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

[Viata]

Changes in dialogue and the story give it a different feel to the original.

Original? OA is a remake?

 

[Zetor]

Yeah, it is... basically a remake of the first two games in the Generation XTH series, Code Hazard and Code Breaker (in one game). I kinda lost interest about 25 hours in... and honestly it's pretty banalshitboring compared to XTH, but still decent enough so that I'll finish it when I'm out of other games. The only good design-level addition is the danger meter thing in dungeons, cranking it up to max while using that item that levels up enemies = good times. I posted a rant about OA earlier, let me track it down...

edit: here it is.
edit2: fuck yeah, go Team Mage! :respekt:

 

[Viata]

That's shit, there goes any reason to play the game then. If it was only a remake, I'd play it. But dumbed down when I can play the original? No thanks.

 

[Zetor]

Well, it's still worthwhile in that it's got the translation of the entire second game in it. There's a LOT of content in there... and some of the dungeons are pretty good (I liked the one where the team had to fight ghostly Abrams tanks and evil Statues of Liberty). It's just that all the 'streamlining' they did turned a worthy Wizardry clone into a nu-skool dungeon crawler with nonexistent character development choices and generally banalshitboring gameplay. They should've just gone all in and switched to mana points instead of Vancian spell levels, get rid of identifying, etc etc.

 

[Courtier]

And at least the portraits look less like your characters are special needs kids wearing five different halloween costumes at once...
I know there's a classic mode, but it only affects your characters, who now not only dress like clowns but also completely clash with the rest of the game.

I'd actually been wondering the whole time why my Samurai didn't have mage spells and where some of them went, now I know
But like Zetor said, there is no other way to play the second game in English.

I'm finding the level-gated gear not so bad actually, because levels come quick and you get a couple rare items to bypass level-restrictions completely.

 

[Siveon]

Lol @ me being a hobbit thief. That's the best.

I really wish the remake was just a straight port too. It's annoying how the front can only really just spam A and get stronger while the best just spams a couple of their only spells. I'm really hoping the next Experience game is free of all that streamlined shit so we could focus on how great the combat and dungeons are. Ah, c'est la vie. The dungeons are still really good, but damn, why remove the multi-classing?

Damn casul Japan. I'm really hoping we'll get the real Experience...experience with Stranger of Sword City. It's our last hope on the Vita. Who could say no to that art?

Oh, I found a quick description on NeoFag. I know, I know, I was googling for mechanics and sadly these guy's have a small dungeon-loving userbase.

Spoiler

• Life Points is the system that keeps characters alive, when you lose all life points your character can be lost or basically permadeath. Life points can be recovered but cost money, though older characters with a single life point, once you lose that, you lose the character also. So beware. Seems that also characters who will be recovering life points need rest time within the guild, so they have to be taken out of the party as they recover. There is a way to instantly recover, but it costs a lot more than the normal recovery process.
• Age system ties into the Life Point system, the young characters have more Life Points but their stats increase during level ups are lower and less max cap for rolling stats points at start. Older characters have less life points, but their stats increase when leveling is much higher along with the initial bonus points you have to roll for at the start of the game.. Characters will not age as in other Wizardry type of titles with an age system, so everything is preset from the creation choices.
• Players can level themselves up at anytime as long as EXP requirements are met. There is no automatic leveling or having to sleep in an inn to raise your level.
• Sub members who are not part of the main adventuring party will gain EXP. Therefore its highly suggested to make all of your sub characters ahead of time.
• When the main Party (PT) is eliminated its game over. There is no recovery system as in other Wizardry type of titles, Elminage being one example where you can send out another party to recover the bodies of the first.
• There is no Thief / Rogue type of class. Skills for treasure hunting can be used for all classes if selected, allowing for people to focus more on a party selection that suits them better than always having to be forced to have a single rogue type of character in the party at all times. Though the related skills will take up a talent slot, so careful consideration needs to be made.
• Magic will be un-usable again underwater, such as what was seen in Demon Gaze.
• Dancer is the new class introduced to the series. Though possibly taking on the role of being one of the more important characters as its class specific abilities allows for recovery of morale. For those who plan on doing long treks through the dungeon having a dancer in the party will allow for that with its morale recovery skills. Can also use multiple items at once, which makes them highly useful for underwater dungeons where magic is unable to be deployed.
• There are no save points in the dungeon spells to exit the dungeon quickly. There are items, but they are very expensive and highly limited in numbers. Also the randomly appearing butterfly nests can give the player a 1 time warp out of the dungeon.
• All characters start off with 2 skill slots, from lv 13 you will gain another and keep doing so till you have 7 total. Has to do with changing classes also I think. Each time you change class you can earn another skill slot. Total is 7. So 2 from the start then +5 from the 5 allocated class changes.
• Rare Items can be fed to the Mumic to give the player another chance at a "re-roll" of the same unique item in the future. The purpose of this is, if you are unhappy with the + stats on your Unique Item (Bishoptl's Hammer of Banning +2) then you can feed it to the Mumic if you come across it in the dungeon, allowing for another chance for it to redrop with better stats. Though its all up to chance if the stats will be better or worse. Just as with Demon Gaze you only pick up rare items once and if you sell it or discard it by accident its gone forever.

I bolded some of the more interesting parts, looks like it takes away a bit from Elminage, Demon Gaze, and Wizardry. Even has aging mechanics? I'm getting nothing on crafting. Also, it's apparently a sequel to Students of the Round. We're probably not getting that one then.

 

[Siveon]

I heard Japanese licensing costs are crazy expensive. Apparently, most devs don't bother because the costs overshadow their projected profits.

Hell, even fucking Square Enix didn't want to keep Crisis Core on the PSN store because they would've had to pay for some music license. That is just batshit insanity.

 

[Courtier]

Their small blobber-loving fanbase is so tiny and different compared to the rest of NeoSJW, they might as well be on a different site. The guy that made the SiSC thread makes pretty much all of them. All of them are colossal weebs and half of those dudes speak moon, ordering Jap LEs while hugging their Werdna bodypillow. This keeps out the rest of the site's trannies. Dorarnae (DRPG 4 ever on youtube, his channel got taken down before) is a regular poster. The threads for Jap-only games are pretty good reads, you can find out how games work long before they get localized/translated (if ever).

But I would still rather get waterboarded for a week and thrown in a single cell with Bubba than make an account on there.

 

[Viata]

It's so expensive most publishers only buy license for battling voices. That's why it's so easy to hear japanese voice during battles in some jrpg.

 

[aweigh]

i finally cleared and completely drew by hand the first floor of wiz 3 legacy of llylgamin. my party's already at level 7!! jesus.

this is literally the first time i have ever mapped out a maze by hand. i know it'll seem cliched saying this but... WOW THE DIFFERENCE WOW THE IMMERSION.

i've been playing multiple crawlers simultaenously past weeks so i have the "genre" fresh in my mind and i have to say mapping out this floor was the best "fun" i've had so far playing a dungeon crawler. i felt like i did something meaningful instead of just staring at the minimap/spamming the map button and basically playing "move the arrow through the lines" instead of playing "the game".

the experience is so different i really can't even put it into words right now. now don't get me wrong i completely understand the need for some type of automated mapping, be it spell/item/whatever; these modern iterations have gotten so bloated and more to the point their maze design is ABYSMALLY OBNOXIOUS in comparison to the simple brilliance of the first levels of wiz 1/2/3 (i have a playthrough going on each; but gonna stick with wiz3 as it is the most enjoyable and difficult of the first three).

looolol just trying to imagine drawing by hand elminage gothic's tsun-cave's b1 ahahha. sure it can be done, and without any problems! but the thing is (i know that floor by fucking memory/heart by now) the thing is it's not horribly designed. it would be sooooo unbelievably tedious drawing all those dead end hallways and obnoxious t-shapes and cross-shapes, ugh, and we can't forget how starfish lurves making you walk down a super long winding hallway for no reason whatsoever right from the start. of course obviously wizardry games feature all of those failings and more, i know, but the maze designs so far are logical. absolutely every single door and every single hallway connected PERFECTLY to its corresponding x:y point. every hallway had a purpose.

or how about drawing by hand babel sphere from gtxh 1? another lewl. fuck that.

the best dungeon in e: gothic is the royal tomb; and the more i think about it it's because it's ironically the simplest one with very logical design. i would have zero problems drawing that dungeon out as instead of being obnoxiously designed as a dead-end screensaver every room and every hallway in the royal tomb serves a specific purpose. no filler there. no crazy stupid "shaped" areas that are there only to make you use your WASD keys more and nothing else.

now watch me take it all back once i reach level 5 hah i read it's a real killer and super hard to navigate... "fucking wiz devs can't make a fucking maappp"

 

[Zetor]

Manual mapping in dungeon crawlers can be fun... but I only find it enjoyable if making a map is actually useful. This requires that a) the dungeon level should be revisited in the future multiple times b) the map design should be at least somewhat interesting c) the dungeon should actually require mapping. Too many modern crawlers make labyrinthine maps that are trivial to navigate even doing something as simple as "follow the left wall", and making their dungeon levels essentially a one-shot affair. Yea, not mapping that.

Counterexample: The Summoning. It's not a dungeon crawler, but it had an absolutely brutal teleport maze -- basically a ton of identical-looking 4x4 rooms with teleports in their corners taking you to another room. It was actually part of the copy protection (the manual had a map), and defeating that felt like a proper challenge. I placed trash items on each node, and slowly managed to map the connections between them. In a few hours, bam, I got the foolproof route from entrance to exit! Too bad it was only really useful when replaying the game, since you only had to go through the maze once.

 

[aweigh]

shit just got real. ronins and ninjas with insta-kill and the ronins open encounters with sleep spell and/or lahalito.

"motherfucking siveon has been slept nigga!! goddamn zetor's catching ZzZ's yooo u better spam confirm key faster sun"

 

[Siveon]

Sorry, I don't get much sleep at night.

As for mapping, the first dungeon crawler I ever beat was Etrian Odyssey. So, I want to do it for pretty much any game, but some of 'em (Like Abyss) don't let me. Fucking built-in maps. I'm glad software like Grid Cartographer exists so I can do it easily on the PC without pulling out my graph paper. Though you do feel a little more IMMURSHUN when doing it by hand.

Moral of the story: There needs to be more 3DS DRPGs that clone Etrian Odyssey's mapping.

 

[Crooked Bee]

Lots of dungeon crawlers are trivial without mapping. I mapped out Dark Heart of Uukrul and the Wizardry games by hand in Microsoft Excel, because dungeon exploration is a huge part of what these games are about.

Grid Cartographer is indeed a great help in that regard. Too bad it got released too late for my Wiz & DhoU playthroughs.

 

[aweigh]

yeah thanks for bringing up mapping not-by-hand. i should take a pic and upload my "map" so far of 2f... it looks like a freaking schizo on bad uppers drew it, nary a straight line in sight. it's starting to fill up with humorous/pathetic little circles that denote GO-TO links because i draw it as i go, literally step by step so to speak, and even though everything matches up perfectly in-game in my paper fucking hallways be floating upside shit looks like hogwarts.

i'm gonna start using my tablet's excel-equivalent or whatever to do it: that way i can have it laid in front of me on the desk right in front of me/the monitor for quick referencing/mapping.

2f is already leagues more "maze-y".

edit: i had never thought about the fact that in these wizardry titles once you exit a floor through any type of warp you have to make your way back to wherever you were on yer lil legs. once again the interplay between having internalized the 1f and gotten to know it in many ways that could not be equivalent to having had an automated map i could see at any moment means i can zip my way through 1f and on to 2f in less than 1 minute. and not because of just memorization but because i "Get it". but i'll stop going on about this for now because these floors are gonna get much more maze-y and i don't want to pat myself too much on the back for having done 1 floor and the half of the second. i'm eager to see bona-fide greenberg designed mazes and trawl thru them, as so far all ofmy real crawler experiences have been with the likes of elminage/gxth1/coh; time for the real stuff.

btw, did bradley have any hand in wiz1-3 or wiz4? i know he was heavily involved for wiz5 and from wiz6 onwards the decline commenced, but what exactly was his role before taking over?

 

[Siveon]

I believe Grid Cartographer has an android app.

 

[CryptRat]

I take more and more notes but I haven't mapped any game ever yet. As a child, it wasn't necessary for Dungeon Master, Eye of the beholder 1-2, Legend of Faerghail (maybe some of these games had an automap, I can't remember), but in Bard's Tale 3 for example I didn't go far (2 teleports if I remember right) because of that, and I went even less far in any "real western" Wizardry I've tried. Maybe I should start by playing some Etrian Odyssey to begin mapping.
I need to play Fate : Gates of Dawn because I have got the box version but on my Amiga the game crashed each time I entered a town (the funny fact is I still had a lot of fun with the game). I also need to play Shining in The Darkness. I don't know when I will have the time to do that with all those recent RPGs I also want to try.

 

[aweigh]

uhh yea i just tried to use the tablets excel and in less than 2 minutes i wanted to smash the thing. there's no fucking way i'm mapping shit using a touchscreen. time to download the free version of grid cartographer.

 

[Anthony Davis]

Here is all the games I have installed in my pc that I wish to finish(and re-finish some) in 2016. I do love Dungeon Crawler/First person RPG. I'm already at Wizardry 4(because I was doing Wizardry marathon):

Took me the whole day to configure every game(that is a rom using a emulator) to run as soon as I click them(couldn't do with PS1, but it opens the games folder so that's good) and to make icon for each one.

I have saved this as an amazing reference so that I can prepare my own list as well. This is truly well done and a good reference for me. I was JUST talking with fellow Obsidian programmer, Dan Spitzley, this weekend about good dungeon crawlers and getting them all setup to play.



Thank you!

ps.
The wallpaper is p.sweet too, what's it from?

 

[Courtier]

what's it from?

剣の街の異邦人 Stranger of Sword City, English release on PSVita March 22/25 (NA/PAL)

 

[Anthony Davis]

what's it from?

剣の街の異邦人 Stranger of Sword City, English release on PSVita March 22/25 (NA/PAL)

Awesome! I've added that to my "keep an eye out for - if my budget will allow it - list."

Is there a better ROM place for emulating these games on my PC than Emuparadise?

 

[Siveon]

what's it from?

剣の街の異邦人 Stranger of Sword City, English release on PSVita March 22/25 (NA/PAL)

Awesome! I've added that to my "keep an eye out for - if my budget will allow it - list."

Is there a better ROM place for emulating these games on my PC than Emuparadise?

The ISO Zone, or common torrenting sites. *cough*

You won't be able to emulate this though. At least, the English version. I don't think the PC version requires emulation, I don't believe it's that old.

 

[aweigh]

holy shit. i'm 100% lost. i'm out of dumapics and i'm out of milwas, and while i had milwa on beforehand i stumbled through several one-way secret doors and now that i can't see them anymore (they're 1-way anyway) i'm literally bumping in the dark. trying to get back i actually fucking reached the ladder to the 3rd floor. jesus. my party is strong enough to auto-battle this floors enemies but eventually my HP will whittle down; no healing spells left and you know potions of healing cost 1000 gp.

this is some intense shit. lack of teleport spell is like the difference between playing a game in normal difficulty or playing it in iron-man. it's the same tension. man they really ramped up the shenanigans already in only the 2f.

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look closely at that. note where i am and where i need to get to. for the life of me i don't see any way through.

edit: i did it. yay. i was being retarded and trying to find a way through in a part of the map i'd already explored. i was going in circles. i noticed one door i hadn't tried, and got to the southern part of the map and then some blind luck bumping into walls got me thru 2 secret doors.

 

[Courtier]

Emuparadise is good. For specific translations and e.g. prepatched psp isos you will have to look around and try places like nicoblog.

I recently found a translation project list of JRPGs on GBAtemp. None of these are blobbers, but it may have something ye readers of this thread like.
https://gbatemp.net/threads/wip-english-translation-projects-list.369474/

Has stuff like La Pucelle, of which the psp rerelease never saw a localization.

One fully translated title definitely worth mentioning from that list is Grand Knights History, a defunct online RPG for the psp by Vanillaware, with a ''training mode'' which is actually a lengthy singleplayer campaign (dialogue, quests, bosses and all).

Gorgeous art/animation and great partybuilding.

 

[Siveon]

Wth, vanillaware made a turn-based game?! Sign me up.

I knew of this translation, but I didn't know it was turn based. CFW PSP's 5 life.