Is it really this good or its only boomer nostalgia

Fleshed out settings.

Actual stories.

Moving way from ascii/tilesets.

AKA: NOT FUCKING ROGUELIKES FAGGOT.

nethack was never really good it just has lots of stuff and was one of the first. I think ADOM is generally all-around better for a similar experience

Back then? Pretty much, there's a reason it's one of the GOATs.
Nowadays? It's okay-ish, the current versions are nowhere are stupid as the old ones and there's quite a few forks you can pick up if vanilla Nethack doesn't click with you.
It's still quite a bit archaic compared to modern RL, its procgen in particular is rudimentary at best, nowhere on the level of modern titles.
ADOM's a completely different format from Nethack and it's also full of garbage mechanics and dumb shit like the cat king, it can arguably be even more obscure and gratuitous than Nethack.
Nethack is an ascension type RL, a better, easier to get into alternative would be something like Brogue or Zorbus.

Adom.

Predefined locations.

nah, I would say Angband is the improvement you are looking for. (Mainhub/store etc.)

I choked on pancakes and learned nothing.
It's the kind of game I'd like to enjoy but have no idea how to. Seems like the best way to learn is to skim a wiki because there's no way I'll naturally absorb what to and not to do otherwise.

games got worse. they went from being games with real terms of engagement that players had to solve, to expecting the players to win as the default state and if the average player isn't winning without putting in effort to learn the game systems it's seen as a failing on the game and developer, not the player.

The game is about get down to the treasure and bring it back up gameplay loop. Its difficult and hard but also rewarding once you get around a few issues. Play a rogue character or a priest for easy time.

There are much better traditional roguelikes, especially for people new to the genre. Nethack is very meta-game heavy to an extreme degree.

Nethack is weird. knowing what stupid universal features to use in what specific situations is far more important than the features of any class.

You learned that shoving food down your throat when you didn't need to eat is a bad idea. Next time you play you'll understand when to eat a little better.

Play Angband instead for a much comfier introduction to roguelikes

Absolute GOAT mobile game, as weird as that sounds. Hundreds of hours in Pathos. Certain playstyles are just so rewarding, like baiting for polymorph or phase cannibal.

I got killed by the high priest of Moloch on my nudist caveman

Maximum soul, minimum game balance. Fun until your first ascension but doesn't have much replay value. It's basically the opposite of DCSS. Avoid spoilers unless you're really stuck. (Zero spoilers isn't necessary. The game was designed around the expectation that players would share information. It's only the modern wiki era that breaks it.)

Its obtuse, like very obtuse, you are probably never gonna be able to beat the game without a guide

gameplay loop

I'm sorry but I can't trust the advice of someone who fits game design into some arbitrary bracket.
I suppose. Can't remember if I was hungry or not.

Arbitrary bracket.

Everything has a gameplay loop. Even old Dungeons and Dragons had a gameplay loop of going into the dungeon and getting loot out of the dungeon after figthing/running away from monsters which is what nethack is based on and that word has been around from 70s. You are clearly a moron. These aren't sandbox games where you can do what you want (GTA or whatever.)

I'm sorry but I can't trust the advice of someone who fits game design into some arbitrary bracket

It's real game design terminology. You HAVE to design the flowchart of actions the player will perform as they play or those actions never get made. Do you think devs just make up shit as they go along and it all just HAPPENS to fit together?

Oh my fucking god whatever.

go back

Despite having a good deal of depth Nethack isn't actually THAT complicated. I think the only real things worth reading the wiki for are ELBERETH, blindfolds, and Mindflayers.

One of my favorite games of all time

Nethack is very meta-game heavy to an extreme degree.

it's really not. people do atheist vegan pacifist ascensions all the time. it's just fucking hard.

I suppose. Can't remember if I was hungry or not.

you weren't, the game actually warns you with a series of "you have a hard time stuffing down more food" messages before you choke

The only way to choke straight from hungry is to each something so massive it takes you instantly over the threshold which is generally speaking, only possible if you cast stone to flesh on a boulder and eat it

eh there's some very important class features, there is a massive difference for example between wizard spellcasting and other classes, since they can easily get full hungerless casting and massive regen speed with their quest artifact

farthest i got was to fire giants (id like floor (Special) lvl 18 or something) and after slaughtering 30+ constantly on screen one just zaps me a wand of death

nethack is the type of game where you might want to read the wiki but just know it will be a different game forever after that

If you want to define the genre so narrowly that's fine but IMO if the developers of Nethack had access to an art team to create something on the level of, for example, Quasimorph, I think they would've used them. Rogue, Nethack, etc were not intentionally limited projects, rather they were pushing the limits of computer gaming in new directions, they just didn't have the resources or the skills to push the limits of computer graphics. ASCII art isn't an inherent good.

It is a fun game.
It was able to hold my attention for a couple hours.
That was with the really shitty ascii graphics too.

The game I like the most and I dont even know if it is the same genre but it def has the same vibes, it is called Tales of Mal'jayel or some shit. That game is amazing. But, what I'm trying to say is that if you like these top down dungeon crawlers, There are tons of them now. Nethack is still fun but there are other fun games out there now too.

I choked on pancakes and learned nothing.

pancakefag

There are so many old games that are still fun that I always hated the "it's good for it's time" sentiment, or it's so classic you can't judge it.

Funnily, Nethack is sort of the prototype of monster collecting games alongside Wizardry IV. Lots of its systems like the lunar cycle, power system, and the bestiary are found in the first few MT games.

one of the things to keep in mind with nethack a lot is that

1: the oracle is really really useful
2: the ingame extended descriptions of creatures are a LOT more useful than you might think
3: it's heavily inspired by mythology and never tries to gotcha you with mythological stuff, if you see a mythological creature with a weakness, it will likely have that weakness

if you want to try it again, don't let purists convince you that playing with tilesets is invalid or anything
for more visually oriented people, a good tileset can greatly increase how much you enjoy the game

Yeah, obviously, but I think that asking "Is Nethack Good?" is too vague of a question. The game is still played to this day, so clearly it has some value, but what standard are you measuring it by? By the standards of "Is this a good adaptation of a Dungeons and Dragons/similar TTRPG into a computer game?" then it is time dependent since D&D and TTRPGs in general have changed. I would argue that games like the Owlcat adaptations of Pathfinder/Rogue Trader far surpass Rogue/Nethack in a lot of ways. But how people played classic AD&D and how they played the Pathfinder: Kingmaker adventure path are very different.

But the same goes for a lot of things. Street Fighter 2 has a lot of clever game design behind it, to the point where a lot of games start by outright copying a ton of elements. But is it a good fighting game? I'd definitely prefer 3rd Strike or SF4, or a host of other fighting games that came after. I think the same goes for Rogue/Nethack. I like them well enough but if I wanted to play a game that emulates a TTRPG then I'd probably play something else.

to be fair though, it did move away from trying to emulate TTRPG's and more became it's own thing
that said it's fairly hard to find a proper oldschool style dungeoncrawler simulator
the lethality of AD&D dungeoncrawlers was completely different from what 5e is

what tileset is that?

That is fair. Good usually just means fun for me personally. But understanding the time period around games does make their design choices cooler and brings another perspective.

Nethack, or at least its derivatives like Slash'Em I'd argue still have a very specific niche to them that has yet to be emulated by something more polished. If you want to play a game using early AD&D's obscure-ass mechanics like eating monsters for intrisics, or you want a rougelike that allows you to (very jankily) control a party of demons armed with machine guns while [clumsily] digging out a base within the dungeon to call your own, there are no substitutes.

It's more than just a RL, it's the primordial soup from multiple game generas have emerged from and there's a certain fascination seeing all those subsystems inelegantly paired together into a game that has unsurpassed depth for something out of the 80s.