Incline Butthurt Dungeon: Thac0's Ultimate Blobber List

[Arthandas]

It is not a combatfag game but a buildfag game

Build your party, combat doesn't matter, makes sense. Nigga, you can't have one without the other.
You're just proving how easy it is.

are you seeking attention by criticizing games you never played?

Fair point though I'm not criticizing it after a single screenshot, I checked the Steam forums, some reddit threads and a few youtube reviews. If even the casuals can beat it on Nightmare, then what are we even talking about?

 

[Rincewind]

Fair point though I'm not criticizing it after a single screenshot

Look, often it's enough to listen to 5 seconds of a modern album to know for certain it's utter unsalvageable garbage... Same for movies, games, etc. If the food smells like dogshit, you don't need to go and eat the whole thing, right?

 

[Thac0]

It is not a combatfag game but a buildfag game

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 conflating threat and quality/complexity. In most fights in Labyrinth of Refrain autobattle is sufficient when it comes to strategy, just attack physically with all units.
Yet if you do not gear your units well and have a feeling how far you can push your group and when to retreat you will die. Not from a single fight, but by exhausting your command pool, and death by a thousand cuts.

Fair point though I'm not criticizing it after a single screenshot

Look, often it's enough to listen to 5 seconds of a modern album to know for certain it's utter unsalvageable garbage... Same for movies, games, etc. If the food smells like dogshit, you don't need to go and eat the whole thing, right?

Sampling by cover and reviews however is quite retarded, when you can just put the thing into the player and listen to it.

 

[Arthandas]

In most fights in Labyrinth of Refrain autobattle is sufficient when it comes to strategy

And he's still defending it lol

 

[Thac0]

In most fights in Labyrinth of Refrain autobattle is sufficient when it comes to strategy

And he's still defending it lol

Fuck off from the threat hypocritical piece of shit, I have written what makes the game great, if you 70 IQ mongrel are too illiterate to comprehend that that is your problem.

 

[V_K]

In most fights in Labyrinth of Refrain autobattle is sufficient when it comes to strategy

And he's still defending it lol

I don't see what's so hard to grasp about it. If you build your party and manage your resources correctly (long-term strategy), you can auto through most battles. If you don't, you exhaust your resources and die fairly quickly. Special boss encounters require special tactics. Quite honestly, that applies to most blobbers - their challenge lies a lot more in long-term planning than in individual encounter tactics. Even for non-blobbers, I remember BG's combat being praised for exactly that.

 

[Arthandas]

In most fights in Labyrinth of Refrain autobattle is sufficient when it comes to strategy

I have written what makes the game great

You're making it too easy man The only thing you should curate is cookie clicker clones.

I don't see what's so hard to grasp about it. If you build your party and manage your resources correctly (long-term strategy), you can auto through most battles.

If you can it means the game is filled with trash encounters which serve no purpose, something PoE1 is well known for, it's just a bad game design.
Also, I disagree it applies to most blobbers. In Wizardry, your party can be put to sleep/petrified and nuked, ninjas can decapitate on hit, you can get your levels permanently drained... If you autoattack it's basically a party wipe.

 

[Shackleton]

Fwiw, I started off really liking Labyrinth of Refrain but after a bit the challenge does just drop off and it becomes tedious. Balancing a blobber is such a hard task, too easy and it's boring, too hard and it's discouraging. At the risk of repeating myself, that's why the current trend of making the map piss easy to navigate is such an own goal. If the combat is routine, then at least finding your way through should be interesting. But no, that's too triggering for snowflakes who review bomb a game if they don't get an infinitely reusable map, (see all the bitching about Elminage Gothic that still goes on to this day.) I'm playing the fan translation of Wizardry Empire on the GBA alongside WotR and it's a breath of fresh air. Heavily randomised encounters, most piss easy but the odd tricky one and map limited by spells or items. Mapping on graph paper learns you the levels then you can rush through to the stairs if you need to backtrack. Ten times better than a lot of these modern ones that are too scared to inconvenience the player. Playing it 'proper' without use save states is the way.

 

[Arthandas]

Fwiw, I started off really liking Labyrinth of Refrain but after a bit the challenge does just drop off and it becomes tedious. Balancing a blobber is such a hard task, too easy and it's boring, too hard and it's discouraging. At the risk of repeating myself, that's why the current trend of making the map piss easy to navigate is such an own goal. If the combat is routine, then at least finding your way through should be interesting. But no, that's too triggering for snowflakes who review bomb a game if they don't get an infinitely reusable map, (see all the bitching about Elminage Gothic that still goes on to this day.) I'm playing the fan translation of Wizardry Empire on the GBA alongside WotR and it's a breath of fresh air. Heavily randomised encounters, most piss easy but the odd tricky one and map limited by spells or items. Mapping on graph paper learns you the levels then you can rush through to the stairs if you need to backtrack. Ten times better than a lot of these modern ones that are too scared to inconvenience the player. Playing it 'proper' without use save states is the way.

Amen, brother. No wonder the best this genre has to offer is limited to the 80s and 90s.

 

[V_K]

Meh. If your level design relies on lack of access to maps to make exploration challenging, it's shit level design. Puzzles, traps, environmental hazards, secrets, one-way doors etc. are all much better ways to make exploration interesting that don't rely on doing chores.

 

[Eisen]

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?

RIP ears

 

[Arthandas]

Meh. If your level design relies on lack of access to maps to make exploration challenging, it's shit level design. Puzzles, traps, environmental hazards, secrets, one-way doors etc. are all much better ways to make exploration interesting that don't rely on doing chores.

You can have both you know.

 

[Thac0]

Fwiw, I started off really liking Labyrinth of Refrain but after a bit the challenge does just drop off and it becomes tedious. Balancing a blobber is such a hard task, too easy and it's boring, too hard and it's discouraging. At the risk of repeating myself, that's why the current trend of making the map piss easy to navigate is such an own goal. If the combat is routine, then at least finding your way through should be interesting. But no, that's too triggering for snowflakes who review bomb a game if they don't get an infinitely reusable map, (see all the bitching about Elminage Gothic that still goes on to this day.) I'm playing the fan translation of Wizardry Empire on the GBA alongside WotR and it's a breath of fresh air. Heavily randomised encounters, most piss easy but the odd tricky one and map limited by spells or items. Mapping on graph paper learns you the levels then you can rush through to the stairs if you need to backtrack. Ten times better than a lot of these modern ones that are too scared to inconvenience the player. Playing it 'proper' without use save states is the way.

I think the problem that Labyrinth of Refrain has, is that it just has a bit too many sources of power you can optimise. And most of these sources stack exponentially. You can have a good class composition, you can pick your feats smartly, you can make the right choice when it comes to making our stat array ♯, ♯♯, ♭ or ♭♭ (which is cool btw), you can level and optimise your pacts, you can choose good overall pact formations, you can synthesize some ridiculous gear and there are probably more power sources I forgot. Later you get the whole soul clarity thing. It just never stops piling ways onto you in which you can increase your power. At some point enemies stop being able to keep up, beyond the gore crits.
Still, it has so much unique stuff going on that it is worth a look, if for the game design ideas alone. I really like the idea of letting multiple units occupy a single slot in a Wizardry like battlesystem. It really is a breath of fresh air, and if they polish the base gameplay and balance it better it has a shining future. I don't necessarily recommend finishing it, because it is fairly long, but I would recommend it to anyone who can stand the graphics, because like most NIS games Refrain is VERY anime.
I heard the for now Japanese exclusive sequel went into the wrong direction and added randomly generated floors as the big new feature, which is a massive shame.

 

[Thac0]

By the way, to talk less about JRPGs in GRPG, a Western blobber is on sale currently.



https://rpgcodex.net/forums/threads/the-keep-new-dungeon-crawler-out-on-3ds-and-steam.92062/

It has fairly good reactions to it in the codex thread, as a single character blobber originally on the DS with a touch control for combat (maybe like Arx Fatalis?) it flew deep under the radar.
My plate is too stacked to give it a chance currently, for 3,50€ I am contemplating a purchase for the backlog however.
It is by the guys who made Inquisitor, which afaik falls into the interesting but flawed category aswell, and is also on a deep sale right now.

 

[Shackleton]

Meh. If your level design relies on lack of access to maps to make exploration challenging, it's shit level design. Puzzles, traps, environmental hazards, secrets, one-way doors etc. are all much better ways to make exploration interesting that don't rely on doing chores.

What, like the Bards Tale 4? Yeah, that worked out great. I'm being facetious I know, but what blobbers are you thinking of as an example of 'good level design'? M&M 6 and 7 had what I'd call good dungeon design, but I'm thinking more of the Wizardry formula of one ever deepening dungeon that's more of a war of attrition to get down than the M&M style of exploration. Again, it's the differentiation between the sorts of blobbers that determines whether a constant map detracts from the experience or not.

 

[V_K]

what blobbers are you thinking of as an example of 'good level design'?

Ones with unrestricted mapping - Wizards&Warriors, both Grimrocks (LoG1 has its weaknesses, but level design is not one of them), Dark Heart of Uukrul, Anvil of Dawn, Legacy: Realm of Terror (the latter two not strictly blobbers but close enough) and technically Dragon Wars (its automap just isn't terribly useful since you can't add notes).
Ones with restricted mapping - DM and CSB, Wizardry 6&7 - and I seriously doubt that having more extensive mapping tools would hurt them much.

 

[Shackleton]

Yeah, we're talking about different sorts of games. I'm more on about the specific 'DRPG' genre, where you just explore grid based dungeon floors, going progressively deeper each time. The Japanese throw out loads of them and invariably in the last 5 years they've all got piss easy maps to navigate and an auto map. It's a favourite rant of mine.

 

[V_K]

we're talking about different sorts of game

Sure, and one of them is objectively better.

 

[Carpincho Pampeano]

God bless your autism, why go to the cinema when the codex exists?

 

[Arthandas]

Ones with restricted mapping - DM and CSB, Wizardry 6&7 - and I seriously doubt that having more extensive mapping tools would hurt them much.

It would, what's the point of spinners, teleporters and dark areas if you have an automap? Dungeon should never be on your side.
I tried playing Wiz 1 with an automap and it just detracts from the experience.

 

[V_K]

Ones with restricted mapping - DM and CSB, Wizardry 6&7 - and I seriously doubt that having more extensive mapping tools would hurt them much.

It would, what's the point of spinners, teleporters and dark areas if you have an automap? Dungeon should never be on your side.
I tried playing Wiz 1 with an automap and it just detracts from the experience.

In Legacy, if you're teleported somewhere new, automapping is temporarily turned off until, IIRC, you reach a square that you've already stepped on before being teleported (or until you pass a skillcheck, I don't remember which). Same could be done for dark areas.
Spinners can die in fire for all I care.

 

[Strange Fellow]

It would, what's the point of spinners, teleporters and dark areas if you have an automap?

The simple and perfect solution is to have zones that disrupt automapping. Dark Heart of Uukrul does it and it's excellent. There's no reason not to do it this way. Sure, some of us like navigational challenges and some don't, but does anyone here genuinely enjoy mapping out a featureless dungeon floor without traps and spinners by hand? Let's map the good stuff and let the computer take care of the tedious parts.

 

[V_K]

Also, people who think you can't get lost in a game with full automapping need to play 7 Mages and see how long it'll take them to get through the Labyrinth of Whispering Fish level.

 

[Thac0]

It would, what's the point of spinners, teleporters and dark areas if you have an automap?

The simple and perfect solution is to have zones that disrupt mapping. Dark Heart of Uukrul does it and it's excellent. There's no reason not to do it this way. Sure, some of us like navigational challenges and some don't, but does anyone here genuinely enjoy mapping out a featureless dungeon floor without traps and spinners by hand? Let's map the good stuff and let the computer take care of the tedious parts.

That is the solution that Experience Inc employs, and probably a large reason why mapping enthusiasts like the series so much, while combatfags are mellow about it. I know the Generation Xth series has anti automap zones in later entries, I think they are called underwater zones or so? I assume their other games use this later aswell.

God bless your autism, why go to the cinema when the codex exists?

DUNE

 

[V_K]

DUNE

HBOMax