Completed the game just now, which I've been playing for the better part of this last week. It was enjoyable -- a distillation of old-school megadungeons. They're not something I ever had the pleasure to go through (I joined the RPG community shortly before the 5e craze) so I finally had first-hand experience in that phenomenon I've heard about where players used to make a basically blank, no-backstory character which then evolved alongside the dungeon's encounters. For example, my PC Isilion became a cleric of Radacina after getting her Gift and I gave him suitably advancing clerical titles over the course of his dungeoneering career (and also I basically locked myself into visiting the temple every time I left the dungeon, haha). I liked it, even though it didn't happen a lot :)
Dungeon generation is fast when you get used to the rhythm, and although there is a lot of variety all levels have a common theme that interlinks them in subtle ways. I enjoyed immensely the introduction of interconnected rooms, and I honestly wished they'd been part of the design from the beginning. Very smart piece of design that allows for tighter connection between differing rooms. I do think the levels that increase/decrease room size artificially (8 and 10) had something good going for there but the +/-2 was a bit too much for my rolls and made it so I saw barely any rooms at all in both levels, one because it was full of corridors and the other because I rolled a large room immediately (though I did backtrack to see some of the other rooms it had to offer...), though I do think the break in the monotony may have been worth the "price". In general the rooms, even with their short descriptions, were evocative enough for a roll-and-play.
Combat shines in this game. So sharp and so fast! Only in the last dungeon level (which is a boss rush) I felt it drag, and I think it was not in a small part due to the Fatigue Die, which miiiight just be my favourite part of the game -- such a good way of making sure combats are not eternal. I did love my throwing weapons, too, maybe putting them in a village shop could be cool. Picking my manouvers and armor (though I do think it'd benefit from saying you can combine them as long as it makes sense narratively, I scoured the books for that one) was also cool :) Big number of choices of potions and scrolls, though I fear they went underutilized for most of my game (maybe in a second run...?!) unlike my bestie herbal crafting, which I was constantly churning out until enemy damage outperformed at like level 8 or 9. Maybe a variant of the "Failure to Cast" table for ointments wouldn't be remiss, unless that's part of the intended experience. Oh, and also my Staff of Claws (<3).
I liked the idea of Inventive Usage even if I did not end up using it most of the game. I did religiously keep the list of all trinkets and baubles that I gathered across the dungeon lol, even if most just ended up in one of the million pouches you end up with at the bottom of my backpack. I think that also is on-par with the dungeon experience, you should see the sheet of my level 20 D&D character... Level-wise, I ended up levelling to 10 in the middle of the dungeon level 10 (fitting), using a 25x25 map. However, if an enemy was 2 levels lower than me (eg. if I was L3 and it was L1) I didn't award myself any experience unless I was fighting 2+ of them (50% XP, then). I think that was a nice middle ground, because in the middle levels I was fighting a loooot of low-mid patrols and I'd previously read some comments where overlevelling tainted the experience. Glad I ended up doing even though it sucked not getting XP after 3 combats in a row. Still only felt a couple times that I could genuinely be about to die, so maybe I played it too easy. I'll have to read through the optional tables at the end of the book. Though to be fair, having the Gift of Rada in my back pocket from the beginning certainly helped with that sense of security... I was also able to find a Dungeon Exit in each level of the dungeon (although a couple times, including level 10, I got CLOSE) which helped -- they did make me feel genuinely relieved a couple times in the game, so you KNOW I was getting into it.
All in all, good game! I had fun :) Some of my favourite narrative moments were: dealing 10+ damage 4 times in a row with level 2 maneuvers (I had insane rolls), dealing 25 damage in one attack, the Ferric Lord killing itself with a mishap, and ending the Nether Lord with a prime attack :) Oh, I also won the arm wrestling contest back home, yay! I've added an example of a level so you can see how they ended up looking like (I used DungeonDraft!).
PS. I'm not selling nor wearing the Lord's Pendants, they're definitely cursed :X
