Not everyone's cup of tea, but Tangledeep is ultimately one of the greatest roguelikes ever created. It's the perfect balance between old roguelikes (like nethack) and newer roguelikes (like dungeons of dredmor). It might not look like it, but this game does have meta progression through raising pets (which you can level up and keep for future runs) and the ability to store gold and items for future runs.

Unlike most roguelikes, the gameplay here is legitimately good. Using skills and walking around is quick and smooth compared to others in the genre. This makes the game more engaging, with tons of QoL features that drastically reduces downtime scrolling through your inventory or inbetween combat.

Overall, Tangledeep feels like a great love letter to the current hottest genre of gaming. There's enough depth here to last you over a hundred hours, with an upcoming expansion to keep you busy even more. If you enjoy roguelikes, you'll absolutely love this. However , if you don't enjoy dungeon crawler roguelikes, I don't think this game will make you a believer.


First, what the game does right:

• The combat is great. I really can't think of other ways it can be better, except for maybe adding more obvious effects (such as notifying me when I parried an enemy, it's sort of hard to tell).
  
  
• The loot system is very well made, and the QoL stuff (such as instantly being able to sell your common items). The ability to go each item's world (it's literally item world from disgaea but alright) is also a great feature. You can get side tracked and provides a bigger incentive for grinding rather farming a specific floor. You can generate new floors while also having a major goal in mind other than just grinding for XP.
  
  
• The pokemon-esque pet system is great. Not having to worry about your pets dying and including additional features like a friendship meter and pet insurance makes it way less tedious than it actually sound on first glance. They're quite useful, and being able to keep them for future runs gives you a bigger incentive to level them up and care for them.
  
  
• Classes feel unique and different (until you hit the level cap and constantly switch jobs)
  
  
• The game doesn't force you to play in a specific way. For the most part, you can ignore almost every mechanic you don't like. Don't like cooking? You can just not do that. Don't like caring for pets? You don't really have to do that either.
  
  
• Multiple difficulty levels, including an easy mode where there's no permadeath, and difficulty modifiers to customize your playstyle make the game very accessible and grants hardcore players a harder challenge if they ever wanted to. That said, I recommend people starting on normal difficulty, I found that no permadeath makes the game a little boring.

But, even though the core gameplay loop is super fun and rewarding, this game still has a few things that stop it from actually being the greatest game in the genre.

• The questing system is unrewarding. Randomly generated quests sound good on paper, but sometimes the quest giver would give you a quest on a previous floor you've already finished. For examples you're on cedar caves floor 5, and the quest giver tells you to go back to floor 4 and kill en elite enemy there. This happens more often than I'd like to admit, and when you do finish the quest usually the reward is just some gold and JP. The quest giver also talks too much, I end up just accepting them without even reading what she wants. It's just not worth it.
  
  
• Once you unlock all the skills for your job, it doesn't actually feel rewarding to switch jobs. Each job has its own "traits", which are class specific passive abilities. They don't carry over, and you end up learning skills that don't fit the playstyle of your class. I personally don't like how you just end up using skills that have nothing to do with one another, I would have preferred if classes were more fleshed out before you max them out at least.
  
  
• Some side features (such as planting trees and cooking) don't feel very satisfying to use. They're just kinda "there" to give you more drops for whatever reason, but honestly they're pretty unnecessary. I never felt like cooking something that slowly heals 30% of my hp and gives me 20 stamina ever saved my life or remotely close to it.

In the end I still feel like this game is severely underrated, but I can sort of see why. This game is pretty niche, not everyone will want to bother with how complex it is or lose over 5 hours of progress just from carelessness, but it's obvious that the devs know how to design a fantastic game. The developers have been amazing and have been updating the game since release 1 year ago, and I really hope the new humble bundle can get more people into it. Great game, can't wait to play more.

[h1] Short review [/h1] Not everyone's cup of tea, but Tangledeep is ultimately one of the greatest roguelikes ever created. It's the perfect balance between old roguelikes (like nethack) and newer roguelikes (like dungeons of dredmor). It might not look like it, but this game does have meta progression through raising pets (which you can level up and keep for future runs) and the ability to store gold and items for future runs. Unlike most roguelikes, the gameplay here is legitimately good. Using skills and walking around is quick and smooth compared to others in the genre. This makes the game more engaging, with tons of QoL features that drastically reduces downtime scrolling through your inventory or inbetween combat. Overall, Tangledeep feels like a great love letter to the current hottest genre of gaming. There's enough depth here to last you over a hundred hours, with an upcoming expansion to keep you busy even more. If you enjoy roguelikes, you'll absolutely love this. [b] However [/b], if you don't enjoy dungeon crawler roguelikes, I don't think this game will make you a believer. [h1] Loooong review [/h1] First, what the game does right: [list] [*] The combat is great. I really can't think of other ways it can be better, except for maybe adding more obvious effects (such as notifying me when I parried an enemy, it's sort of hard to tell). [*] The loot system is very well made, and the QoL stuff (such as instantly being able to sell your common items). The ability to go each item's world (it's literally item world from disgaea but alright) is also a great feature. You can get side tracked and provides a bigger incentive for grinding rather farming a specific floor. You can generate new floors while also having a major goal in mind other than just grinding for XP. [*] The pokemon-esque pet system is great. Not having to worry about your pets dying and including additional features like a friendship meter and pet insurance makes it way less tedious than it actually sound on first glance. They're quite useful, and being able to keep them for future runs gives you a bigger incentive to level them up and care for them. [*] Classes feel unique and different (until you hit the level cap and constantly switch jobs) [*] The game doesn't force you to play in a specific way. For the most part, you can ignore almost every mechanic you don't like. Don't like cooking? You can just not do that. Don't like caring for pets? You don't really have to do that either. [*] Multiple difficulty levels, including an easy mode where there's no permadeath, and difficulty modifiers to customize your playstyle make the game very accessible and grants hardcore players a harder challenge if they ever wanted to. That said, I recommend people starting on normal difficulty, I found that no permadeath makes the game a little boring. [/list] But, even though the core gameplay loop is super fun and rewarding, this game still has a few things that stop it from actually being the greatest game in the genre. [h1] The worse [/h1] [list] [*] The questing system is unrewarding. Randomly generated quests sound good on paper, but sometimes the quest giver would give you a quest on a previous floor you've already finished. For examples you're on cedar caves floor 5, and the quest giver tells you to go back to floor 4 and kill en elite enemy there. This happens more often than I'd like to admit, and when you do finish the quest usually the reward is just some gold and JP. The quest giver also talks too much, I end up just accepting them without even reading what she wants. It's just not worth it. [*] Once you unlock all the skills for your job, it doesn't actually feel rewarding to switch jobs. Each job has its own "traits", which are class specific passive abilities. They don't carry over, and you end up learning skills that don't fit the playstyle of your class. I personally don't like how you just end up using skills that have nothing to do with one another, I would have preferred if classes were more fleshed out before you max them out at least. [*] Some side features (such as planting trees and cooking) don't feel very satisfying to use. They're just kinda "there" to give you more drops for whatever reason, but honestly they're pretty unnecessary. I never felt like cooking something that slowly heals 30% of my hp and gives me 20 stamina ever saved my life or remotely close to it. [/list] In the end I still feel like this game is severely underrated, but I can sort of see why. This game is pretty niche, not everyone will want to bother with how complex it is or lose over 5 hours of progress just from carelessness, but it's obvious that the devs know how to design a fantastic game. The developers have been amazing and have been updating the game since release 1 year ago, and I really hope the new humble bundle can get more people into it. Great game, can't wait to play more.