This is going to be a long post.
Chapter 1: YoshidiousI think Svlad's request for the review to be retracted is quite ludicrous. The implication is that anyone without a certain threshold level of experience with a given series or genre should be disqualified from providing a review
I trust you knew I wouldn't be able to resist rising to this.
To go way over the top, imagine if someone whose total exposure to games was a half-hour of Windows Solitaire was asked to review X-COM. Obviously that's far beyond the situation at hand, but it's the basis on which I asked that the review be, well, reviewed.
My contention here is that the majority of the review is the things a player who is new to roguelikes would be shocked by. That's valuable for most of the reading public, just as that Solitaire player's review of X-COM is valuable to people like him or her. People who know what a rogue-like is, however, are going to find the review, well.. laughable. I'm sorry, I know that's not a wonderfully nice thing to say, but based on my reaction and those of several people I forwarded the review to, it's accurate.
Maybe I'm drawing a false distinction here, but I believe that a review is supposed to try to be somewhat objective. If it were the reaction of some random individual to a film, game, what-have-you, it would be a blog post. Reviews, in my expectations - have I established that this may be subjective yet? - are supposed to be the work of someone who knows a lot about the subject matter and who can judge it relative to other works in its field. A review of a roguelike that spends a lot of its word count just coming to terms with the fact that it's a roguelike doesn't do that justice. As I mentioned in passing, I would not purport to give an authoritative review of a racing.. or sports.. game.
So that's why I feel a change should be made, great. What do I want that change to be? On reflection, I don't think the review should be deleted. It's a fair appraisal of the game from the perspective of an 'average' gamer; I concede that point, people absolutely do need that sort of information. I do think someone else on your staff who has more experience with the genre should take a look at the game and add some opinions from a more jaded perspective and make it more of a true review.
Chapter 2: The QuickeningMr. Jack, or Nick, or Mr. DiMola, as you like. I again apologize for the fact that this interaction started out fairly badly.
You took exception to two of the points I raised. I'll deal with the strategy-RPG versus roguelike question first, and I'll open by saying that classifying things into genres is a useful tool for describing things but that when one gets into individual cases one invariably runs into problems of subjective opinion, semantics, and just all-around fuzziness. I'm going to take a stab at defining things, but I'm not going to pretend that I expect this to be the Final Ultimate Supreme Papal-Infallible Word on the subject.
A strategy-rpg is FFT, or Disgaea, or half of X-COM, or Battle of Wesnoth. You control multiple characters, strategy revolves around using them effectively as a large team and deciding which of them to develop in what way.
A roguelike is POWDER, or IVAN, or Angband, or Nethack, or.. THIS place! One night in Bangkok and a strong man.. er.
Roguelikes feature control of one character, or one character and their pet. Strategy revolves around coping with randomness and permanent death and that one character is developed to a very great degree only to be heartlessly reset to level 1.
I could keep naming features distinctive to each, but my essential point is that I feel the two are distinct. Space Rangers 2 is an RPG, and it involves strategy, but it is neither a strategy-RPG nor a roguelike. Disgaea has some random elements, but focus is not on one character and coping with those random elements is not really the main problem of the game - it's a strategy-RPG. This game has strategic elements, but they are those exactly typical of a roguelike.
If you want to say that any RPG involving strategic elements is a strategy-RPG, I can't really disagree with you - genre definitions are subjective and fuzzy, as I noted above. But that's not how I see the term generally used.
Chapter 3Randomness versus hand-made content. Round 1. FIGHT!
I'll lead off by backing down on one item. Your point that the dungeons are ugly and incoherent is accurate, and it's a problem the game should not have. X-COM (this is where I thought of using this as an example, all other uses have resulted from, hey, it's easy) managed to randomly generate battle maps that were up to the visual standards of the day. It's not a hard problem to solve, and it is a failure of the game.. ljust ooking over my shoulder as my wife plays it.
Of course, no REAL roguelike player cares about graphics! We all think Dwarf Fortress looks great and have lots of hair on our chests and.. yeah, no. Presentation matters. You have a point.
Meanwhile, on to the core battle I announced at the start. I am by no means saying that all games should use procedural content, or that it is good every time it appears, or that hand-made content is bad, or any other such silly things. I am saying that random content is an outright superior choice for some games and that it does have value in its own right.
Essentially the remainder of this argument is going to be an extended version of the reasoning I already gave, but let's play it out. If someone designs a level in a game, it is going to have cues indicating which direction the player should go, it is going to have items that are actually useful, and it is going to have opposition that is carefully tailored to what the player can handle.
And if you're nodding your head and saying yes, that's great, I will start linking you to mods that removed level scaling from Oblivion because there were a fair number of people out there who hated that feature, who did not want to always run into appropriate challenges, who wanted adversity and the unexpected.
The unexpected is what randomness offers, and it is to be valued. In the face of the utterly unknown with, strategic decisions are changed. You cannot count on there being a reasonable number of monsters on the next level. You must therefore do whatever you can to prepare for an unreasonable number. You cannot assume that you will start at any given distance from the exit. You cannot assume this, that, or the other. Surely I do not have to explain the pleasure of truly not knowing what is down that next corridor? Even the most sadistic and clever designer must make choices, and I'm sure you're all fairly experienced with the jrpg phenomenon of figuring out which direction leads to the next plot point and either avoiding or seeking it.
Randomness offers other pleasures, too. As my wife conveniently just exclaimed, "yay for small levels." In a designed scenario, if there is a small level it is because a designer has decided that it shall be so. In a random one, that small level or treasure chest with a useful item or whatever is a gift from the RNG.. and in the face of permadeath, one to be prized. A hand-made world is a pretty Skinner box. You know where the sugar button is. A random world makes finding sugar cubes an event
As far as more compelling experiences being available.. that's especially subjective, so I have license to be subjective back. I have found that managing randomness is, as experiences go, unique. There are other things that are entertaining, it is not the Ultimate Gaming Experience, but it is fun and distinct and something I would not want to abandon. I don't think it's for everyone, but I really do think it's unfair to say that it should be left in the dust.
I don't think I've said everything I possibly could say here, but this is supposed to be a dialogue, not a monologue.. and I've said quite a bit.