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 What's this all about? This is an adventure game released in 2002 by Adventuresoft, it's not just in 3D it's also the 3rd in a series of adventure games. I did a Let's Play of the first two games many years ago which are available on the archive here: https://lparchive.org/Simon-the-Sorcerer-Series/. It's not really required to play or watch the first two games, but it probably helps as this game continues straight on from where the second game left off. There is a small recap at the start of this game. A 3D adventure game from 2002? Oh yes! This game was originally developed in the traditional point 'n' click style from the first two games. You may very well be aware that adventure games became a dying genre and this game was being developed right in the middle of it all. Also during this period, LucasArts had some with success of Grim Fandango and Escape From Monkey Island. Adventuresoft decided to scrap a project which was very much in development and started completely fresh with a 3D engine. This game went through development hell, the change of engine initially causing an 18-month delay from their original release date to start with. Changes in publishers also caused further delays, two years after the game was developed it was finally released after the developers decided to finance it themselves. This is the last game that the developer's ever released. I'll go into more details a bit later on as I want to keep this brief. This isn't exactly a bad game, it's not exactly a good game either. Is this game available to buy? Yes, it's currently available to buy here: https://www.gog.com/game/simon_the_sorcerer_3d The normal price is $5.99 but it's known to be on sale from time to time. As with all GOG games, it should run on modern day PC's with no real fuss. The engine was dated even when it was released so don't expect much at in terms of optimisation. I will go into more details about some things later. LP details I will aim to post at least one update a week, some weeks I should be able to fit in a couple. My work pattern means that I can't really have fixed dates or times, unfortunately. This is my first time working with a 3D game, I'm very much used to point 'n' click but I will try to do what I normally do with transitions during the later gameplay and skipping anything that repeats. You can talk about the first two games freely as long as it doesn't spoil anything in this one, if it does have any potential spoilers then please use the appropriate tags. Let's Play: Simon The Sorcerer 3D                     
Rocket Baby Dolls fucked around with this message at 23:39 on Feb 14, 2019 |
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Dec 23, 2018 20:47
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Tried and failed miserably to beat this at some point due to dodgy controls, and just growing less fond of the characters. There was still fun to be had, just hidden under so much junk. Best of luck on the LP.
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Dec 23, 2018 21:11
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I remember trying to play this so many times, and it just kept crashing.
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Dec 23, 2018 22:51
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Happy 25th December whether you celebrate anything or not! This video is the final part of Chapter One. There's dialogue with several characters and a little bit of puzzle solving. The next chapter is going to be the real test, it opens up the game world and my memory of it is very hazy after a fifteen year absence. As for the crashes, I've yet to experience any but I haven't really pushed this game too far yet. I did a test recording before this one and had some graphical glitches which weren't too pretty. Recording this will be an interesting experience as the game forces the graphics into full screen no matter what. The maximum resolution is 1024x768, but the game stretches the graphics to fit my widescreen monitor. There's no windowed mode and no way to force a windowed mode. If I try to record the game in widescreen or fullscreen it plays back in 4:3 with black borders, I have to play the game in 16:9 but record it in 4:3. It's working so far, that's the main thing. Rocket Baby Dolls fucked around with this message at 20:30 on Dec 29, 2018 |
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Dec 25, 2018 21:48
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I started off chapter two with exploring the game world. I wanted to give an impression of the game world and the general location of landmarks and people on the map. There's one location that I didn't visit (the bridge) as it was out of the way and there's nothing to do there at the moment. I'll start actually doing things in the next video.
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Dec 29, 2018 21:08
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Ah, yes, another reason I never got very far in this. The tons and tons of running around.
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Dec 30, 2018 12:53
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This is a miserable game, even worse than the other two. Godspeed in making it through!
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Dec 30, 2018 19:18
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Several things happened during this recording, mostly a headache. I decided to take a visit to the 'Pointless Bridge' as I missed it in the last video and to show how pointless it is at this current time. I engaged in some butterfly collecting, I tried and failed to beat the RNG but I will try again in the next recording. I also showed off one of the "fun" new mechanics in this 3D environment that unlocked a new location to visit. Some further recording information: I ended up cutting out over forty minutes of video in the end. Twenty minutes were of catching butterflies, I only gave myself around 15-20 minutes to beat the paltry RNG Gods as I was planning on doing a I was expecting to make several attempts at the timed event but it spawned into frustration very quickly, it took around a dozen attempts to locate the next candy that I missed on my first try. At the end of it I mentioned about clipping a candy, I left the footage in the video to see for yourself. I still say that it should have counted. evilmiera posted:Ah, yes, another reason I never got very far in this. The tons and tons of running around. That wasn't really an issue for me originally, what usually killed it for me was getting through what I did in this recording. But I can understand what you mean, there's a whole lot of empty space with extremely little to interact with. When you first start to play this game a lot of time is just wasted on exploring a lot of nothing. gschmidl posted:This is a miserable game, even worse than the other two. Godspeed in making it through! I'm trying to be kind to this game as I'm a big fan of the first two games. I went into this with a positive attitude, but these last couple of hours have beaten it out of me. I think that I'm over the initial hump but there's still so much about this game that is lost to my memory.
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Dec 31, 2018 22:34
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Well, the writing is still as strong as it ever was. By which I mean, Simon is still an unrepentant rear end in a top hat. Aside from the money earning business and the running about it entails, this seems mostly fine. But I guess we'll see if that continues or not.
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Jan 1, 2019 05:03
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We're nearing the end of the second chapter. In this video, I managed to accomplish a few things and we get to speak to a new person. I had a game breaking bug halfway through recording this video, it wasn't nearly as painful as the candy chase from the last video though. Yapping Eevee posted:Well, the writing is still as strong as it ever was. By which I mean, Simon is still an unrepentant rear end in a top hat. If anything, Simon seems to be even worse in this game.
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Jan 5, 2019 23:19
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Good thing Simon usually gets his comeuppance at some point in most of these games. Like being put in stocks, inhabiting another body and humiliated for being an rear end to Calypso and his daughter, not to mention making Swampling cry. Even though he's ostensibly the protagonist the writers knew exactly what he was and planned accordingly.
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Jan 6, 2019 01:03
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And then, the German Simon games happened.
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Jan 6, 2019 07:55
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SelenicMartian posted:And then, the German Simon games happened. I own them both, the first is pretty bad and the second is pretty terrible. The first game is actually still available on gog.com for free if you know where to look for it. The second game is no longer available anywhere as the company who made it went under and left it in a broken state. The digital download requires an online activation to play it, the problem is that it doesn't work anymore. The only physical copies available are in German. There is a *ahem* workaround for the digital download though so not all is lost. I will probably LP them both because I hate myself.
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Jan 6, 2019 12:25
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Don't! We don't hate you and would rather you were happy. Too bad the proposed new Simon game got cancelled.
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Jan 6, 2019 12:41
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In the final German Simon they were straight up trolling the players. They advertised it had a branching storyline, and the only choice you got was near the end when you were picking which weapon to whack the big bad with. I've also played Everlight.
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Jan 6, 2019 12:50
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evilmiera posted:Don't! We don't hate you and would rather you were happy. It is a shame as it was going to be a return to the roots of the original games. It got cancelled just before they were ready to take it into the mainstream too. If anyone is interested you can read more about the cancelled sixth game here: https://web.archive.org/web/20161007074837/http://www.storybeasts.com:80/ Much of the blog is still intact, it includes some concept art and photo's as well as a couple of youtube video's.
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Jan 7, 2019 23:30
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This video is the end of chapter two. I didn't quite know what to expect with the final few sequences, they turned out to be shorter than expected so this video is only a little over eight minutes long. I'll start chapter three this weekend and if all goes well I will try to make up for this extra short recording as well.
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Jan 9, 2019 21:52
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I'd like to see a variation on the rear end in a top hat Protagonist where as the series goes on the world only gets worse and worse directly due to the character's actions. Like in the next game no one is getting to the afterlife properly due to the guidance bell being stolen.
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Jan 12, 2019 16:23
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BioEnchanted posted:I'd like to see a variation on the rear end in a top hat Protagonist where as the series goes on the world only gets worse and worse directly due to the character's actions. Like in the next game no one is getting to the afterlife properly due to the guidance bell being stolen. From what I can remember, the Deponia games do that.
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Jan 12, 2019 17:26
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BioEnchanted posted:I'd like to see a variation on the rear end in a top hat Protagonist where as the series goes on the world only gets worse and worse directly due to the character's actions. Like in the next game no one is getting to the afterlife properly due to the guidance bell being stolen. Well, there was the God of War series, particularly the third one. But the first Alundra did something interesting with a similar idea - the protagonist is genuinely trying to help people, but that causes everyone to blame him for most of what goes wrong, and since he gets upgrades when people die, it's hard to argue otherwise.
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Jan 12, 2019 18:51
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The Mega Man X series has the world get worse and worse with each sequel, and while one might think he's a good guy, in actuality X leads an authoritarian group that will claim any reploid has gone rogue if they ever dare disobey their commands, then proceed to kill them.
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Jan 12, 2019 20:08
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The start of chapter three. This video is mostly set in and around one building. Mostly because there are people to talk too and things to do, partly because I got a little lost. I've completed this game a total of one time and that was at least fifteen years ago. I've reached chapter three a total of one time before, so I pretty much went into this blind on this occasion and it kinda shows. I will probably do some prep work tomorrow on the locations and such. If I have time I'll record and upload another video too. BioEnchanted posted:I'd like to see a variation on the rear end in a top hat Protagonist where as the series goes on the world only gets worse and worse directly due to the character's actions. Like in the next game no one is getting to the afterlife properly due to the guidance bell being stolen. I'll second the Deponia series. Mainly the trilogy as the fourth game was utter trite. The Protagonist is a selfish rear end in a top hat and his actions pretty much affect the whole game world that he inhabits. The series is well worth playing, I believe the first three games are also on the LP archive. Unfortunately I'll never get to experience the God of War series as I don't own any consoles.
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Jan 12, 2019 20:25
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I'll probably get around to Alundra, I tried it but the american version had terrible balance changes, so I downloaded a fan-translation of the japanese version, but never got around to it.
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Jan 12, 2019 23:15
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I said that I'd do some prep work off screen, I changed my mind. I decided to explore Poliganis and record the experience. This video is partly down to the very short video at the end of chapter two, and also partly due to being able to only record one video next week because of a busy work schedule. It's not chock full of content but there are several new characters that we get to meet and speak too, we also get to see all of the... wonders that the town has to offer. And yes, while I was editing the video I realised that I had made a mistake... Rocket Baby Dolls fucked around with this message at 17:28 on Jan 13, 2019 |
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Jan 13, 2019 17:26
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If the Wizard's Guild guy had seen the way Simon can make his head spin around he'd have let 'em right in 
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Jan 14, 2019 02:28
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I managed to advance the plot further in this video, although after a couple of sequences my brain has been fried a little and I'm trying to remember some of the events. We get to see the Sheriff's office, we got to see a lot of it, too much in fact... Half of what I showed was by accident, I cut out a further 3-4 minutes of pure bullshit frustration... The story has been advanced further and we've progressed things with several characters. We also get to meet several new characters and engage in a bit of animal cruelty. ArchWizard posted:If the Wizard's Guild guy had seen the way Simon can make his head spin around he'd have let 'em right in I did try but Simon was being stubborn!
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Jan 17, 2019 21:32
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I love the guy declaring the roll was 34 when he threw 3 dice and one of them clearly rolled a 1. Perhaps Simon shouldn't be so quick to comment on the uneducated.
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Jan 20, 2019 19:14
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This is one of those recordings with which I felt like I had done a lot to achieve very little. But achieve something we did as it ends with some payoff towards progression. I knew that there would be a lot of running around in this game but I forgot just how much On the positive side, we're still meeting new characters and making progress. FoolyCharged posted:I love the guy declaring the roll was 34 when he threw 3 dice and one of them clearly rolled a 1. Perhaps Simon shouldn't be so quick to comment on the uneducated. Yeah, I have no idea how he came up with that number. I did notice the dice with a 1 at the time too. But I've never played any pen and paper RPG's so I wasn't sure if any of them involved multipliers and such.
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Jan 22, 2019 21:48
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Yer a Wizard, Simon! This episode seems to be more productive than the last one. There's a lot less running around and a lot more dialogue, we also get to see a couple of new locations and speak to some more new characters. I'm really skill at this game.
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Jan 26, 2019 19:55
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I'm fairly impressed with the size of this game, I have no idea how long it's going to take to complete at the moment but I intend to see it through to the end. I was kinda eager in continuing on while I have the time to do so. In this recording, we have reached an all-new area and we're getting to meet even more new characters. I'm still getting my bearings with this map, there are no fast travel locations here which is going to make things extra fun! Also, there's a couple of mini-games, including a death sequence, in this video. Enjoy! Rocket Baby Dolls fucked around with this message at 17:56 on Jan 27, 2019 |
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Jan 27, 2019 14:37
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Oh good gods, the perspective on the Rainbird looks like total rear end. And the camera turning during the Quicksand segment wasn't a great design decision either. Also clearly Simon spoke too soon, because his worst thing he's ever done for a puzzle is definitely killing and then zapping an innocent, knighted hamster.
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Jan 28, 2019 06:11
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Yapping Eevee posted:Oh good gods, the perspective on the Rainbird looks like total rear end. And the camera turning during the Quicksand segment wasn't a great design decision either. Good lord that was painful. And I'd go for literally killing a person at the start of the game myself.
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Jan 28, 2019 19:25
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You're all forgetting Simon's most heinous act: Inflicting an anchovy pizza on (presumably) innocent people. There are crimes and there are crimes 
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Jan 28, 2019 20:07
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FoolyCharged posted:Good lord that was painful.  Especially that of an unnamed NPC.ArchWizard posted:You're all forgetting Simon's most heinous act: Inflicting an anchovy pizza on (presumably) innocent people. There are crimes and there are crimes
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Jan 29, 2019 00:02
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Yapping Eevee posted:The other three didn't seem to mind! Fair enough Yapping Eevee posted:The other three didn't seem to mind! Well that's just proof they're monsters that need to be destroyed
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Jan 29, 2019 01:49
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I don't that think Simon intended to kill the hamster, although I'm kinda wondering what he thought would happen when he knocked it into the water. He did redeem himself by reviving it even if it was for his own benefit. The pizza incident is another matter. One of the players didn't want anchovies because he is allergic to them. Simon knew this when he ordered the pizza as he ordered extra cheese to cover them up. The death of the ninja is also another serious incident. Simon knew full well that if he took the peach another soul would need to be taken to make up for his impatience. The death wasn't by his hand but he was the cause of it. Simon is turning out to be a real piece of poo poo in this game.
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Jan 29, 2019 23:12
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Rocket Baby Dolls posted:Simon is turning out to be a real piece of poo poo in this game.  Simon is even more willing to screw over everyone he meets for personal gain than most other adventure game protagonists.
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Jan 30, 2019 00:39
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We're making more progress through the swamp and from what I've been reading there isn't a whole lot more left to do in this chapter. I will attempt to finish it off in the next recording. This video was uploaded earlier, I just didn't have any time before work to finish things off. Thankfully my cold seems to be at an end, the next recording should hopefully be a little smoother. Yapping Eevee posted:And that's why I've enjoyed this series. I think that's one of the reasons why I enjoyed the first two games so much. I think it was the second game where he intentionally got the three bears house demolished just so he could get inside of it.
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Jan 30, 2019 23:51
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Oh hey, so much for Simon not outright murdering something sentient with his own hands, even if it is a talking tree.
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Jan 31, 2019 05:04
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This is the end of chapter three, it didn't take as long as I thought it would as I was expecting a couple of deaths and a sequence repeat or two. We ended up doing the thing that we needed to do eventually. But you can probably guess that it's not over yet as there are still two more chapters to go. I probably should have included the test run that I had recorded which was a lot of bullshit janky camera angles and controls. Edit: (grammar) On a side note, I was playing another game recently called The Darkside Detective which had a nice easter egg:     Yapping Eevee posted:Oh hey, so much for Simon not outright murdering something sentient with his own hands, even if it is a talking tree. Yeah I was trying not to spoil that, I'm not going to spoil the thing that happens in this video either. Rocket Baby Dolls fucked around with this message at 11:29 on Feb 1, 2019 |
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Feb 1, 2019 11:18
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