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PurpleXVI posted:Now, truth be told I don't entirely know what the stats do. I mean, okay, some of it's obvious. Speed makes you act faster and be harder to hit, Strength makes you hit harder and able to carry more, Piety gives you more mana, etc. but the game also insists that, say, Intelligence "influences" lockpicking ability. However, at no point does it give a direct, listed percentage or skill point bonus indicated anywhere, so maybe it means that you learn the skills more quickly passively? Neither the manual or in-game tooltips deign to specify it in any detail. Probably there's a FAQ out there that has a very precise definition but I'm not a nerd who needs FAQs. I got curious and figured I'd go find some FAQ for juicy juicy numbers. I found some, but not nearly as many I expected. In particular, no one knows how controlling attributes work exactly. The basic idea is that if your controlling attribute is low then the associated skill goes up slower when killing crabs, but no exact details. They have reverse-engineered the combat formulas pretty well. Some tl;dr notes:
Most of the details are compiled in this horrifying crime against formatting, please don't read it.
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Jul 14, 2020 19:15
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EclecticTastes posted:But, it gets better, in that signing away the IP was likely done specifically to spite Electronic Arts, who allegedly pulled a lot of strings to gently caress over Sir-Tech as much as possible in order to prevent the successful release of Wizardry 8 and force them into a buyout so EA could acquire the Wizardry license (essentially doing to Sir-Tech what they'd previously done to Origin Systems). Of course, while Sir-Tech was forced into insolvency, EA failed to prevent Wizardry 8 from being released, and the IP was sold to a company that would actually use it well, so, like Ultima VII, Wiz8 (and all the Japanese entries) exists in large part as a giant "gently caress you" to EA. I knew nothing about Sir-tech or Wizardry going into this thread, but I suddenly have a huge amount of respect for them and I wish all the best for the Japanese Wizardry games, may they flourish for as long as video games survive.
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Jul 14, 2020 19:37
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Omnicrom posted:I knew nothing about Sir-tech or Wizardry going into this thread, but I suddenly have a huge amount of respect for them and I wish all the best for the Japanese Wizardry games, may they flourish for as long as video games survive. The other big thing to know about Wizardry is that Wizardry IV is one of the wildest rides in video game history.
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Jul 14, 2020 19:57
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Cythereal posted:It's D. W. Bradley. I think every single game of his had voluptuous women NPCs or enemies with their tits out. I don't have much exciting to add to the development hell that was Wiz8, but I would like to point out how gloriously weird D.W. Bradley's photo was in the Wiz6 documentation. It is definitely the hair, face, and background of a man that would insist that the Amazon enemies must be topless for authenticity reasons:  Click here for the full 457x645 image
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Jul 14, 2020 21:25
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John Stossel, is that you?
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Jul 14, 2020 21:26
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I have started this game a number of times before but never finished it so I will be eager to see the bits I have never gotten to. I've never had a party that didn't have a Bard in it. The free only limited by your stamina sleep spell they start with via their instruments is too good to pass up.
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Jul 14, 2020 21:38
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EclecticTastes posted:The other big thing to know about Wizardry is that Wizardry IV is one of the wildest rides in video game history. I'd totally forgotten that was Wizardry. That would definitely explain why Werdna is in the party though. I also read the LP of Tales of the Forsaken Lands a little while ago. Honestly most of what I know of Wizardry is that it's that game that inspired Etrian Odyssey and also kind of the generic fantasy setting in Japanese media along with Dragon Quest.
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Jul 14, 2020 22:10
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Omnicrom posted:I'd totally forgotten that was Wizardry. That would definitely explain why Werdna is in the party though. I also read the LP of Tales of the Forsaken Lands a little while ago. The real bummer is that only very few of the Japanese games inspired by Wizardry adopted any of the rad sci-fi elements added during the Dark Savant trilogy. Also, many of the cultural references and in-jokes were lost on the Japanese audience, so they took the whole thing completely seriously and so the Japanese installments are honestly kind of dreary.
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Jul 14, 2020 22:50
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EclecticTastes posted:The real bummer is that only very few of the Japanese games inspired by Wizardry adopted any of the rad sci-fi elements added during the Dark Savant trilogy. Also, many of the cultural references and in-jokes were lost on the Japanese audience, so they took the whole thing completely seriously and so the Japanese installments are honestly kind of dreary. If I remember correctly isn't there a blade that is named after a food processor that's a joke outside of Japan but the Japaneses don't have the brand so they missed the joke and took it 100% seriously?
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Jul 14, 2020 22:54
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Don't go dungeon delving without your very own Blade Cuisinart!
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Jul 14, 2020 22:57
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EclecticTastes posted:The real bummer is that only very few of the Japanese games inspired by Wizardry adopted any of the rad sci-fi elements added during the Dark Savant trilogy. Also, many of the cultural references and in-jokes were lost on the Japanese audience, so they took the whole thing completely seriously and so the Japanese installments are honestly kind of dreary. Yeah, they tend to stick very closely to the original Wiz trilogy. There are Japanese Wizardry games released in the past decade that stick to the original 8 classes and 5 races.
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Jul 14, 2020 23:27
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Part 002: Virtuous Thieves So the vote seems to be pretty clearly in favour of stealing everything but not killing most people. When there's an interesting result from murder, or a we encounter some new factions of people, I will of course put up the vote again so you guys can decide what encounter you want me to get my face staved in by next time. Without further ado... welcome to me getting owned by Burz. Skip the video if you just want the highlight screenshots and explanations, though the video does contain Chewbecka's voice snippet for when an ally goes down. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MfFJQm3ETIU   Sneak up behind Burz, initiate combat, set everyone to target him. Seems simple enough, right?  It isn't, though. Firstly Burz is real tough, he can take more punishment than Gregor.  Secondly, his "Pray to the Spirits"-move, as indicated by the lack of space, it's a summon ability, and I thought maybe since it had bugged out in this one case, I'd be free to own Burz on my own time.   Because his personal damage output is low, and Stony saved the day by blinding him, doubling my melee damage output against him.  I beat him down to his first damage texture and he prays again...   Hmmm yes, this is bad news. There are three but you can't see the third because it spawned right behind Stony and Werdna.   And they, uh, hit like trucks. They're high-level Earth-focused mages that start off by buffing Burz and then just annihilate you. One round after this they do the following.  A blast of Whipping Rocks that just one-hit KO's the entire party. At least we get to see the death screen, though!  So. Let's leave Burz alone for now. I think the only hope of taking him down is multiple bugged summons or Chewbecka/Twinkles landing an instakill crit in the first couple of rounds. To top off the embarrassment, his chest doesn't even contain anything worth showing off, though Stony has at this point not failed a single trap disarming, making him literally the best rogue-type I've ever had along in any game of Wizardry 8. Getting back to the update proper, let's start with an overview of the team.    Lady and Chewbecka are much like how they started out, though they've been equipped with bows for when caught at long range. Probably one of the first things you want to do for all your melee characters.  Werdna's main improvements are in his spellbook, he's the only character with zero gear changes so far, since I've found nothing appropriate for mages and if he's ever fighting instead of casting spells, I've hosed up grievously.  I gave Stony a sword but honestly don't expect him to ever use it. Once his Omnigun starts firing arrows and quarrels it will be his permanently superior weapon.  Twinkles got a sling for ranged combat, but once I get a decent stash of darts and shurikens, I'll swap him over to that so his thrown auto-pens can benefit from it. For now, though, the darts are better in Stony's hands. Shurikens are the best, but also rarest, thrown weapons, except for the infinite-use Boomerang Shuriken of which there is only one in the game.  And Aurora's biggest change is that she now has an axe and shield for if something comes right up in her face. The axe isn't a superior weapon to her bow, but combined with the shield it gives her some more survivability since she's the weakest member of the front line in that regard.    These area intro screens are very cool, but sadly you'll probably miss most of them if playing Wizardry 8 on Steam since it just loads so goddamn fast. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PbZUzKw0NuA   We crawl out under these stairs, making the Lower Monastery feel very much like a forgotten part of the place that sees little use, emerging in this storeroom sort of area. Most of the boxes in the center can't be interacted with, but a few can be picked open, or just plain opened, to yield some low-level armor.    Crawling around the crates we get ambushed by a couple of rats. Rats are generally low-level enemies, but they're able to nauseate and sometimes disease you with their attacks, the latter of which can be extremely bad news, as mentioned. The storage hall has two doors and some stairs. Since I know where things lead, I hit up the stairs first as they're a short, dead end.    Seekers are odd little lizards that always have a spit attack but rarely constitute a threat, apparently nesting in this old... control room?    I love the juxtaposition of old-school architecture and modern items like electric lights and computers. None of the machines yield us any clues, however, simply beeping "ACCESS DENIED" when interacted with. We will be back here later, however. The sharp-eyed may already have an idea of why.  On the way out I look up at the ceiling because it being an open courtyard would explain a lot about why it looks like a loading dock, but no such luck.   Some more flattened rats on the way out give Werdna another level-up, and I choose to teach him Web. It's a cone spell which, well, webs enemies up for beatdowns. Unlike Sleep, victims don't get unwebbed when beaten with sticks. It also opens his second-to-last elemental selection of spells.   Both side areas are little barracks for the monks, with further areas branching off them. One leads to a small shrine and library, and I visit that one first because my gaming instincts always tell me to put off progress for as long as possible.  The shrine contains our first humanoid enemies, which is great. They're not fundamentally tougher than monstrous enemies, but they tend to drop more gold and have a chance of dropping equipment items. Again, these fellows are unlikely to drop anything useful but eventually a good number of our potential better equipment choices are likely to be looted from corpses.  A slightly better look at the shrine with the ruffians evicted, it has no equipment of interest, just a plain quarterstaff and a couple of potions.   Of course in a library you're required to remain silent. If you try to cast any spells inside...  The library itself only contains a few rats, and splatting them yields a level-up for Lady, Chewbecka and Aurora, leading to their first spell-casting options! For Lady and Aurora I get Heal Wounds since I desperately need some healing access(and I also want Lady started on Divine spells so she can eventually get Soul Shield), while Chewbecka gets Frost, an unexciting single-target Water offense spell. But she's learning the same spellbook as Werdna and so far Water is the one he hasn't touched, so I'll prioritize that one with her for now for the sake of spell variety. The one advantage of Frost is that it doesn't have a projectile, so it'll never get caught on intervening terrain.     The library has a spellbook we can't yet identify by way of loot, and a bit of flavour text besides. One side of it is occupied by a big, locked gateway and the other by a small doorway. Since we don't have the key for the gate, we have to check out the doorway first.     Looks like a kitchen. Hmmm. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y5mqGsAGCdM Whoops!  Eventually we can use this to make a reasonably powerful gadget for Stony. For the time being, though, it's just evidence that we're fuckups who'll poke anything till it breaks. On the way back out I also remember to look up at the ceiling of the library.  There are sometimes some surprisingly nice ceiling decorations despite it being super easy to completely miss them while playing the game. I don't think I ever actually looked up and saw this one.  I get why all the corridors are twisty-turny(to prevent you aggroing too many enemies at once), but it makes the building layout feel really wonky. I wonder if a simpler solution wouldn't just have been more doors to section things off.  Heading past the other monk dorm, we get a peek at the main hall.  And the somewhat unimpressive ambush there. So far all encountered bandits have gone down like chumps, these are no exception. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IKgaf_Ikh6o With the bandits bonked, I figured the front hall looks a bit nicer in video format. But I'll also post it as screenshots for the people who prefer it that way.        PHOONZANG Apparently a pretty important guy, I'm sure we'll learn more about him sooner or later. From the main hall there are four places to go: The front door leading out, we could actually leave right now, but we're not going to.  This little museum with a chest(containing nothing impressive, but once again Stony disarms a trap successfully), the glass case that we can't just bust open(yet) containing some armor and an instrument.  Without a bard it's useless to us, but let's keep it around just in case.  This stairway leading up to a small rest area for the monks.  It contained a couple of spiders that the team splattered in seconds, though they did manage to paralyze Aurora and Werdna, giving Twinkles the level up needed to access his Alchemist spells. He gets Itching Skin since status effects from him will likely contribute more than pure damage at this point. Predictably it causes the Irritation debuff.       The Amulet has a limited number of Energy Blast charges, it's a simple first-level, single-target attack. The Lightning Rod is our first gadget for Stony, it also casts Energy Blast, but runs off his stamina rather than mana. It's a decent enough backup ability, but considering that the Omnigun is already a decent ranged option, I never got that much use out of it. Using it does raise his Engineering skill, though, which is vital. The key unlocks that door back in the Library... so obviously I haul rear end right the hell back to crack it open, ignoring the fourth door in the main hall for now.   It's guarded by bats and... it's worth noting that flying enemies in Wizardry don't really fly. Instead they just hover over the ground and have the same movement limitations as walking enemies. So what happens when you paralyze one? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mQQDsxHTwLM (Worth opening this one on Youtube since it's hard to see the funny part in the smaller in-post view) So what happens is that anything that prevents an enemy from acting(paralysis, sleep, web, KO) stops their animations. However, being in the air isn't part of the bat's model animations, nor, apparently, is the up-and-down bobbing, so you get this silly display. This also counts for any other "flying" enemies we eventually meet, I'll note. With them out of the way, it's time to check out this room we've opened up.   A mysterious machine and a bunch of bells, also a chest in the corner and once again Stony proves to be far better at disabling traps than any goddamn trap-busting character in a party I've made myself. Seriously, what the hell? Let's see what happens if we fiddle with the machine... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=na1gi5PWheM The sound of breaking glass makes it very obvious what happened when we slammed the monastery bells at full power. Let's go check out the glass we've seen in the past!   The loading dock glass being broken is at first glance unimportant except... the crates are arranged in a circle.   Get up top, hop down and one of the crates can be opened from its interior side. It contains a cloak that we can't ID just yet, but all of the game's cloaks are useful even if they only offer an AC bonus, and many of them offer much better than that.  Up top we got a book, a note and a stick.    The note will be useful when we reach Arnika, and the stick is just a melee weapon that I don't quite "get" as it's really barely more useful than a wizard's bare hands or a plain quarterstaff.   In the museum is a piece of samurai-only armor, though since we can't ID it yet, I'm a bit leery of putting it on Chewbecka since I can't remember where every cursed item in the game is and many of them share sprites with normal or beneficially magical versions. So into the inventory it goes as we check out the last parts of the Upper Monastery.   Behind the statue of PHOONZANG is a door leading into this nice little garden(the XP is from a pair of Seekers that were running around inside) and a door leading to the last room in the monastery. This one is gonna be a video since there's a good bit of voice acting in it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zg3dLlQZnhI Pretty cool that the Cosmic Lords have a robot for an emissary, in my opinion, and also we meet the first of the Dark Savant's androids. It also sets up our overarching goals for the game. Firstly: Life, Change and Knowledge? Clearly we need to acquire the Astral Dominae(Dark Savant has it after the events of Wizardry 7), the Chaos Moliri(in the hands of the Mook expedition on Dominus) and the Destinae Dominus(some dude named Marten ganked it and no one has any idea where he's ended up with it). We'll have to find all three and then their current owners are unlikely to relinquish literal artifacts of the gods without a struggle of some sort. Secondly: If we want to actually make use of those to Ascend... well, we're going to have to disarm the Dark Savant's literal planet-destroying bomb in Arnika. I'd also like to point out that I absolutely love how perfectly villainous it is. "If you're about to win I'll destroy everything, including myself and this planet. gently caress you." It goes well with his petty, spiteful tone from the intro. You can tell the Savant is used to getting everything his way and absolutely WILL cut off his nose to spite his face because he's that sort of rear end in a top hat.    Also this is obviously the place from the intro, where the Destinae Dominus used to hang out. Nice touch that it was obviously an object of public worship and veneration, the Brotherhood of the Ascension clearly never expected that anyone would try to steal it. In any case, that's the last thing we need from this place, so let's hit the road and get out of here.    The Arnika Road is the first place the game really takes off its gloves, aside from Gregor and if you try to gently caress with Burz. Most encounters out here can and will gently caress you up if you're careless. I had to reload twice just getting to the main road from the monastery.  Right out the door? Poison crabs.  Even having webbed them down they took away half of Chewbecka's hit points, and poisoned her and Lady.  With the crabs gone we can also turn around and look at the monastery we just left. It's weird that compared to how well-crafted the interiors were, the exterior looks like someone's Minecraft house. Presumably one of the bits that didn't get sufficient polish before launch.   A bit farther up the road we meet a bunch of plants. Plants are mostly noteable for the fact that almost every single variant of them can cause Irritation, and most can Poison, Paralyze, Blind or Nauseate you as well. Unlike a lot of games where the devs didn't quite seem to know what the most powerful strat was, in Wizardry 8 it's lockdown conditions and the devs made sure the NPC's were both capable and willing to use those, too. NPC casters are also usually very well-scripted in terms of what spells they use and can catch you off-guard.    This sandy pass also has a small bandit camp, which caused my first need to reload. Not from this particular pack, but the next one down the road. I'm mainly showing these guys off for their barely-visible-in-that-screenshot buddies.  Wasps! Enemy mobility varies some, and wasps are very mobile and tend to come in swarms, so you have a large risk of having your back row attacked by them on turn 1 or 2. On top of that, a very common variant can also potentially blind you with every sting, which sucks.  Worth noting is also that we're starting to run low on our yellow bars, too. That's our stamina. Zero stamina makes characters pass out, and they don't wake up from getting stabbed or poked until they recover sufficient amounts, thus, +stamregen items and the spells that recover stamina are very important. All attacks eat stamina and so does getting hit by enemies, as noted by Xerophyte low stam hurts your ability to hit enemies(and seems to hurt successful casting chances of spells, too, from personal experience). The reason Stony is so low is because he used the Lightning Rod a couple of times and that eats shitloads of stam every time at this point in the game, gadgeteers and bards really need tons of stamina to do their thing regularly.  This is the camp that got me killed once because I didn't think when casting my spells. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Lc-ogBqYC4 This short video from the fight is purely because that hit with the Energy Blast making the one guy explode felt real good. The sound design in this game just makes every spell and impact feel meaty and satisfying and like you're kicking rear end, and minor stuff like enemies getting more bloody and ragged when injured contributes, too. The fight nudges Werdna up a level and his next spell is Missile Shield. Like Enchanted Blade it's a persistent, party-wide enchantment that persists outside of battles(letting you pre-buff, thank Phoonzang) and offers you a shot at no-selling any enemy missile attack(as long as it isn't a spell) that would otherwise hit. It's one of the less vital party buffs, but in some specific battles it contributes a lot to your survivability. The bandits' loot also yields two upgrades for Lady:  First a pair of pants.   And secondly an upgraded spear, the Awl Pike. Check out the huge difference to her damage at the top of her sheet, from 1-14 to 10-23. She is now absolutely the team's chief asskicker for a while since no one else can really match her damage output and a good roll from her can splat many enemies from full health for the next while. The bandits also had some magic bagpipes for Bards, capable of casting Shrill Sound, a cone-shaped damage spell that attempts to blow up enemy eardrums.  After another stretch of sandy canyons, we finally reach the edge of the badlands around the monastery and reach somewhere with a bit of green and life.  Off to the side is this Mysterious House that we'll eventually learn the purpose of, it's one of two Mystery Houses, though also the less important of the two. The other one will save us a great amount of headaches in the future.    For the moment, though, there's no way in, and wandering around outside we can hear a bunch of machine humming noises inside.  Then when I turn back to the road, I get attacked by giant ants. On the first try I gently caress up and cast a cone spell rather than a group spell to start the fight, and end up not locking down enough of them and the remainder strip Aurora to the bone while Chewbecka harangues her for being the weak link. The second time I properly lead with a Sleep spell which hits them all since they're only arranged in one Group and Lady shows off her stuff by dunking on them with her new pike. With that out of the way...  Where do we go next?  Here's the gameworld.  And here's where the party is currently, leaving us with two destinations. South to Arnika or North to Mt. Gigas. Heading South Pros: Obviously the intended progression, lots of merchants, some relevant plot stuff, we get to check out the Savant's bomb, recruitable NPC's, more gadgets for Stony, ghosts Cons: It's what The Man and the Savant want us to do, and we're not going to let them push us around, are we? Heading North Pros: We get to meet some different friends earlier than we normally would, I've never gone that way around before, I will probably get my rear end kicked in funny ways, there are some different merchants to patronize Cons: I will probably get my rear end kicked in funny ways
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Jul 14, 2020 23:27
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You really should give Lady a different weapon instead of axes, as they really suck in this game. Since you already have a Samurai who will probably be hogging all the good swords I suggest you give her Maces instead. I would also suggest Spears instead but looks you want her to be a tank that utilizes shields. You could always swap the bow out and give her a spear as an extended range option.
wafflemoose fucked around with this message at 23:38 on Jul 14, 2020 |
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Jul 14, 2020 23:35
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Go North, it makes for some fun times getting there early. It also helps speed along some of the early-midgame quests and cuts down on backtracking.
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Jul 14, 2020 23:44
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wafflemoose posted:You really should give Lady a different weapon instead of axes, as they really suck in this game. Since you already have a Samurai who will probably be hogging all the good swords I suggest you give her Maces instead. I would also suggest Spears instead but looks you want her to be a tank that utilizes shields. You could always swap the bow out and give her a spear as an extended range option. Seeing as how Aurora is a ranger she's never gonna not have a bow(unless I swap her to a Double or Triple Crossbow once Stony has the ingredients and skills to craft one). Earnestly the usual worthwhile weapons are swords and polearms, and also where most of the options are, but it's kind of cool and thematic for a ranger to have an axe and also it's a bit different from what I've done before, so I will see where it takes me.
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Jul 14, 2020 23:47
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PurpleXVI posted:I get why all the corridors are twisty-turny(to prevent you aggroing too many enemies at once), but it makes the building layout feel really wonky. I wonder if a simpler solution wouldn't just have been more doors to section things off.  /  Well actually, games of a certain age do this for purely boring technical reasons. Absurd twisty-turny corridors break sightlines. In non-zoned games they let you load and unload areas, and in zoned games they just limit how much stuff the player can see at once from any given point which guarantees that the geometry you need to render and the textures you need to keep on the GPU are below whatever the limit is to keep the game running on your lowest spec machine. Plain doors can work for this purpose as well of course, but with free viewpoint the player can see both sides through an open door and that might not be OK. My personal favorite example is world of warcraft, where almost every city in game had these weird tiny entrances with S-bends or walls right in the middle of the thoroughfare to ensure players can never see both the inside of the city and the zones outside. Most of those weird entryways are still there, years after the technical limitations went away and they redesigned the entire game for flight. It's generally done more subtly now, but even a modern Uncharted game or the like will have disguised loading cutscenes where the game zooms in on the protagonist squeezing through a small crack in the mountain or something while the game loads and unloads things in the background.
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Jul 15, 2020 00:09
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If you can manage to get to Mt. Gigas without it being too frustrating with getting your rear end kicked, that's my vote.
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Jul 15, 2020 00:38
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Just for the record: you do not have to choose your characters' spells when you level up. You can leave those spell selections indefinitely and spend them on higher-level, rarer spells. There are some spells in the game that this is the only reasonable way to get. Also, all the low-level spells are readily available from early loot and/or merchants.
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Jul 15, 2020 00:40
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Other than bishops you don't need to worry too much about saving spell picks, there are <10 non-spellbook spells per school. Diversifying elemental access early on is a great use of spell picks, as is getting immediate use of key spells (spell books generally won't show up at vendors until you get to an even higher level than you need to cast the spell.)
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Jul 15, 2020 00:52
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The only wizardry games I have played are 7 & 8. And when I started 8 I was so traumatized by those friendly npcs that I never considered attacking them. It actually looks easier here, because the npc doesn't run away imminently after summoning his overpowered crew. Which deprives you of most available loot, unless you can kill him in two rounds.
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Jul 15, 2020 01:15
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PurpleXVI posted:Seeing as how Aurora is a ranger she's never gonna not have a bow(unless I swap her to a Double or Triple Crossbow once Stony has the ingredients and skills to craft one). Earnestly the usual worthwhile weapons are swords and polearms, and also where most of the options are, but it's kind of cool and thematic for a ranger to have an axe and also it's a bit different from what I've done before, so I will see where it takes me. Was talking about your Valkyrie actually, give her a mace and shield and you should have a pretty decent tank that has the ability to knock monsters out, and then a spear for poking monsters just out of melee reach. As for the ranger, it's a waste to use a melee weapon on them, always be using ranged, even at point blank range since Rangers have the ability to instant kill with a ranged weapon. Yes, even at melee range they should still be using their bow to shoot them in the face for that crit chance. Double/Triple crossbows are awesome but they are ammo and stamina hungry so it might be useful to have a single shot weapon to swap to if running low on either resource. wafflemoose fucked around with this message at 02:19 on Jul 15, 2020 |
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Jul 15, 2020 02:16
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Hey so uh...is Wizardry good? I figure it's gotta be on some level, and 8 does look like a lot of fun. But say, hypothetically, if I were to play any Wizardry games, which ones are worthwhile? Browsing through the LP Archives, 4 at least looks like something I never wanna play ever. No clue about the others, though.
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Jul 15, 2020 02:16
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Arzaac posted:Hey so uh...is Wizardry good? Honestly at this point this one is the only game in the series I can really recommend for a newcomer. Maybe Wiz1 for sheer historical curiosity (it's 40 loving years old!); it's not Good, but it is Short, so the suffering is brief. Wiz6 is good but it's incomprehensibly ugly, Wiz7 is very good but it is incomprehensibly huge, and neither of them is very forgiving or user friendly. Wiz8 is not super well polished by any stretch but it's vastly easier to get into than either of them.
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Jul 15, 2020 03:15
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Wizardry 1-5 are also pretty much completely different game systems from 6-8 so if 8 looks like your jam and you're curious about the others you can limit yourself to 6 or 7 without missing much. If you're interested in the others try either 1 or 5. 1 is the absolute classic and 5 is the perfect incarnation of what pre-DW Bradley Wizardry was all about. Wizardry 4 is probably one of the most difficult games ever made and I wouldn't recommend it to absolutely anybody.
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Jul 15, 2020 03:23
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Arzaac posted:Hey so uh...is Wizardry good? They're good in that almost all of the wizardries are exemplars of their genre. They're less good in that their genre is janky 80s-style turn based hydra dungeon crawlers, which is probably not something you'll enjoy unless used to the conventions of those games. I think 8 is worth trying even today because its systems are interesting and it is less obtuse and evil than it's predecessors, but if you do then please remember that it is still an old-school dungeon crawler that will randomly kill your party when you make a bad roll. Save often, run away a lot and overuse any cheese you find. As for the others: - 1 is interesting in that it basically established computer roleplaying games as a genre, but it established its genre on the goddamn Apple 2 and odds are you don't want to play through a 4-color dungeon crawler from 1981 no matter how historically significant. - 2-3 are quick sequels that just provide more of the same. - 4 is famously one the of the meanest games of a mean genre. Try it only if you really want to repeatedly get kicked in the teeth by the kickstarter backers of 1987. - 5 provided the first engine update and is the last and most polished of the "classic" games. - 6 is the first "modern" wizardry, introducing many of the systems used until 8. It's ugly as sin and still one big linear dungeon crawl. - 7 is a stone cold classic with an entire open world full of big long dungeon crawls. It's obtuse, complex and brutal. The archives have LPs of 1, 4 & 6, and there's one of 7 in progress but currently on hiatus.
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Jul 15, 2020 04:04
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Also if you're really set on playing 1 or 5 like I suggested, 1 is available on the NES and 5 is on the SNES and both are decent ports with far far FAR superior graphics.
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Jul 15, 2020 04:59
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Honestly I might do that. As long as the NES port is good that sounds quite a bit more palatable.
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Jul 15, 2020 05:35
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William Henry Hairytaint posted:Also if you're really set on playing 1 or 5 like I suggested, 1 is available on the NES and 5 is on the SNES and both are decent ports with far far FAR superior graphics. There's actually an SNES title called Story of Llylgamyn that contains the first three games, but it's technically Japan-exclusive, though most of the text can be set to English (using the original scripts, IIRC), and Aeon Genesis made a patch to translate what little text wasn't in English. That said, it's the most graphically advanced and user-friendly version of the original trilogy. Further, there's also New Age of Llylgamyn on the PS1, which combined IV and V and is really the only way a person used to modern video games is likely to be able to play Wizardry IV without going mad. The PS1 version also includes an "arranged mode", which is a full remake of IV that gives you direct control over Werdna's monsters, but makes it so there's only ever one of each, essentially making it a more traditional Wizardry party crossed with Shin Megami Tensei (since you still have to summon new monsters to get upgrades), as well as other improvements (such as a complete revamping of the Black Box that makes inventory management vastly easier). The arranged mode doesn't have an English language option, mind you, and you'd have to deal with some Japanese text even with the original version, but one feature available even for the original Wiz4 is automapping, which, I mean, you can imagine how useful that would be for Wizardry IV in particular. EDIT: Found some footage of New Age of Llylgamyn! Behold, Werdna's emergence into a new realm of 3D graphics! EclecticTastes fucked around with this message at 10:49 on Jul 15, 2020 |
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Jul 15, 2020 05:37
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wafflemoose posted:Was talking about your Valkyrie actually, give her a mace and shield and you should have a pretty decent tank that has the ability to knock monsters out, and then a spear for poking monsters just out of melee reach. As for the ranger, it's a waste to use a melee weapon on them, always be using ranged, even at point blank range since Rangers have the ability to instant kill with a ranged weapon. Yes, even at melee range they should still be using their bow to shoot them in the face for that crit chance. Double/Triple crossbows are awesome but they are ammo and stamina hungry so it might be useful to have a single shot weapon to swap to if running low on either resource. I was just confused since you were talking about axes and the only axe user I have is Aurora, and her melee option is mostly so A) she'll swap to something with a shield up close and B) Webbed/sleeping/paralyzed/KO'd enemies don't get double damage from ranged attacks, but they will take 2x damage if she beats them in the face with her axe. As for Lady, the KO chances from using a mace are extremely negligible, once again she's better off, in my experience, having a high-damage melee weapon that can do huge 2x damage against paralyzed enemies rather than taking the gamble on very minor condition chances, and a bow/crossbow for the longer-than-spear range stuff. Xerophyte posted:- 4 is famously one the of the meanest games of a mean genre. Try it only if you really want to repeatedly get kicked in the teeth by the kickstarter backers of 1987. I'd recommend reading the LP of 4, since it's a very clever game, but I couldn't recommend anyone ever actually play it for themselves without a walkthrough close to hand. Also, so far the votes seem to be for going North to Mt. Gigas. I'll be doing more recording on friday(or thursday if the votes are very obviously one-sided), so please get your votes in if you have a specific opinion.
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Jul 15, 2020 09:52
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PurpleXVI posted:I was just confused since you were talking about axes and the only axe user I have is Aurora, and her melee option is mostly so A) she'll swap to something with a shield up close and B) Webbed/sleeping/paralyzed/KO'd enemies don't get double damage from ranged attacks, but they will take 2x damage if she beats them in the face with her axe. Yeah, maces really aren't effective unless they're dual wielded by a Fighter or some other class that can take advantage of dual wielding. Your Valkyrie is better off using spears anyway since they get a starting skill bonus with those. Still think the ranger should stick to just shooting people in the face with their bow even at point blank range since there's the chance of instant kill if they're using a ranged weapon, plus it helps level the ranged skill. If you're insisting on letting your Ranger use a Melee weapon I actually recommend Spears since they have extended reach. EDIT: I just realized I did indeed confuse the weapons your Ranger and Valkyrie used. wafflemoose fucked around with this message at 19:30 on Jul 15, 2020 |
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Jul 15, 2020 16:27
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Most spears have a built in skill bonus for some reason which makes the Valkyrie bonus kind of redundant in the long run. On the other hand they're just really fuckin good weapons.
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Jul 15, 2020 16:32
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Reinstalled Wizardry 8. Now comes the single hardest part of the game. Getting past the first 15 minutes without deciding to restart with a different party composition.
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Jul 19, 2020 18:35
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Huh. Is Thunderscape from the same developers? Or just
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Jul 19, 2020 22:27
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Xander77 posted:Huh. Is Thunderscape from the same developers? Or just Wizardry 1 was one of the first, possibly the actual first (I haven't done the research to be sure), first person party-based dungeon crawler. It's generally considered the genre-defining game/series. Eye of the Beholder, Etrian Odyssey, Shining in the Darkness, etc etc all come straight from the Wizardry school of gameplay. As far as Thunderscape specifically, it looks like that was probably inspired more by Eye of the Beholder, seeing as SSI (the people who published EotB) developed it. EDIT: Doing a little more research, it looks like the original Wizardry is actually considered a strong influence on the creation of Dragon Quest I and thus Final Fantasy I as well. Apparently Yuji Horii is or was a big fan. Zurai fucked around with this message at 14:15 on Jul 20, 2020 |
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Jul 20, 2020 14:01
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Wizardry 1 was almost certainly the first game on PCs where you controlled a full party and navigated a dungeon in first person. It may or may not have been the first publicly distributed game on any platform to combine the two features--several 70s mainframe RPGs (some of which were ripped off quite shamelessly by Wizardry) had one feature or the other, and there were first person multiplayer dungeon crawlers where you controlled a single character in a party of multiple concurrent users, but there are no clear precedents for first person multi-character gameplay. And yeah, there were several recognizable features of Dragon Quest that derived directly from Wizardry (and perhaps indirectly from mainframe games that Wizardry lifted from.) Wizardry 1 had a slime monster as the very weakest enemies in the game that were not even threatening to unequipped level 1 characters, and a slightly more advanced slime on level 2 with slightly better stats than level 1 monsters and the ability to poison on hit, that would map directly onto Slimes and Babbles/Liquid Slimes. The effects of poison (decrease HP every step) and paralysis/numb (a permanent disable that lasts until being healed and can cause game overs) also match Wizardry. These things aren't really super closely associated with 70s era D&D, the main source of inspiration plundered by early CRPG nerds, so they're pretty much part of that early proto-CRPG DNA passed down through Wizardry into DQ.
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Jul 20, 2020 15:41
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Wizardry didn't just influence Dragon Quest and Final Fantasy, it can easily be seen as the progenitor of the entire JRPG genre. Many early JRPGs were first-person dungeon crawlers because of Wizardry's influence, such as Phantasy Star, Shining in the Darkness, and Megami Tensei (and later, Shin Megami Tensei). You'd be hard-pressed to find a JRPG that doesn't draw on that legacy, either directly or indirectly (such as Earthbound's gameplay being fairly derivative of Dragon Quest).
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Jul 20, 2020 16:54
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I totally forgot that the original Phantasy Star was a first-person dungeon crawler.
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Jul 20, 2020 17:04
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Robert Woodhead -- one of the two people who made Wizardry 1 -- was, uh, apparently not well loved in the late 70s PLATO mainframe dungeon crawler community. Quoting Dirk Pellet, who worked on dungeon crawler dnd:quote:Sometime around 1977, Robert J. Woodhead (who was non-affectionately known on PLATO as "Balsabrain") through means unknown to the dnd authors, obtained a copy of the source code to the current version of dnd (probably 6.0 or 7.0). He "created" "his" own game from it, in a file called "sorcery." It had essentially all the same features of dnd except the messages, monsters, and magic items had different names and pictures (although identical functions). Apparently the illicit copy hadn't included the charset. The elven boots were socks, among other alterations. "Balsabrain" followed up on making Wizardry 1-4 by: - Making some of the first antivirus software for the Mac. - Starting one of the first anime translation companies, AnimEigo. - Moving to Japan for 6 years and marrying one of his translators. - Winning the 30 lb division of the Robot Fighting League with his kids. - Playing a ton of EVE, up to being a part of their weird player-council thing for years. I suspect he may be the biggest nerd alive.
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Jul 20, 2020 19:40
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Knowingly blowing Trebor up in EVE would be pretty fun
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Jul 20, 2020 20:54
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| # ? Apr 24, 2024 01:54 |
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If you import a party from the previous game, would it be significantly beefier than the starting party for this game?
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Jul 21, 2020 19:04
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