this game a joy to play. Furthermore, there is about 4-5 hours of content to this free game.
Pro Multiple Endings
For being a free game, the amount of content is astounding. There are a total of three endings, and there are a lot of extras that you can get as well (as well as a hidden area). These endings are determined by your choices throughout the game.
Pro Considered an Indie Classic
Created in 2005, Cave Story helped spark the indie movement in game development. This entire game was created from scratch by one developer in his free time. Everything, from plot, gameplay, assets, and music were all created by this man.
This game sparked so much praise that it received a Steam port, a 3DS port, and a Wii port. Though all of these ports have bonus content and are "remastered" versions of the game, the original game is free and for the PC.
Pro Depth
The gameplay is very deep due to the amount of skills and systems present in the game.
Pro Potential for enormous skill growth
Nethack is a game that you can play for hundreds of hours and still not master. But you'll have tons of fun attempting to master it.
Pro Over two decades of constant development
Nethack was first released in 1987. The latest version, 3.6.0, came out in December 2015.
Pro ASCII and tiles available
Nethack is able to run on simple ASCII graphics or use graphic tiles instead.
Cons
Con Replayability
Upon completing the game, there isn't too much replay value. You could try to get different endings or get different character customizations, but the plot is, in general, the same throughout each playthrough.
However, the Steam Port "Cave Story +", the 3DS port "Cave Story 3D" and the Wii Port should all have some bonus content (though, you have to pay to get these versions of the game).
Con Burden of knowledge
There's simply too much information that the game expects you to know before you can properly take advantage of the systems in the game.
Con Feature creep
NetHack has an overwhelming amount of features mostly because the development team found them cool at the time, but with little thought of their greater impact. For example, a Nethack staple is Sokoban as a built-in minigame, which feels out of place in a dungeon crawler.
The extremely large amount of items and abilities break the game's balance and coherence.
Con Outdated controls
You need to study a wiki just to learn the most basic controls. The game is broken in this regard.
Con ASCII Art
Con Run of the mill story
The story of the game is pretty generic fantasy fare. It features orcs, elves, and trolls in an effort for the hero to save the world. While it does not detract from the gameplay, it does seem very familiar to those interested in the genre.