Playing Elminage Original

[aweigh]

wow the difficulty difference is INCREDIBLY noticeable. especially since right now i'm coming off the trial by fire marine boot-camp that is the 9th circle of hell known as Ibag's Tower (Currently on 8th floor); started up E: Original on PSSPSPSPSPSSPSPSPSPSPSSPSP and in less than 2 hours already have chars in the "teens".

they even put a Murphy's Ghost exp generator for you on the entrance of the 1st dungeon!

it's like somebody made the game to actually not punish you for playing it or something SMH

EDIT from 2021:
I can't remember if i ever came back to this thread to say it but I love Elminage: Original now.

I really should stop making knee-jerk reaction threads, it's really embarrassing. Elminage: Original is an amazing game, just a different flavor to Elminage: Gothic. I'm tempted to delete this thread simply because I don't want it to dissuade anyone from trying the game.

Yes, it is an easier game, the balancing is not as elegant as in Gothic, but Elminage: Original is still fantastic and offers a more adventurous and charming campaign that plays on more conventional fantasy pastiche than the more grim and gritty tone offered in Gothic; and if you even remotely enjoy Wizardry you owe it to yourself to play it.

 

[Courtier]

Told you senpai, if they had ported Original instead of Gothic it would have been much more popular. I love both, but the former is obviously more accessible.

 

[aweigh]

THIS GAME IS MUCH BETTER THAN GOTHIC.

seriously the tutorial floor of the dungeon is hands-down THE BEST tutorial floor of ANY rpg i've ever played. they put in EVERYTHING and it's so smartly designed! everything in the floor interconnects BEAUTIFULLY.

 

[Great Deceiver]

Are you playing 1.01 or the first botched translation?

 

[aweigh]

well the translation seems much the same as from Gothic. no "friend is mine" in sight. all the spells are named the same. i have to identify not appraise, etc.

 

[TigerKnee]

Why does your title imply you liked Gothic over Original?

 

[ghostdog]

Why does your title imply you liked Gothic over Original?

Because it's the first botched translation :D

 

[aweigh]

ok there's only one thing i find objectively to have been fixed in Gothic and that is that weapons that have proc-spells, like flame rods and flamberges DO NOT BREAK in elminage original when used repeatedly.

this has completely thrown out of wack the mid-game balance when the spells those items cast, "Rabalad", is an incredibly good one and there is absolutely no reason at all not to equip those items on whoever isn't a martial class and have them spam them every single fight (as long as there is no reflect up)

this is why i mention specifically mid-game: because this large partion of the game, just like in Gothic since almost all of the enemies are exactly the same don't use magical reflection.

in Gothic those items have a % chance to break on repeated use preversving some semblance of magical-resource management in the beginning and middle. obviously in both games once you're finishing mid-game and entering the last 3-4 dungeons of the main storyline enemies have too many HP's to bother using the spells from those items anyway and they usually have barrier or reflect.

 

[Courtier]

Well, you can also say it's precisely because those items become obsolete quickly that it's entirely fair to have them as they were in Original. Rabalad from a Flamberge used by a fighter is never going to be as strong as if it were casted by a mage. By the mid to late game the only spell item I used was the winged hat for infinite range. The items also take up precious inventory slots and you have no Mysterious Bag this time, so it's a tradeoff. I don't think anybody that knew how easily they break in Gothic even used them at all in that game.

 

[aweigh]

very true about they mysterious bag. good point.

and yep, i absolutely never bothered using spell-proc items in gothic once i realized i'd have to use up an alchemy spell slot which houses 2 other more important spells.

i love how every dungeon is available to you right from the start. playing this entry in the series has completely nullified my attempts at furthering progress in Ibag's Tower... hehe. I gotta say though i do feel pretty proud of the fact i even reached floor 9th of that damn place. I've never played the fuck outta an RPG so hard as I have out of Elminage Gothic.

obviously i'm no wizardry aficionado having only played and finished Wiz8, but i can't imagine a better homage to the series than Elminage. these games are pure love.

 

[aweigh]

the dungeons are fucking HUGE. i'm currently traversing the mirror marsh (wee...)

what's the point of the inaccesible door in b3f of karaida cavrerns?

 

[aweigh]

OMG ORLANDO DIED WTF !!!!!!!!!! TEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEERS

 

[Dorateen]

I look forward to playing this one day.

 

[Mustawd]

the dungeons are fucking HUGE. i'm currently traversing the mirror marsh (wee...)

what's the point of the inaccesible door in b3f of karaida cavrerns?

spoilers fucker. FFS.

 

[Sacred82]

I'm going on holiday and I might be playing some EO on the Vita. Thinking about the following party:

Dragonewt Brawler

Dorf Cleric
should he start as a Fighter?

female Devilish Shaman
ditto

Werebeast Thief

Devilish Mage-->Summoner

Devilish Mage-->Alchemist

 

[aweigh]

wow i didn't even remember making this thread. i sure do post a lot of hot takes!

should probably let my gaming experiences marinate for at least 1 or 2 days before blogging about them.

As for E: Original parties I would say that p. much all of the same guidelines you would follow for an E: Gothic party apply with the caveat that all of the intermediate classes are much more combat-useful:

- Clubs/maces/staves are M-ranged.
- Bards, Hunters, Thieves and Clerics have access to a broader spectrum of gear, although not necessarily better gear.
- Skills (not ex-skills, but class skills) are something to take more into account due to the lack of ex-skills.
- Armor items give, overall, way more A.C. than in E: Gothic, which means pre-game is much easier than E: Gothic pre-game.
- Items with in-battle effects (such as Musical Instruments) don't break!
- Damange-dealing spells are more viable because the modifier to damage dealt is affected much more by elemental buffs, and Enterook Mista is boosted by all 3 elemental attributes in E: Original; in E: Gothic only INT raises damage dealt by Enterook Mista.

The post-game's 2 dungeons (Old World and Old World underground) are hard as fuck, though. The harshness of the post-game in E: Original sticks out like a sore thumb precisely because its pre-game encounters are much easier, so the difficulty spike is more apparent.

(Of course, nothing is like Ibag's Tower. IT stands out even among all dungeon crawlers, let alone Elminage).

I'll post more thoughts later, but i'm glad you're playing E: Original. Try to play it for its systems, soundtrack, NPCs, artwork and itemization, just like you would with E: Gothic, but remember and keep in mind that unlike E: Gothic the dungeons in E: Original are intentionally less maze-like.

They're meant to represent more "areas" or "locations". It is overall easier, but the underlying mechanics are the same. Now that time has passed, and now that I've played through all 4 elminage games (2 and 3 are in japanese, and 5 is a side-story), I have come to appreciate E: Original a lot more than I did when I played it immediately after finishing my first playthough of E: Gothic's pre-game dungeons.

 

[aweigh]

I'd like to point out though that the main reason I have always considered Elminage: Original an "easier" game is simply because I played through Elminage: Gothic beforehand.

That's like your first shmup game being IKARUGA (hardest shmup bullet-hell game ever), loving the shit out of it, then going backwards though popular shmup games afterwards.

It's by no means a cake-walk. Wizardry mechanics will never be noob-friendly if implemented correctly, and Elminage: Original does so.

Now, Stranger of Sword City is a perfect example of a good/above-average Wiz-clone that is unarguably an easy game.

 

[Sacred82]

I like the fact that they made it easy to grind up those first few levels because the peasant levels have never been a benefit to RPG's.

Did I shoot myself in the foot by going Devilish Shaman? Are Shaman weapons "holy" often?

I'm stuck in the tutorial dungeon lol I flipped the switch but it doesn't seem to have done anything

 

[aweigh]

There are 2 seals/charms that are Devilish-only. As for the swich if it's the one from b1f of Krieida Caverns then that swich should open a previously un-openable square, big metal gate. If I remember correctly the route involves 1 secret door, so if you've yet to find 1 secret door in b1f then that's the problem.

 

[Sacred82]

it's 1f actually and there's no metal gate anywhere I can see

ah I just found another route out of the darkened area

have to brush up on my "investigate every square" skills I guess

 

[aweigh]

https://translate.google.com/transl...8380E383B3E382B8E383A7E383B3E694BBE795A5.html

 

[Sacred82]

thx. Not playing dungeon crawlers usually I am a bit lax about exploration, guess that will have to change

this sure is no Infinity Engine where you can leave half the map under fog of war

The thing is I've never played EG without Stronghold, in EO the number of random encounters really makes exploration a bit of a PITA

 

[aweigh]

The encounter rate is indeed higher in Elminage: Original, with or without any ex-skills. They toned it down a tiny bit for Elminage 2 and 3, but Gothic features the lowest encounter rate out of all the Elminage games.

They went for quality over quantity in terms of random encounters in E: Gothic. I've sometimes had a random encounter three times in a row, each one after two steps taken, in E: Original. Once your party is powerful enough for whatever area it is you want to clear I just recommend fleeing, as unlike in Gothic, fleeing in E: Original is almost guaranteed.

(In E: Gothic fleeing usually results in half the party failing their roll and then getting beheaded...).

 

[Sacred82]

How the hell do I start over? I can't seem to delete my save or anything.

edit: nvm, found it. Fuck but these games have some convoluted controls

 

[Sacred82]

Actually I didn't, I just put party 1 on a break. I suspect that since you could access your save games outside the game on the PSP, when you deleted the save file you could start over. This isn't possible on the Vita though. Am I fucked y/n

On a different note, I like how the characters are coming together beautifully from the start. In EG I wondered what I would want a Shaman for, in EO they're immediately useful with starting Shaman weapons and use of Barrier at will. Also Bishops learn spells almost as fast as Mages or Priests in EO, which was a very pleasant surprise to me. Wonder why they nerfed them so much in EG.