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

[Matador]

Wait a minute, so blobbers died in the west, but not in Japan?
Is The Decline™ more of a western thing?

Yeah, check out this gem:

https://www.gog.com/game/elminage_gothic

0% Anime if you don't like that.

 

[Zed Duke of Banville]

I've heard good things about Stranger of Sword City. It has option to reduce level of horribleness (switch from anime style to less anime style) at least.

To be precise, in a Japanese re-release of Stranger of Sword City (and then the international release), there was an additional option to increase the "level of horribleness" by replacing the original graphics for NPCs and PCs with conventional anime-style graphics. The original graphics are fairly stylish, with only a small amount of influence from anime/manga artstyles.

Spoiler

 

[ilitarist]

To be precise, in a Japanese re-release of Stranger of Sword City (and then the international release), there was an additional option to increase the "level of horribleness" by replacing the original graphics for NPCs and PCs with conventional anime-style graphics. The original graphics are fairly stylish, with only a small amount of influence from anime/manga artstyles.

It makes Japan look even worse if they felt the need to add "cute" portraits even though default ones are already idealized and cartoonish. Still hope the game itself is good.

 

[plakia]

Does anyone here know where I can find the Windows version of Llylgamyn Saga? Best I've found are used copies on JP amazon for 7300 yen and considering courier costs and potential damage to the disc I don't particularly like that option.

 

[aweigh]

plakia
https://firedrop.com/df183f02fb895e46

i recommend the ps1 or the snes vers instead as windows pc ver. of the remakes is chock full of bugs, u never knw when it'll crash (at least that was my experience), and it uses the Macintosh style of UI where there are seperate draggable windows for every gui element, one window for the viewport, (which has the same polygonal textures used in the ps1 vers by the way, except worse looking), one window for the party and one for when a combat occurs, etc.

it's a terrible (IMO) style of GUI because everything ends up jumbled together, and you have to keep tediously dragging each window around in order to get a look at whatever it is you need to focus on at that moment. (also everything ends up looking very small).

original Apple II / DOS interfaces will always, always be the best. so elegant, so simple, 30+ yeasrs and counting and still the best and most accessible interfacesGUIs in ANY rpg ever made since.

and, obviously, snes and ps1 remakes mimic the original interfaces. The windows vers. of the remakes, as mentioned , for whatever reason opted to use the interface that they designed for the Macintosh ports of the games (btw, a Mac is not the same as an Apple II, not trying to insult your intelligence just wanted to make sure that was clear).

also the windows PC ver. of the remakes do not feature a custom soundtrack. Sure, faithful to the original games, indeed... but what the fucking fuck man, this is 2017. the SNES and the PS1 versions each feature BEAUTIFUL compositions and music themes (one composer for the snes, and a different one did a different style of OST for the PS1).

my personal favorite is the ps1 ver. of the remakes: beautiful orchestral strings and in for Scenario 4: the revenge of Werdna, he opted to go with an extremely balls-to-the-wall bass heavy arrangement full of trumpeting doom that keeps you fucking on edge the entire fucking scenario.

seriously, the only reason to even play the windows ver. of the 1-2-3 remakes is only for the sake of completion. And believe me, I understand THAT.

(...that's why i also played thru it. LOL). I still have the reamkes on GBC and WonderSwan left to finish so i can say i have finished scenarios 1-2-3 on every single platform they were ported to.

also, gbc and wonderswan remakes feature extra items, and the GBC ver. features a bonus post dungeon for scenario 3. (that are not found in snes/ps1 vers).

 

[aweigh]

btw, my personal recommendation if you want to play thru the original original releases, BUT want to play these versions (i.e. the Apple II / DOS) versions...

WITH BETTER GRAPHICS. BETTER... AND THEY DIDN'T CHANGE ANYTHING ONLY HIGHER-RES....

then download a PC-98 (jap. PC) EMULATOR and I'll send you the emulated floppy disks for the japanese port for PC-98 of Wiz scenarios 1, 2, 3, 4, 5.

they are identical, complete with 100% ENGLISH LANGUAGE, except the enemy sprites are in highger resolution because the PC-98 had much stronger hardware than anything in the West at that time period and best of all, for maximum graphics whoring:


- the PC-98, being a japanese PC, had a special graphics chip that was made specifically for the output/drawing of japanese full-width characters, like hiragana/katakana and kanji characters. These characters require much more "graphics" to render correctly than "western" letters such as "english".

- because of this, they took advantage of the kanji-CPU (that was its name lol) and the result is the PC-98 ports feature extremely crisp and extremely sharp looking WHITE TEXT.

OMG. DUDE. SERIOOSLY. you will not BELIEVE how beautiful those white lines look! or how unbelievably "crisp" the text looks!

heh. I only joke in half-way, of course, because everything i just typed is completely true. The pc-98 ver is the original versions except with better looking wireframe lines and better looking enemy sprites and better looking text.

I believe the floppy disk access times are also 2x or 3x faster than if played on an Apple II emulator or the on DosBox, as like i said, the PC-98 was very powerful for its time.

Also, the emulator i use for PC-98 games outputs even the sound of disk access! you can't get any better than that

 

[plakia]

Thanks. I've already got the PS1 and Super Famicom versions. Just wanted this more to keep it from disappearing online.

 

[Grauken]

Hey aweigh, do you play the SNES W trilogy in the order its there 1-2-3, or in the correct scenario order 1-3-2 ?

 

[aweigh]

correct order ofc. btw, scenario 3 is my favorite of the first 3.

4 is... 4.

5 is the best out of all western wiz. pinnacle of the series.

 

[Dorarnae]

 

[Hengki Kusuma Adi]

aweigh = Speaking of your SNES9x emulator, one of your SNES Wizardry Videos, that filter are you using seems disturbing for me and hurts on my eyes. Why not change it to normal or linear or something?

 

[Hobo Elf]

https://twitter.com/JustinTrudeau/status/873601054226698242

 

[Hobo Elf]

Finally beat Wizardry: Tales of the Forsaken Land. That was a pretty good game, I highly recommend it. There were some things that were annoying to me, like money being useless other than to buy monster ingredients to make spells, and how tedious the process of making and powering up your spells is, but apart from that, it was a fun game. The Allied Action system was probably one of the greater parts of the game even if it does trivialize a lot of combat encounters, that being mostly a testament to how the system works too well. AAs are basically advanced moves that you need 2-3 characters or the whole party to perform a useful action (the character lose their turn to perform an individual turn so it's a trade off, but it's almost always worth it). Stuff like using a frontliner to overcome an enemy Barrier so your caster can cast a spell without it being negated, back liners sacrificing their turn to negate an enemy spell caster and killing the enemy in the process, or backliners protecting two frontliners from physical harm. Good stuff. Good game. Kinda surprised that this is the only blobber the devs have worked on with their pedigree being games such as Bomber Man and Snowboard Kids. Story wasn't bad either, which isn't mandatory but it is nice when it is decent, and I appreciate how all the side quests and side characters tied in heavily to the overall plot of the game instead of being some separate thing.

 

[Dorarnae]

Finally beat Wizardry: Tales of the Forsaken Land. That was a pretty good game, I highly recommend it. There were some things that were annoying to me, like money being useless other than to buy monster ingredients to make spells, and how tedious the process of making and powering up your spells is, but apart from that, it was a fun game. The Allied Action system was probably one of the greater parts of the game even if it does trivialize a lot of combat encounters, that being mostly a testament to how the system works too well. AAs are basically advanced moves that you need 2-3 characters or the whole party to perform a useful action (the character lose their turn to perform an individual turn so it's a trade off, but it's almost always worth it). Stuff like using a frontliner to overcome an enemy Barrier so your caster can cast a spell without it being negated, back liners sacrificing their turn to negate an enemy spell caster and killing the enemy in the process, or backliners protecting two frontliners from physical harm. Good stuff. Good game. Kinda surprised that this is the only blobber the devs have worked on with their pedigree being games such as Bomber Man and Snowboard Kids. Story wasn't bad either, which isn't mandatory but it is nice when it is decent, and I appreciate how all the side quests and side characters tied in heavily to the overall plot of the game instead of being some separate thing.

good game indead, my only complaint was the battle speed because of all the animation and creating spell like you said....but all that is fixed with the other game (japanese only though).

 

[Viata]

Wizardry: Tales of Forsaken Land is better to play on emulador so battle speed is not slow as fuck anymore.

 

[aweigh]

dorar, i found the sequel to be equally slow in its animations. sure it reduced "overall" animations and animation speed but it also introduced more of them.

i didn't play further than mapping out the b1f of the sequel's intro-dungeon though, and i didn't change any of the menu options, so i'm assuming they didn't introduce a menu option to turn then off altogether.

if they did then that changes my opinion completely and i'll probably pick it up again. games like Wizardry, and in this context being Forsaken Land 2 jap-sequel, are perfect games to play without being fluent in japanese: the story is whatever, and the game is made completely by its music and atmosphere and dungeon design and the underlying mechanics are the exact same as the previous title in the series which, same as with the Elminage games, means something very important:

- if you played the previous titles (which were localized in english) then that means you know what everything in the menus does already and you're good-to-go!

 

[Dorarnae]

dorar, i found the sequel to be equally slow in its animations. sure it reduced "overall" animations and animation speed but it also introduced more of them.

i didn't play further than mapping out the b1f of the sequel's intro-dungeon though, and i didn't change any of the menu options, so i'm assuming they didn't introduce a menu option to turn then off altogether.

if they did then that changes my opinion completely and i'll probably pick it up again. games like Wizardry, and in this context being Forsaken Land 2 jap-sequel, are perfect games to play without being fluent in japanese: the story is whatever, and the game is made completely by its music and atmosphere and dungeon design and the underlying mechanics are the exact same as the previous title in the series which, same as with the Elminage games, means something very important:

- if you played the previous titles (which were localized in english) then that means you know what everything in the menus does already and you're good-to-go!

in the option you can turn off the battle animation.
and it'll look like this:

 

[Dorarnae]

looks like Elminage 3 is on 3ds now

 

[anomie]

tales of the forsaken land put me to sleep, but i only played the intro dungeon. all the dumb dialogue that i had to mash through felt so wrong for a wizardry game, and the intro dungeon wasn't even that interesting. i'd maybe give it another try if i could emulate it. i also hated how you didn't make your own party.

 

[Ventidius]

I quite liked Code Hazard, but always wanted something with the smoother interface of the newer games and the actual substance of CH. I skipped Abyss because I heard it was too easy, but after playing Operation Babel for a while I realized it wasn't very challenging either. Anyone knows if Labyrinth Cross Blood is any better in this regard? Not that I can play it given the lack of localization, but at the rate they have been going it is not entirely unreasonable to expect they eventually get around doing it.

 

[Dorarnae]

I quite liked Code Hazard, but always wanted something with the smoother interface of the newer games and the actual substance of CH. I skipped Abyss because I heard it was too easy, but after playing Operation Babel for a while I realized it wasn't very challenging either. Anyone knows if Labyrinth Cross Blood is any better in this regard? Not that I can play it given the lack of localization, but at the rate they have been going it is not entirely unreasonable to expect they eventually get around doing it.

labyrinth cross blood isn't really hard either. I finished the game with a party lvl 26-28 and the lvl cap is like 40 for the final boss.
I like experience inc. dungeon crawler for their atmosphere,music...if I want something challenging, it's elminage, original wizardry series, wizardry prisoners of battle...

 

[Viata]

Why is StarCrawlers not on first page? Nothing to do with Wiz-clone? I was thinking in buy it, but now I don't know anymore.
Also, aweigh you should fix first page. There are lot of images lost thanks to photobucket.

 

[Ventidius]

I quite liked Code Hazard, but always wanted something with the smoother interface of the newer games and the actual substance of CH. I skipped Abyss because I heard it was too easy, but after playing Operation Babel for a while I realized it wasn't very challenging either. Anyone knows if Labyrinth Cross Blood is any better in this regard? Not that I can play it given the lack of localization, but at the rate they have been going it is not entirely unreasonable to expect they eventually get around doing it.

labyrinth cross blood isn't really hard either. I finished the game with a party lvl 26-28 and the lvl cap is like 40 for the final boss.
I like experience inc. dungeon crawler for their atmosphere,music...if I want something challenging, it's elminage, original wizardry series, wizardry prisoners of battle...

I see. I agree that Exp. knows how to make their games more inviting and immersive than any other crawler dev. The art style, portraits, environs, music, interface, QOL improvements and overall presentation are some of the reasons I enjoyed SOSC so much. But then again SOSC had some fine boss/lineage encounters thrown in for good measure, which I didn't get that much from Babel. Still, I have noticed games of this style increasingly excel at many things at once. DT2 for example had a good interface and presentation(if you are ok with anime), but also complex dungeons, encounter design, and character system. Its only flaw IMO was the lack of chargen. All in all, definetely look forward to a localization of 2-2 if they kept the same level of quality. Etrian Odyssey also does most things well, again, if the "loli" art style is not too offensive to you. I actually liked the art style in Elminage Original too. Also, I remember really liking some screenshots from Wiz LoLS but never got around playing it because of the devs's bizarre choice of platforms in which to release it....

 

[Ventidius]

Why is StarCrawlers not on first page? Nothing to do with Wiz-clone? I was thinking in buy it, but now I don't know anymore.
Also, aweigh you should fix first page. There are lot of images lost thanks to photobucket.

I am also curious about this one, can anyone who played it comment on how it compares to Japanese Crawlers? I frankly don't expect it to be of the same quality, but the wait for Grimwah is making me thirsty for new crawlers.

 

[Viata]

but the wait for Grimwah

My plans for playing Grimore were fucked thanks to Cleve, so I need a new Wiz-clone.