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I suppose it’s a little weird to put a game I’ve spent 25 years of my life trying to beat into Tier Two, but here we are.
Nethack isn’t quite the original roguelike, but it’s pretty close. First appearing in 1987 and staying in development since then, Nethack is the game that took Rogue (okay, technically Hack) and added everything including the kitchen sink (Indeed, I originally started playing Nethack under the mistaken impression it was simply a continuation of Rogue). Its true claim to fame are the unbelievable number of interactions between items and the environment (and the number of interactions you have to memorize to even have a hope of beating the game).
The basic outline of Nethack is somewhat straightforward (albeit lengthy): head downwards and look for the Amulet of Yendor. On your way, you’ll pass by the gnomish mines (and Minetown), the Oracle (and Sokoban, which is technically optional but kinda mandatory), a magic portal, the Medusa, the Castle, the hellish (in two ways) Gehennom beneath the Castle and Valley of the Dead, as well as Vlad’s Tower and the Wizard Towers. You get a guaranteed altar to find your cursed items as well as a variety of shops with candles in Minetown, an amulet of reflection or bag of holding (both indispensable) alongside a bunch of food and a guaranteed identification of scrolls of earth from Sokoban (which you will eventually memorize entirely but still hit one extra key by accident), the Bell of Opening and a quest item from the magic portal, need a ring of levitation (you’ll need it later, so while water walking boots or just digging can work, it’s best to find the ring) and a way of blinding yourself (so be sure to eat a floating eye corpse at some point) and a mirror (from those stupid nymphs) to defeat the Medusa, a wand of wishing from the Castle (to round out any missing items and guarantee a blessed magic marker, which I’d recommend using to genocide the worst offenders – with apologies to the hobbits and dwarves), Wraith corpses (the fastest way to level up at that point) from the Valley of the Dead and environs, the Candelabrum of Invocation from Vlad’s Tower (for which you need seven candles, and probably a couple scrolls of magic mapping to save your sanity), and the Book of the Dead (a papyrus spellbook) from the Wizard tower. Once you take the Book of the Dead, the Wizard of Yendor will plague you randomly for the rest of your run, so make sure you’ve gotten a wand of death with plenty of charges. Finally, head down to the very bottom of the dungeon and look for the vibrating square. While standing on the vibrating square, light the Candelabrum of Invocation, ring the Bell of Opening, and read the Book of the Dead (in that order). Head down to Moloch’s Sanctum, find the hidden door on one of the four sides of a tower surrounded by fire traps, steal the Amulet of Yendor, then head back out (while possibly being set back 0-4 levels each time you climb the stairs, which isn’t frustrating at all).
Ah, but then, you’re still not done. And this is where my “accomplishment” is tainted: once you leave the first level of the dungeon, you have a final gauntlet of the five worst levels – one which isn’t so bad, one which is both incredibly frustrating and seemingly random, one which just feels mean, one which is simplistic and entirely random, before finally ending with a 1/3 chance of guessing the correct direction to go before being entirely surrounded by high-level monsters and near-instant death attacks. This whole outline also doesn’t include the crazy things you do or encounter along the way (like dipping for Excalibur after XL5, filling out your ascension kit only to have it randomly cursed by a Lich or destroyed after putting a wand of cancellation in your bag of holding, polypiling, leprechaun halls, quantum mechanics, engraving Elbereth with a wand of fire, or even just enhancing your skill).
And, I’ll be honest, I died almost instantly upon reaching the Plane of Air. Between monster attacks which curse your items, destroy your magical rings and wands, engulf you with zero recovery time between attacks, dragon breath attacks, and the extremely high damage Jabberwocks, you seemingly lose all control on these last levels. Nethack’s difficulty curve is almost a perfect W: starting out brutal due to low health, easing off as you continue downwards, sharply increasing for the Castle level (especially if you haven’t genocided Liches and Disenchanters), then becoming just as easy as before (though infinitely more frustrating due to the horrible, mazelike level generation in Gehennom), before finally increasing again through the Wizard of Yendor and capping it all off with the Planes. At this point, though, my interest in doing it all again had waned and I just save-scummed my way through these last levels (I typically make a save or two when I get further than I ever have before to troubleshoot whatever new terror kills me). The combination of the mazes of Gehennom (which are littered with traps and are hard to parse quickly despite not actually being that threatening) and the feeling of helplessness in the Planes (due to the flood of combat messages and dozens of attacks happening each turn between player actions) just broke my spirit.
During my most recent push to beat Nethack, the thought crept into my mind that this whole endeavor might not be worth it. Having now at least seen the kill screen (albeit illegitimately), I no longer feel the urge to continue. Part of this has to do with the unnecessary complication, unreasonable amount of preparation and luck manipulation, and simple trial and error it takes even to get a good grasp of how to beat the game. Looking back now, I find myself wishing the tedium and difficulty spikes could be toned down just a tad – and it’s for this reason I’m now looking into xNetHack, as well as older versions like 2.3e (which didn’t have an Endgame at all) or 3.0.10 (having only a single Endgame level, which feels like it would be a lot more bearable). The only reason I haven’t started already is that I’d need to completely redo my cobbled-together options file (which, by the way, is a huge quality of life improvement which you should definitely be using for a variety of reasons) and find a way to compile them on modern computers.
Hence the Tier Two rating – vanilla Nethack has a truly stupendous amount of stuff in it, and quite a bit of it is amusing (even if many of them result in YASD, most – though not all – are avoidable with knowledge), but the frustration near the end is too much. At least now I feel I can move on to other roguelikes, even if those roguelikes are just different flavors of Nethack.