Caves of Qud is a wonderful game, but my expectations were too high. Other reviews get into the positive aspects of this game, but I found very few people talking about how much is randomly generated. There is a main storyline, and several areas and dungeons which are hand-crafted, but they make up a small portion of the time I spent playing this game.

While there are lots of wonderful ideas with faction relations, the wide array of items, and the lore to the world, I think all of these good ideas are hurt by leaning on random generation. Improving Faction relations is entirely dependent on the random people you may (or may not) find, and their random relationships with the factions. The wide array of items is great until you've found your 100th trade item and can't find a merchant to buy anything worthwhile from. The lore is great but the stuff you find outside the main story is mostly small inconsequential details, which are randomly generated themselves and don't really have any useful applications.

I look forward to further updates to the game, but I think it is over-rated at the moment, with way too much filler.

This game is a classic roguelike with a unique art style that can be confusing at first, but once you get used to it, it sucks you into the world they have created. The developers are dedicated to constantly improving the game, and with a small but growing modding community, it has become one of my favorites.

perfect game