Dragon Wars

[Joe Krow]

The Bard's Tale is now available on iTunes.

 

[octavius]

The hosting service he's using sucks, won't allow hotlinking. Use a different host plz.

Which one do you recommend?
Bildr.no works fine for me, but then I've changed a setting in Mozilla (something about RefControl).

 

[Excidium]

http://imgur.com/ is p. good.

 

[octavius]

http://imgur.com/ is p. good.

Thanks, that one is really fast and simple.

How does this look?

 

[Jack]

Looks good, Namtar doesn't look nearly as fearsome as I had imagined him. Thought he would be taller.

 

[Carlos' Bitch1]

You have already finished?!

I must have too many things on my plate. I can never finish RPG's like Dragon Wars that quickly.

Poor old Ratman...back into the pit again...

 

[octavius]

You have already finished?!

I must have too many things on my plate. I can never finish RPG's like Dragon Wars that quickly.

It went quicker than I thought. But I think the lack of endless random encounters is mostly to thank for that. But the frequency of encounters, and lack of variation, at the end made me get tired of the game, so I rushed the last part. I skipped the Royal Game Preserve, didn't explore the entire Dragon Valley and only explored about half the Depths of Nisir before I tracked down Namtar. Killing him again and again and again and again and again was also rather tireing.

All in all a good game, but not the pinnacle of awsomeness.

Graphics are very good, at least the Amiga version.
Automap is very good, probably the best one in a CRPG at the time the game was released. Too bad the game doesn't track all the encounters. Killing the same group of enemies at the same place several times is not so fun.
Only discovered one bug, with suddenly having billions of gold.
Good atmosphere and a more original world than most fantasy games.
Writing is very good, and sometimes humourous. But some things are more goofy than funny, like fighting "beach bums" and "gobbos in speedos".
The unlinearity is both good and bad. The good thing is more freedom, but the bad thing is that the game feels more disjointed.
Some heavy C&C, especially the part where saving a poor guy from being fed to a dragon leads to the obliteration of a city from the map (what I really wanted to do was to feed the feeder to the dragon).

Combat is fast and usually fun, but both the Bard's Tale and old Might&Magic games had better combat engines, with more variety and options, IMO.
Hardly any randomization is also a negative in my book. All loot is hand placed, enemies never carry anything but gold, and you tend to meet the same groups of enemies over again.
Breathing monsters were annoying, especially the snakes (I wonder if Burger Heineman was afraid of snakes, since there are so many of them?). And it was too easy to just run from an encounter if you met annoying enemies, and then step back on the same square and fight some less annoying enemies instead.

I didn't like that there is no in game way to tell what items do, except by trying them out.
The game sometimes felt too much like an Adventure game, where you had to use a certain attribute, skill or item to progress. The whole thing with securing the aid of the Queen Dragon felt very forced.
There should have been a "fix" option so you could Bandage the whole party after each battle, instead of bandaging each party member separately.

I'd rate it as better than Wasteland, but not quite as good as Ultima V. Like with Magic Candle I got a bit tired of it, but being a shorter game than MC I only got tired in the end.

 

[MMXI]

Yeah, most of those complaints are fair. I usually think of the game as The Bard's Tale done right more than anything. It's still in my top five 80s cRPGs after all these years, and even then it does some things better than the other four.

I'd rate it as better than Wasteland

I always thought it was better than Wasteland. Good to see someone who has just played it for the first time agree.

So what's up next?

 

[octavius]

So what's up next?

Starflight 2, then Dark Heart of Uukrul.
I recently discovered that I had actually purchased SF 2 in my Amiga days. I thought it was Star Control I had bought. Anyway, I only barely played it then, but I enjoyed Starflight 1 twenty years later.

Uukrul, not being released for the Amiga, I know little about, except I have only heard good things about it and that it has good puzzles and dungeon design.

 

[Jack Of Owls]

This was the first RPG I ever played, back around 1990, on my trusty Commodore 64. Loved everything about it, though it was brutally difficult at times, especially for an CRPG virgin, but I persevered. I remember using the paragraphs in the manual as a cheat when I got stuck on the People of the Yellow Mud Toad quest (needed to progress) which was risky, since Burger Becky et all purposely fucked with your head with false entries. Through sheer luck I found the RIGHT passage. Ah, memories. I immediately followed this game up with Pools of Radiance so it's no wonder I ended up a CRPG nut, having found through happenstance two of the best old style RPGs. I remember trying to play a Bard's Tale installment after these but found them beyond frustrating & tedious. Negative transfer and all that. I'm thinking of replaying this on WinUAE but discovered it's prone to constant & unpredictable locks up with the mouse cursor locked in the window.

 

[octavius]

I played it using Amiga Forever which is based on WinUAE, and I had no problems.

 

[Jack Of Owls]

I played it using Amiga Forever which is based on WinUAE, and I had no problems.

I tried to play the HWA WHDLoad version since I can't stand disk swapping anymore. Must be misconfigured or something because every now and then the cursor gets locked into the animations window and I have to do a hard WinUAE reset. Heh, I was going to use your cool screen cap above of Namtar as an RPGCodex avatar but i guess you have to be a "friend of the forum" and contribute (?) to do that since I couldn't find anything in my CP to upload a jpeg.

 

[octavius]

Heh, I was going to use your cool screen cap above of Namtar as an RPGCodex avatar but i guess you have to be a "friend of the forum" and contribute (?) to do that since I couldn't find anything in my CP to upload a jpeg.

I think the only way to get a custom avatar is to bribe Dark Underlord or be a VIP/developer like Cleve. I miss my old avatar...

 

[Pantalones]

I could not choose any avatars from a list or anything either, maybe it's because I am new.

I played Dragon Age. You had to actually drag your dead guys back to the underworld to bring them back to life, and if you were not very careful it could happen easily. That is the way it should work.

I got stuck a long time trying to figure out how to get into some forge area or something. There was a prison area that actually did things right, too. I mean aside from the one you start in, the mines. Great game overall and one where you rally had to think to get anywhere - half RPG and half Adventure, really. Or more like 1/4 adventure compared to the hard ones back then. Perfect combo. But I hated that you could only do magic with dragon eggs.

 

[octavius]

I could not choose any avatars from a list or anything either, maybe it's because I am new.

You should be able to chose an avatar from one of the many game gallieries. Unless things have changed.

 

[Mortmal]

Its odd you have problem with winUAE , just runned it, works flawlessly with KS ROM v1.3 (A500,A1000,A2000) rev 34.5 (256k) [315093-02] , just setup 2 disk drives DF0 and DF1 set their speed to 800% , go in the misc options and use save states instead of save disks and you have no swapping at all, nor any cursor getting locked.

Maybe its cause of a wrong version, i am using V1.2 from http://thegamearchives.net/?val=0_2_1_0_0_4_17_0_4_8_0 . Dont play that on dos seriously, that amiga version is FAR better, just for the soundtrack only.

This game was way ahead of its time, the interface is wonderfull, completely mouse controlled + an automap, only sad thing is some of the text must be read on the manual due to the limitation of floppies.

Its a good idea to try this if you never did , as its not likely we are going to get a good blobber the 31 of may....

 

[victim]

I never beat this game because the combat is sloooooow but it is still pretty awesome.

Also, I'm pretty sure the weapon skills are better than they seem to be regarded in this thread.

 

[Overboard]

I played Dragon Age.

 

[Sacred82]

What versions have you guys played?

Apparently, the game launched on a shitton of platforms: https://www.mobygames.com/game/dragon-wars

I've played the DOS and the Amiga version (because that one looked the purrtiest). There were some differences I can't recall, but I do remember one: in the Amiga version, in Purgatory, there are no 'story encounters'. Remember stuff from the Realms of Arkania games like walking around town and tripping over some bum? Stuff like that. I don't remember if those happened on fixed squares in the DOS version or if they were random (like in RoA), but the city seemed way more interactive. Also the game was overall super easy, and survival was never an issue even in the very start in Purgatory. Just make 3 toons with v. high health and unarmed skill, they're going to kill everything for you, including the oh so tough guards. Have 1 character level up beside them. When you have enough money and XP on your char, drop 1 toon, create another character. Once those 2 are advanced enough you can ditch the toons.

Even Dark Sun started out harder (with a similar setting).

Anyways, since Becky's home territory was the Apple II, and that version seems to have come out first (but about simultaneously on the C64), has anyone played that and can compare it to other versions?

 

[octavius]

toons

 

[Jack Of Owls]

What versions have you guys played?

I played the C64 version. Amiga and Apple IIGS look purrdier but I always hated that the doors in the Amiga version look stretched as if you're running it with an incorrect aspect ratio. Plus, the 1st person view screen in the C64 version is huge, which is always a pleasing thing.