Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup is arguably a better game than Nethack in almost every way, and it's actively developed. Crawl is better balanced, meaning that when you die it's often due to your own misstep, rather than arbitrary luck. The UI takes care of a lot of the grunt-work of crawling through the dungeon, so you can spend more time on the aspects of the game that are actually fun. And it's got more to do than Nethack does, featuring a variety of branches and interesting areas rather than the monotony of the same kinds of levels over and over.
Before Crawl, I never thought I could feel absolute terror while playing a roguelike. You'll see what I mean the first time you're frantically trying to find a portal out of the Abyss with a veritable armada of demons closing in on you.
The one thing that Nethack does "better" is that it's got dozens and dozens of ways to die. In Crawl, when you die, it's usually due to hit point loss.
While I will take your word that crawl gets good later in the game, I've always found it to be really monotonous to start, so I never got into it, and have never played it long enough to see past the first level or two.
Nethack was intriguing and really funny right from the start, so I got really into playing it, and the sense of humor is really important to me.
I will have to give crawl another serious look, because at first it seems really mechanical. Pretty much like Diablo, but on the console.
Nethack definitely has more going for it in the comedy department. I like good game humor as well, but balance and interesting gameplay are even more important to me. I would encourage you to give Crawl another try, if only so that you can appreciate the quantum mechanics in Nethack that much more.
Before Crawl, I never thought I could feel absolute terror while playing a roguelike. You'll see what I mean the first time you're frantically trying to find a portal out of the Abyss with a veritable armada of demons closing in on you.
More info: http://crawl-ref.sourceforge.net/
The one thing that Nethack does "better" is that it's got dozens and dozens of ways to die. In Crawl, when you die, it's usually due to hit point loss.