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Recommend me a Wizardry ripoff

obediah

Erudite
Joined
Jan 31, 2005
Messages
5,051
Zomg said:
Jap games are fine. As I understand it they thought the early Wizardries were digital love and they kept the same formula for longer than Westerners did, like Appalaichian hillbillies keeping premodern Scottish accents longer than the Scottish.

Hmm. Wizardy-like, and jap games are fine?

How about, Wizardry: The Forsake land. It's pretty fun even.

If you have a DS, Etrian Odyssey is good stuff as well.

(my apologies if dupes, I scanned the other posts and neither jumped out)
 

Mayday

Augur
Joined
Feb 14, 2007
Messages
1,000
Location
Poland
Zomg, I recommend you start with Might and Magic III.
It's the beginning of the golden era of the series (III-V).
 

Raapys

Arcane
Joined
Jun 7, 2007
Messages
4,960
M&M 6&7 are much more playable though, because of the no-longer-terrible UI. I'd also say that M&M 6 has by far the best gameworld in the entire series. So if you can look past the awkward graphics, they're definitely something to try too.
 

Hazelnut

Erudite
Joined
Dec 17, 2002
Messages
1,490
Location
UK
Zomg said:
Hazelnut said:
Dungeon Master's not on your played list... :shock:

I played the EoBs and LoL1, is there any pleasure of DM they failed to elaborate on?

I can't objectively answer that question, sorry. I think so, but then this game just fucking blew me away back in the late eighties... it's a pure dungeon crawl and you ought to try it because it's such a classic is the best I can do without getting so nostalgic as to be useless. I did play one of the EoB's and enjoyed it, but it had a completely different feel due to being D&D and xp based, enough different for DM to be worth playing after I believe. Never played any M&M or Wiz games.
 

Lord Rocket

Erudite
Joined
Feb 6, 2008
Messages
1,089
Plus Dungeon Master has PC ports with mods and source ports and stuff when/if you get bored with the original game. Click (Return to Chaos and Chaos strikes back for Windows being the two big ones).

Also, I really like The Dark Heart of Uukrul. It features a pre-generated party (although you customise your stats and sub-class via Ultima-esque Q and A prior to play) and Gold-Box/Ultima IV and V style combat. Has automap and all that stuff. Graphics are minimalistic for the most part, although the combat animations are surprisingly fluid and pleasant. Interface is reasonably intuitive, although you will have to read the manual. Features learn-by doing mechanics for the magic system (ie. pleasing gods/casting lots of spells of the school in question). There are plenty of weird puzzles and some dialogue, but it is mostly a dungeon crawler, albeit one that was designed to subvert many of the cliches of the genre (going 'down a level' is essentially meaningless here, as one example).
 

crufty

Arcane
Joined
Jun 29, 2004
Messages
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Glassworks
Elvira
D&D - ravenloft series (there were 2 or 3 ravenloft themed games)

elvira games were good if i recall right. ravenloft meh.

not sure if they are multiparty though. worlds of xeen is better.

obligatory wasteland reference here, not meeting your gaming requirements at all but worth the playthru.
 

Zomg

Arbiter
Joined
Oct 21, 2005
Messages
6,984
The inventory and magic interfaces in Xeen are very bad, and Darkside sadly uses a lot of rendered sprites, but otherwise it's pretty, er, keen. Good job, Codex.

I've played Wasteland, it just didn't seem pertinent for that list.
 

Andhaira

Arcane
Joined
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Messages
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So are you playing world of xeen then? You can go upto level 255 in that game; so if you like it theres really nbo need for you to look out for more such games for a long time.
 

mondblut

Arcane
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Aug 10, 2005
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Ingrija
crufty said:
D&D - ravenloft series (there were 2 or 3 ravenloft themed games)
not sure if they are multiparty though. worlds of xeen is better.

They are. 2 PCs + 2 NPCs. Two games.

They were realtime and "3d" though (although technically one could turn off fluid movement, much like in Star Trail, but it worked really bad). Sucked as far as gameplay goes, but had tons of killer atmosphere, including probably the best midi soundtracks I ever heard. I have a couple of tunes as ringtones on my mobile ;)
 

Zomg

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Oct 21, 2005
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My results, after having played World of Xeen:

Surprisingly breezy, short & easy. The combat mechanics were nice popcorn fare and killing stuff rarely felt like garbage combat (particularly since you could destroy the monster generators in the overworld). I didn't finish Darkside or the combined Clouds/Darkside content, but Clouds itself never gave me any reason to shit on it, aside from some slight interface stuff. The way the final boss was handled was pretty dumb, though, but I guess there would be no way to have a tactically interesting fight with the skimpy combat mechanics.

At a certain point playing Darkside I just realized I'd played my last minute of Might & Magic. The experience I was going for was a really easy version of a Roguelike that wouldn't make me learn any mechanics or read any FAQs, and that's pretty much exactly what WoX is.

Dabbling with Shin Megami Tensei:

SMT's interface is nearly unplayable and a few hours in the garbage combat gets so thick that you wonder what the fuck anyone could have been thinking. It was intolerable even with a fast-forward button on my emulator. You get into random fights, which can consist of four or five separate fights about each as shitty as you might get in a normal early '90s JRPG, then take a step and get into another set of four or five right off the bat. The concept where you recruit monsters and combine them is interesting, but the game is not compatible with human life.
 

afewhours

Scholar
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Dec 26, 2007
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Location
UK
zomg said:
You get into random fights, which can consist of four or five separate fights about each as shitty as you might get in a normal early '90s JRPG, then take a step and get into another set of four or five right off the bat.

Heh heh. Never mind. MOAR RANDOM ENCOUNTERS and grindy-grindy-nice-and-slow is not for everyone. I became horribly addicted to SMT3 and clocked up over 70 hours on that beast, but I could imagine it having the opposite effect, which is why I plastered the JRPG disclaimer on the suggestion.
 

ghostdog

Arcane
Patron
Joined
Dec 31, 2007
Messages
11,079
You get into random fights, which can consist of four or five separate fights about each as shitty as you might get in a normal early '90s JRPG, then take a step and get into another set of four or five right off the bat.
There is an option for quick combat , you used that, right? But yes SMT has a huge load of random battles but you don't have to do all of them. IIRC you can run away and also negotiate (or was that only in SMT2?) You can also use PAR and GG codes with the emulator : http://gshi.org/index.php?s=v2&sys=6&gid=558
 

Zomg

Arbiter
Joined
Oct 21, 2005
Messages
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I looked lackadaisically for a hex edit to turn down encounters, but it's hard as hell to look up stuff specifically for SMT since they've used the same name for so many vastly more popular sequels.

Negotiation and running are both options, but they take even longer than combat does given the option to up the framerate while autocombat resolves. At any rate, when the combat is so completely vacuous that I can autofight ten times in a row I'm not exactly driven to play further.
 

Andhaira

Arcane
Joined
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Messages
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SO why have you stopped WoX? You still have to finish darkside. plus there are many optional encounters (for instance, the vampire king is much tougher than any of the main must defeat bosses)
 

Zomg

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Everything was just more-of-the-same. Like, for example, Darkside doesn't seem to add any new spells. The set of possible magic items is the same. There are no new skills. So, you mostly just hit harder and have more hitpoints, and the monsters hit harder and have more hitpoints.
 

cardtrick

Arbiter
Joined
Apr 26, 2007
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Maine
I'm still thinking you should go with Wizardry 8 . . .

I was planning to start a 6->7->8 epic runthrough, but I just started playing 8 again. I like it so much.
 

hammermd

Novice
Joined
Mar 2, 2008
Messages
1
I vote for Wizardy 8 as well, but there was a game not mentioned I'll add:

DEMISE

http://www.decklinsdemise.com/news.php

It is EXACTLY like the first Wizardy, more or less, with updated graphics & etc. The only difference is that encounters and levels are randomly generated (if I remember right). Basically the ONLY thing you do is kill monsters, go up in level, find and trade equipment, & etc. The dungeon has like 1,456,124 floors, so you can't run out of hacking space. Go play Wiz8...much better game...but keep this in mind, if all you want is a giant dungeon crawl...
 

Andhaira

Arcane
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You could try anvil of dawn, and /or thunderscape (both are available free from abandonia)
 

Binary

Liturgist
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Jun 30, 2003
Messages
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Location
Trinsic
Jasede said:
I never heard of this Fate, can you show me a screenshot?

"blah blah I know all RPGs blah blah"

fail.jpg
 

Zomg

Arbiter
Joined
Oct 21, 2005
Messages
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cardtrick said:
I'm still thinking you should go with Wizardry 8 . . .

I was planning to start a 6->7->8 epic runthrough, but I just started playing 8 again. I like it so much.

Eh, I'm kind of tentative on playing a härdkor blobber, given that Incursion is already waiting for me to get in the mood for a painful learning curve.
 

cardtrick

Arbiter
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Wizardry 8 isn't punishingly hard like 7 is reputed to be, especially not if you take a full-sized party. There's also a difficulty setting that can be turned down. The interface is thoroughly modern, and there are tooltip descriptions of everything, so you can even get by pretty much without reading the manual.

On the other hand, Incursion kicks ass in a major way, so I can't push Wizardry 8 too hard.
 

Andhaira

Arcane
Joined
Nov 25, 2007
Messages
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Yeah wizardry 8 is not that hard. You can even kraWl (aka grind) without much diffculty and raise your skills willy nilly. You can rest whenever you want to get your health back.
 

Andhaira

Arcane
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Nov 25, 2007
Messages
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@cartrick: btw whats incursion?
 

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