When comparing Tales of Maj'Eyal vs Zero-K, the Slant community recommends Zero-K for most people. In the question“What are the best open-source games?” Zero-K is ranked 23rd while Tales of Maj'Eyal is ranked 25th. The most important reason people chose Zero-K is:
You can create your own multiplayer battles, even password protected ones for playing with friends only.
Specs
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Pros
Pro A lot of depth through many character classes and quests
Pro Pretty polished compared to other open source games
Pro Easier to learn than some other roguelikes
The graphical menu system helps a lot.
Pro Built-in but optional chat system for bragging or when you get lost
Pro Multiplayer online battles
You can create your own multiplayer battles, even password protected ones for playing with friends only.
Pro Expansive tech tree
Land, sea, and air. Choose your favorite play-style and use the appropriate tech tree. There are tanks, bots, walkers, planes, helicopters, boats, and submarines available to you.
Pro Flat tech tree
All units are available from the start of the game. There are no unit upgrades and you don't need to build certain buildings to reach the next level of unit.
Pro Awesome graphical effects
Despite it is an open source engine, the graphics are fantastic.
Pro Cross-platform game
There are versions for Linux and Windows. The easiest way to play in Linux is using Lutris platform.
Cons
Con Bad balancing
Not all classes are balanced. Some are clearly weaker. As an example, every class that can summon, cannot avoid their summons to waste their skills. This is not important, except if you only have 1 summon, like the alchemist, that often charges you.
Con LUA bugs
It depends on LUA for many (if not most) things, this could ease the development, but in the end, the result is several crashes which are hard to debug.
Con Heavy resource need
Lots of graphics effects, which may make the game run slower on older systems.
Con Graphics may not appeal to everyone
Mostly because they are a mix of styles assembled throughout the lifetime of the project instead of one consistent whole.
Con Bad visual design
Obviously this is an open soruce project so nobody expects AAA level gfx but this one looks exceptionaly bad. Some of the weapon effects are hideous to look at. Simple things like UI buttons and color scheme seem to be visually out of sync with the way unit models and the map terrrain look.
It seems like a mishmash of visual styles which is probably a result of many different contributors of varreying skill levels.
There definately are visually consistent and pelasant ot look at open source games so The visual design of the game needs to have some sort of strcut guidline or rely primarily on the taste of a single individual from the ZK team.
Con Flat balance
The economy is very close to a Total Annihilation economy (despite all the changes they introduced) but the unit balance resembles games with harder unit counters like Warcraft and Starcraft. In Blizard games, there are different ways to limit what unit type or kind you can build at any stage of the game, like tech structures which the opponnet can scout.
In Zero - K this is not the case since there are no tech buildigns focusing the player on a certain unit type which can be scouted. You can make all units at all times. The gameplay design feels amateur and not thought through From the broadest perspective. It also manages to miss the advantages of the Spring engine and mixes the need to micromanage units that counter each other with big Area of Effect Weapons.