Reception
| Reception | |
|---|---|
| Review scores | |
| Publication | Score |
| The Good Old Days | 4 of 6 |
| Abandonia | 3.0 of 5.0 |
ADOM has established a strong fan base that started gathering since 1997 at Usenet group rec.games.roguelike.adom, sporting 2000-3000 messages monthly regularly in years of active development, although lately the activity has been ceasing.
Given that ADOM was a long-lasting development effort and new versions of the game were regularly released over the years, ADOM has received many critical reviews over many varied versions. The overall critical reception is good.
Reviewers usually compare ADOM to other roguelike games (like Rogue, Angband or Moria) and find that ADOM offers a much deeper storyline, more manifold environment, and is generally more complex. Most note that ADOM offers very high replay value and general randomness of events that happen in the game. Overall game system design (and especially the character development system) is usually praised for its flexibility. Some reviews note low hardware requirements and freeware distribution as essential advantages.
As for downsides, there is no universal agreement. The user interface is cited to have high learning curve by some critics, while others note that it is "brilliant in its simplicity", "very practical" and "easy to navigate". Keyboard controls imply usage of the numeric keypad which makes ADOM relatively hard to play on keyboards without keypads (i.e. laptops). Discussing gameplay, the same complexity and randomness that were cited as positive features are sometimes said to make ADOM very difficult for beginning players. Most reviewers agree that ADOM may be very hard to play for beginners due to the deletion of savefiles, which is uncommon for games outside the roguelike genre.
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