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Which hardcore early CRPG should I play?

nomask7

Arcane
Joined
Apr 30, 2008
Messages
7,620
1) I want to give myself the challenge of completing something like Wizardry 1 or Might & Magic 2 or something - without online guides.

2) Preferably *no* need to map the game myself, either due to maps being memorable or small enough or there being automap.

3) There should be some way of making it run nicely on a modern PC. If you have info about needed dosbox settings, emulators, or something like that, please share.

What's the best, most awesome such game?
 
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PC RPG Website of the Year, 2015 Codex 2016 - The Age of Grimoire Make the Codex Great Again! Grab the Codex by the pussy Divinity: Original Sin 2 BattleTech Bubbles In Memoria A Beautifully Desolate Campaign Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Pathfinder: Kingmaker Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag.
1) I want to give myself the challenge of completing something like Wizardry 1 or Might & Magic 2 or something - without online guides.

2) Preferably *no* need to map the game myself, either due to maps being memorable or small enough or there being automap.

3) There should be some way of making it run nicely on a modern PC. If you have info about needed dosbox settings, emulators, or something like that, please share.

What's the best, most awesome such game?
M&M2 has an automap if you've got the appropriate skills on your characters. But I wouldn't consider its maps 'memorable' or small, they are better than M&M1 imo. But I think you'd be better off mapping them yourself anyways to mark important information for yourself. M&M3 and M&M4-5 are I guess better introductions if you want to do things solo without mapping.
 

BlackGoat

Arbiter
Joined
Sep 15, 2014
Messages
505
Dude, play Wizardry 1 and map it yourself. Mapping's fun, man. And you end the game with cool little paper artifacts you can share in the Dungeon Map Porn thread.
 

nomask7

Arcane
Joined
Apr 30, 2008
Messages
7,620
Dude, play Wizardry 1 and map it yourself. Mapping's fun, man. And you end the game with cool little paper artifacts you can share in the Dungeon Map Porn thread.

I'll have to think about it. I wonder if these games were paced to be mapped by the player. Like, maybe the combat occurs too often if you just skim through the maps trying to remember where you've been and so on. Any thoughts on this?
 

Watser

Arcane
Joined
May 8, 2014
Messages
1,865,075
Divinity: Original Sin 2 A Beautifully Desolate Campaign
M&M2 has an automap if you've got the appropriate skills on your characters. But I wouldn't consider its maps 'memorable' or small, they are better than M&M1 imo. But I think you'd be better off mapping them yourself anyways to mark important information for yourself. M&M3 and M&M4-5 are I guess better introductions if you want to do things solo without mapping.
But he wants the Hardcore Experience™ and both MM III and WoX are piss easy.

Dude, play Wizardry 1 and map it yourself. Mapping's fun, man. And you end the game with cool little paper artifacts you can share in the Dungeon Map Porn thread.

I'll have to think about it. I wonder if these games were paced to be mapped by the player. Like, maybe the combat occurs too often if you just skim through the maps trying to remember where you've been and so on. Any thoughts on this?
Wizardry was designed to be mapped by yourself. Spinners and teleporters are gonna fuck with you if you don't map your progress in a 20x20 layout.
 

BlackGoat

Arbiter
Joined
Sep 15, 2014
Messages
505
With Wizardry 1 (and 2 and 3 and I believe 4) the maps are never larger than 20x20 and there's a spell that tells you exactly where you are on the grid and what way you're facing. Mapping is an essential part of the game. And it's interesting how mapping on graph paper also maps the dungeons in your mind and solidifies the entire experience as something more real than just a game. To play it with automap, or following someone else's completed map, it's as if you're not even playing it at all, just going through the motions for kred. Especially since to beat the game you don't even need to visit every floor, or even every nook and cranny of the floors you do need to visit. A simple walkthru is just grinding for levels then bee-lining towards what you need, essentially ignoring the entire actual Game.

Wizardry has a nice slow-and-steady phase where you're mapping the environment, then fast-and-furious when you know the environment more or less by heart and you're dominating encounters and grinding levels. There's the occasional random encounter, but there are a lot of Definite Encounters, like when you open certain rooms you know you're almost always likely to have a combat. You learn to avoid these, unless you need the xp. The random combats only really become a problem when you get lost and you're panicking cause you're near dying and you're trying to reorient yourself (but you cast your last dumapic a little while ago).
 
Last edited:

Wayward Son

Fails to keep valuable team members alive
Joined
Aug 23, 2015
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1,866,294
Location
Anytown, USA
I'll have to think about it. I wonder if these games were paced to be mapped by the player. Like, maybe the combat occurs too often if you just skim through the maps trying to remember where you've been and so on. Any thoughts on this?
I know for a fact that this happens. In my experience at least. Also, Dark Heart of Uukrul would be good. The dungeons have auto map, except for some that cannot be auto mapped. Also, there's a application called grid cartographer that allows you to make maps without needing graph paper.
 

Bio Force Ape

Arcane
Joined
Feb 24, 2014
Messages
3,427
Wasteland. The new version (like $1.50 on GOG) includes the paragraph texts in the game so you don't have to look them up and I think they made saving/loading a little easier.
 

octavius

Arcane
Patron
Joined
Aug 4, 2007
Messages
19,182
Location
Bjørgvin
You could try Phantasie 1. Not quite as hard core as Wizardry or Might&Magic 1-2, but it has a very nice auto map.
If you want to take your party all the way to P3 use an Atari ST emulator (Steem is quite easy to use; very easy compared to Amiga emulators). The Atari ST version also looks and sounds much better than the DOS version.

3315-phantasie-dos-screenshot-your-choices-in-a-town.gif


45002-phantasie-atari-st-screenshot-inside-the-town-pelnor.gif
 
Self-Ejected

Lilura

RPG Codex Dragon Lady
Joined
Feb 13, 2013
Messages
5,274
(Steem is quite easy to use; very easy compared to Amiga emulators).

The ST emulator is easier to use because the ST is a simple machine compared to the Amiga: :retarded: vs. :obviously:.

I suspect Codexers who have difficulty running UAE never were Amiga users to begin with; just fucking posers.
 

iZerw

Arcane
Vatnik
Joined
Apr 18, 2012
Messages
895
Location
Russia
Play Wizardry I. It's an amazing game and justified classic. And mapping is an essential part of any blober. Just try to map yourself you'll like it, in the first wizardry and m&m maps are pretty small and easy to map.
 

Wizfall

Cipher
Joined
Oct 3, 2012
Messages
816
Ultima V, very interesting game (big open worldmap, good writing and better character system than U4).
Big open worldmap in particular is something that has been lost in modern isometric/top down cRPG (you can only find this kind of thing in first person real time cRPG like Bethesda unfortunately, W2 or PoE worldmap don't offer enough "liberty" IOM)
 

Daemongar

Arcane
Joined
Nov 21, 2010
Messages
4,706
Location
Wisconsin
Codex Year of the Donut
Wasteland. The new version (like $1.50 on GOG) includes the paragraph texts in the game so you don't have to look them up and I think they made saving/loading a little easier.
I concur on this. Not only is it a good game that's playable today, but it also has an excellent skill system and is one of the earliest rpgs to feature multiple methods to complete quests and solve problems.
 

nomask7

Arcane
Joined
Apr 30, 2008
Messages
7,620
Wizardry 1 seems pretty epic. I played for around six hours, and didn't even manage to map the first level fully, although I started from scratch once when - I suppose - a teleport confused me and I hadn't mapped stuff carefully enough anyway.

The game's rogue-like nature adds to the epicness, even considering that you can always attempt to save your dead party by using a new one, finding their corpses and dragging them back to castle where you can pay (exorbitant sums) to get them resurrected. (High level priest can do the same job for free of course, but that isn't much comfort for noobs.)

I should also say it's probably not as simple a game as it might seem at first. Already the first level is unexpectedly inhospitable to cartographers. Nevermind zombies that cause paralysis, I'm talking about complacently mapping the level, while suddenly being teleported - without notification - into a place where the only way out leads through a pitch black area that can't be illuminated. I noticed my map was starting to have considerably more width than it should have, so it was time to assume I had been teleported and cast location spell.

At that point I just wanted to get back to castle and didn't even attempt to map the pitch black area. Then I started messing up. It's entirely possible to mess up and get half of your already somewhat advanced party massacred in the process. To be more precise, I stumbled through the darkness into a room with buttons, so I pressed some buttons until a way seemed to open forward, and after killing a bunch of rather tough monsters I cast location spell and noticed I'm on level three, oops. Then I realised the room with buttons was an elevator. Then I went to level two to find a way to level one, and one of my characters got poisoned. If I recall right, cure poison is a level four spell, which doesn't mean you get it when your priest is level four, oh not at all (the character system being inspired by DnD).

I was starting to pine for a simpler game. I somehow managed to drag my ever dwindling party back to castle, and now I'm not sure whether it would take more or less time to grind for a few thousand coins (for resurrection purposes) than it would take to level up new party members. Of course I'll probably have to use new party members for that grinding anyway, so.... Might be a good idea to try one of those SNES Wizardries....

Still, if one adopts the same kind of attitude with Wizardry 1 as you would with ADOM or any other gigantic rogue-like, I suppose it can provide many, many hours of more or less addictive gameplay. I did enjoy it right up until I noticed the prices for resurrections.
 

BlackGoat

Arbiter
Joined
Sep 15, 2014
Messages
505
That teleportation trick on Wiz floor 1 is rough. I had more or less the same "Wait, what the fuck" type moment, after having been taking it very slow and being very careful about mapping, and then panicking when the dungeon no longer made sense and I realized I had no idea how to get back to the castle. Sort of a trial by fire for newbies. Makes you pretty paranoid for the rest of the game.
 

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