When comparing Icewind Dale: Enhanced Edition vs Nethack, the Slant community recommends Nethack for most people. In the question“What are the best games on Linux?” Nethack is ranked 74th while Icewind Dale: Enhanced Edition is ranked 77th. The most important reason people chose Nethack is:
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.
Specs
Ranked in these QuestionsQuestion Ranking
Pros
Pro Easy to google for help
Due to the game popularity many guides and help tutorials are easily found through google search, which is great as there is much one needs to learn about the game that is not available as a tutorial.
Pro Remastered RPG classic with extra content
The whole game has been remastered to play and look well on modern devices. With additions to the game like skipping dialogue or being able to finally zoom this is the definitive version.
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 Depth
The gameplay is very deep due to the amount of skills and systems present in the game.
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 Combat system is still convoluted
Certain weapons need certain stats to damage certain enemies, which is most left unexplained in game, which makes the game difficult to play at times.
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Con Outdated controls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.