Anybody want to CRAWL?

[JAG]

I think Tome4 has stayed true to the Tome2 vision (roguelike with skills, wilderness map, different themed dungeons, and quests). I completely agree about what you're saying regarding unlocking classes / races. If you're afraid people will have trouble starting with those options, just put a warning that they're extra challenging or something, don't restrict people from experimenting or trying their favorite class because they haven't logged x hours in the game. Just a terrible decision in my opinion.

To update my adventure, my guy died soon after the above post by me, died of smothering in the Sandworms Caves as the result of a cavein. I botched things by not having a means of teleportation readily available or even trying to dig out. That's a bit of a weird place to explore with the dungeon constantly shifting around.

Since then I tried out a couple archmages since I unlocked it with my first character. They have a different opening sequence than the human fighter I used (in fact it looks like most classes / races have their own starting area which is cool) and it was somewhat tough. The first one died at level 2, the second one died at level 5 or 6.

Surprisingly I didn't enjoy playing it as much as I usually like my mages so I tried another Bulwark who I've gotten to level 15 (and succeeded at 3 of 4 escort quests thus far). Bulwarks are kind of cool because they make their best attacks off counterattacking when foes make attacks that get blocked, so it's not quite the same as a straight fighter. Fighters in this game also have stamina as a resource to be managed, you can use stamina to unleash some rather damaging attacks and Rush, which lets you close the space down between you and an enemy (very handy vs. pesky archers / mages). There was a really cool quest I recently got where I had a message that one of the towns was burning, I went there and a bunch of air elementals were killing people. I stopped them and then the mayor said there was still a huge cloud over the town that needed to be removed with a couple different ideas of how to get rid of it.

All in all, I give it a positive review. It's a good mix of challenging but not impossible gameplay, a fair bit of choice in deciding what to do next, good character building options, and (in the tougher battles) good tactical combat.