Wizardry Wizardry: Labyrinth of Lost Souls - now available on PC

[Grauken]

The graphics in LoLS look indeed not so good (that is wall sets, monster graphics I've seen so far, the images in the intro look great), Elminage, on the other hand, looks awesome, if you can't appreciate the painted art style of that game you're simply a philistine

 

[Shackleton]

I know this is the last place where I should ask this, but what the Hell ... does it have an automap?

now bring it on.

Sent from my SM-J530F using Tapatalk

Buy a map in the shop, then yes

Do these maps never break? I got two right at the beginning, and now with 3 floors nearly cleared in Trials Dungeon I've still got 2 left. It'd fit with the much less punishing gameplay, but would be /decline imo. The whole game is scratching the blobber itch but it's making me wish for more Elminage Gothic tbh.

Glad I went with a Bishop as well as a Priest and Mage, it'd be a right pain to appraise all these ??? drops without one. Drop rate much higher than E:G, people have got to get their loot these days. Most of it's crap so far though.

 

[Mastermind]

feels a lot like elminage 1, only without the minimap and worse monster graphics

still, i played elminage 1 to death so i'll probably keep at it

 

[d1r]

The graphics in LoLS look indeed not so good (that is wall sets, monster graphics I've seen so far, the images in the intro look great), Elminage, on the other hand, looks awesome, if you can't appreciate the painted art style of that game you're simply a philistine

I like the character artstyle too, but it fails to shine through if everything else looks horrible. It's like looking at a nice landscape painting by Achenbach framed in a "Hello Kitty"-picture frame. Not gonna work.

 

[Comte]

I wanna get this from GOG just so they can maybe release some more blobbers but not liking what I am hearing here.

 

[turkishronin]

Already Mixed Reviews on Steam

 

[kaisergeddon]

Elminage's art direction is amazing. The eldritch aesthetic is great, along with the settings of each of the dungeons and the grim secrets of the post game in each title. This game though is just "competent weeb" which is a shame, but whatever.

 

[Shackleton]

Already Mixed Reviews on Steam

I well remember Elminage Gothic getting review bombed because snowflakes couldn't cope with mapping needing an item that was breakable or casting a spell. I don't think a blobber will ever get 'Mostly positive' on release unless it dumbs itself down to Bethesda level and lets people play it at 144Hz with flashy graphics for everything. Stranger of Sword City was about as close to mainstream as they're going to get and there's still idiots thumbs-downing it because they can't understand the UI.

Not to say this game deserves 'Overwhelmingly Positive' because it's pretty bang average to be honest, but if you like blobbers it'll keep you going for a bit.

 

[aweigh]

The vast majority of RPG fans absolutely despise blobbers.

Never forget that the actual Codex majority is comprised of die-hard anti-gameplay storyfags who think combat is a hindrance.

 

[Hyperion]

'Hold A to win' blobbers where you skip through 95% of combat messages until you reach a boss that requires 90% RNG and 10% strategy are no better than braindead storyfag trash. Blobbers are rare. Good blobbers are a Golden Goose.

 

[kaisergeddon]

Damn, it's almost like someone should think of a genre for them, a style of gaming where you don't have to bother with learning systems rooted in tabletop mechanics or getting good at the abstraction of exploring mysterious dungeons and uncovering their secrets by adapting strategy and resource management... something entirely story-based, one that allows a novel to be told visually I imagine...

 

[aweigh]

'Hold A to win' blobbers where you skip through 95% of combat messages until you reach a boss that requires 90% RNG and 10% strategy are no better than braindead storyfag trash. Blobbers are rare. Good blobbers are a Golden Goose.

Could easily say the same about "hold LMB to win". Rubbish 'argument' that I've seen many times before from storyfags. It's usually an off-shoot from the same branch of "any fight that isn't a bossfight-level of challenge was a trash mob" which is peak stupidity.

Blobbers rarely use RNG, at least not in the dismissive way I'm sure you mean. Stuff is dependent on stats. Shows that you don't know what the hell you're talking about.

 

[Hyperion]

Could easily say the same about "hold LMB to win". Rubbish 'argument' that I've seen many times before from storyfags.

I'm not defending those games either in case you didn't notice. But blobbers are a niche, regressive genre because the fans don't want any sort of risks or innovation in them. Just look at the love for Elminage here. It's a soulless early Wizardry clone, nothing more. I hated Original so much I couldn't bring myself to play Gothic because everything about it was so bland.

I wasn't much of a PC gamer growing up, so Wiz 8 is next on my list of blobbers to play, which has a good reputation, so I've some hopes for that one, but who knows when I get to it. Gaming time is limited these days.

 

[kaisergeddon]

I don't know about that, the blobber genre is certainly niche, but I wouldn't call it regressive. It has seen enormous innovations in Japan, especially in the past decade. The game assets are definitely simple, but this allows developers to focus on the games rather than the graphics. The Etrian Odyssey series alone has added so much to the formula and readapts it constantly (Moe Moe Kyun Lolita aesthetic aside...), and just recently we got Labyrinth of Refrain: Coven of Dusk, which, all things considered, is very unique in this genre. Of course, if you mean the core gameplay loop is basically identical between titles, well... that's true, but that's also why it's a genre.

Besides, the gameplay in blobbers isn't necessarily about figuring out a new puzzle everytime you encounter an enemy formation. Sometimes it's true that you just rotate your proven attacks between team members. However, the means to get to that point is a matter of economy, which is the real gameplay: the encounters add up. Figuring out the most efficient pattern is part of the strategy and adapting your resources to meet the needs of each encounter is a core part of a good blobber. Every vancian magic point you gain is another step further in a dungeon. Sometimes that's all you need to reach a new exit or even another secret that dares you to push further. That's why so many of these games disguise the enemy types with shadow forms before they become visualized by your party. That aspect is meant to spook you and make you change your estimation of the enemy and challenge your resource management. A miscalculation can kill a team member or make you waste an important item or spell, which means leaving the dungeon, or worse, a total party wipe. It's this careful balance that encourages risk-taking to reward discovery and makes the genre addicting, and something Elminage excels at, Gothic in particular. It's probably best to think of the dungeons themselves as the foe in a blobber rather than any particular enemy or even the boss.

Original is honestly a bit too easy though, more like an introduction to the series formula than anything. Wizardry 8 is very good btw, and basically its own thing alongside DW Bradley's Wizards and Warriors. It's more on the aesthetic side of the formula, with questing and fantastic world exploration rather than hardcore dungeoneering. I recommend grabbing the Wiz8Fast speed hack for it from Jeff Ludwig's site, however, since it can be hellaciously slow with some bloated encounters.

 

[Hyperion]

Sometimes that's all you need to reach a new exit or even another secret that dares you to push further.

Most of the newer blobbers have such lousy dungeon design this is never a concern, because there aren't secrets, or new exits. The dungeons are so boring, and straightforward that it's more like going point A to point B as quickly as possible. SoSC even lets you autowalk places...

A miscalculation can kill a team member or make you waste an important item or spell, which means leaving the dungeon, or worse, a total party wipe. It's this careful balance that encourages risk-taking to reward discovery and makes the genre addicting, and something Elminage excels at, Gothic in particular.

Most fights you take 0, or minimal damage because enemies typically miss. If they do hit, they chunk your HP. Same goes for the case of being ambushed. This is lazy RNG, not difficulty. Yes, you see the enemy silhouettes, but you don't know about an ambush till after you choose to fight, and generally the only time you get hammered. SoSC and Labyrinth of Lost Souls are terribly guilty of this. Getting wiped over something you had no control over is not true difficulty, or a sufficient risk. At the risk of digressing too far.... SoSC's character creation is also SHIT.

LP is a pointless mechanic since death is too expensive, you're just going to reset if someone dies....so you may as well make every team member a 1 LP beast with a huge roll imstead of gimping yourself with some 3 LP pussy that gets a bonus roll of 4.

Elminage is too loaded with worthless 1x1 and 2x2 rooms that contain literally nothing, and pitfall traps that are unidentifiable until you step on them. Forced encounters (because you have extra chance of fighting when traversing doors) and damage is not attrition of the good sort. If I want an RPG with good attrition. I'll play Shining the Holy Ark or one of the Dragon Warriors.

It's this careful balance that encourages risk-taking to reward discovery and makes the genre addicting,

I like RPGs for the same reason, but it's not exclusive to blobbers, it's just that modern RPGs allow you to save anywhere anytime. The "well just dont save!" argument doesn't work, because if the game gives you the ability to do so, there is no reason not to, and is often balanced around it.

The Etrian Odyssey series alone has added so much to the formula and readapts it constantly

Art-style aside, EO is pretty much the exemplar of the genre and brought it back from relative obscurity. Alas, my copy of The Dark Spire went missing, and now it costs a small fortune.

Etrian Odyssey isn't perfect either. Atlus had a decent amount of success with it and released too many titles in too short a time frame and caused serious burnout. And that isn't even including the two rereleases, and Persona crossover stuff. And I wasn't big on SMT4 either. Got bored of it at the Minotaur boss.

Edit: Etrian Odyssey's biggest contribution is materials from enemiea dropping based on conditionals. Grinding a single enemy for 12 hours for a Muramasa is neither fun nor interesting, and SoSC's hunting mechanic took the grinding aspect and made it worse by FORCING you in and out of the dungeon by capping your Hunts.

 

[aweigh]

I don't know about that, the blobber genre is certainly niche, but I wouldn't call it regressive. It has seen enormous innovations in Japan, especially in the past decade. The game assets are definitely simple, but this allows developers to focus on the games rather than the graphics. The Etrian Odyssey series alone has added so much to the formula and readapts it constantly (Moe Moe Kyun Lolita aesthetic aside...), and just recently we got Labyrinth of Refrain: Coven of Dusk, which, all things considered, is very unique in this genre. Of course, if you mean the core gameplay loop is basically identical between titles, well... that's true, but that's also why it's a genre.

Besides, the gameplay in blobbers isn't necessarily about figuring out a new puzzle everytime you encounter an enemy formation. Sometimes it's true that you just rotate your proven attacks between team members. However, the means to get to that point is a matter of economy, which is the real gameplay: the encounters add up. Figuring out the most efficient pattern is part of the strategy and adapting your resources to meet the needs of each encounter is a core part of a good blobber. Every vancian magic point you gain is another step further in a dungeon. Sometimes that's all you need to reach a new exit or even another secret that dares you to push further. That's why so many of these games disguise the enemy types with shadow forms before they become visualized by your party. That aspect is meant to spook you and make you change your estimation of the enemy and challenge your resource management. A miscalculation can kill a team member or make you waste an important item or spell, which means leaving the dungeon, or worse, a total party wipe. It's this careful balance that encourages risk-taking to reward discovery and makes the genre addicting, and something Elminage excels at, Gothic in particular. It's probably best to think of the dungeons themselves as the foe in a blobber rather than any particular enemy or even the boss.

Original is honestly a bit too easy though, more like an introduction to the series formula than anything. Wizardry 8 is very good btw, and basically its own thing alongside DW Bradley's Wizards and Warriors. It's more on the aesthetic side of the formula, with questing and fantastic world exploration rather than hardcore dungeoneering. I recommend grabbing the Wiz8Fast speed hack for it from Jeff Ludwig's site, however, since it can be hellaciously slow with some bloated encounters.

Well said man.

BTW, Hyperion has said before he hates Elminage, for all the same reasons that we think makes Elminage great, so there's no middle-ground to meet here. He's one of those types who pretends to like blobbers but when the subject comes up says Wizardry gameplay is 'obsolete'.

But a great effort on your part nonetheless!

 

[Grauken]

With friends like Hyperion, who needs enemies

 

[kaisergeddon]

Yeah, I'm a hardcore blobberfag, I pretty much play everything in the genre I come across. That's why I'm this gross crusader with a magician lurking in his shadow.

I don't think I can split those points any further. Hyperion, I think you're approaching the genre with bias, but your points are essentially valid. I will say though that given what you're complaining about, you're likely to enjoy Wizardry 8, Wizards & Warriors, or even one of the late Might & Magic games a lot more due to their emphasis on exploration variety with aesthetics, verticality, and puzzle-solving, as well as the lack of random encounters which makes other gameplay possible (stealth, attacks of opportunity, etc.). Although I think you're wrong about conditionals in EO, those save a ton of time if you know what you're doing, and forces you to fight the bosses in new ways to plan the conditionals which I find challenging in its own way. The sleep conditionals against bosses suck ass though, not gonna lie about that one.

 

[LESS T_T]

Already Mixed Reviews on Steam

I well remember Elminage Gothic getting review bombed because snowflakes couldn't cope with mapping needing an item that was breakable or casting a spell. I don't think a blobber will ever get 'Mostly positive' on release unless it dumbs itself down to Bethesda level and lets people play it at 144Hz with flashy graphics for everything. Stranger of Sword City was about as close to mainstream as they're going to get and there's still idiots thumbs-downing it because they can't understand the UI.

Not to say this game deserves 'Overwhelmingly Positive' because it's pretty bang average to be honest, but if you like blobbers it'll keep you going for a bit.

FWIW Coven of Dusk retains mostly positive reviews. Being a well polished and presented game helps I guess.

Also about Labyrinth of Lost Souls, funny that almost half of the negative reviews came from Japanese players.

 

[Hyperion]

Although I think you're wrong about conditionals in EO, those save a ton of time if you know what you're doing, and forces you to fight the bosses in new ways to plan the conditionals which I find challenging in its own way. The sleep conditionals against bosses suck ass though, not gonna lie about that one.

Maybe I was a little unclear when I said it, but I liked that quite a bit, and it's a huge plus in terms of approaching combat, party comp, character building, and reducing the grind in an already grind-heavy game.

 

[Viata]

The last review is interesting. Can someone confirm it? The VO, the difficulty(I hope this is true) and the gamepad/keyboard thing.

 

[Grauken]

The last review is interesting. Can someone confirm it? The VO, the difficulty(I hope this is true) and the gamepad/keyboard thing.

which review do you mean?

 

[Viata]

The last review is interesting. Can someone confirm it? The VO, the difficulty(I hope this is true) and the gamepad/keyboard thing.

which review do you mean?

What the fuck? Someone posted a bunch of reviews and then deleted that post.

Edit: Found it on steam:

Not Recommended
0.9 hrs last two weeks / 0.9 hrs on record
Posted: 15 Jan @ 8:34pm

Wizardry: Tale Of The Forsaken Land (On ps2) is one of my favorite games. This is not that. The interface is all over the place. It's better with a gamepad, but since it switches back and forth from keyboard to gamepad depending on what you're doing, its still obnoxious. Just trying to figure out how to get to the settings menu with the keyboard was a pain.

Character creation was also weird. Are the stats random? you can skip through classes with the "auto" button, but also your alignment influences your classes? Or not? Who knows! No explanation for anything as far as I could tell. What stats does each class require? How do i make a ninja? Is this an advanced class I get later? Why is it an option at the start then? Does race influence class? I can only be a bishop if I choose a particular race? Again, no explanation at all.

The difficulty seems to ramp up at a weird rate- I went from stomping through things to near party wipe within about 15-20 steps. Are there just bands of extra hard monsters? Is it random? Are there definite areas where the levels change? There wasn't any kind of markings denoting that. Am I just supposed to know?

The vocals are Japanese, which is fine, but they're terrible, which is not. Listening to my female characters shriek in a high pitched voice whenever they took damage got old pretty fast. On the other hand, the male characters sound like they're literally phoning it in. I don't know what they're saying, but I'm assuming they're ordering lunch.

This feels like a mobile studio got the rights to the Wizardry license somehow.

https://steamcommunity.com/id/gawaintheblind/recommended/948640/

 

[Grauken]

I use a gamepad and it works perfectly fine with it, but you can also use the mouse in combination with keyboard movement and its okay as well

Character creation would have been annoying as it doesn't tell you the min stats for classes, which if you know Wizardry isn't a problem, it's the same as in Wiz1-3, but newcomers will be confused, as they don't know where to put stats to even select a simple warrior. There are no random stat rolls in the usual sense, you have minium stats per race and then can allocate a number of points (always the same number), or allocate those points randomly (kind of pointless, why would you even?!?) instead of manually raising the stats to get certain classes

I haven't played far, but found difficulty pretty easy. You level up automatically after you reach enough EXP in fights in dungeons, you don't have to go back to town, which can or could be annoying if you get not only plus but minus upgrades for stats (I have to look out for that next time if it really happens, I read a review on GOG that stats can go down, which is on par with early Wizardry, but not exactly something I like)

About the vocals, I actually have no idea, I don't even remember

It's definitely not the best jap-Wizardry out there, but if you need to scratch that itch to play an early-type Wizardry game its adequate

 

[kaisergeddon]

The last review is interesting. Can someone confirm it? The VO, the difficulty(I hope this is true) and the gamepad/keyboard thing.

which review do you mean?

What the fuck? Someone posted a bunch of reviews and then deleted that post.

Edit: Found it on steam:

Not Recommended
0.9 hrs last two weeks / 0.9 hrs on record
Posted: 15 Jan @ 8:34pm

Wizardry: Tale Of The Forsaken Land (On ps2) is one of my favorite games. This is not that. The interface is all over the place. It's better with a gamepad, but since it switches back and forth from keyboard to gamepad depending on what you're doing, its still obnoxious. Just trying to figure out how to get to the settings menu with the keyboard was a pain.

Character creation was also weird. Are the stats random? you can skip through classes with the "auto" button, but also your alignment influences your classes? Or not? Who knows! No explanation for anything as far as I could tell. What stats does each class require? How do i make a ninja? Is this an advanced class I get later? Why is it an option at the start then? Does race influence class? I can only be a bishop if I choose a particular race? Again, no explanation at all.

The difficulty seems to ramp up at a weird rate- I went from stomping through things to near party wipe within about 15-20 steps. Are there just bands of extra hard monsters? Is it random? Are there definite areas where the levels change? There wasn't any kind of markings denoting that. Am I just supposed to know?

The vocals are Japanese, which is fine, but they're terrible, which is not. Listening to my female characters shriek in a high pitched voice whenever they took damage got old pretty fast. On the other hand, the male characters sound like they're literally phoning it in. I don't know what they're saying, but I'm assuming they're ordering lunch.

This feels like a mobile studio got the rights to the Wizardry license somehow.

https://steamcommunity.com/id/gawaintheblind/recommended/948640/

Damn, this game is popping his cherry hard. I forgot what it was like to be new to this genre. Reminds me of those "kids play for the first time" Youtube videos.