When comparing Tales of Maj'Eyal vs Oolite, the Slant community recommends Oolite for most people. In the question“What are the best open-source games?” Oolite is ranked 16th while Tales of Maj'Eyal is ranked 25th. The most important reason people chose Oolite is:
Space battles happen without the player starting them, or even being involved. Criminals and fugitives shoot at police. Police shoot at criminals.
Specs
Ranked in these QuestionsQuestion Ranking
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 Non player centric
Space battles happen without the player starting them, or even being involved. Criminals and fugitives shoot at police. Police shoot at criminals.
Pro Improves on the Elite formula while not straying too far
Pro Lots of mods
Mods to customize the game's look and mechanics means that you can pretty much customize your gaming experience. Add new planets, station types, stories, and a whole lot more.
Pro Mods create missions, ships and equipment to totally change the difficulty
The mods make every ship from every movie and TV series available, which is fun.
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 Too addictive
This can be a serious time thief.