If you like exploration and puzzles and don't mind (or even like) real-time combat, you can't go wrong with Dungeon Master or Eye of the Beholder. The graphics and sound hold up very well too.
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Incline Butthurt Dungeon: Thac0's Ultimate Blobber List
- Thread starter Thac0
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If you like exploration and puzzles and don't mind (or even like) real-time combat, you can't go wrong with Dungeon Master or Eye of the Beholder. The graphics and sound hold up very well too.
If he didn't like Grimrock, liking Dungeon Master is unlikely. EOB might get a pass over AD&D roots maybe.
V_K
Arcane
LoL is very pretty but very shallow.
I'd say Wizards&Warriors, if you don't don't mind spending some time getting it to run on a modern system. Its character system and combat are more accessible than late Wizardries but still fairly deep, and it has some of the best dungeon design in any RPG.
Just a reminder, we're talking here about an accessible starting blobber for someone likely young, judging from the post. Plus the ability to play 1990s vidya with a 320x240 resolution doesn't come as naturally to the youngsters as it does to decrepit oldfags like us.
Grab Wizardry 8 then. That game got me fully into blobbers and I was desolate when I realised it was pretty much one of a kind.
Ubisoft, no. But pirates did it on release day.
Plus pirating the game is the only way to get it now, as Ubisoft pulled it from all stores. Fucking cretins.
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Wizardry 8. Best blobber ever, one of the best RPGs overall.
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Might & Magic X is probably the most accessible if you never tried blobbers. It is also turn-based, which is much better than the "dancing around" in Grimrock.
Something like Wizardry or Grimoire is more complex and has a bit of a learning curve. But those are the best blobbers in my opinion, especially Wizardry 7 and Grimoire.
Arthandas
Prophet
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I find it weird that some people can lean so much into either direction. For me combat and dungeoneering are inseparable.
The dungeon must be your enemy but at the same time it must be interesting enough so you want to explore and conquer it.
The same with combat, it doesn't have to be mechanically complex (bonus points if it is) but it absolutely needs to be challenging to keep you on your toes and test your party.
From what I played so far (and I admit I didn't play too many blobbers yet), only early Wizardies deliver on both fronts.
I was interested in Labyrinth of Refrain but apparently the game is pretty easy even on the highest (nightmare) difficulty setting, if SoSC has decent dungeons but easy combat then it might not exist at all to me.
Playing the Final Fantasy series has got me thinking, the early games have clear Wizardry influence. So I went and checked, and indeed Square published a pure blooded dungeon crawler series before Final Fantasy.
Behold! Deep Dungeon!
I think all have English translations, can't find one for Deep Dungeon 2 for some reason.
https://www.romhacking.net/translations/1996/
https://www.romhacking.net/translations/1568/
https://www.romhacking.net/translations/1658/
Has anyone tried those?
Behold! Deep Dungeon!
I think all have English translations, can't find one for Deep Dungeon 2 for some reason.
https://www.romhacking.net/translations/1996/
https://www.romhacking.net/translations/1568/
https://www.romhacking.net/translations/1658/
Has anyone tried those?
V_K
Arcane
As far as modern, pretty and accessible blobbers, there's 7 Mages - but it also might not be the best representative of the genre because of tactical, if still first-person, combat system.
Wizardry 1.
I do like Labyrinth of Refrain quite a lot.
It has easy combat, but you will still take losses from enemy critical hits. As such dispatching a fight faster is a real upgrade, as it lowers the amount of chances your enemies have for nasty gore crits. Furthermore healing is really limited in that game. You have a second manapool shared across the entire group, basically dungeon mana, called command points. This is the only ressource that can heal you, and you also need it for one of this games premium features. You can break down walls with it. Behind most walls is nothing, just a bunch of dirt. Behind some are pitfalls which take you to the next area, a risk to take. Behind some is hidden treasure or an entire secondary path through the dungeon. So you your preciously few healing ressources are also demanded in other ways.
The game also has pretty deep team building. You can field a ridiculous amount of fighters, about 36 or so. You do this by putting them in formations, which then act like a singular unit in battle. You can have up to five formations. The formations also have formations on their own, if you put your flank formations in the front row and the three in the middle in the back row you get a pincer formation with stat buffs for example. Add to that six classes or so and a bunch of perks, also a farily involved item synthesis system, and you are permanently improving something. Adding new fighters to understaffed formations, leveling up and unlocking new formations, swapping around formations, improving your gear, brooding over perk choices etc etc.
There are some fights in which you will actually need your spells and special combat skills, the game employs FOEs just like Etrian Odyssey. So enemy blobs which take one tile movement whenever you do, like roguelike enemies, and are miniboss fights when you bump into them. Those are nowhere near Etrian Odyssey strong, but they give you a run for your money, especially if you run into multiple. The game also rewards challenging yourself, as you can chain the xp you get from fights. You can refuse to take the xp directly after the fight, then it gets put into an xp bank of sorts. The more fights you put in there, the higher the multiplicator gets. So after you have been exploring for a while and have built up a respectable 3x multiplicator it is a really good idea to hunt down 2-3 foes to add a high amount of base xp to the bank. Then you cash out and get 5-10 levelups at once, very addictive.
Labyrinth of Refrain does also have easy combat, no two ways about it, but it brings enough other stuff to the table to keep me happy.
Especially the gameplay loop of delving deeper on every run is still there, as optimising your tanks and damage dealers means receiving less gore crits which damage body parts, which can only be healed outside of the dungeon. This somewhat replaces hard combat for the threat in dungeoneering.
Arthandas
Prophet
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This sounds like typical jrpg where you have 50 classes, 100 spells, 1000 items and complex mechanics but all that means shit since you can win almost every fight with auto attacks.
There's no point in anything you described since you can completely ignore it and still beat the game no problems even on the hardest difficulty.
Apparently it's possible to either one shot bosses with a crit or 2-3 casts of the most powerful spells, like wtf?!
Kusoge.
"You sometimes need your spells and skills" - they should put it on the cover.
Seriously, few posts earlier you dissed SoSC for being too easy and now you're recommending LoR which is even easier.
... learn to read. If you put it to hard and try to waltz through the game without thought you will get butchered in the Gullivers travels kingdom where the people are tiny, ie the second labyrinth, due to gore crits.
It is not a combatfag game but a buildfag game, the decisiomaking is in the pause menu, not in combat. That is fine with me aswell, but Sword City offers not much on both fronts.
There is a skill tree in Sword City where you buy permanent unlocks with gems, but it is not that deep.
also:
It is not a combatfag game but a buildfag game, the decisiomaking is in the pause menu, not in combat. That is fine with me aswell, but Sword City offers not much on both fronts.
There is a skill tree in Sword City where you buy permanent unlocks with gems, but it is not that deep.
also:
You changed it! It was Dungeon Master before!
I don't know any of those animu games but this doesn't make any sense. Builds are only meaningful if the combat is challenging. If there's no real challenge, builds are pointless.
You are perceptive for a young man.
He didn't like Grimrock, so I figured DM was not the right answer in this case.
Ha! Wish I was...
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