Wizardry Long Live Wizardry! (And The All-New Games By Ex-Wizardry Developers)

[Courtier]

I really like it. So far it does feel like a step above Demon Gaze and Operation Abyss in depth and difficulty, but not quite at the level of Starfish crawlers. There is free multiclassing, age matters, the LP and hospitalization system are neat and make character deaths matter more than just aging a year. Characters can equip different gear and use moves depending on skills learned, making multiclassing have more depth than in early Wiz-based games.

The gameplay revolves around taking risks and fighting bosses/high level ambush encounters for gear, which works pretty much the same as in DG. The art is fantastic and really the main draw...I'd buy it for that alone. The UI is well designed, and the game is chock full of quality of life features. No crafting as far as I can tell, not much to say about the mazes yet.

It has its flaws: the reused PC voices/SFX/BGM stand out to me (some are the same in every single Experience game...), the only way of getting treasure is from specific ''farming zones'', and the gear is very ''find a +4 shortsword to replace your +2 one with''.

You get one stat point per level, and the leveling/stat system of this (and similar titles) is much less rooted in D&D. Also no Vancian casting but MP, spells are somewhat lackluster (less Tiltowaits to throw around, spells are more weak and generic). DEF/AVD in these games feels so much less solid than THAC0. You have no idea how much impact either stat has. The hit/avoid buffs are stackable but the impact of a single one in combat is negligible.

I'm only a few dungeons in so these are just some first impressions, but I'd highly recommend this one. It plays like a finetuned version of the games I mentioned at the top of this tl;dr

 

[aweigh]

sounds great. i actually am really looking foward to playing a dungeon crawler that's... not wizardry or elminage. Heh. By no means am I burnt out; I just want something a little different. Unfortunately 99% of all the "different" crawlers are... um,... gomen na sai sugoyy su goyy oki masta? :D

I just had a huuuuge, huuuuge milestone breakthrough today; did my first succesfull ASM code hack on a game. I feel all amped up and shit. By the way, have you ever seen footage of the mysterious long-lost Elminage: Ibun for the PSP? Starfish released after Gothic, i suppose because they needed to churn out a cute anime game after how hard-core Gothic was.

Oh? Yeah, Ibun is totally kawaii desu ne... though it features some gorgeous watercolor painting. Now that I finally figured out how to successfully extract and re-insert PSP images I'm thinking of dropping 2 and 3 and doing a menu translation, as an experiment of course, for E: Ibun. I say "experiment" because the more bits and pieces of "hex lore" I've been collecting the more i notice how some games can be flat out impossible to translate or work on. Starfish isn't know for zany encryptions tho, so It'll be fine.

What got me curious about Elminage: Ibun was first it's watercolor art, and second the fact that it's set in modern day japan and features a cast of anime yami-yugi chans. Inside the "Elminage system". And it's a ghost story. Sounds possibly so bad it's awesome.

Video:

 

[Courtier]

I've heard of it, those spooky ghosts are apparently from nip folklore hence the art. Honestly I didn't expect to see any TL progress on any Elminage title again after Gothic, these are good times we're living in

 

[Dorarnae]

ugh, elminage ibun shouldn't be called elminage, I tried to play that game 2 times but I can't, I hate it hehe.

 

[aweigh]

2spooky4dorar

 

[Dorarnae]

well to be honest at first I didn't really like the monster art, but I told myself ''this is elminage right, don't really care about art, as long as the gameplay...''. but it's NOT elminage at all.
seriously that game suck.

 

[aweigh]

damn

that sucks to hear... but ah well, it makes sense. if it was good you would've mentioned it by now :D

 

[Dorarnae]

I made it in the post game dungeon with Wizardry Dimguil and wow the monster in there are ridiculous. tried two time and couldn't kill even 1 enemy.

 

[Courtier]

Have 25 coffees and grind greater demons for 200 hours, just like old times

 

[aweigh]

I made it in the post game dungeon with Wizardry Dimguil and wow the monster in there are ridiculous. tried two time and couldn't kill even 1 enemy.

I spent quite a while yesterday trying to make heads or tails of the 3 dimguil CD's to judge how viable a translation would be... i can't make anything out of that game. Most confusing file structure I've stumbled across yet and I *think* the game text is compressed... ah well.

 

[Dorarnae]

Have 25 coffees and grind greater demons for 200 hours, just like old times

yeah I am leveling some new character, my first party was getting a bit old and they were still in their base class. I am only getting close to lvl 20 and I wish I was like lvl 70-80. going to take a while(my original party was only 30-32).

I am even wondering if I shouldn't go all ninja instead of my samurai in the front row, for the AC ability they have.

 

[Dorarnae]

starting to clear that place slowly. even with lvl 80 samurai and 30-40 ish ninja, that place is dangerous. but the exp <3. lot better than those greater demon that I killed for like 2 days.

 

[Dorarnae]

Patch 1.02 for elminage original on pc. they added sound load.

 

[Celerity]

Epic music. More epic rekt.

 

[Dorarnae]

btw I checked starfish website and they finally put a release date for their soccer dating visual novel thing (or whatever it is). so let's hope after that they have something...I seriously need elminage 4 or gothic 2 hehe.

 

[oddech_wymarlych_swiatow]

Any chances of this one being translated?

 

[aweigh]

oddech_wymarlych_swiatow

i looked through the files on the new age of llylgamyn disc and there is quite a lot of surprising stuff. for example apparently they originally planned to include wizardry 6 as there are folders for it but it seems they scrapped that idea (it got a solo release, and it was an atrociously horrible port) and instead inside the W6 folders are the wiz 4 arranged stuff.

i'm looking at the files right now and it is a clusterfuck. the translation is doable for sure as the game features native support for english (i.e. latin-ascii) i just can't find anything it's a mess of compressed text. they crammed so much crap inside that ps1 disc that almost everything is compressed to high heaven. it would be... time-consuming for 1 person to attempt a translation of the wiz 4 arranged game.

i did manage to find the file with the monster names and did a quick try to see if the font wrapping works and it does, i.e. nothing going outside any boxes, although the font is still fixed width and monospaced (what you see in the pic you posted). i'm not l33t enough to tackle the compressed text yet... someday perhaps.

 

[aweigh]

 

[Courtier]

About Javardry, I found a pixiv with hundreds of illustrations for it a while ago, created for the author's own scenario.

Absolutely fantastic art: http://www.pixiv.net/member_illust.php?id=5887541

IMAGES

 

[Siveon]

As well as a small comic advertising his engine with...Touhou characters. Ok.

Spoiler

 

[Courtier]

 

[Dorarnae]

playing wizardry 4, checking some maps....

omg this will be a pain once I get there.

 

[Dorarnae]

wizardry 4 is so evil lol. you need to play it aweigh

 

[aweigh]

Dorarnae

so last time we were talking about wizardry post-game bosses you mentioned that the only one you never beat was the dragon at the end of the post-game dungoen in wiz-Empire-2 right?

 

[Dorarnae]

dragon at the end of wizardry empire 1. it's the dragon in the first dungeon that gives access to dragonewt, you get the ''heart of evil'' item in the post game and you can fight various NPC. I can probably kill him if I took the time to grind a bit and get the best loot, staying alive against it wasn't a problem, it's just doing enough dmg.

Wizardry empire 2 I never tried the post game.

Wizardry empire 3 post game isn't very big and you can clear it without multiclassing. I know you weren't a big fan of 3 compared to 2, but I liked it and wish it was longer. the post game dungeon at one point you have to use malor in battle to complete the map..., I thought that was interesting.

Wizardry asterisk is a major pain in the butt to grind if you don't know the trick I guess. but once you find out that the miracle mace have infinite charge of 50K exp, you pretty much won the game hehe.