Crooked Bee is absolutely correct. I'm playing off-and-on the 2nd LoT game but I don't enjoy its mechanics as much as I enjoy the Wizardry blueprint. in fact, i can't think of a more different crawler to Wizardry in its underlying design than the LoT crawlers. I'm enjoying myself of course, otherwise I wouldn't be playing it, but it plays much more macro than a Wizardry-inspired crawler. Damn, how do i explain...
the LoT crawlers (to ME, it's my opinion, JEEEZ) play with a much more present strategical layer, fuck, layer(S), that dovetail into every single gameplay system the game utilizes. It's brilliantly designed, and I mean that in the sense of "these people knew EXACTLY what they wanted to do and how to implement it"; anyway to finish up: in my opinion the LoT crawler formula is meant to drive players to view the game more like a strategy game than the normally tactical Wiz-clone crawler (which are lacking in strategical extrapolation) where the player needs to think long-term and needs to concentrate not on the isolated incidental gameplay (building up a kickass character! wait, no?) and instead to start living in the game's "macro", a literal counterpoint to a Wiz-clone game's "micro". I can't explain it any better if i go on i'll sound stupider.
but yes, good crawlers. totes different from Wizardry, much more than games like the Etrian Odyssey series. I *thought* the EO series was a new off-shoot blossoming from the Wizardry-design branch but man, after playing LoT the EO games seem like carbon copies of a wizardry game in comparison to LoT. the differences that I had before cited that "made EO games fundamentally different to Wizardry" are quite simply not that big if we're taking into context the existence of crawlers like the two LoT games and specifically talking about how these games live and breath.
also, i really miss the first-person view dungeons. now, of course you'll call me a faggot (that was a figurative "you") but my reason is simple: one of the biggest reasons I enjoy playing Wiz-style crawlers, or even non-Wiz-style crawlers since what I'm about to say is not Wiz-specific is the simple and tactile way in which you move through the world. WASD/Arrow-Keys, and the directional inputs are cardinal.
With the LoT isometric/cavalier/whatever perspective they accomplished one thing very well and that is creating a truly more maze-like vessel for the player to trawl through. The view point and the directions and all that serve to make the LoT mazes very much true-blue mazes. However I don't find myself enjoying traversing them THAT much, and while I definitely recognize and appreciate their minimalist approach to a hard-core dungeon design i find myself experiencing something truly... inexplicable:
- I find myself feeling that even though these isometric mazes are, by their very MAKEUP, almost always more challenging to the players navigational senses and the psychological logistics are skewed much more than in a Wiz-clone dungeon.
- I also find myself feeling detached from the navigation precisely because it is isometric and it looks like a board game. The first-person view of the dungeon maze has imprinted itself on me in such a way that it feels closer to god than a church. In closing, what i'm saying in this last sentence is basically that even though the overhead LoT mazes are maze-ier the lack of the first-person view disengages me.
This reasoning is as i said, inexplicable, because it is irrational. I've been trying to pin point in my head where the true spirit of each approach to the maze excludes the other since i've been playing the game and i'll probably make a long thread about it that'll get merged into the Wizardry series thread by Infinitron and I will literally want to fucking explode.
there's a lot to be said for a game where you can just hold enter to continue walking foward, and where bumping into walls is a feature. Stuff like dark-zones and spinners, just to use some very basic examples, are the stuff of happiness and they are part and parcel of the first-person view dungeon experience.
EDIT: Shit, i fucking forgot one of the most salient observations on this subject:
- The LoT crawler favors a design that does not utilize skinner boxes. This is the single most important detail when discussing how LoT differs from a traditional Wizardry-inspired approach. Of course, yes, I know there *are* _some_ elements of casino gaming in the LoT games but they're there because they're there, they're not there because they matter.
The Wizardry design formula to this day is the only one to have ever successfully implemented layer upon layer of casino game design, or skinner boxes if you will, or whatever the fuck you want to call it-- these elements are not used as a crutch nor as a band-aid nor even as a TREAT for the player; in actuality these elements in Wiz-clones are utilized in lockstep with every single other gameplay system operating in the game. Fixed encounters, trapped chests, random loot tied to floor and not to enemies, random damage, random resistances, random level-up attribute gains and losses, random amounts of enemies appearing in a given encounter; evreything leads into each other beautifully and they managed to strike a very, VERY elegant balance wherein all of this "randomization" (there is no such thing as randomization, btw) NEVER makes the player feel "cheated" in any way, be it from their "loot" or in a deeper, more intellectual sense.
This is a primary reason Wizardry-type games are INFINITELY replayable.
Now, turning very briefly towards the studio(s) behind SiSC i have only played Gen XTH: Code Hazard and am currently playing through Wizardry XTH: Unlimited Students while I try to figure out how to translate it someday and to me it seems that the biggest difference is in the handling of the "random" elements. It seems to me like they don't fully grasp how to strike the same balance that Wiz 1-5 did with their skinner boxes. I found that in Gen XTH and in Wiz XTH they wanted to establish themselves as seperate from being straight-up copies of Wizardry games with their crafting system, and I have never, ever in my life played a more tedious and soul-crushing crafting system than the one in their games. Of course I still LIKE their games, enoguh so that it makes me wish they did better because it SEEMS like they can do better. The excess of "loot" that is required as a system-wide crutch to help prop up the completely unnecessarily convoluted and nigh-DEGENERATE crafting system completely fucks up any sort of elegance that might have been in these matters.
oh, the joy of winning a battle and getting a crafting part! woooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooow. Can't wait to STOP EXPERIENCING THE ACTUAL GAME, i.e. DUNGEON CRAWLING, SO I CAN GO BACK TO THE LABORATORY AND SPEND 40 MINUTES CYCLING THROUGH ENDLESS MENUS.
<(' '<)
thankfully I'm hearing a lot of good things about SiSC and most important of all... crafting is gone, if i understand things correctly? or minimized and/or transformed into an ACTUAL crafting system, like the one in Elminage, instead of a DEGENERATE one?
(>' ')>
