Wizardry The Wizardry Series Thread

[Humbaba]

"...ripe with wine and orgasm"

(I don't ever wanna hear about cringy writing in modern games ever again, shit's been here since the beginning)

 

[Dorateen]

It's a fitting and well-phrased description of the Magna Dane's debauchery and hedonism. The difference is, in modern games this kind of behaviour is celebrated.

 

[Humbaba]

well-phrased

In what fucking universe lmao

 

[Lukifell]

Why did all of these major series (Wizardry, Ultima, Bards Tale, Might and Magic) fade away while the games inspired by them (Final Fantasy / Dragon Quest, others?) continue to thrive?

 

[Daemongar]

Why did all of these major series (Wizardry, Ultima, Bards Tale, Might and Magic) fade away while the games inspired by them (Final Fantasy / Dragon Quest, others?) continue to thrive?

Well, it's the way things are. The ying/yang of RPGs. I remember in the 80's I was complaining that Wizardry wasn't giving "Hunt the Wumpus" and Logo it's due. The same thing will happen as Final Fantasy will fade and the games it inspired will rise to prominence. Games like Devil May Cry 1, 4, and 5, Honey Select 2, and games like Shenmue 3.

 

[KeighnMcDeath]

Wizardry is still quite alive but mutated and spinning.

Bard's Tale could keep going if Fargo wanted to or let out an ever expanding Dungeon Creation kit.

Might & Magic is doomed to ubisoft... it is probbly fucked.

Ultima was trying with mobile but got SMASHED in about a year by EA because they want profits and don't give a fuck about IP. So much work was put into that last work too.

Shroud of the Avatar is also just a huge disappointment because of $$$

once in a while an enthusiast puts up pet projects to try and recapture "yester-year," think about the Deathlord project.

 

[Morpheus Kitami]

Why did all of these major series (Wizardry, Ultima, Bards Tale, Might and Magic) fade away while the games inspired by them (Final Fantasy / Dragon Quest, others?) continue to thrive?

Two of them tried to branch out into the more multiplayer focused side of games. Ultima Online happened, and there were two other MMO attempts, neither of which went well. Might and Magic is still going, but every attempt by Ubisoft since Heroes 5 in the overall franchise hasn't really done much. There's been like three or four MMOs, should tell you how well those went.
The other two, well Wizardry isn't dead, there's been many releases since the golden days. You can see which of them interest you over in the JRPG forum. Admittedly, outside of that there isn't anything, unless you count Grimoire. The Bard's Tale is interesting, since it has a weird history compared to the other two. Dragon Wars was originally supposed to The Bard's Tale 4, which is why the series originally died out. Then there was the PS2 game, which was one of those weird action-adventure games based off a strange license that were a few of back in the PS2 era. I understand that even if it isn't that much like the series its still a good game.
So I'd say that the reason why they disappeared is that they had a stroke of really rotten luck, despite how popular they were once upon a time. Though even if they all had bad luck around the millennium, they probably would have been hit hard in the latter half of the '00s and the first half of the '10s.

 

[Zed Duke of Banville]

Bard's Tale could keep going if Fargo wanted to or let out an ever expanding Dungeon Creation kit.

Brian Fargo and Interplay did release a Bard's Tale Construction Set in 1991, though it apparently never gained the traction of SSI's later Unlimited Adventures Fantasy Construction Kit for the Gold Box series.

 

[Lukifell]

That’s too bad. I grew up on stuff like Wizardry / the Gold Box games.

I know the Japanese have been doing stuff with Wizardry, but so far I’m not too impressed. There hasn’t been that much innovation.

I do think the Town+Dungeon setup is the way to go... there’s just something about it. It feels good to have a “rest” area, a nice contrast to the oppressive dungeoncrawling. Have any of the newer Wizardry clones added any depth to the Town aspect at all? I haven’t played Etrian yet. I know Lost Souls kind of made an attempt with the NPC quests, but it felt rather halfhearted, and the dungeon itself felt extremely rushed and slapped together, like an unfinished game.

Never heard of Unlimited Adventures / Construction Set. Nice.

 

[newtmonkey]

Lukifell Have you played Elminage Original? It has the same setup as Wizardry (town+dungeon), but multiple towns and dungeons (the overall structure is very nonlinear), an alchemy system in towns to upgrade equipment, and NPCs in towns and dungeons that provide plenty of generally interesting side quests.

 

[Fowyr]

Brian Fargo and Interplay did release a Bard's Tale Construction Set in 1991, though it apparently never gained the traction of SSI's later Unlimited Adventures Fantasy Construction Kit for the Gold Box series.

A lot of FRUA's popularity was due to hacked modules that added a lot of new things. Probably, BTCS was less powerful. Never worked with it, but dabbled with FRUA and Blades of Exile back in the day.

 

[Humbaba]

Why did all of these major series (Wizardry, Ultima, Bards Tale, Might and Magic) fade away while the games inspired by them (Final Fantasy / Dragon Quest, others?) continue to thrive?

Because Dragon Quest is literally the most famous and successful video game series in Japan.

 

[Humbaba]

And now I'm done with 7. Basically the same game like 6 but with better graphics and a mapping feature.

Now I can finally play 8, which is the only reason why I even bothered with 6+7. I love importing save files. Shame I can't play the cutscenes because they make the game freeze for some reason. If I can't find a fix then I'll just get rid of the video files.

 

[Catacombs]

And now I'm done with 7. Basically the same game like 6 but with better graphics and a mapping feature.

What's your current party?

 

[Humbaba]

Very nice to see that everything I meant to import actually imported.

What's your current party?

Dramatis Personae:

(John) Moblus: M-Human-Lord

Borko (Hohol): M-Mook-Samurai

Tomiko: F-Faerie-Ninja

Ana(stasia): F-Hobbit-Bard

Hugh (short for Hubertus): M-Human-Ranger

Cass(andra): F-Elf-Valkyrie

 

[Humbaba]

Apparently people have had similar issues relating to the cutscenes (not quite the same as mine) and there are fixes but those involve some bullshittery about some glide wrapper called dgvoodoo, with which you can switch to directx rendering instead of glide or whatever the fuck but that's not an option for me anyway, because macs don't do directx. Don't really know how that relates to video files anyway but it works allegedly. So I just renamed the Flics folder where the video files are and watched the intro cutscenes in a separate player.

The game itself runs great aside from some weird hitching if I move the camera too fast. Widescreen looks good too. I know it technically stretches things but the game doesn't look unnaturally stretched at all. The most important thing is that the UI and menus don't become microscopic like they do with other games that were never meant to be in modern resolutions.

After a particularly nasty crash relating to cutscene fiddling I can no longer run the game through steam for whatever reason but that's ok because this mac port is literally just a wine job any tech-illiterate dumbass like me could do in 5 seconds with porting kit and I can simply run the .exe file via wine completely independently with steam turned off. DRM defeated. By itself, oddly enough.

 

[Lukifell]

Just bought Elminage Original...

It’s okay, but wow, the interface. It has the same kind of floaty Windows feel as Lost Souls, except worse.

You go into an encounter, it takes 5 seconds for the camera to pan down to the battle... then you have to click on each character’s actions... and the feel of this is terrible, especially because the menus aren’t extremely responsive to the mouse cursor, there are times where you’re clicking attack but the menu didn’t register the cursor yet and it does something else like defend.

Buying, selling, identifying, equipping, doing literally anything in the game, is hamstrung by this horrible interface.

Is there a way to change this somehow? As it stands, it’s much worse than the interface in Wiz8, Wiz7. Even the SNES port of Wiz1 and 5 feel superior, because at least in those games you can fly through the menus with key presses instead of clicking on menu buttons that aren’t always responsive.

 

[Darth Canoli]

Is there a way to change this somehow?

Nope! You're stuck with that shit.
It's a shame, the game behind the terrible UI is great but really, I tried 3 times at least Elminage Gothic and 1-2 times original and I never get very far, it's just too tedious.

 

[BlackGoat]

You can go into the options and speed up messages and turn off a lot of the movement and battle animations in the Elminage games and using the keyboard is definitely better and faster than using the mouse.

Also, pressing E repeats all the attacks of the previous round so you can blow thru trash mobs pretty fast. It's not quite as good as being able to use keyboard shortcuts in the old dos Wiz games, but still zippy

 

[kirin]

 

[samuraigaiden]

What is a blockchain game?

 

[RatTower]

I'd have to guess but I'd say, it's a multiplayer game focused on buying and selling in-game goods (probably some sort of collectible). Those goods are probably created from resources you can purchase in an in-game store or by grinding for 20 hours.
In those 20 hours, the software will likely mine for crypto in the background and it might even throw you a bone by leaving 0.00001 crypto units in your "possession".
The big gimmick in these games seems to be "Play to earn", cause apparently, some people would voluntarily waste their free time playing trash, as long as they get a few pennies for it.


Aaaany way, I got Wizardry: The Five Ordeals gifted a while ago and I was wondering:
Is there an (unofficial) language patch for the game's main scenarios?
The interface seems to be fully translated but all messages are Japanese.

So far it seems pretty alright. I am missing a command to repeat the combat instructions from last turn though (like in Elminage).

 

[Humbaba]

The steam version is such fucking jank. I can now run the game via steam again, don't know what fixed that particular issue. But it doesn't take the widescreen resolution I set in the nglide config file and randomly crashes on startup. The kicker is that I don't have those issues if I run the .exe directly without steam. It's like they want me to circumvent the DRM.

EDIT: Out of curiosity, I tried converting the game into an app with wine bottler and experienced the same problems. Leads me to think that something in that process is causing some weird shit.

 

[Rinslin Merwind]

Soo, during my misadventures in Wizardry 8 I decided to level up Divinity with Divine magic in room with toxic box. After leveling up Divine Magic to 100, I noticed that Divinity stopped at 90.
I thought "HMM weird, oh well maybe will level up by itself later". Later in Arnika I tried to level up psionics with divine trap and noticed that Divinity went up too. I realized that divine trap belongs to two books and reloaded just to not fuck shit up. I went leveleing through mindread
Later it's turned out that I fucked up anyway and ended up with Psionics -73 and Mental magic -100 (And Divinity was 97 for some reason). Soo, is there a way to fix this without restarting walkthrough? I mean, it is possible to level up spellbooks when governed skillls all at 100?

 

[Humbaba]

The extreme difference in portraits between 6+7 and 8 makes it feel like a TV show that got cancelled without a conclusion and then got a gritty early 2000's reboot/continuation with an all new cast.