You Absolutely Shouldn't Miss Out On One of the Best Roguelikes of All Time 

Can confirm: This game is fantastic. The strange art style actually grows on you and becomes quite endearing once you start playing.

Tales of Maj Eyal is great because unlike so many other games, if you play a sword and board character or any martial character, you've still got so many abilities, you almost never are just 'bumping' enemies. Also build-crafting is fantastic fun.

The best thing about this game is that you don’t have to play it as a rougelike. You can just play it as a normal rpg without permadeath.

One of the things that makes this game really nice, for me, is that it doesn't have consumables. The runes and infusions are designed to serve the same purpose, but on cooldowns, which means there's no too good to use syndrome. It's such a nice change.

I bought the paid version of this game to support the creator, and I really like it. It's free, so there's no reason not to try it out. Interesting to hear that ToM has dethroned Rogue's Tale as your favorite roguelike.

I bought this yesterday because of this vid. I also bought Caves of Qud, Delta V, and Star Sector. Thanks for all the games you've learned me about. This is my daily go-to feel calm channel. I appreciate you.

Grabbed this game during the Summer Sale and dumped a bunch of hours into it, got pretty obsessed with unlocking new classes and trying them out. I do love how the classes have distinct play styles from each other and are not just a few stats shifted around.

I remember playing it long long ago, deciding to try a mage.... and ended up having like the most Epic Mage vs Mage duel I've ever seen in a video game. There were summons, fireballs, thunder, teleporting around, healing, going invisible, ambushing, buffing, debuffing, straight-out-punch-fest.. it was crazy.

ToME is incredible, no question there. Tons of classes, all of which play super differently with a number of viable builds. Massively more nuanced difficulty settings than any other roguelike I've ever played. Plenty of unexpected developments in a character based on which unique gear pieces you end up finding. Multiple entirely separate campaigns, all of which with tons of unlockable stuff in them... And that's without even getting into the modding community adding even more to all of those categories. I've put a concerning number of hours into ToMe and I've still only won a handful of times, got a lot to learn still. (I can consistently reach the west, but man there's some dangerous stuff out there, and the final dungeon is a heck of a final test.)

I bought this game after I saw you feature this game some time ago. It really is one of the best Rogue-likes ever to me. I feel like every run feels meaningful somehow, even the ones where I don't get any good rolls or whatever. It feels fantastic when you actually get a run where things seem to fall into place. It's an experience that's difficult to replicate for sure.

I dove super deep into ToME when I was finishing my dissertation, and it is singularly responsible for a multiple month delay. The game has no business being this good, and this in depth. The class diversity is *shockingly good*. Time Warden remains one of my favorite game classes ever.

ToME is glorious...and it looks better than PLENTY of it's brethren. Chronomancer LIFE! The Paradox Mage is a WONDERFUL class, and such a cool mechanic.

ToME is definitely one of my favorite games ever. I love how you unlock new classes and then almost look forward to dying so you can try the new thing you unlocked. My first victory was with a Yeek Solipsist

I haven't played this game in yeeeears! Awesome depth and replayability. ToME deserves the love, thanks for giving the old girl a much deserved spotlight.

Good review of a great game. I think its skills, classes, and races are really well done. So many variations and possibilities. Non-roguelike rpgs could learn a fair bit from TOME on how to do character progression. Everything from being a necromancer who achieves lichdom (through evil, grim methods) to a nature-loving, magic-hating oozemancer who has learned how to become one with slime, and protoplasm. And everything in between.

You sold me on this game the last time you recommended it. Great recommendation too, I've had tens of hours of fun on the cheap with this.

I'm very glad to see this get featured. You've mentioned it a lot on the channel. I don't normally go for these older style games with bad graphics but huge complexity like Caves of Qud, but I'm seriously tempted by Tales of Maj'Eyal. The barrier to entry seems a lot lower here.

Could watch and listen to hours of you and this game!

Probably my favorite game of all time, your video on CoQ made me want to replay both. Thanks a lot for showing this game the attention it deserves because it does so much right and yeah graphics don't make everything.

Awesome coverage of a favorite I keep coming back to for the last 10 years. Now do Siralim Ultimate. That game is a tinkerers dream and gets NO love. Its possibly one of the deepest party customization games in history. Please check it out.

Now I wanna play Tales of Maj'Eyal again 😃

that was a high-quality fast forward sound effect, i appreciate that.

I love Tales of Maj'Eyal, even though the game consistently destroys me and I don't have the heart to play on anything but roguelike difficulty. I bought the DLCs and im pretty sure most of it I can't even get to because of this lol. I found this game much more approachable than other traditional roguelikes.

Splat's playing Maj'Eyal on camera again? Sweet! It's been too long. Note: I've been playing TOME for probably 15 years now. It's _that_ good.

This is my favorite roguelike I've been playing it for a decade.

Tales of Maj'eyal and Caves of Qud are two my favorite Roguelikes to date and I'm loving that the absolute GEM that TOME is finally getting some more attention

I've found so many fun games as a result of watching your channel sir. If you could just maybe double how fast you create content, that would really help with my growing addiction to it.

This game is dope. I picked it up a few years ago and bring it out when I wanna get in some old school roguelike action.

Man, this game takes me back. Reminds me of an older game called Castle of the Winds I played when I was a kid.

This is one of my fav games of all time! Só much content and the gameplay is soooo good!😊 not only is it great but the developer is super approachable!

This just brought back a really old memory of a game I haven't thought about since middle school. Exile III from Spidersoft. Well now I have two new games to check 😁

There are auto-explore and auto-ability macros you can set up as well that make certain more tedious levels faster on your second and third playthroughs. They come with a risk though, when combat initiates you may not be in an ideal position.

What i like so much about minimal graphic rpgs like this and caves of qud is that it allows so much of your imagination to fill the gaps. When you learn more and more of the in game lore it really adds to the head canon eith you and youre character

holy smokes just wanted to thank you for putting me on to this game thanks to you ive been playing this incredible game lately

TOME is great, true old school feeling. Far more depth than you'd think by looking at it.

I've owned the game for a while but haven't played it in some time. Went ahead and booted it up while watching this video and started an alchemist, which is a surprisingly epic class with a super powerful golem pet.

Got this game on Steam, and it's a lot of fun. Thanks for introducing it to me.

For me, not just the best roguelike ever, but one of the best games of all time. I almost never play anything else. And brutally hard. After playing it loads for years, I’ve finished it once on normal difficulty. Almost infinite customisation and options and with all the DLcs, so many different classes. Love it so much!!

The reason I love watching you because you play games that are not "graphically beautiful" which to me, is the essence of a true gamer.

Thank you! Videos like this inspire me to dev

the best roguelite game ever. I wish there are more and more contents.

I haven't played it in over a year, but I got a good 250+ hours out of this game. It is definitely worth it for the price.

I’ve been playing this for years, since I think the late teen or early twenty beta builds, after seeing one youtuber or another feature it (might’ve been you, I honestly don’t remember anymore). It is such a fabulous game, and I could not recommend it more to any fan of roguelikes.

This is a go to game that I always return to.

TOME definitely is one of my favorites. The gameplay is so good. I also really love the lore. The documents you get in dungeons are really fun to read. The way the lore works with the gameplay is amazing. This game is so good

I stumbled into this game a while back and it really caught me off guard. I eventually started doing it on a Hardcore challenge with only 1 life. It's been an amazing decision =P

Splat doing the goofy nerd voice and his sound effect for the auto explore are a rare treat

I play this game all the time. It has kept me busy while i had a low end pc. Now i just play it in 4k

You made me want to go back to TOME on my deck, thanks mate - my favourite game of all time calls once again!

I just got back into this game a week ago, some of the classes have such a good gameplay loop necromancer especially

Game is amazing! My fav roguelike that I swear to go back to

Absolutely love this game.

i always injoy playing tales speeking on the bullet hell aspect if you make your char super fast you can see arrows and bullets move tile to tile letting you side step the shots cause bullets have travel time in this game

Ahhh, I once got to the end fight with a tanky shield build, deciding to go straight for the end boss, ignoring the monster summoning portals. I died surrounded on all sides enemies, one phase away from winning, cursing my HUBRIS. Fun times.

This brought back a very distant memory of Castle of The Winds. @.@ Wow. Been AGES since I thought of that game. *sighs in overwhelming nostalgia*

Steam says I last played Tales of Maj'Eyal in 2015, so maybe it's time to give it another go. Thanks for reminding me.

Honest to God I had forgotten I owned this game. Installed it as soon as I watched you play Splat and it is forking amazing. Get this game and give the devs some money friendos. It's great.

Between this and Qud Splattercat is looking at my favorite games of all time. Hell yes.

Great job!

I played that one when it was still based on Pern (and later Middle Earth) and was in the old mailing list 20+ years ago. (game has changed 'a bit' since then)

Oh hey, someone else remember Pernangband :D Played that waaayyy too much myself, and a fair bit of the early ToME days.

I remember you claiming another little-known roguelike as your long-time favorite - some dungeon crawler with similar graphical capability and light metaprogression, IIRC. I should have it written down somewhere…

At some point in my life I had no internet but had this game installed in my steam library. Having basically zero internet(I was out in the country, cell reception was terrible), I couldn't watch videos or download anything, I gave this game a go thinking nothing of it. I spent THOUSANDS of hours on it. I died many times, but had this one character that I leveled up(took me months, just this 1 character. Also, I took my sweet time as I had already spent hundreds of hours with only 1 life) and was powerful only to die to some place where there was a dead necromancer? I honestly can't remember it was so long ago. It was insane and TENSE. Having nothing to do out in the country, this game took me on the wildest adventures fueled even more so by my imagination. Sadly, when I did get reliable internet, Steam did not save any hours I had put into it and somehow I lost all progress, although in the games defense, I think it was my fault that happened as my save files were stored locally. I IMPLORE you, if you like living on the edge, reading, using your imagination, and TENSE and frightening moments, play this. Don't let the graphics fool you, once you sink several hours into it, you will begin to understand the depth of this. Also, when I played, I changed the animation so that instead of the character automatically appearing on a tile you click on, they smoothly transition to the next tile, like if you were picking up a chess piece and placing it on an adjacent tile. Doesn't effect gameplay, but made it easier and more pleasing to my eyes to not have my character "teleport" on every move I made. It also affects all other characters on screen. Try it out, there's tons of settings to change. As of typing this, I'm only 6mins into the video so apologies if it was already mentioned by the time ya'll read this :) Had to put in my two cents, this game deserves every rougelike fan's love.

Great game tough to start with until you get your head around it . 9 years since I bought it wow.

"Are we the baddies?" - your axe.

Fun factoids: In the beginning, Tales of Maj'Eyal was Pernangband, and was a variant of Angband. Along with any variants, Angband was a community maintained group of games descended directly from Rogue. The transition from "everything happens in one dungeon" to the paradigm with an overworld and dungeons scattered around started with Pernangband. Eventually, Pernangband became Tales of Middle Earth and started getting fancier. The name change was so the dev could market the game on Steam and GoG and etc. I'm sure getting all the Tolkien references out was quite a chore. Anything I'm getting wrong, please forgive me. I'm remembering back to my many hours playing Angband and participating in the #Angband IRC channel...

"MIND BULLETS!!!... That's telekinesis Kyle."

bought it a couple years back really recommend it

I've got 1800 hours of playing ToME, the most played game in my list of 200+ steam games. I'm always coming back to ToME, very addicting. Please send help...or not its so much fun.

I as well ADORE this game.

Buying this now

I was just playing this game earlier today, completely unrelated to this video. It’s fun to just try a bunch of different builds, see how you can break stuff.

I love this game so much.

Tales of Maj'eyal is the shit, and I'm one whose coming from endless attempts, of Morraff's Dungeons of the Unforgiven, which I must say is so much more impossibly heartbreaking!

My man Splatty with ToMe. I have aroun 400 hours and i am just beginning to understand the classes. Absolutely my favorite roguelike ever.

I thought you were meandering around to this one again. This is the game where our ultimately very different game views sync 100%.

Classic game this, Sword of the Stars is a decent rogue-like if people prefer sci-fi setting too.

"Coming this fall: The Ensmackinating"

If you want a fun melee combo then try a Ghoul Reaver. The ghoul rot is a disease so you can easily spread it to hordes of enemies which means you can wipe hordes really quick with the class :D

This is really niche game, yet truly great. I heard, that another whole campaign is in making right now

Funny, I stumbled upon this game like 2 weeks ago. It's actually super good if you're not intimidated by the graphics

Pretty sure this has the most time of all games on my Steam Profile

I managed to get to near the end once, there was a type of hall way with bosses spaced out along it and I got past a couple of them then got wrecked and lost my last life. I was gutted. there is a new DLC in the works, I'm eager to see that and Elin is supposed to come out this year and I thought elona was quite close to ToME, just more JRPG-ish.

I am _immensely_ offended that you ended before showing what was behind that door! How dare you, sir?! How. Dare. You.

To me, where TOME excels, is the speed of the interface. There's actually a setting to slow it down when you take a percentage of damage. Mouse overs give tons of info and comparative info with gear you have. This gives you time to play smart.

I just want to point out Splat's immaculate sound effects at 8:48

I feel this way about Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup.

cant wait for the new dlc to come out.

TBH Maj'Eyal is pretty much a turn based hack and slash played on hardcore. It has Hack & Slash style itemization but sticks to the turn based roots of the roguelike genre.

i remember playing this free years ago lol might buy it soon

Don't forget about the mods - many mods are available that ca enhance the experience further

Literally less than a week ago while streaming Caves of Qud splat said his favorite roguelike is Rogue's Tale lol

Godlike game. The variety in magic and classes is unmatched. Only critique I have is that the game is so long that replays become a slog.

Just watched splats two previous ToME vids last night, both uploaded several years ago, in search of good berlin roguelikes. It must be a sign from the rogue gods. Think i'm going to start with zorbus, it has the most complete character creation i think compored to others like soulash or doors of trithius. Any suggestions?

I bought this game 7 years ago and only have 3 hours in it cos I suck. Might be time to try it again!

does it have a big none random main questline for beating it?

Ah ToME. The game that like any true necromancer refuses to die.

I've been playing this for years ..typical loop is: start a new character, find a cool item for another build, push to the shared item vault, store item, start a new character (repeat)..anyone else have this problem? 🤯 Love it tho 😅

Love the system, shame there isnt anything just like this but with more eyecandy, heck ill even take something with just some extra animations, and yeah the items are great. my only headache is the keymapping and such, it really tells this is based of an even older game, most ASCII related games are still using some odd or old button layout.

This game is so similar to the SSI version of DnDs "Pools of radiance" and the like from back in the 80s.