So, I think Im pretty much done with the post game now. Some impressions (bunch of spoilers for the rest of the post):
Dungeon design is mostly excellent. Very "clean", no pointless hallways linking areas together so that you dont get the "theme park" feel of lesser crawlers. A very good example of this would be castle B4, even though the principal design is absolutely theme-based (you have a teleport area, a switch hunt area etc.) it doesnt feel disjointed due to very good overall integration of the dungeon sub-areas. They also have a nice variety of dungeon design principles with some nice use of vertical connectivity, like in Dungeon 1 and 3.
Itemization is excellent. THAC/AC considerations combined with special properties, resistances etc. give broad and flexible party building possibilities and allow you to experiment with plenty of tactical setups. It's not perfect of course, like the spear class of weapons was really horrible and you always had better options at the same equipment tier, and some more parameters like weapon speed modifiers would have been nice, but it's still a really excellent system overall.
The item trading is huge fun and massively addictive (20-25 hours out of the 96 Ive played were probably in the shop), but they probably couldnt figure out how to balance it perfectly; as it is, up to around castle B4/B5 trading is more beneficial than spending the same amount of time grinding monsters (esp. since gold = xp and you can always sell stuff you get via trading that's expensive but useles to you) so you end up with weapons way beyond what could drop at the highest dungeon level you can safely handle, at basically no risk. Starting from castle B6 however trading is basically useless for the rest of the game. Maybe a solution would have been to tie available trading results to your current party level.
As good as most of the dungeon design is, castle B7 and B8 are horrible. I cant remember the last time I saw such uninspired, insipid level design. It reminds me of the final areas of Lufia 2 in how bad, bare-bones and unfinished those levels seem. Aweigh should do one of his comparison picture posts to illustrate how terrible they are compared to the other levels. Basically they're a square inside of a square surrounded and filled out by useless, empty space and useless, empty rooms. At first I thought B8 was like a short break before the finale to give you a breather (you drop from B6 to B8, boss is at B7), but B7 is exactly the same shit. It's such an anticlimax especially compared to the high design quality in the entire rest of the game that it really deflated some of my enthusiasm about the game (didnt even map those floors). Why would you sabotage the final 25% of your final dungeon?
Also, as a first time player of this series it didnt bother me at all, but I watched some videos on Wiz Empire 1, and like Dorarnae said, Empire 2s entire final dungeon is copy/pasted right out of Empire 1. But that's not all. The entire post-game dungeon is identical as well; every tile, every trap, every chute - absolutely identical. So I completely understand his low ranking of the game because of re-using 11/20 dungeon maps, even though it didnt matter to me at all. I enjoyed the final dungeon (which you pretty much have to in order to complete the post game, as you'll be seeing it a lot).
So after those ramblings I have some actual gameplay questions. Mainly, I have no idea whether Im done with the game. What I did so far: beat the Fausts, get his diary, get the key to Rommel, fight Rommel over the diary, and beat Lilith. None of those events indicated any kind of closure to the game, so I'ld like to know whether there's anything left to do? You can fall down a chute in bonus dungeon B3 into what seems to be an empty area, but the only thing Ive found there so far are random encounters with Lilith. Anything else?
Also, what does the item "Statue of Peace" do? The description says it "ContradictsRace (sic)", but it doesnt seem to do anything if I keep it in my inventory, and I cant use it to change my race or anything.
Finally, what's the status of further Wizardry translations? I read that Empire 1 is in progress, but how about Prisoners of the Battles instead/afterwards? It would seem to be an easy translation since everything apart from game text can be switched to English already, everyone who's played it is gushing over how awesome it is, it has a great aesthetic with beautiful music, and it's 100% fresh content. Also it's available for PC. I'ld be willing to help out with proofreading/editing the draft if that's any help.
So yeah, thanks again for the translation, and I can wholeheartedly recommend this game to anyone that hasnt played Empire 1 if you're looking for a crawler with excellent dungeon design, complex itemization and flexible party building options.
hory shet
