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Wizardry The Wizardry Series Thread

Sinatar

Arbiter
Joined
Jan 25, 2014
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I'm playing through Tale of the Forsaken Land right now and despite being very much a Wiz 1 - 5 influenced game, they also tossed all the spell names for a bunch of dumb shit.
 
Self-Ejected

aweigh

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Tales is a very, very weird hybrid. It's severely hamstrung by the other changes they made (should've kept it normal Wiz), the music and dungeon design make it worth playing though. Dungeons are top-notch.
 
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Tale of the Forsaken Land is pretty cool but it commits the cardinal sin of being too slow. If a blobber can't be played fast, I lose interest very quickly.
 

Strange Fellow

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Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag.
aweigh neat! I knew about the morph-based construction of spell names, but I never knew that they were from Hebrew. :eek:
Ultima does the same, although AFAIK those are just made up words. Still, the internal consistency is very cool. This sort of unneccesary bullshit was already dead by the mid-90's for the most part, which I think is a real shame. :argh:
 

Allyriadil

Educated
Joined
Jun 9, 2018
Messages
38
I just finished Wizardry I on the PSX. The one thing I really dislike is the backtracking you have to do to rest and level up your characters, this is really fucking tedious.
It was fun though, now on to Wizardry II.
 

Covenant

Savant
Joined
Aug 3, 2017
Messages
343
wiz 7 Monk, unarmed or level up staff with Bo from beginning?

Use unarmed but put your level-up skill points into staff. You'll max out unarmed very quickly anyway, as monks get more attacks very early on. Then you should be high enough in staves that if you find the Zatoichi Bo (or something shittier if you just need to shunt the guy into the rear of the party) you can switch over.
 

Shadenuat

Arcane
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after wiz7 I think Arnika road would feel to me as grindy and combat heavy as planescape torment or dear esther
 

Shadenuat

Arcane
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Finished Hidden Temple in Munkharama

The grinding is atrocious (I pray to my dosgod ALT+F12), many puzzles have random logic, when they say manuals for old games were good they were wrong at least once (one of few games you dump STR for fighters lol); the character system, party building and spellcasting are very solid though. Combat system is mostly grinding but there are special encounters and bosses which are difficult and make you use everything you have. In terms of graphics game is ugliest of the family of it's time but at the same time it is the smartest one due to solid roleplaying system. Wilderness exploration is nonexistent/bad - mostly roads and roadblocks with trash mobs, but dungeon exploration is quite solid. The writing is odd but actually adds immersion. There are factions and NPCs belonging to them who can steal stuff you need, but you can buy it or kill them. Pretty impressive.

The game is excellent for losing some weight because when I got to difficult parts I began physically sweating and I think I lost a few litres of water on those 25 ravens near chest and 10 skeletons attacking you when I got locked in a room trying to get some macguffin. After I lost a party member in fight my hands were shaking as I was trying to get out and find a resurrect potion and not die back on the road to city. Why the **** didn't I pick a wizard for that Magic Screen, had to use Dispel Undead. But hey it worked.

It's a 20x20 cm. window with a bunch of same pixels, and I went in and read stuff like "you check it... yes these corpses are of the dead", and I physically felt some sort of pressure or anxiety. Had to redo fight 20 times but game proved that you can win fights suboptimally using something else than best thing (I used Silence & 2 dispels undead from valk & bishop), which is a very good thing.
 

Shadenuat

Arcane
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It's nice that you meet low level monsters where they always have been, and high level odd shit in depths of dungeons, why did Wiz8 went away from this with it's strange high level spawns I don't understand. Makes traveling around less of a chore.
 

Shadenuat

Arcane
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Roxor remove your cat from PC it mashes buttons randomly and stalks me for some reason. Tell it I don't have anything tasty on me


poison (96 rounds) lmao

fucking rats.
 
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Shadenuat

Arcane
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Arguably every AoE spell in Wiz 7 should have been TARGET>ALL, but not like every mob, but continuing hitting from group you target to lower group, "jumping" from one group to next. Since they already target mobs equal to spell level you use, that would mean say you use magic missile, it targets 3 mobs per level, it would kick 2 mobs in first group which has only 2, and 1 mob in second group.

I wonder if there were blobbers that went around this group combat limitation by doing this (I am very inexperienced in blobbers except modern stuff).
 

Darth Roxor

Royal Dongsmith
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It's nice that you meet low level monsters where they always have been, and high level odd shit in depths of dungeons, why did Wiz8 went away from this with it's strange high level spawns I don't understand. Makes traveling around less of a chore.

wiz8 has high level odd shit in depths of dungeons while its low-level spawns are hard-capped not to scale past a certain point - you'll never see anything higher than level 10 or sth on arnika road for instance

'muh wiz8 high level spawns zomg' is the epitome of fake news

Arguably every AoE spell in Wiz 7 should have been TARGET>ALL, but not like every mob, but continuing hitting from group you target to lower group, "jumping" from one group to next. Since they already target mobs equal to spell level you use, that would mean say you use magic missile, it targets 3 mobs per level, it would kick 2 mobs in first group and 1 mob in second group.

wiz8's 3d aoe targeting was the best thing that happened to the series
 

Shadenuat

Arcane
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Nah, the difference in mobs on arnika is pretty massive, although it's due to particular parts of it being crossroads for mob spawns. Roaches vs mages who could summon high level elementals is not the same as bunch of hard capped bugs and ravens.
Yes, it's 3d
Yes, it caps
Yes, you can avoid them, use psionic lure, etc.
but it's still big difference for parties. even Monastery had p. high level spawns for a low level zone (super death crabs).

wiz8's 3d aoe targeting was the best thing that happened to the series
yes but these are not 3 d.

What I wonder is how they could have avoided engine limitations and fix this issue.
 

Darth Roxor

Royal Dongsmith
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actually, the hell-unicorns are relatively low level no matter when/where you meet them (except the crystal ones in ascension peak ofc)

its just that enemy psions are bullshit OP lol
 

Shadenuat

Arcane
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The easiest comparison is New City - Arnika.

They are extremely similar, and you can easily see where the roots are coming from (which is why I play - not because I don't like Wiz8 more, but because I am interested where good things I liked in it come from - like the magic system with afflictions, ability to turn monsters on each other, make them flee; and overall design changing).

In New City, I met 25 hp guards and some 45 hp guards. I return after 6 levels, and I meet 45 hp guards.

In Arnika you meet 16-18 hp borgs, you return and can meet 100 hp borgs.

So if I would choose between:
a) fast roads, death dungeons
or
b) death roads, death dungeons

I'd prefer designer sticking to a).

the hell-unicorns are relatively low level
Doesn't matter if mobs are technically not as high level, what matters is their strength relative to party.
If party at that time mob spawns will probably always be underequipped to deal with them it's not great.
If encounter is some sort of story unique and you gotta be smart and avoid it, is ok, but in a system which just well infinitely spawns monsters, spawning increasingly higher level shit all the time between locations is not the best thing you can do.
In that respect I like M&M6-8 system more. I also would have enjoyed some sort of lair/destroy lairs/spawn lairs/make roads great again system.
 
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Strange Fellow

Peculiar
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Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag.
except the crystal ones in ascension peak ofc
:xThanks for convincing me not to complete my Soul Shield-less gimmick run.
which is why I play - not because I don't like Wiz8 more, but because I am interested where good things I liked in it come from - like the magic system with afflictions, ability to turn monsters on each other, make them flee; and overall design changing
Did you play VI? Sounds like it's too late for the recommendation now, but it's a really tight game, with the same systems.
 

Shadenuat

Arcane
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I played 6, but not a lot. I am a graphix hoe (hurr sexy d&d ladies and alligatordudes in lol, hurr click on witches in xeen and see them do funny animations) and storyfag and I need muh immersion, just unlocking doors in grey dungeon is not enough for me. For some reason Wiz7 grabbed me with it's bigger, colorful world and cool text and retarded npcs, but 6 never did the same for me. Maybe after I train on wiz7 I'll continue evolving backwards increasing my tolerance for old shit until I can appreciate it and *go deeper*.

Also wiz7 has terminate combat button etc. which as terrific savescummer I greatly appreciate.
 

Shadenuat

Arcane
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ALT+F12 turbo mode makes terminate and everything ultra quick.

Including Rest. Restscummer in me is happy too.
 

Strange Fellow

Peculiar
Patron
Joined
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Messages
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Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag.
Yeah, thank christ for turbo mode. Btw, if you haven't, you really should turn off monster sounds in the settings to speed things up.
 

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