"DRPG" Stranger of Sword City

[aweigh]

i'm testing this out right now and the status screen numbers do not lie: any all effects that are boosted by whatever you equip in the B-set is always active even if you never change sets. You can boost DR, SpD and SpE by having the B-SET consist of dual-wielding shields :D

BTW, you are of course correct that dual-wielding main-hand weapons will do much more damage than anything else. An end-game character dual-wielding two good main-hand weapons who uses an ability like the samurai's Carnage Back (death duel), the fighter's Genocide, or the Dancer's 5-Step will always deal much more damage than an end-game character using Mysterious Focus -> (Critical Hit) Sniper Shot.

what I'm saying is that the best way, looking at the numbers we have available and the classes in the game and such, and taking into considering the variables of monster damage-immunities is:

the Ranger's Sniper Shot, as fired from a currently-classed Ranger character, is beyond doubt the game's most accurate (highest +HIT) attack option out of ALL classes and ALL abilities. The ninja comes close with having a free +5 HIT via Assassinate, but that attack only features extra HIT it does not have a +DMG modifier.

Meanwhile the Ranger's Sniper Shot has the +10 HIT AND the 2.25x DMG modifier. The fact that it also does not unstealth the Ranger, assuming he was a Ninja beforehand and has the skill, and the fact that it applies to both Bows and Special-type weapons, and lastly coupled w/ the fact that if the Ranger firing it targets an enemy away from the 1st row they receive an extra 0.25x DMG modifier.

You are absolutely correct that that, fuck, even that SAME RANGER char i've been describing if he were to slap on dual-wield and 5-step would of course out-dmg his own sniper shot but he would not be enjoying the +10 HIT.

Basically it's worth getting a char up to Ranger lvl 15 and then classing on to something better just for Sniper shot because it works while in stealth and it's the most accurate attack available in the game for instances when you absolutely need that hit to land, regardless of dmg. Plus the 2.25x dmg is just icing on the cake.

Of course this is really p. much meaningless once we take into account even basic things such as characters debuffing via items and then it doesn't matter really that Sniper shot is the most accurate attack in the game AND features good dmg (this is a rare combo); after enough Divinities/items/spells whatever everything comes down to something which is 100% classic for this game genre:

dual-wielding the best weapons and wailing on the enemy until it dies. I have yet to play a turn-based dungeon crawler where using sword-and-board is worth it. There is simply no mathematical excuse for it. And btw, in other games, for example in Elminage, if the 1st weapon kills the enemy then the 2nd weapon continues and auto-targets another enemy!

that means that in Elminage, even though it is by far the best modern representation of Wizardry-based turn-based dungeon crawling I have ever played, they've made 5 games of the damn series and Starfish still hasn't realized that there is absolutely no reason to ever use either Shields or to use a 2-Handed weapon!

Dual-wielding was first introduced in Wizardry 6 and it was also the first game in the series to feature optional keyboard + mouse controls. (Btw, they were horrible... basically just imagine playing SoSC with your mouse instead of the keyboard or a joypad; imagine having to click on EVERY SINGLE SELECTION-- now you understand).

Ever since, man, the genre never recovered. I mean, there is simply no reason other than when you specifically need extra defense, to ever *not* use a 2nd weapon.

Anyway, where are some good butterfly spots? And what's the best/fastest way to "trigger" them? Like for example, in Wizardry/Elminage you can cast the Teleport spell one tile away from where you currently are and you "reset" all of the encounters and shit for fast grinding.

 

[aweigh]

damn, turns out it IS a bug. Sometimes the effects from the B-set stick, and sometimes they don't.

- If i give my pure Cleric Holy Rod in A-set + Flame shield, etc, he has atm 4 DR

- i change to B-set and give him the Hammer-type (Cleric, remember) weapon Battle Staff that comes with 3 DR.

- Screen changes to 7 DR.

- I change back to A-set, and still 7 DR.

- I fight enemies... open his screen, 7 DR.

BTW, what is the difference between "PASSING" and "RETREATING" on an Ambush chest, before the fight? I know when you retreat it still raises the morale required. What does passing do?

If i try other combinations, and on other characters, sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't. According to the jp-wiki this SPECIFICALLY has to do with characters who can utilize Wands, btw. So no, one cannot cheat super stats via weapon sets like I mentioned in ALL CAPS.

 

[Shackleton]

Passing you get to do 4 times and it gives you a different chest and a different set of enemies. Handy with butterfly ambushes, pass and try and get 2 or even 3 butterflies.

Retreat, you lose the Morale points and have to ambush again.

 

[Emmanuel2]

That DR is a game changer but I moved on to trying to finish my PoR playthrough first. But holy shit, it's basically like snapshotting.

Anyway, where are some good butterfly spots? And what's the best/fastest way to "trigger" them?

The best butterfly spots IMHO are in M.o.Sea and M.o.Storms.

M.o.Sea depth 1000 X:12 Y:16 and M.o.Storms Summit X:15 Y10

Passing the encounter gets you a chance for a different set of enemies and loot but it increases your chance to get ambushed by 20%(Approx.) hence the danger level. By the fifth pass, you are sure to get ambushed. Retreating wastes your Morale points but I'm not sure if it affects the levels as well.

 

[Suicidal]

Finally finished the game including all the post game stuff (at least I think I did - I killed everything in the White Kingdom area and beaten all the bosses in the bonus rooms near the magic portals and the knight dude gave me a sword so I'm pretty sure that's 100% of the content not counting new game+).

It's a good game and I had a lot of fun, but it does suffer from some bonehead design decisions.

To anyone who might check out this thread and think "hmmm should I buy this shit" here's my sorta review sorta pros and cons of the game.

Stuff I liked:

-The game really does a good job at making every dungeon stand out from the others. Each one has its own design, atmosphere, enemies, loot types and traps and they all make sense (more or less). Like in the ghost town you go through a maze of abandoned buildings, fall through crumbling ceilings to reach new places and try not to bump into the spooky death ghost that can kill you in 1 hit and in the storm tower you are constantly going up, fighting off flying monsters and periodically getting hit by lightning. Also each dungeon has its own set of bosses you need to kill in order to advance the plot, and they behave differently. Some stand in the open waiting for your to come, some need to be lured out, some will attack you while you fight other enemies. My favorite part of the game was unlocking new dungeons because new dungeons meant new stuff to find, new places to explore and new enemies to kill. Each one was like a new mini-adventure with its own set of rules and challenges.

-The divinity skill system is an interesting way to combine gameplay and story c&c. Basically you give quest items to city NPCs and get new abilities depending on whom you give them too, and the ending also changes depending on which NPC you favor. That's pretty original as far as dungeon crawler mechanics go.

-I really liked the enemy caravan raiding mini game as a way to get loot. I think it puts a fun little spin to the tired tradition of grinding. I really hate grinding. I only find it acceptable when it's very fast and doesn't take a lot of time. Well this game managed to make grinding fun. You go into a dungeon, find an ambush spot and you can hide there and ambush an enemy transporter carrying a loot box, which gets you gear. I liked it because in order to get loot you have to fight sort of mini bosses that at low level can be quite challenging, if you kill them you are guaranteed to get at least some items (there's no killing the same enemy for their 0.2% chance to drop your desired item bullshit), you can control which items you get (the chests display what sort of items they contain and if you don't like them you can make them pass and get a new chest) and there's a sort of gambling risk and reward element involved (the more you ambush, the stronger the enemies become, but you can also get even better items).

-The game has some nice automation features that save a lot of time - fast auto-walk to almost any place of the map you explored, ability to repeat previous actions in combat, ability to skip combat animations.

-There were some interesting unpredictable challenges. Some people might fight them irritating (and indeed they can sometimes result in party wipes you weren't prepared for forcing you to load a save and lose an hour of progress) but they managed to add a sense of danger to some of the dungeons, like you can be walking around being on top of things and suddenly you are in a really shitty situation and must find a way to get out (sometimes that way involves going into battles you cannot escape from and are too high level for you but that's another story).

Some minor stuff that I liked:

-It looks very nice. Probably one of the better looking dungeon crawlers there is. The dungeon environments are very varied and never look dull. Monsters look good and highly detailed (although a bit overdesigned - even some of the earliest enemies can look like a major boss would in another game). Spell effects are pretty meh, though.

-Ability to use custom portraits. I always enjoy this feature. Spent like two hours making the perfect degenerate team.

-The story, despite being filled with typical JRPG characters and cringy writing, at least had me interested enough in finding out where they were going with this.

-I liked the music and there was quite a lot of it. Usually dungeon crawlers have like 3-4 different combat songs and call it a day. This 1 had like 10.

Stuff I didn't like:

-For being such a big part of the game, the bosses aren't very impressive. In order to progress the story you have to kill them and harvest their essence like the noble hero you are, so you have to fight a lot of them, but after a while they all start feeling the same. The problem is that there's barely any variety in boss abilities. Most bosses are based on the random trash mobs you encounter in a dungeon and are basically a stronger version of said mobs with stronger abilities and several boss-specific abilities that are pretty much the same for all bosses. Starting from somewhere in the mid game, all bosses can do the following things: cast a spell that charms all your characters, lower your morale, summon trash mobs that are present in that dungeon, regenerate a big % of their HP once in a while. Sometime later they also get the power to dispel all your buffs and after that point all those abilities will be present on every boss you fight. They will also have at least a few of the following: an elemental damage spell that barely does damage, an aoe magic attack with some standard status effect attached, a spell that ruins your party formation and a spell that imprisons one of your character. As a result it really starts to feel like you're fighting the exact same enemy wearing different skin over and over again. + Most of the late game bosses are very poorly designed. None of their abilities are a threat to you but their normal attack hits for more damage than your fattest tank has HP. However, if you use one of two tactics that nullify their basic attack effectiveness then you win automatically.

-There's not a whole lot of character customization. You get your 1 stat point per level and that's it. Each class gets the same skills automatically at predetermined levels, so wizard A will be the same to wizard B. No skill points, no perks, no feats, no talents. Not a lot of different skills and spells as well. There is some additional customization through multiclassing, but the way it works you will probably end up getting the same skills on your characters anyway. For example I multiclassed all my front row guys into knights to get that skill that protects you from random instant death critical hits, because no reason not to. I multiclassed my wizard and cleric into eachother to give my wizard mana regeneration and my cleric multicasting. Not much point in multiclassing your casters into physical characters and your physical characters into casters.

-The game gets kinda easy once you get your party rolling. This is due to a few reasons:

1. The way enemy levels work in this game is really weird. As long as you are a certain amount of levels below your enemy, as I noticed, they will do a shit ton of damage to you. But if you close the level gap a bit, this huge damage will mysteriously disappear. And it's very hard to tell what exactly this difference is. For example, when your party is at levels 1-2 in the first zone, you will encounter level 10 enemies. You'd think fighting level 10s with your level 1 guys isn't right, but actually level 10 monsters are the correct challenge level for your party. You can also find level 12-13 monsters, which will be slightly harder but still beatable. But in the very same zone you can also randomly encounter level 20 monsters which will pretty much one-hit your guys. This is all very inconsistent and as the game goes on this level number nonsense persists, like at level 7 you will be fighting level 15-20s but level 25s will wreck your shit, etc. The same thing applies to bosses. Because it's very hard to tell the exact level difference threshold, you might run into a boss, get killed by his 300 damage autoattacks and then decide to do a few ambushes to get some gear and in the process gain a level or two and when you next fight the boss he now does 50 damage to you instead of 300, even though your stats didn't change so much. So levels influence combat difficulty A LOT in this game and it's not that hard to get them.

2. Almost anything an enemy can do to you can be easily countered completely with a single use of some item or skill. Don't like having your characters imprisoned and taken out of the fight for a long period on time? Just stock up on magic dolls and forget this ability ever existed. Enemy about to cast charm? Use the skill specifically designed to counter charm. Don't have morale to use it? There are items that do that too! Tired of the boss dispelling your divinity buffs? Angel mirror/force guard. Your back row guys get oneshotted? Veil. Once you get access to all the tools, every battle turns into checklist filling. Cast all the buffs, protect against dispell, aim strongest spells at the boss, repeat actions till he dies, stop to heal when necessary.

-Even with all the fast forward buttons, the random encounters waste too much time considering how little threat they pose. They happen far too often and most of the time your best option is to mash quick apply and wait till all the monsters die. You'll never die to them because holy light will heal more of your HP per turn then they can damage. Even though you can see them on the map, you still have no choice but to go through them because they are often placed in chokepoints that are impossible to get around otherwise.

-The translation fucking sucks dick. Took me a while to figure out that item loss rate up means that the item has a chance not to disappear after use. Really? Because ITEM LOSS RATE UP sounds like the exact opposite. Also items that protect your party from imprison effects have the property "escape resistance", so I thought that it had something to do with preventing monsters from escaping. Now imagine that someone actually got paid to write that text the way it is. Disgusting.

TL;DR - despite some pretty dumb flaws, it's still a good game. At the end of the day it was still fun going around different dungeons, killing shit and taking their loot so I could kill more shit. Not the best dungeon crawler I've ever played, but very worthy of my time and I'd love to see more games like this on Steam in the future.

 

[Courtier]

Above is a good post

Why can't I use the gay rating system, gibe brofists bak

 

[Matador]

-There's not a whole lot of character customization. You get your 1 stat point per level and that's it. Each class gets the same skills automatically at predetermined levels, so wizard A will be the same to wizard B. No skill points, no perks, no feats, no talents. Not a lot of different skills and spells as well. There is some additional customization through multiclassing, but the way it works you will probably end up getting the same skills on your characters anyway. For example I multiclassed all my front row guys into knights to get that skill that protects you from random instant death critical hits, because no reason not to. I multiclassed my wizard and cleric into eachother to give my wizard mana regeneration and my cleric multicasting. Not much point in multiclassing your casters into physical characters and your physical characters into casters.

This is my main problem with the game. Not to the point of breaking my opinion on it but to the point of not bother finishing it.

I play these games for the thrill of customizing my party, selecting spells and skills on level up,not having all of them prefixed and locked at different levels.

Can I ask you what is your favourite dungeon crawler?

Mine is wizardry 6, although I despise some of the over complex,annoying level design,like the mines.

but the character system, although being flawed, is funny. I can create the type of wizard I like, selecting magic schools,make hybrids at my own pace,etc.

Other great character system for me would be the fft one,with the flaw of being very grindy,and the bad structure of the progression tree,forcing to grind classes not related with the one you want to achieve.

 

[aweigh]

Matador
Emmanuel2

i recorded some video of best crawler for both of you guise matador & emmanuel:


YOU'RE WELCOME!

 

[aweigh]

some more footage i mean why not rite

 

[Emmanuel2]

Matador
Emmanuel2

i recorded some video of best crawler for both of you guise matador & emmanuel:


YOU'RE WELCOME!

Thanks alot! Apart from standard google searches, your channel along with dorarnae's are the first ones I check for some gameplay. And yeah, so far from what I've played (Just recently reached royal tomb), hands down it's the best dungeon crawler I've played. Had to stop because MHG came out in the middle of the playthrough.

I can attest to that. Made it to the underground Church without saving in the dungeon feeling pretty confident then breathing Frost Giants, turn-1 full party paralysis, anti-magic zone with 6 ninjas that can behead/charm/confuse/sleep twice in an attack, doom, bugged level drains, self destruct, ninjas, death spell spam, and ninjas happened.

Now I worship the save-anywhere function of Gothic and do it every two or three fights. Never had as much fun dying and that sense of triumph in a game before, and I played DS1 SL1 / KH2FM Critical L1.

 

[Suicidal]

-There's not a whole lot of character customization. You get your 1 stat point per level and that's it. Each class gets the same skills automatically at predetermined levels, so wizard A will be the same to wizard B. No skill points, no perks, no feats, no talents. Not a lot of different skills and spells as well. There is some additional customization through multiclassing, but the way it works you will probably end up getting the same skills on your characters anyway. For example I multiclassed all my front row guys into knights to get that skill that protects you from random instant death critical hits, because no reason not to. I multiclassed my wizard and cleric into eachother to give my wizard mana regeneration and my cleric multicasting. Not much point in multiclassing your casters into physical characters and your physical characters into casters.

This is my main problem with the game. Not to the point of breaking my opinion on it but to the point of not bother finishing it.

I play these games for the thrill of customizing my party, selecting spells and skills on level up,not having all of them prefixed and locked at different levels.

Can I ask you what is your favourite dungeon crawler?

Mine is wizardry 6, although I despise some of the over complex,annoying level design,like the mines.

but the character system, although being flawed, is funny. I can create the type of wizard I like, selecting magic schools,make hybrids at my own pace,etc.

Other great character system for me would be the fft one,with the flaw of being very grindy,and the bad structure of the progression tree,forcing to grind classes not related with the one you want to achieve.

I played quite a lot (although I didn't finish many), so it's difficult choosing one single favorite.

Out of the ones I played recently, like in the last couple of years, I most enjoyed Labyrinth of Touhou 2. I think it has some of the best party building and combat mechanics I've ever seen in this genre. Although it's very different from the standard dungeon crawler, wizardry-like formula. I'm not sure I can even call it a dungeon crawler, it's more like a combination of a dungeon crawler and an X-com type game that manages to be very casual (no permadeath, leave dungeon any time you want) but also very difficult (battles are very hard and require a lot of planning to get through, character levels don't matter as much as strategy, on the hard difficulty the game flat out forbids you from fighting a boss if you're over-leveled) at the same time.

 

[aweigh]

ShackletonEmmanuel2CourtierSiveonDorateenDeuce TravelerCelerityJaesunCrooked BeeInfinitronDamned RegistrationsThisNameIsFreeDorarnaeViataZetorSuicidalMustawdJinnV_KLady ErrorBlackGoatGhopTheConquerorrailway

PART ONE: WIREFRAME GRAPHICS AND HOW BEAUTIFUL THEY CAN BE.

i've really grown to love the look of Wireframe graphics in modern hardware / modern 'crawlers. There is something unbelievably appealing about the minimalism of straight white lines overlaid atop a void that really defines all sorts of shapes and allows the imagination to run wild by making the brain and the eye process and take in information in a way that is very similar to the effect that celluloid-sourced film has on our interpretation.

it has been theorized by many of the great film scholars that the primary reason film film will always be so entrancing to the viewer or simply put the reason why it will always "look so real" compared to the modern digitally-sourced film is because celluloid film strips were physical material that lack the digital ability to "shoot continuously"; as such there is a gap between every single frame of a celluloid-sourced film strip and while it is something so incredibly brief that were you not told about it one would never know it the fact remains that the human brain can and does "catch" the dark, blank void of the film strip that lies between each frame and when our human eyes are in the process of taking in the movie every time a frame cuts to the next frame we sub-consciously begin to anticipate each void of black lying in wait between each frame and, depending on our level of engagement, our human brain which will be at that moment actively suspending our disbelief begins to fill in the darkness between each frame of the movie with interstitial interpretation that continually unfolds as the movie progresses.

Paper Sorcerer showcases a masterful understanding of what i'm talking about and the developer as said that his primary goal witht he monochromatic art (which he did himself) in the game is an intentional homage to the Wireframe "look" of classic dungeon crawlers.


I think this is by far the closest a modern 'crawler has come to not only duplicating the immediate psychological effect and, of course, the sub-conscious interpretation of the classic Wizardry Wireframe graphics has on us is from the Windows PC 'crawler "Paper Sorcerer". Have a look at this marvel of art, texturing, musical scoring and master-class understanding of spatial interpretation and minimalism in architecture in the video embed, you'll thank me! You'll probably go away from this post and end up playing Paper Sorcerer just from that video alone :D

the stark, minimalistic look and feel of the Wireframes contrasted against the inky black of the dungeon halls create an equivalent feeling of immersion in the player as our human brains are actively filling in the blanks. I've found I can actually concentrate better on a dungeon floor's layout and that I actually exhibit a much greater degree of spatial awareness and orientation of myself when playing with Wireframe graphics on a 'crawler.

PART TWO: AN EXAMPLE OF A MODERN 'CRAWLER THAT LOOKS AND PLAYS BETTER IN WIREFRAME THAN WITH 3D GRAPHICAL TEXTURING.

Here is a another video of Elminage: Gothic featuring gameplay from the post-game Wireframe Dungeon:

Notice how the addition of equally minimalist musical scoring exemplifies and underscores the existing strengths of the Wireframe "look".

Here's Wizardry Empire 3 for PSP with Wireframe mode enabled:

notice how when playing with textures/graphics enabled that everything seems to muddle together? Obviously this speaks more to the art and texture department, i am aware of this, but 'crawlers as a general rule are games that feature long stretches of repetitive actions and long stretches of "sameness".

I think the best of both worlds would be a modern 'crawler with a fantastic art team working to duplicate the minimalist beaty, and more specifically, working to replicate the psychological effect that the absence of space has on our human eyes and brains but utilizing modern-day digital tools for texturing and rendering; simply because the origin of this comes from the strict and exclusive use of Wireframe graphics without usage of texturing does not mean that a similar and probably better effect cannot be achieved today by using it as inspiration with modern rendering tools.

A few modern 'crawlers that allow swithcing to wireframe:

- Wizardry Empire 1 (Playstation 1 / Windows PC w/ translation in progress!)
- Wizardry Empire 2 (Playstation 1 / Windows PC w/ a 100% completed translation patch available.)
- Wizardry Empire 3 (Playstation 2 / PSP w/ a "menu patch" coming soon as a patch for the PSP .ISO.)
- The Dark Spire (Nintendo DS system and it is an officially localized game.)
- Wizardry Gaiden 4: Throb of the Demon's Heart (SNES w/ a 100% completed translation patch available)
- And, obviously, all of the Wizardry 1-5 remakes for SNES/Playstation 1 feature a Wireframe mode option.

worthy mentions would be the some of the post-game dungeons in the Elminage series of games, although they don't offer a complete Wireframe option.

EDIT: YES PEOPLE I KNOW FULL WELL THAT WIZ's ORIGINAL REASON FOR USING WIREFRAME GRAPHICS WAS BECAUSE THEY COULD NOT AFFORD REAL GRAPHICS OK? I GIVE YOU ANOTHER FILM ANALOGY: THE JAWS SHARK.

 

[Shackleton]

That's an interesting viewpoint aweigh, but personally I find wireframe almost impossible to look at for any period of time without it causing real discomfort. The harsh white lines against the black background really affect my eyes and I find myself blinking a lot and getting headaches if I play too much like that. I also find it really disorientating in a way that textured walls never are, probably because it's so abstract I have a hard time keeping track of what's wall, floor and ceiling. I enjoyed paper sorcerer, but I had to take more breaks than usual playing it as the contrast did affect me.

Just my 2c. You always make such interesting posts when it's time for me to log off!

 

[aweigh]

you do have a point, Shackleton , as I have also gotten big headaches from hours of playing in Wireframe. It's not really that hard to understand though, i mean we're basically staring for hours and hours at a computer monitor display that is showing nothing but... Wireframe graphics LOL.

cue incoming headaches. people get massive headaches from just generally using computers for long hours and the like, imagine combining that but w/ addition of wireframe haha.

Paper Sorcerer was such a gem, man, it's unfortunate the developer did not spend more time polishing the gameplay mechanics / combat as he obviously did the sound, graphics and writing. It's a 'crawler I recommend to every person who likes 'crawlers and I consider it an incredibly artistic video game but i absolutely will never, ever, play it a 2nd time.

in any case, I would like to add that Wireframes alone do not do it for me, there has to be an musical score that underscores (key word!) the visual design, like for example the beautifully subtle pseudo-8bit BGM in the Cave of the Ancients post-game dungeon (the wireframe one) in E: Gothic. I simply cannot imagine enjoying that dungeon as much as I do if it did not feature that incredibly simple loop of processed sound effects filtered so as to sound as if it came out of an 8-bit console sound chip.

it accentuates as well the nostalgic feelings that the E: Gothic devs wanted to bring out of the player when they entered that dungeon, and as I already mentioned, it also underscores beautifully the minimalist look of the Wireframe graphics.

tl;dr lines alone are not enough.

 

[Dorarnae]

I preferred wireframe in some game because this make the game faster (dark spire in particular, so much faster)

 

[aweigh]

THAT is also true! you know i am huge on 'crawlers having all of the possible options to turn off everything unnecessary. big, big part (if not the ENTIRETY of it) why i can't fully enjoy 'crawlers like Class of Heroes and other 'crawlers that are very slow, like the Playstation 2 game Wizardry: Tale of the Forsaken Land".

In particular I would've loved to play the ps2 forsaken land Wiz game since absolutely everything about the game is genius-level design: the atmosphere, the actual dungeon design / individual floor layouts, the way party building is still "like Wiz" but with the added stuff of some classes helping other classes unlock special skills or "combo attacks" if they fight together in the same party long enough and if certain conditions are met (like, say, X character revived Y character 10 times). The graphics are also gorgeous, and although I already mentioned the atmosphere and how incredibly bleak and mysterious the game's World is presented to the player the actual art and art-design of everything is top-tier.

but it's unplayable for me because you move slower than in Dark Spire (to give you a frame of reference), and to top that off battle animations are not able to be turned off and that ps2 frame rate man, it's bad. 30fps locked games are horrible. I gave up on it after clearing the 2nd floor of the 1st dungeon simply because playing it was too slow!

apparently the dev team behind the game rectified almost everything i just complained about for the japanese-language sequel game, "wizardry 0: neo bushin mega ranger" (or something like that), as they added options to remove battle animations and they increased the speed at which you walk and they also simply overall made it faster. Apparently i was not the only one who found it unplayable, since for a dev to make those changes like that they must have received untold complaints/criticism.

Courtier tells me it's one of his favorite 'crawlers, tho, and that the dungeon/floor layout design is top-tier, top-notch stuff, and that I shouldn't be a pussy and should finish it. I can definitely believe it's one of his Top 5 'Crawlers, tho, cos everything about it just drips talent and love, and game-wise it is just the single most atmospheric and evocative Wizardry game ever made, PERIOD. And i only played through the first 2 floors!

right from the very beginning the game slams you with a beautiful and evocative use of strings in a slow cord progression to underscore the bleak winter forest that you find yourself in when you start the game, and then a mysterious man (looks like an adventurer-type) approaches you and instead of having the usual JRPG/any-RPG type of "WHY HALLO THERE! YOU R IN TEH LAND OF...", etc, he actually just addresses you in a very, VERY, good use of how to properly write literary dialog (in the sense that it is not prose, it is Text that is written in accordance with most/all of the Unwritten Rules of Literature); not saying the actual dialog itself is of literary quality. There's a difference.

 

[Celerity]

Yeah, I know every quick kill method and Forsaken Land battles still were a minute each just because that's how long the animations for 1-2 attacks required.

Emulator with turbo? Those fuck hard on ninjas though.

 

[Hirato]

I played ToFL to about dungeon level 6 or so - I remember something about an icy cavern.
I had to keep it on turbo most of the time, the animations just took too damn long to do anything, and Clerity's not wrong about the ninjas, if one comes on screen your framerate is basically about 5 FPS tops until you wipe them all out.
It has been nearly 3 years since i last played it on PCSX2, the emulator might be a lot faster now, since gregory in particular's been doing a great job optimising things.

 

[Celerity]

Shame Busin 0 was never translated. It really fixes a lot of those design flaws. The main one that bugs me is spell leveling. In Forsaken Land you gotta go in the dungeon, buy a bunch of non stacking ingredients, leave, combine them in groups of 2 or 3 in your city, use the stones you make one at a time and repeat. Cue it taking literal hours just so you can max one spell on one character and it's pure busy work, not the grinding for gold or anything that might require actual effort. Granted most spells don't need many levels, just a few buffs, Jakreta, Megadeth, and a few others but even then...

 

[aweigh]

MrRichard999
Celerity
Hirato


I ACTUALLY HAve in my HDD and already completely "dissected" and with all of the game files spread open the Sequel game, "Busin 0". I was going to go full asburgers autist and begin translating what I could, with a minimum goal of doing a "menu patch" but alas, PS2 archive compression for the game's files is 2spooky4me. PS2/Sony in that era they almost always use the archive compression .LLU or, more randomly, one called .ARC which is not proprietary to Sony it's a normal compression method for archiving that they modified for their own use in some ps2 games.

example: the ps2 game Wiz Gaiden 6: The Prisoner of the Battles consists of only 2 files... file #1 is the game's executable which is not inside any sort of Archive file and is the first thing one hacks in order to begin translating the game text; file #2 is a huuuuge archive with the .ARC extension and this means this is an archive that contains ALL of the game's FOLDERS, not the files only, these archives contain stuff like the Game's Folder Structure, including stuff like for example the equivalent to what i found in E: Gothic by using the Excel .CSV files that Starfish used for the game. However, all of those files including the uber-important .CSV files in E: Gothic had to first be extracted from the compressed archive they used for the game, extension .BRA, and to do that you need to use a script tool that is coded specifically to do this specific and unique job, i.e. extract all the files from this, and only this specific .BRA archive. Once you have a way of extracting files, shit is basically a free for all. However you're not out of the woods yet young man...

even after you successfully extract everything, and it's a big if, you run the risk of of finding out that in order to save space on the game CD's the fucking jap devs utilized Encyclopedic Encryption on the game's NPC/dialog/majority-of-text-files. This is more commonly simply referred to as "Text Compression". this means that while the file with the entire list of magic spells is in plain english, er, well plain japanese i mean, if you go and open the file with the NPC dialog it looks like a crosswords puzzle. Complete jumble. Impossible to edit and translate any of that unless you, once again, sigh and move on to the process of either: 1) coding your own tool to crack the text compression, and apparenlty from what i've read in forums this isn't exactly super-spy shit or NSA shit, it's just simple encryption that can and is frequently broken by translators; and/or 2) get ready to beg, i mean, get ready to start making friends in the translation forums so you can get someone to do it for you, or lastly, 3) use google and spend weeks/months of your life teaching yourself tons of stuff about coding and shit until you realize 1 year has gone by and you dropped your menu patch because you simply can't believe how much work and dedication is required to do a one-man translation, and the cool thing about option 3) is that the people who go with this option win! they win... at life!

(i hate that term, btw, because my "menu patch" also includes all enemy names and all of the game's items, spells, class abilities, and every single minor interaction within the game that does not consist of a Kanji-heavy text all in english; in my opinion this, which is what i'm finishing up doing for Empire 3-PSP so i can make an X-delta "menu patch" for it; the people who do "menu patches" usually translate basically everything but legitimate conversational dialog text with an NPC/dungeon-Event/etc, as those type of things are in kanji and lots and lots of use of both of the other two alphabets which compliment kanji... unlike something like a list of all of the game's items, for example, which are almost universally always written in simple japanese hiragana which is sometimes actually nothing more than straight-up Phonetic spelling of a katakana/kanji word(s))

EDIT: currently on my HDD are the following japanese Wiz-clones awaiting further "work":

- Forsaken Land #2 for PS2
- Wizardry Summoner for PS2
- Wizardry Asterisk for NDS (Starfish)
- Wizardry Gaiden 5: Dimguil, and Gaiden 6: The Prisoner of the Battles
- Wizardry XTH 1, and XTH 2 from Michaelsoft studios before they became Team Muramasa / Exp Inc.
- and fuck, probably even more I don't remember right now, stuff like the DRPG game about the Super Mega Taisen Robots "Lost Heroes" on PSP.
- Windows PC versions of Generation XTH 1, 2, and 3 (only #1 was translated).

 

[Dorarnae]

yeah tale of forsaken land is great but I agree the combat animation makes it so slow. the sequel (alternative neo) which we never got had option to turn off animation.

 

[Jaesun]

Jebus fucking christmas, you cant even read about any game in here at all because of aweigh's constant assburgers.

 

[Modron]

In before Aweighland, he really should just start a diary/rambling thread at least. Going on about Elminage Gothic here instead of its' thread and always ready to copy paste his diatribe about how JRPG forum is the best forum whenever his sperge sense tingles.

Granted he his is actually contributing to some translations but the whole stream of consciousness ramblings is a little tiring.

 

[aweigh]

talking about 1 crawler in a 1 crawler's game thread is not uncommon plus i've been posting on the codex for 11 years and this thing of threads being "sacred" and about it being "policy" not to derail threads is new-fag bullshit.

so, Modron , go right ahead and fuck off you fucking retard. please be sure to notify when you make a post or a thread which contains anything useful about video game deconstruction and theory as you have made none, and your only contributions to the Codex have been to complain about thread derailing.

same applies to you Jaesun .

 

[Modron]

I don't particularly care about derailing a blobber thread to talk about another blobber but you've done your third grade report about how JRPG subforum is the best forum in quite a number of threads and that everything else is below the standards of your refined palette (the ad nauseum delivery is the annoying part not necessarily the message).

Nobody was complaining about your 10+ years of posting, just that the recent blobber sperge is being thrown out there quite randomly and somewhat nonsensically in regards to when and where (every thread possible) it shows up. You should do what Konjad is doing with his Personal RPG blog thread and start a My Little Blobber thread here in jrpg and talk about the games you're playing/working on thus freeing you up to talk specifics in respective game threads instead of trying to assimilate them all into your being.

Making things like your wireframe discussion is a step in the right direction and translation work should probably have it's own as well so more people could notice it instead of just missing one post in hundreds. I will say that talking about a specific game in it's specific thread can draw some decent attention to said game though; by all means, feel free to direct/link people to related threads from here and what not.

Honestly half this probably would be avoided if we had a general blobber thread or something along those lines.