Wizardry: New Age of Llylgamyn (Wiz 4-5 PS1 Japanese ports)

[Matador]

Finished Elminage Gothic Ibag Tower I'm gonna embark on Wizardry 5 using PS1 Japanese port. I was doubting between SNES one and PSX, but the SNES is more arcaic than Wiz 1-3 (which are fantastic and look amazing). So I'm gonna go with the PS1 version and probably play Wizardry 4 soon afterwards for the first time.

Never got too far into Wizardry 5, so this time I want to finish it. I plan to save only on town to keep things interesting and old school despite the game features save anywhere.

I plan a party in honour of our master Aweigh, close to what I think he would make to overpower the dungeon:

Samurai -> Ninja
Cleric -> Samurai
Cleric -> Samurai
Pure Ninja (called Aweigh)
Mage -> Lord
Pure Bishop

Probably will make some filler characters to help level up. If anyone wants his name on the playthrough just tell me and I will feature you.

Anyway, just discuss Wiz 4-5 and its Japanese versions. There is no thread dedicated to these games, and I think is worth it because how different are to the rest of the the titles on the franchise.

 

[Matador]

The music in the PS1 version is beautiful. The inn theme is so mesmerising, best level ups ever.

 

[Ysaye]

Funny - I was thinking about doing Wiz 5 as well sometime later this week when I get an RG350 handheld; been playing around with party ideas - currently thinking:

• Dwarven Fighter
• Dwarven Fighter
• Elven Mage -> Lord (Was thinking maybe if I get bored trying to solo with this)
• Elven Cleric
• Elven Mage -> Thief

Yes - I was going to avoid the samurai, ninja and Bishop (might have a Bishop in the town?)..but I have a spot to fill in later if I change my mind (although I was thinking just having a Thief -> Mage so that I at least have a thief most of the time).

 

[Matador]

Yes - I was going to avoid the samurai, ninja and Bishop (might have a Bishop in the town?)..but I have a spot to fill in later if I change my mind (although I was thinking just having a Thief -> Mage so that I at least have a thief most of the time).

I guess you will need a thief at least when the loot begins to be good. The first floor loot is shit so there is no urge there, you can get better stuff on the shop. If you have no bishop you will be even lower on money due to have to identify on Boltac shop and no chest gold, keep that in mind.

Anyway I'm playing blindly so far (I will try to do it until I got into some obtuse puzzle) got the Orb and I am exploring the closed north part on 1st floor. Got the party around levels 5-6 just exploring the level. No very dangerous enemies so far on 1st floor, some paralyzing ones made me go back to town and lose 500GP and a poison trap almost got my party very far from the entrance but manage to get out without dying.

First time I played Wiz 5 i remember getting into 2nd floor and starting to face dangerous and hard hitting enemies there, can't wait.

 

[Matador]

I have been investigating the Wiz 5 snapshot files on Mednafen emulator with an HEX editor because I wanted to control the alignment for some class changing and not rely on finding friendly monsters, and I have not discovered the class and alignment info yet, but a lot of other info I didn't want yet, but I guess you would like me to share:

Eventually I plan to try decipher the missing elements if I can creating characters to see patterns. There is hex editing guides for SNES version but not for PSX one, I hope my humble contribution is useful to someone.

Maybe aweigh is interested.

 

[Matador]

Jump in difficulty in 4th floor. Now I need to invest resources for winning a lot of fights. Most enemies start to have nasty status effects like level draining armour breaking, petrification, beheading,etc.

Traps are also Very dangerous, now I see how a thief can be a good class even they are less powerful on combat than ninjas. If you want money and security you should make sacrifices.

Insane how this game has 35 years, the game mechanics and level design are top tier.

The game systems: combat, character progression, party composition, enemy encounters, level design, resource management, difficult curve, stakes involved, level design; interact in an organic way I can only describe as beautiful. The game also plays fast and responsive

Save scumming and change of vision ruined Wizardry. This is the point from where they should have iterated instead of transforming Wizardry in another bland RPG for story fags.

Masterpiece.

 

[Machocruz]

Ok, Wizardy 5 on SNES is my favorite Wiz. The music is majestic, character/enemy art is very cool if a bit too grainy. The floor/wall graphics are nice and varied. Amazing atmosphere. I play like a rat bastard though and reset the rom if looks like I'm going to lose more than one character in battle. And I also use print outs of the maps to save time; hand mapping was never one of my favorite apsects of these games.

Think I'm going to fire this bad boy up now. Think I too was on the 4th floor last time I played

 

[Matador]

Think I'm going to fire this bad boy up now. Think I too was on the 4th floor last time I played

Would be great to have another bro playing at the same time. Give it a go!

I have been playing with wireframe graphics and it has been a great experience, very immersive. Party with level 12 ready to explore 5th floor. Right now enemies don't give enough XP to keep on farming 4th and they are dangerous. I want to get a couple levels to get spells and start class changing.

Let's see what's ahead.

 

[Strange Fellow]

Why on earth would you play the console version in wireframe mode? Isn't improved graphics the whole point?

 

[Tse Tse Fly]

Personally I couldn't play the ps1 version of Wizardry 5 because the levels somehow appeared even emptier than they were in the snes remake. I was quite intrigued with the Saturn version of Wizardry 1-3, might give it a try sometime.

 

[Matador]

Personally I couldn't play the ps1 version of Wizardry 5 because the levels somehow appeared even emptier than they were in the snes remake. I was quite intrigued with the Saturn version of Wizardry 1-3, might give it a try sometime.

Check Wiz 1-3 SNES versions with the translation patch if you haven't. By far the best looking Wizardries ever.

Why on earth would you play the console version in wireframe mode? Isn't improved graphics the whole point?

I started playing with graphics,but they are not great, then tried wireframe mode and it plays faster, I like it. I check every new floor if the tileset has changed to play for a while, but not changes yet until 4F. The SNES version maybe has more variety.

I find very comfortable to play on the PSX emulator. Also like the monster art a lot.

 

[zwanzig_zwoelf]

Why on earth would you play the console version in wireframe mode? Isn't improved graphics the whole point?

Wireframe mode offers instant movement and feels easier to parse, while the polygonal graphics force (?) smooth movement and are repetitive to the point it loses all appeal it had.

 

[Strange Fellow]

I meant that if you'll be playing the game with wireframe graphics anyway, why play the console version at all. Preferring controller to KB controls is something I'll never understand.

 

[Matador]

I meant that if you'll be playing the game with wireframe graphics anyway, why play the console version at all. Preferring controller to KB controls is something I'll never understand.

I'm playing on mednafen emulator, you can play it with keyboard or controller. Both work well.

My keyboard layout for playing these crawlers on emulators is:

Z,X,S,D: X, circle, triangle, square
Q, E: Shoulder buttons
arrows: digital pad.
Enter: start
shift: select.

I sometimes use the controller to lay back and be comfortable, it plays great also.

 

[Twizman]

I only play on wireframe in Wiz V psx, for the speed but also immersion as I didn't like the polygons.

 

[Strange Fellow]

I meant that if you'll be playing the game with wireframe graphics anyway, why play the console version at all. Preferring controller to KB controls is something I'll never understand.

I'm playing on mednafen emulator, you can play it with keyboard or controller. Both work well.

My keyboard layout for playing these crawlers on emulators is:

Z,X,S,D: X, circle, triangle, square
Q, E: Shoulder buttons
arrows: digital pad.
Enter: start
shift: select.

I sometimes use the controller to lay back and be comfortable, it plays great also.

You're still missing out on hotkeys for no reason except the ability to lean back.

 

[overture2112]

I have been investigating the Wiz 5 snapshot files on Mednafen emulator with an HEX editor...

I was digging around the Wiz1-3 playstation port the other day for similar reasons. Obviously it's going to be different from 4-5 but something I noticed in 1-3 that might be helpful to know (in case it comes up in 4-5) is the way it handles certain large numbers. For example, gold is actually stored where the high bytes store the number of 10,000s and the low bytes store the remainder.

In other words something like

(gold // 10000 << 16) + gold % 10000

Unrelated:

I find very comfortable to play on the PSX emulator.

what emulator do you use? I've been using epsxe and I find it's turbo button implementation to be quite cumbersome. When playing snes wizardry games using zsnes or similar I like having both a normal and turbo accept button depending on whether the fight is trash or something more important and I need to tread carefully.

 

[Matador]

I have been investigating the Wiz 5 snapshot files on Mednafen emulator with an HEX editor...

I was digging around the Wiz1-3 playstation port the other day for similar reasons. Obviously it's going to be different from 4-5 but something I noticed in 1-3 that might be helpful to know (in case it comes up in 4-5) is the way it handles certain large numbers. For example, gold is actually stored where the high bytes store the number of 10,000s and the low bytes store the remainder.

In other words something like

(gold // 10000 << 16) + gold % 10000

Unrelated:

I find very comfortable to play on the PSX emulator.

what emulator do you use? I've been using epsxe and I find it's turbo button implementation to be quite cumbersome. When playing snes wizardry games using zsnes or similar I like having both a normal and turbo accept button depending on whether the fight is trash or something more important and I need to tread carefully.

I use Mednafen. I wouldn't call it super confortable, because it has almost not interface. It's a good emulator that works very well, but a lot of customization is through config files. It's not a big problem, and you can customize a lot of things this way.

You can customize the controls and set up turbo buttons inside the emulator though.

Yeah, some of the values like the gold or EXP have that weird implementation, you can see it on the pics. When I finish the walkhtrough I'll try to get all the info left. I have the intuition that the class/race alignment will be coded in some way like in Elminage.