I wrote this game off for a while and it sat in my steam library as another game I would revisit. The time is here and I have revisited. If I had more time I would play more. The game has a fun variety of classes and I often found myself gravitating towards a Ranger as it is the easiest class. The beginning of every run was fairly mind-numbing and I appreciate the trivial dungeons being skipped when a high enough level. You do kind of plateau again in the later levels when you have some fairly good gear where the trickiest enemies are the legendary mobs and bosses at the end of dungeons. I have had many a runs where I quit paying attention just to be gloriously two shot by a legendary/elite mob. The later boss fights get incredibly intense. In particular the Warlord Conqueror drained my resources and was one of the most challenging fights I had and made me feel very accomplished upon his defeat.

The middle to end-game is where the game shines and unfortunately it take a few hours to get going before you can truly enjoy it. Then the hardest decision comes in which you must decide if you should retire your hero to teach an entire skill line to future heroes or keep going and hope you don't die and risk your gear. I would say risk it all, however I was pleasantly surprised to see I didn't just risk it all as my 2nd level 15+ hero died and became a teacher as a ghost. It makes the world feel very alive to leave the graves of previous heroes and gear that becomes a part of their legend that you can recollect. If you maxed out a town's prosperity and that hero died they will replace the town fountain with a statue of that hero. I have yet to beat the game and earlier on I attempted some hardcore runs which are incredibly difficult because the Dungeonman's academy is destroyed and non-existent in that world.

Other things to try out is the breeding of companion chickens. I enjoyed my time with the mechanic, but the RNG with skills on said companions make it incredibly frustrating at times. I have yet to delve into the map system yet which as far as I have gathered is modifiers for dungeons to make it more difficult and also get better loot in return. The ability to alter the world map as well is very nice for those pesky mountains blocking your path so you don't have to travel around them all the time.

This Dev has poured years into this game and it shows. It's a true passion project and I am more than happy with the content it has.

TL;DR This game is incredibly fun with varied builds. The early game is a bit of a slog, however the mid to late game is incredibly detailed and fairly challenging. The world feels fairly alive with changes you can make with your previous heroes and you can see the legend they leave behind when your hero tragically or mundanely passes.

Dungeonmans really tries to take the best of Traditional Roguelikes and add elements from newer Rogue-Lites, like meta progress with a town to build and upgrade between characters, but everything else about it is really shallow. Skill trees are shockingly small, combat is very spammy and repetitive, dungeon randomization is poor and sometimes broken, and time to kill rockets up way too fast. Add onto this the obnoxious Millennial writing and you somehow have a Traditional Roguelike with not only bad gameplay but bad writing. Maybe this is one of those games that gets good 40 hours in but I've play many Traditional Roguelikes over the years (starting with the original Rogue back on my family's first PC in the 90s), and this just doesn't scratch any kind of itch the genre usually does.

Roguelikes (old and new) thrive on replay value through character customization and build options but the bare minimum was done here for skill variety. Most classes has less than a skillbar worth of skills and there doesn't seem to be any hidden per-class; for example, two of the "standard" classes, Fightermans and Wizardmans, only have six and 12 skills respectively. Even then, Wizardman's tree has three stat buff skills, three fire spells (damage), three ice spells (CC), and three "Tricksonometry" skills (evasion and illusions). There's separate armor and weapon skill trees but they're really basic and mostly just -1 skill point to use a piece of gear. Nothing here is as comical Dungeon of Dredmor's Viking Wizardry class going into a berserker rage while shooting lightning or as insanely powerful as TOME4's time manipulation classes.

Time to kill is really fast right at level 1 and the rapid scaling on gear and enemies only exacerbates this. Enemies stay in the room they spawn in until you open the door... Except for Champions, who can open doors apparently. My last character died from a Champion opening a door as I was walking past, attacking and moving in one turn, and attacking twice in a second turn, to kill me in three hits from full to 0 HP. I totally expect a skill curve and wiki reading with a Traditional Roguelike, but this wasn't the first time this had happened during a run... Enemy spawning randomization seems to favor spawning bosses and Champions in tight spaces or around corners with no line of sight. You can say "skill issue" but I felt I had the most cheap deaths in this over any other game I've previously played in the genre.

Usually I try to finish a game before reviewing it, but most people don't ever finish a campaign in a Traditional Roguelike, and I don't see myself sinking dozens of hours into this to try to conquer it. As mentioned above, I'd recommend Dungeons of Dredmor as a good entry point to the genre and Tales of Maj'Eyal for something much more complex (while still being very combat focused). Playing this just made me want to reinstall those games instead; I don't see myself giving this game another chance, especially with all the other Traditional Roguelikes I have unplayed in my Steam library.