for example the Evil Club (can't be bothered to name-check the ITEM.csv file, so it maby Evil Stick or whatever) has sub-par stats and it's a common drop early on.
...and? well i used to think it was worthless because it sells/buys for huge money (at that point in the game); until i found out one day the weapon changes the character (whose Class allows them to equip it) to equip it, invoke it's Special Power, and instantly change alignment to Evil.
Extremely quick and easy example of why one would suddenly really want that?
1) one of your chars just then hit the attributes required for Ninja... but he/she is FUCKING NEUTRAL!!!!! (Neutral alignment cannot be changed by non-special means).
2) there are MANY small and MANY big examples of how all this shit dovetails with every other piece of shit int eh game, but as a 2nd and final quickie example: a very cmoon drop in like, i think the 4th dungeon (being the 2nd "Story Dungeon") is an "Evil Bascinet". At the time you find this... evil... bascinet (heh) it will be the best head-gear available to all of the Martial-type classes and for a few dungeons beyond as well. Obviously, only EEEEEEEVEEEL chars can put that silly hat on.
So, yes, i'm not saying that you should be constanly analyzing every single minute bullshit piece of text or detail in fear of ending up with sub-optimal characters: trust me, for real, this will not happen. The game is, as i've said many times before, unebelivable well-balanced and the reason why is simple: Starfish coped wholesale the Wizardry 1-5 developmental blueprint, and then just sat in a room for a while, smoked a blunt, and came out with a lit detailing how they could just marginally improve and elevate every thing and every Wizardry system and gameplay mechanic to each one's linear end pinnacle of games design and mathematical harmony.
Yes, i'm snidely typing that Starfish didn't really create any gameplay mechanics themselves. At all. Elminage is simple Wizardry but as made by the original dev's spiritual grand-children who went to video game college but were social outcasts who rejected mainstream video game media and hated with a passion games that insulted the player's intelligence.
/fanfic
EDIT: To be fair, Starfish has been making the best dungeon floor map layouts out of canon Wizardry series (Empire games 1-3) and not-quite-as-good-as-the-Empire-dungeons-but-still-good floor map layouts in the Elminage series for almost 20 years now. So yes, they do indeed create shit.
In fact, Exp Inc (Muramasa Studio) are the kind of polar opposite of Starfish. They decided to ALWAYS introduce completely "new" mechanics or gameplay slices, or elements, to each one of their crawlers. Obviously, since they're not very smart, none of the shit in Generation XTH / Wizardry XTH / Stranger of Sword City / Students of The Round, are actually good stuff to add, or even arguably stuff that betters the game.
Example: They tried "streamlining" in a "cool" way the Wizardry-inspired trapped chest Emergent Gameplay Scenario, and made it fast to do and impossible to fuck up, plus they made identification automatic when the party exits a dungeon.
The first few seconds your non-Cleveian Blakemorish brain, due to its lower amount of synapses and whatnot, will probably think "aweigh that sounds cool, wtf is your problem, stop typing!"; then you will think about the sheer, diaphanous beauty of the elegant relationship between classic Wizardry's simple mechanical sub-systems of having fixed encounters only be the ones to drop loot, and then that loot being a 2nd layer of conflict for the Player's party representing a continuation of the actual "battle" the Player just won and thus, with the danger of fuckingf up the trap and its results being without exaggeration usually deadly; they managed to make each single Fixed Encounter provide:
- The biggest gate-keeping of the game design's implementation of its Itemization formulas.
(Remember that this shit is not a mere matter of Sabers and Masamunes; itemization is a mathematical exercise that is part and parcel of the parallel sub-system of Encounter Design, i.e. actual monster make-up and how many and doing what and leaving what and having how much of what's that, etc, etc).
(each trapped chest is, in my ongoing Wizardry dissertation I shall someday write and then delete; each chest is the simplest more purest and simple to understand encapsulation of the VIDEO GAME DESIGN THEORY which posits that emergent gameplay within the mechanical systems provided to the player are intrinsically fed and in reciprocate fashion also nurture every single other design layer/level of the entire System of the game's "working parts").
- And it also continues the game's single and most prominent goal: to keep the player's belief suspended for as long as possible. The player has just won that big tough battle, and now they are presented with the chance to "win big", or roll a pair of snake eyes and quite probably end their play session right then and there due to death(s). Not the most complex gameplay design layer ever, sure, but it also promotes:
- Making the player think about whether they can RISK opening the chest or not, thus introducing actual human psychology into the player's interaction with the world of Wizardry. I mean Elminage. You know what I mean!
- And lastly, but not least, the consideration of the party's RESOURCES and thus their innate need of existential MANAGEMENT. Maybe they're low on THAT_AWESOME_THING, and they need it, but in the last encounter their Thief got PARALYZED!!! Oh no!! It's a very tough choice they have now! Not tough because it is difficult to jump over, or because it is difficult to combo into, or because it is difficult to "time the button press at the EXACT MOMENT!!!"; but because it has completely engulfed the person playing this game and these players have their belief suspend to its complete extent as their thoughts race to calculate the odds and the possibilites and the routes and the ways and the tools and the OH SHIT GOTTA RETURN TO TOWN BUT I WANT DAT LOOT FIRST-- etc.
My point: the Wizardry trapped chest scenario is an early example, and possible the most elegant one in its simplicity and amount of layered depth to its sub-systems, of a video game example of TRUE EMERGENT GAMEPLAY.
SO YAH basically Team Muramasa had an honest idea, not copy everything exactly, but they failed at a fundamental level to understand the actual game design between what they were changing! With automatic identification and a 5% chance of a trapped chest going off it begs the question: why even have those elements present at all?
So, sadly, they continue doing their thing, well not sadly i enjoyed SoSC; but they each new one I guarantee will have some Wizardry-inspired tradition or element comically warped in some way that, worse case, completely neuters the philosophy of the original design while also failing to replace anything with anything.
But yes, buy it, they got the "party building" "element" 100% correct. Not that its' perfect, or "better" than Wiz/Elminage: but that they wanted to do their own style of a thing, and they succeeded in the "party building" part.
Of course they couldn't help but fuck it up a little bit and introducing OTHER sub-systems like the one mentioned by Emmanuel which completely trivializes THE ENTIRE GAME'S ENCOUNTER DEISGN.
Heh.
(I really need to get a diary).
...and? well i used to think it was worthless because it sells/buys for huge money (at that point in the game); until i found out one day the weapon changes the character (whose Class allows them to equip it) to equip it, invoke it's Special Power, and instantly change alignment to Evil.
Extremely quick and easy example of why one would suddenly really want that?
1) one of your chars just then hit the attributes required for Ninja... but he/she is FUCKING NEUTRAL!!!!! (Neutral alignment cannot be changed by non-special means).
2) there are MANY small and MANY big examples of how all this shit dovetails with every other piece of shit int eh game, but as a 2nd and final quickie example: a very cmoon drop in like, i think the 4th dungeon (being the 2nd "Story Dungeon") is an "Evil Bascinet". At the time you find this... evil... bascinet (heh) it will be the best head-gear available to all of the Martial-type classes and for a few dungeons beyond as well. Obviously, only EEEEEEEVEEEL chars can put that silly hat on.
So, yes, i'm not saying that you should be constanly analyzing every single minute bullshit piece of text or detail in fear of ending up with sub-optimal characters: trust me, for real, this will not happen. The game is, as i've said many times before, unebelivable well-balanced and the reason why is simple: Starfish coped wholesale the Wizardry 1-5 developmental blueprint, and then just sat in a room for a while, smoked a blunt, and came out with a lit detailing how they could just marginally improve and elevate every thing and every Wizardry system and gameplay mechanic to each one's linear end pinnacle of games design and mathematical harmony.
Yes, i'm snidely typing that Starfish didn't really create any gameplay mechanics themselves. At all. Elminage is simple Wizardry but as made by the original dev's spiritual grand-children who went to video game college but were social outcasts who rejected mainstream video game media and hated with a passion games that insulted the player's intelligence.
/fanfic
EDIT: To be fair, Starfish has been making the best dungeon floor map layouts out of canon Wizardry series (Empire games 1-3) and not-quite-as-good-as-the-Empire-dungeons-but-still-good floor map layouts in the Elminage series for almost 20 years now. So yes, they do indeed create shit.
In fact, Exp Inc (Muramasa Studio) are the kind of polar opposite of Starfish. They decided to ALWAYS introduce completely "new" mechanics or gameplay slices, or elements, to each one of their crawlers. Obviously, since they're not very smart, none of the shit in Generation XTH / Wizardry XTH / Stranger of Sword City / Students of The Round, are actually good stuff to add, or even arguably stuff that betters the game.
Example: They tried "streamlining" in a "cool" way the Wizardry-inspired trapped chest Emergent Gameplay Scenario, and made it fast to do and impossible to fuck up, plus they made identification automatic when the party exits a dungeon.
The first few seconds your non-Cleveian Blakemorish brain, due to its lower amount of synapses and whatnot, will probably think "aweigh that sounds cool, wtf is your problem, stop typing!"; then you will think about the sheer, diaphanous beauty of the elegant relationship between classic Wizardry's simple mechanical sub-systems of having fixed encounters only be the ones to drop loot, and then that loot being a 2nd layer of conflict for the Player's party representing a continuation of the actual "battle" the Player just won and thus, with the danger of fuckingf up the trap and its results being without exaggeration usually deadly; they managed to make each single Fixed Encounter provide:
- The biggest gate-keeping of the game design's implementation of its Itemization formulas.
(Remember that this shit is not a mere matter of Sabers and Masamunes; itemization is a mathematical exercise that is part and parcel of the parallel sub-system of Encounter Design, i.e. actual monster make-up and how many and doing what and leaving what and having how much of what's that, etc, etc).
(each trapped chest is, in my ongoing Wizardry dissertation I shall someday write and then delete; each chest is the simplest more purest and simple to understand encapsulation of the VIDEO GAME DESIGN THEORY which posits that emergent gameplay within the mechanical systems provided to the player are intrinsically fed and in reciprocate fashion also nurture every single other design layer/level of the entire System of the game's "working parts").
- And it also continues the game's single and most prominent goal: to keep the player's belief suspended for as long as possible. The player has just won that big tough battle, and now they are presented with the chance to "win big", or roll a pair of snake eyes and quite probably end their play session right then and there due to death(s). Not the most complex gameplay design layer ever, sure, but it also promotes:
- Making the player think about whether they can RISK opening the chest or not, thus introducing actual human psychology into the player's interaction with the world of Wizardry. I mean Elminage. You know what I mean!
- And lastly, but not least, the consideration of the party's RESOURCES and thus their innate need of existential MANAGEMENT. Maybe they're low on THAT_AWESOME_THING, and they need it, but in the last encounter their Thief got PARALYZED!!! Oh no!! It's a very tough choice they have now! Not tough because it is difficult to jump over, or because it is difficult to combo into, or because it is difficult to "time the button press at the EXACT MOMENT!!!"; but because it has completely engulfed the person playing this game and these players have their belief suspend to its complete extent as their thoughts race to calculate the odds and the possibilites and the routes and the ways and the tools and the OH SHIT GOTTA RETURN TO TOWN BUT I WANT DAT LOOT FIRST-- etc.
My point: the Wizardry trapped chest scenario is an early example, and possible the most elegant one in its simplicity and amount of layered depth to its sub-systems, of a video game example of TRUE EMERGENT GAMEPLAY.
SO YAH basically Team Muramasa had an honest idea, not copy everything exactly, but they failed at a fundamental level to understand the actual game design between what they were changing! With automatic identification and a 5% chance of a trapped chest going off it begs the question: why even have those elements present at all?
So, sadly, they continue doing their thing, well not sadly i enjoyed SoSC; but they each new one I guarantee will have some Wizardry-inspired tradition or element comically warped in some way that, worse case, completely neuters the philosophy of the original design while also failing to replace anything with anything.
But yes, buy it, they got the "party building" "element" 100% correct. Not that its' perfect, or "better" than Wiz/Elminage: but that they wanted to do their own style of a thing, and they succeeded in the "party building" part.
Of course they couldn't help but fuck it up a little bit and introducing OTHER sub-systems like the one mentioned by Emmanuel which completely trivializes THE ENTIRE GAME'S ENCOUNTER DEISGN.
Heh.
(I really need to get a diary).
Last edited:
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