Caves of Qud is a good traditional roguelike set in what could be thought of as a future Mesopotamia, a sort of Canaanite dreamland with swords and lasers.
As most traditional roguelikes tend to be, CQ is heavy on mechanics and light on graphics, UI and explanations. This turns out to be mostly pretty good.

Most of almost everything you will be doing will involve one of three things: combat (unless you are playing "Wander" mode, which I have not tried), fiddling with the inventory, or reading the description of the entities (items, objects, living beings) of the world. The "world" is a giant database of stuff, almost all of which is repeated and iterated to make for a large text-based simulation that would compare to the largest and most well-planned modern AAA-studio-made RPGs, such as for example Cyberpunk. Obviously, there will be significant differences -- most obviously that CQ is a traditional text-♥♥♥-sprite-based, turn-based indie presentation, so there is zero FPS. Perhaps only slightly less obvbiously, CQ relies on your ability to imagine this world, as opposed to the developers visually and auditorily presenting it to your two senses -- so there are no coffee cups or used cola cans peppering the landscape to help reinforce immersion. Because of CQs repetitive iteration, this can become quite a task. But perhaps most importantly, CQ lacks detailed scripting of its most important inhabitants, namely characters -- it's exceptionally difficult to have anything resembling a conversation with anyone, and this is simply much less true for large productions like Cyberpunk. Indeed, most of the characters in CQ are leaden clods, dummies without any form of interaction; yet even the special unique, scripted individuals feel wooden and barren -- they have only one or two lines that they can repeatedly bleat, and if they are taken out of their context (e.g. if they become one of your "friends" or followers and are then in the next town over), they will still repeat the same context-laden lines (e.g. "look at this beautiful church" which is, of course, hundreds of kilometers away). CQ does a decent job of making immersion particularly challening.

Overall, I've found the vaunted "storytelling" and "immersion" to be lacking, even if it is refreshingly superior to traditional hack-and-slash roguelikes. The bits of humor and irony can sometimes be lost in the overly floral and verbose descriptions. Much of CQ takes itself quite seriously; the prevalent style is reminiscent of an anthropologist's reconstruction of some Canaanite parchments, and the vibe can often be very academic. Sometimes it can be difficult to parse the humor in the pretentiousness. In addition, some of the cultural juxtaposition and humor will be hard to understand for the uninitiated (e.g. the obvious Sephardic context is occasionally supplanted by bizarre Ashkenasi tidbits, such as a playful rendition of a futuristic dreydel song familiar only to North American Jews, or those who know of it).

That being said, while CQ does have quite a few weaknesses, overall it is a fun experience!

PROS:
- A deep, complex character creation system
- A robust combat system
- A really large pool of "stuff" to discover and almost literally wade through (puddles etc.)
- Like most traditional roguelikes, it can run on a potato and uses very little energy.

CONS:
- Despite a greatly improved UI over such classics as Dwarf Fortress or Stone Soup, the interface is still clunky and cumbersome by even modest modern standards
- The dialogue creation and scripting could be massively improved
- While still looking slightly better than most traditional roguelikes, the presentation still relies on sprites which are often hard to interpret.

If you are interested in roguelikes and find a vaguely mesopotamic science-fantasy setting appealing, Caves of Qud is surely worth a try.

The game takes some getting used to at first. I had an on-off relationship with it for almost a year until one day I realized what the game wanted from me. What followed were 1.5 weeks with >60 hours of gameplay that had me glued to my chair, literally. I would get up, sit down at the computer, realize in the afternoon that I had forgotten to eat, cook something quick, and continue playing until I went to sleep. Exploring the world, losing myself in epic battles and underground exploration, burning enemies with plasma, or accidentally turning myself into an industrial machine – these are the things that made this game almost irresistible to me. Some things in the world are procedurally generated, but you can tell that the developers have put a lot of thought into the scripted elements of it, offering a broad base of storytelling and content. Overall, the game was a positive surprise for me, and I'm glad I stumbled upon this recommendation. My recommendation for really getting into the game: activate debug mode and quick save. The roguelike experience was too deadly for me when I was getting to know the game with my first character, and this helped me get into the game better.

What a game. It can take a while to click, but once it does this game will have hooks in you.