Roguelikes

[hitogoroshi]

Crawl is the best and the secret answer is to play more Crawl.

But pretty much all the thread recs are good. Nuclear Throne in particular is sublime. I'll also throw out a mention for Invisible Inc. Kind of like a stealth based XCOM.

Also, Hydra Slayer is free and worth playing if nothing else for the creativity on display. Hard to get in to, but in terms of difficult tactical combat you pretty much can't beat HS.

[hitogoroshi]

GrFi/MiFi of Ru is probably the best way to 3 rune

[hitogoroshi]

Yeah, like a version or two ago.

You periodically make a choice to sacrifice one of three things. Maybe it's three schools of magic you're not allowed to use, or it's your armor skill, all the way up to sacrificing an arm (!!!). The sacrifices give you piety. However, Ru abilities don't actually take away piety, just cause exhaustion or skill drain. So yeah you give up some stuff, but you gain really powerful abilities you can spam. Passive aura that debuffs people who attack you (even up to blindness), a heal/cleanse, a reposistion, and a massive AoE nuke. For three rune games (and especially as a newbie) when you're not likely to utilize hybridization that well, she's insanely strong. Probably a little less good in extended but even then I'm sure she'd still be fine, not like lategame Yred or anything.

Ru is probably the strongest god but the sacrifice decisions are also meaningful and fun, so it's fine.

Also Ru's wrath is amazing. She just...does nothing, because you've already made all these sacrifices and now you're just not getting anything from them. It's one of the coolest thematic things in Crawl (right up there with the draconian who worshiped Dith, got red scales, and had to avoid breathing fire for religious reasons)