When comparing Nethack vs Risk of Rain, the Slant community recommends Risk of Rain for most people. In the question“What are the best roguelikes/roguelites on PC?” Risk of Rain is ranked 12th while Nethack is ranked 16th. The most important reason people chose Risk of Rain is:
Imagine a small set of DOTA or LOL. These 10 characters can be tankers, DPS, supporters, rangers, carriers, etc depending on your skill and level of use. And they're hard to unlock which makes the challenging to get them even more.
Specs
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Pros
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.
Pro 10 unique characters
Imagine a small set of DOTA or LOL. These 10 characters can be tankers, DPS, supporters, rangers, carriers, etc depending on your skill and level of use. And they're hard to unlock which makes the challenging to get them even more.
Pro Replayability is high
The levels are generated very randomly making for a unique experience every time the game is played which in turn makes for a ton of replayability.
Pro Time equals difficulty
It gets tougher as time passes by. That means by minute 40, you are playing at hardcore difficulty. This makes for an experience that is good for learning the mechanics as once you can not advance due to the difficulty you will die which means the game has to be repeated which help learn the ins and outs more and more each time it is done.
Pro Fun local and online co-op modes
No need to compete as the multiplayer is all cooperative where each player has to help the other survive the harsh world which is a fun setting for friends as it leaves out any competitiveness.
Cons
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.
Con Unlocks unclear
The game explanation of how unlocks unlock is not very clear or intuitive making for wasted time trying to figure them out.