These days I play almost exclusively with no portals and either permadeath or a limited lives house rule. Every run is unique, the game throws different sets of challenges and every session I end up experiencing something new. Like yesterday, when in early swamp era, kited an abomination out of the swamps and into the meadows where a veritable horde of neckers and a number of insane boars helped me kill him off with me only using fire arrows.

Players who say no portals is just making things longer by running the same route over and over just have no idea. For a trip of any real length I'm lucky if I come close to repeating the same path and count myself fortunate if things go smoothly. Quite often things don't go smoothly and that is where the epic portions of the journeys occur.

For an old rogue-like player like me, this game comes closer to achieving the holy grail of infinite replay-ability than most.