Castle of the Winds

[Tripecac]

I played [url http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Castle_of_the_Winds]Castle of the Winds[/url] for the first time today. For a graphical roguelike (most of which I do not like), it was better than I thought.

Things I liked:
1) the narrative, which is presented in little bits every time you complete a dungeon
2) getting identify spell early on
3) simple command set -- no page upon page of command keys, and many of the commands are context-sensitive; this made it easy to start playing

Things I didn't like:
1) the narrative element reduces replayability; when my first "real" character died, I had no desire to start over.
2) having to use the mouse to examine items things (instead of using easy keyboard based directions)
3) not having a health bar on myself; staring at numbers during combat isn't as fun as watching combat details while monitoring a health bar with the corner of the eye
4) not having a health bar on enemies
5) multiple stores -- why not just have one? Although multiple stores is realistic, I would gladly accept the abstraction of a single store.

I'll turn this topic into a poll so that we can post our ratings and thoughts here.[/url]