When comparing Tales of Maj'Eyal vs Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup, the Slant community recommends Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup for most people. In the question“What are the best open-source games?” Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup is ranked 9th while Tales of Maj'Eyal is ranked 25th. The most important reason people chose Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup is:
There are a few different classes available at character creation, each one has it's own abilities that are different from the others. Creating one is quite simple, which makes for a fast way to get into the game and start playing.
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 Simple character creation with different classes
There are a few different classes available at character creation, each one has it's own abilities that are different from the others. Creating one is quite simple, which makes for a fast way to get into the game and start playing.
Pro Gold Standard for roguelikes
The controls and replayability have been refined over the years. Whether the player chooses to play with Tiles (graphics) or console (ASCII) the game works well even when choosing online or offline play. Either way there is just enough interface to play the game.
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 Have to fiddle with controls
Being that the game uses an emulated keyboard on screen it works best on tablet, though is not really the preferred method (but is the only one) since it takes up screen space.