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

[Viata]

1. Remove 'Shin Megami Tensei' part from Devil Summoner: Soul Hackers, since it has nothing to do with mainline SMT games.

Indeed. It's, however, called SMT: Devil Summoner: Soul Hackers in the English version, it up to you and Atlus USA to discuss about removing it. Not us since we are going with the English release.

3. Replace horrendous PSX screens of 'if...' with SNES screenshots.

It was the first one I found, while searching for if... images to post here.

 

[zwanzig_zwoelf]

It's, however, called SMT: Devil Summoner: Soul Hackers in the English version, it up to you and Atlus USA to discuss about removing it. Not us since we are going with the English release.

Fatlus is notorious for inserting 'SMT' into every MegaTen-related game and causing confusion among MegaTen fandoms, especially when yet another newfag decides to join the discussion. 'SMT? Ahh, you're talking about Persona!'
I'd rather stick to 'actual' names.

ok i removed the devil survivor games.

there are plenty of pictures of devil summoner 1 (i.e. NOT FUCKING SOUL HACKERS GOOGLE) in moby games but it's not in english. pls add it to the second post in the thread.

There is a translated script on romhacking.net forums.

Added to the second post as 女神異聞録デビルサバイバー - Megami Ibunroku Devil Summoner. Have you played it and if so for what system? I remember trying the PSP port a few years back and getting frustrated at the negotiations.

Eh. IIRC it's JUST Devil Summoner, without 'SMT' or 'Megami Ibunroku' parts.
Yeah, I've played it on Saturn and PSP. Don't care much about negotiations - I usually pick a few demons, then keep using brute force/milking demons for $$$ until it becomes unbearable.
Also, PSP port sucks. Stick to Saturn version.

 

[aweigh]

i actually thought a lot about including might and magic or not because i honestly DO NOT like the series.

i fully acknowledge that might and magic is not in any way mechanically similar to wizardry; in fact japanese rpg's like dragon quest are more mechanically similar.

the reason i added the might and magic titles is because of PM's from people. i'll remove them.

i find MM games dumb.

 

[aweigh]

there we go. i feel better now actually

i also removed wizardry: nemesis since it is an adventure game. the reason i included it originally is because it's an ACTUAL wizardry game and it WAS coded by people from the original wizardry dev team.

in the end though it's just occupying space in the thread.

 

[H-K]

It's, however, called SMT: Devil Summoner: Soul Hackers in the English version, it up to you and Atlus USA to discuss about removing it. Not us since we are going with the English release.

Fatlus is notorious for inserting 'SMT' into every MegaTen-related game and causing confusion among MegaTen fandoms, especially when yet another newfag decides to join the discussion. 'SMT? Ahh, you're talking about Persona!'
I'd rather stick to 'actual' names.

ok i removed the devil survivor games.

there are plenty of pictures of devil summoner 1 (i.e. NOT FUCKING SOUL HACKERS GOOGLE) in moby games but it's not in english. pls add it to the second post in the thread.

There is a translated script on romhacking.net forums.

Added to the second post as 女神異聞録デビルサバイバー - Megami Ibunroku Devil Summoner. Have you played it and if so for what system? I remember trying the PSP port a few years back and getting frustrated at the negotiations.

Eh. IIRC it's JUST Devil Summoner, without 'SMT' or 'Megami Ibunroku' parts.
Yeah, I've played it on Saturn and PSP. Don't care much about negotiations - I usually pick a few demons, then keep using brute force/milking demons for $$$ until it becomes unbearable.
Also, PSP port sucks. Stick to Saturn version.

Looks like we're both wrong. The saturn cover clearly uses the 真・女神転生 (Shin Megami Tensei) moniker.

 

[Viata]

Fatlus is notorious for inserting 'SMT' into every MegaTen-related game and causing confusion among MegaTen fandoms, especially when yet another newfag decides to join the discussion. 'SMT? Ahh, you're talking about Persona!'
I'd rather stick to 'actual' names.

That seems like you are just angry because Persona fans call every game SMT.

Eh. IIRC it's JUST Devil Summoner, without 'SMT' or 'Megami Ibunroku' parts.
Yeah, I've played it on Saturn and PSP. Don't care much about negotiations - I usually pick a few demons, then keep using brute force/milking demons for $$$ until it becomes unbearable.
Also, PSP port sucks. Stick to Saturn version.

Megami Ibunroku is for the Persona series, Devil Summoner is just for any game from the DS series after the first one that was called Shin Megami Tensei: Devil Summoner.

 

[H-K]

Fatlus is notorious for inserting 'SMT' into every MegaTen-related game and causing confusion among MegaTen fandoms, especially when yet another newfag decides to join the discussion. 'SMT? Ahh, you're talking about Persona!'
I'd rather stick to 'actual' names.

That seems like you are just angry because Persona fans call every game SMT.

Eh. IIRC it's JUST Devil Summoner, without 'SMT' or 'Megami Ibunroku' parts.
Yeah, I've played it on Saturn and PSP. Don't care much about negotiations - I usually pick a few demons, then keep using brute force/milking demons for $$$ until it becomes unbearable.
Also, PSP port sucks. Stick to Saturn version.

Megami Ibunroku is for the Persona series, Devil Summoner is just for any game from the DS series after the first one that was called Shin Megami Tensei: Devil Summoner.

Atleast the first Devil Survivor is also Megami Ibunroku.

Edit: And Persona dropped it after the first game.

 

[Viata]

Only DS1 has the Ibunroku, btw. It seems like a title for spin-off and then goes on to use the spin-off subtitle as the series name.

 

[zwanzig_zwoelf]

Looks like we're both wrong. The saturn cover clearly uses the 真・女神転生 (Shin Megami Tensei) moniker.

the first one that was called Shin Megami Tensei: Devil Summoner.

No relation to mainline SMT series apart from some easter eggs related to Gotou and Thorman.
Therefore - Devil Summoner.

That seems like you are just angry because Persona fans call every game SMT.

But am I wrong, brah?

 

[aweigh]

i actually consider myself an SMT fan and the first SMT game i played was persona 1 for the PS1 when i was in 8th grade. I played it on the year of it's release (for the american ps1).

this is the first time i've seen people arguing that some SMT games are NOT smt games. i've always considered every SMT game an SMT game: Megami Tensei series on the NES and Game Boy, Shin Megami Tensei series on the SNES/GB/PS/etc, the SMT: Persona series on the PSX/DS/3DS/etc, the SMT: digital devil story series on the PS2 and the DS/3DS; the devil survivor series; the devil summoner series; etc.

it's all SMT. i mean there's no real "mainline" SMT since the first SMT entries are basically remakes of the Megami Tensei series with shit added in. then the third entry in the SMT series, "If...", has nothing to do with the earlier entries in SMT but has callbacks to the Megami Tensei games.

EDIT: Mark will always be black to me!!!! suck it purists!

 

[Viata]

No relation to mainline SMT series apart from some easter eggs related to Gotou and Thorman.
Therefore - Devil Summoner.

The japanese version is called SMT, but somehow it's not SMT. Okay then, MegaTen fanbase clearly knows more than the creators itself.

 

[H-K]

i actually consider myself an SMT fan and the first SMT game i played was persona 1 for the PS1 when i was in 8th grade. I played it on the year of it's release (for the american ps1).

this is the first time i've seen people arguing that some SMT games are NOT smt games. i've always considered every SMT game an SMT game: Megami Tensei series on the NES and Game Boy, Shin Megami Tensei series on the SNES/GB/PS/etc, the SMT: Persona series on the PSX/DS/3DS/etc, the SMT: digital devil story series on the PS2 and the DS/3DS; the devil survivor series; the devil summoner series; etc.

it's all SMT. i mean there's no real "mainline" SMT since the first SMT entries are basically remakes of the Megami Tensei series with shit added in. then the third entry in the SMT series, "If...", has nothing to do with the earlier entries in SMT but has callbacks to the Megami Tensei games.

I think it's better to refer to the extended franchise as MegaTen since there are games before the 真 was added and a lot of Super Famicom sequels used the shin prefix (but a different shin, 新=new instead of 真=true) in the same way that a lot of Super Nintendo sequels used super.

 

[aweigh]

AAAAAAAAANYWAY what about persona Q from the EO makers? worth playing?

 

[zwanzig_zwoelf]

No relation to mainline SMT series apart from some easter eggs related to Gotou and Thorman.
Therefore - Devil Summoner.

The japanese version is called SMT, but somehow it's not SMT. Okay then, MegaTen fanbase clearly knows more than the creators itself.

Devil Summoner = MegaTen, but Devil Summoner != SMT.

I think Atlus tried to promote Devil Summoner in Japan in the same way they're currently promoting their games in US/Europe.

i actually consider myself an SMT fan and the first SMT game i played was persona 1 for the PS1 when i was in 8th grade. I played it on the year of it's release (for the american ps1).

this is the first time i've seen people arguing that some SMT games are NOT smt games. i've always considered every SMT game an SMT game: Megami Tensei series on the NES and Game Boy, Shin Megami Tensei series on the SNES/GB/PS/etc, the SMT: Persona series on the PSX/DS/3DS/etc, the SMT: digital devil story series on the PS2 and the DS/3DS; the devil survivor series; the devil summoner series; etc.

it's all SMT. i mean there's no real "mainline" SMT since the first SMT entries are basically remakes of the Megami Tensei series with shit added in. then the third entry in the SMT series, "If...", has nothing to do with the earlier entries in SMT but has callbacks to the Megami Tensei games.

EDIT: Mark will always be black to me!!!! suck it purists!

The franchise is usually referred to as MegaTen. SMT is just one of its series.
I understand why some people are confused (thank you, Fatlus), but it would be a lot better if people started using proper names, just to avoid pointless arguments.

 

[Siveon]

AAAAAAAAANYWAY what about persona Q from the EO makers? worth playing?

It's Etrian Odyssey with Persona characters instead of classes. It's a little more wordy than the average Etrian Odyssey game, but it's good for an Etrian Odyssey game. I don't think there's any social links either so it's pretty much just Etrian Odyssey in Persona clothing.

What I'm trying to say is, it's just EO. Play it if you like that franchise (I do).

 

[Viata]

No relation to mainline SMT series apart from some easter eggs related to Gotou and Thorman.
Therefore - Devil Summoner.

The japanese version is called SMT, but somehow it's not SMT. Okay then, MegaTen fanbase clearly knows more than the creators itself.

Devil Summoner = MegaTen, but Devil Summoner != SMT.

I think Atlus tried to promote Devil Summoner in Japan in the same way they're currently promoting their games in US/Europe.

I would believe that if Persona 1 was called SMT in Japan too.

 

[aweigh]

i sunk about 15 hours into EO 3: the drowned city before getting fed up with the grind.

JEEEEEEEEEEEEEESUS CHRIST is there a lot of pointless but 100% necessary grinding needed in order to level up.

i swear to fucking god there's less grinding required in Elminage Gothic than in EO 3. also since the enemys are random encounters instead of fixed you're forced to wander up and down the same hallways waiting for an encounter.

all that said i did love the dungeon design. expertly crafted dungeons with multiple interlocking parts that really told a story all their own. i've been told EO 3 is one of the weaker entries in the series, so i'll give Persona Q a try. i did enjoy it's blend of wizardry-inspired mechanics mixed with nippon-grown jrpg systems like skill points. and like i mentioned i really enjoyed the dungeons.

there's just so much grinding ugh. you even have to grind in order to unlock a skill that lets you grind 5% faster with every unlock. you literally have to grind grinding.

 

[Suicidal]

Wut? I've played EO 3 till the lava zone forgot which level it is till I dropped it (planning to come back to it later, had no time to play) and I don't remember ever needing to grind. I just went through the dungeon and fought whatever I encountered without stopping to intentionally fight monsters without going any further for the purpose of getting XP/money (which I would define as grinding). I almost never ran from fights and had enough levels to face the challenges on the next dungeon floor I went through (usually avoiding the wandering minibosses at the beginning of each new floor then coming back later to kill them later).

 

[Siveon]

You might have the wrong mindset for Etrian Odyssey. While I never played 3, I never felt the need to grind monsters (for the sake of fighting monsters alone) while playing Untold, but instead do other things like look for treasures or try and finish the quests. Most of the time I was just making my way through the dungeon, and when I met a challenge I couldn't beat (like a boss), I simply prepared with appropriate items and equipment.

But grinding levels? Like, just for level sake? That's unnecessary, the levels take a while from simply grinding monsters to deter players from doing so. The most I ever did was kill the FoE's because they were entertaining to fight.

 

[aweigh]

well i've only played eo 3, but i'm p. sure the grinding i had to do had a lot to do with my party composition.

i didn't do any research before my playthrough and i made a complete assbackwards party and i realize now that it ended up affecting a lot of my combat efficiency.

i didn't have anyone who could tank and i didn't have anyone who could DPS so i had to grind low-level monsters right from the beginning 1f of the introductory forest area just so i could get enough levels/hit-points and be able to beat the Fox enemy that could 1-hit anyone in my front-row (because i basically had an entire party of back-row characters with poor skills).

when i say grinding what i mean is that with that ass backwards party i couldn't fully explore the introdoctory area, as an example, until everyone was at least levels 5-6 because of getting 1-shotted. AFTERWARDS i did research and realized my party composition was completely wrong and that i didn't have a good source of healing or tanking or DPS'ing.

if i played it again i am 100% i could make a traditional party in EO 3 and blaze thru the first 3 dungeons (which is what i what played) without dying once.

HOWEVER i still maintain that the game requires you to earn more XP per level-up for LESS MEANINGFUL GAINS upon LEVEL UPS than a game like Elminage: Gothic or Elminage Original, or even Wizardry 6 (which i'm playing on the side right now). level ups in EO 3 consist of gaining a meagre amount of skill points that need to be incrementally hoarded in order to unlock worthwhile skills and unless you do a ton of research on the skills you can easily waste all of them on worthless skill trees (which is what happened to me and my bad party).

from what i've read EO4 and the EO1 and EO2 remakes cut away a lot of the wheat and chaff from the skill trees and reverted back to more traditional series classes/archetypes that are less confusing so i have that to look forward to when i decide to get back into the series.

my front row was a ninja, a bucaneer and a monk, with the back row an arbalist and an elementalist. perhaps not the WORST party imaginable but the lack of a prince/hoplite/gladiator REEEEEALLY hurt me in the beginning and contribute a LOT to me having to spend more time levelling up than most other players with a normal party setup in order to beat the same enemies.

also money in EO 3 is unbelievably scarce right from the beginning and since the itemization is unlocked through defeating enemies in pre-determined amounts of times and then returning to the town shop and turning in the monster trophies for a very small amount of money it made me feel like i wasn't being rewarded enough for the effort i was putting in. sure, there were treasure chests with actual loot in them in every single floor of every dungeon but i had just gotten done with Elminage Gothic and Elminage Original, and was playing (and still am) playing Wiz 6 on the side so i was/am used to getting tangible rewards/drops after defeating an encounter which at most i'll have to identify or uncurse before using.

in EO 3 getting new loot meant "grinding" away enemy encounters for their monster-scalps and then a return trip to town to turn them in the hopes that a piece of gear useful to one of my characters would magically unlock; THEN scrape up enough dough to actually buy the overpriced item. it's just a ton of work that felt like needless filler.

i have an INTENSE dislike of any rpg mechanic which is based on unlocking tiers/rewards/gear/classes/etc based on defeating X amount of an encounter type / game-scenario for Y amount of times. That to me is the very definintion of grinding and the WORST kind of grinding imaginable.

 

[zwanzig_zwoelf]

ok i removed the devil survivor games.

there are plenty of pictures of devil summoner 1 (i.e. NOT FUCKING SOUL HACKERS GOOGLE) in moby games but it's not in english. pls add it to the second post in the thread.

There is a translated script on romhacking.net forums.

Added to the second post as
真・女神転生デビルサマナー - Megami Ibunroku Devil Summoner. Have you played it and if so for what system? I remember trying the PSP port a few years back and getting frustrated at the negotiations.

Edit: I usually get frustrated at the negotiations in English too so I'm not sure I would have preformed any better had I understood them.

Jesus fucking Christ, check your information before posting stuff.
Devil Summoner wasn't released for PS1.

 

[Courtier]

The Etrian Odyssey games are well made, balanced, easy to get into and fun in general. I've played all the DS titles and EO4 on the 3DS to completion, and was in the midst of EOU when last I played. The series is so accessible it's got throngs of people into the genre. And by into the genre I mean mostly ''only play 4 or Untold and nothing else''. You've even got niglets proclaiming Experience titles are copying EO. It's like how most of the people that played Grimrock have never seen a Goldbox game.

That aside, they're really good games. I highly recommend them. But as for the difficulty, only the postgame or the newer games' Expert setting even remotely approach early Wizardry. If you're having trouble early game, you're just not used to the way EO works yet. Every EO is beatable with pretty much any party. But there's a big emphasis on smartly managing and scavenging resources.

For example even on the very first floors, certain enemies drop special materials if you defeat them in a set way. You get hints for that from quests, or in EO3 onwards from the bar. There are gathering points you can exploit and find shortcuts to for material runs. You need to be able to conserve your TP to last your trip and make enough money to both afford better gear and items for the next one, while trying to find the good stuff early. Because of the skillpoint system, you can and should create builds to suit your particular needs as opposed to passively getting access to a wide variety of skills. This also applies to the rest of the gameplay. You can replace a healer with a fast class using consumables for example.

EO3 is actually the most popular in the series and also my favorite. You have to look at it from the perspective of the player coming from 1+2: the majority of the labyrinth in those two games consists of forests in a medieval European-ish setting. Both games had the same classes, and lacked some quality of life improvements while having some obtuse elements like how you needed to raise a character to max level (70) then retire to increase their successor's max level by one, and have to keep doing that ad infinitum if you wanted higher levels (about 2400 levelups and many retirees per level 99 character).

Suddenly there was EO3, with a seafaring Caribbean setting! It had an entire roster of completely new classes, big sailing minigame, FOEs gave EXP again unlike in EO2, beating dragons increased max level by 10, it had many additions such as subclassing, guest NPC sea quests and even a branching storyline. All that combined with the tropical environs made it truly feel like a breath of fresh air.

Contrary to what my EO1/2 level cap example would have you believe, grinding is completely unnecessary in these games. If you map the floors and complete the quests, you will always be overleveled. FOEs give fucktons of experience, so you can just go round up a few of those if you want some levels. In EOIV with shiny FOEs it gets easy to the point of being ridiculous.

 

[aweigh]

the problems i had with eo 3 all stem from lack of research. for example i waste the first 8 levels worth of skill points on my monk's Unarmed skill tree, and i wasted my bucaneer's first 8 levels' worth of skill points on the Lucky Strike skill tree.

i also did not know that TP conservation was paramount to Elementalist development and that one should NEVER invest more skill points into a spells' skill tree beyond the opening amount necessary to unlock the actual spell as doing so increased the spells' TP consumption at a pace faster than the MP growth of the character.

i found the game much more confusing to grasp by jumping in blindly than i did in comparison to jumping in blindly to the Elminage series. i had NEVER played any etrian odyssey game at all nor any games inspired by its mechanics.

it is unarguable that eo 3 will punish you for lack of knowledge. it is also unarguable that it features common JRPG mechanics that promote grinding such as turning in monster hides to the town shop in order to unlock new gear instead of rewarding the player directly for success in combat. i never said the game was difficult, mind you; i said it featured grinding. the two things are not the same.

it all boils down to personal tastes; for example right now i'm half-way through Dragon Quest 9 and one of the biggest disappointments with the game is the japanese-centric grinding necessary to unlock the advanced classes. in order to unlock the elementalist class you have to defeat two encounters with metal slimes by using the Flare spell as the killing blow. this is the very definition of obnoxious "grinding" in an RPG for me and i've lost interest in finishing the game because i simply flat-out refuse to do the stupid requirements to unlock further classes. I refuse to run around getting random encounters until a specific enemy pops up and i have to have the rest of my party uselessly defend while one character does something stupid a specific number of times.

mind you that once again i'm not saying a game like DQ 9 is difficult. i'm saying it features obnoxious "grind". in fact DQ9 is shockingly easy, and can be easily finished without ever unlocking ANY of the advanced classes.

all that said and with all of my complaints about EO 3 i still liked the game enough that i want to continue playing the other games in the series or even re-starting EO 3 with a proper party. i think that says enough about how well designed the games are as my somewhat bad experience jumping in blindly into eo 3 did not turn me off the series at all. another big part of the reason i dropped my initial eo 3 campaign is that i was (and still am) riding a wizardry-mechanics high such as vancian spell casting (to give one minor example) and even having to pay money to sleep at the inn instead of having normal free stables was incredibly annoying.

i've jumped blindly into tons of rpg's including wizardry 8 and pretty much all of the megami tensei games but i gotta say eo 3 was the one game that was the least fun for having the least amount of pre-game research done; and yet it STILL managed to hook me. it has the one thing i prize above almost everything else in an RPG: fast paced turn based combat with depth and complexity and rewarding dungeon exploration. well, those would be two things i suppose.

fighting in eo 3 is truly enjoyable and the additions like the combo attacks really allowed my horrible, HORRIBLE party to overcome more difficult encounters. in fact the main reason i put it off is simply because i realized that i was using a horrible party and i didn't want to start over; i would rather take the knowledge i'd gained from my false start in eo 3 and play the other games in the series.

edit: by the way what you describe concerning retirement and maximum levels is once again another shining example of terrible japanese grinding. a LOT of work for a MINIMAL reward. compare that to Elminage series where you have to grind Mages to level 13 in order to unlock Diomante before class changing them but once you do... the rewards of grinding at least two or three characters to level 13 as mages and then class changing them to something else are UNBELIEVABLY rewarding, tangible and useful throughout the entire game. it's like the exact opposite of the kind of grinding done in the EO example.

you know, all this EO 3 talk is actually making me want to pick the game back up and make a proper party with an actual front-row. i think that says it all really concerning the quality of the games. the only reason i haven't done so is simply because there are a few other dungeon crawlers i've yet to play and that are new to me such as Generation XTH: Code Hazard. i'm having quite a bit of fun with GXTH (probably because i had to jump through so many hoops to get the game to work including a complete OS re-install) but i'm already mentally planning an EO 3 party of prince/hoplite/gladiator in the front-row and ninja/arbalist in the back-row.

 

[Courtier]

You will easily get the materials needed for the shop to carry most gear without needing to go out and fight encounters solely for materials. That is to say, you can get through the game at a fair pace, get everything you need and beat it by simply exploring. You could call it grinding if you had to get hides for every single piece seperately, or needed dozens of them, but this is not the case. It's just a tiered unlocking mechanic; you beat some new monsters, and by selling their materials unlock the next levels of equipment. An alternative to animals magically carrying coins and tools. It requires almost zero time or added effort (even the special drops you are flat out told about and they're also optional), so how can you call it grinding? As I mentioned you can get through EO3 easily by simply going straight for the objectives, no pacing back and forth.

 

[aweigh]

my problems with that system stemmed from the fact that i had chosen to use all of the niche classes in one fell swoop for my party and with the exception of the bucaneer (useless class) absolutely no one in my party benefitted from the gear unlocks in the shop until about half-way through the second dungeon. it was quite disheartening to clear floors and return to town and see all of the unlocks be for gladiator/prince/hoplite gear.

sure, there was gear for my monk but remember: i had foolishly decided to pump all of his skill points into unarmed so once again i couldn't enjoy buying weapons for him.

like i said almost all of my problems with that initial playthrough of eo 3 came from picking all back-row caracters for the entire party composition; dumping several levels' worth of skill points into completely useless skill trees (ninja's evade/monk's unarmed/bucaneer's lucky strike/etc); and being annoyed that the price of the Inn went up along with character levels. I found that last one VERY annoying.

i wouldn't call EO a series easy to get into at all. at least not without doing a lot of reading concerning what classes to pick and what skill trees to avoid. the enjoyment i get out of a game like EO is 100% from the party composition/optimization and the fact that i had made possibly the worst party you can make made me quit my initial playthrough. like i said, doesn't mean i won't play the series again.