When comparing I Wanna be the Guy: Gaiden 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 I Wanna be the Guy: Gaiden is ranked 16th. 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.
Ranked in these QuestionsQuestion Ranking
Pros
Pro Constantly suprising
The game constantly changes. There are no physics or logic in this game, anything can or will change abruptly, which keeps the player on their toes, just to see what can happen next.
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 Very difficult
The gameplay is extremely tough in this game. Just about anything can and will kill you. Meant more for people who love a challenge, only the most dedicated will have the best of times with no frustrations.
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Con Outdated controls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.