i feel they should have allowed optional option to enable in-dungeon saving and then that would disable the map auto-walking.
presently the way this game is laid out for the player it is like a checklist:
- enter area.
- auto-walk to ambush spot(s).
- clear out the floor's ambush spots and/or simply need to return to town because you've accumulated loot/EXP and...
- ...you need to SAVE THE PROGRESS.
remember that original Wizardry games did not utilize anything even remotely resembling this system: original release apple II / DOS Wizardry games, up until Wiz 5, hard-saved the entire game state upon every "tile interaction", which includes spinning around in place. a total wipe from a trapped chest would not end the game but rather send you to the town where you could use your back-up chars to go rescue some corpses or simply create a whole new party.
(or re-load from your hard-copied diskettes which you, OF COURSE, made ever so diligently every level-up, tee-hee).
that means the tension was always there because... every. single. thing. you. did. MATTERED.
in a fight? yeah, it's literally the most important fight of your life... better win it, yo or the game will save immediately as soon as the last character's status changes from "good" to "dead"! oh, you won? well homie, better put on your Depends because it's time to pray your shitty Thief doesn't fuck up disarming this chest. SHIT! NO! Magnetics melted all your armor!! aaaaaaaaaaargh... oh well, moving on!
however the way stranger in sword city is designed it makes dungeon exploration feel like filling out a checklist, and once an area is "cleared" the game's auto-walking is so fast, much faster than manually going there yourself, that you never really truly achieve a real sense of deep, dank dungeoneering.
the prospect of "finding your way back" is not only something that is completely off the table, even if it already was off the table with free auto-map (at least you have to bring it up and study the map itself); now all you have to do is auto-walk back to home base in super-speed and you never need to learn the area design or layout.
and *because* you can only save your progress in town then this in turn puts this whole "routine" i have outlined above into what is basically COMMON USE, or rather "STANDARDIZED". i don't know about anyone else but the last thing a Wiz-clone, or any dungeon crawler, is to be rote.
wizardry empire series utilize a similar iron-man style save system as the original wizardry games (1-5 only), and the elminage series utlizes a save anywhere, save at any time approach that was chosen specifically because the modus operandi is to have the elminage player literally always be exploring. sure, there is no need to fear the next combat, or the next chest, because you have plenty of saves literally from seconds before... but the game's mechanics are so intricately sophisticated and the Wiz-clone design philosophies are polished to such unbelievable levels of *shine* that you are never really even thinking about how "all this saving is reducing the game's tension", rather you are always thinking "mmm must keep playing elminage, must reach next floor, game is so good". nothing rote whatsoever.
"ambush zones" seem to me to be the most casualized, or... rather, the most SIMPLE MINDED interpretation of classic Wizardry fixed encounters and how those are layered expertly into the actual dungeoneering. something which was carried over and arguably BETTERED in the elminage series.
however in here it comes off as a very... yes, like i said, a very simple minded implementation of an idea that does not work as well as the idea it was taken from.
you know what, taking into account SSiSC's town-saving and agonizingly slow rate of EXP progression they actually should have eschewed with the Wizardry-style levelling only in town and have characters level on the spot.
that would have injected a little "spice" into the routine checklist.
EDIT: all that said the game is mechanically as sound as anything else. Wizardry-lite so to speak in terms of numbers but the numbers are solid. It is basically the exact same systems from Generation XTH: Code Hazard but simplified and, amazingly, in this case BETTERED due to this. a rare occurance.
i've railed against exp. inc's / team muramasa's almost pornographically offensive crafting systems before and the blatant, desperate gameplay strings the devs are using to make the player's experience almost completely centered around the manipulation and storage of tons of item types and item pieces.... but in THOSE games you could save inside the dungeon.
i can't believe i'm typing this but: considering SSiSC's town-save system... it is actually the first exp. inc / team muramasa Wiz-clone to actually have been designed from all angles with the entire focus on doing rote "area farming" and then returning to town to craft!
ooops.
er... except they excluded the crafting system in the one game they'eve ever made where it would most naturally dovetail into the overall "flow" of the standard playing session... instead of auto-rushing back to town only to save, it could have been a moment of satisfaction as the crafting commenced.
it would have also been a welcome break from the monotone ambush trawling.
it's crazy stuff... because in all of their PREVIOUS games the crafting system actively detracted, whereas in this one it would have fit perfectly.
Denpasoft@Denpasoft_pr
