Wizardry Long Live Wizardry! (And The All-New Games By Ex-Wizardry Developers)

[Siveon]

Yes, it makes me want to play a really spergy dungeon crawler with various nutrition and morale sliders and timed quests.

Hopefully with artwork made by the dude. Not only does he make really good environments and monsters, but the food items are top freaking notch. Almost Vanillaware-tier. This is what kickstarter is for, people.

 

[Courtier]

-Already got morale meters in Experience titles, just need to make it affect characters' wellbeing instead of just being usable resource
-Food is big part of RLs in staying alive, so many games to mimic - already have it in Etrian blobbers per expedition, just need to make it visible resource on screen and add some Dragon's Crown minigame

Sounds doable men haha will never happen

I'm still waiting for CoH3, says ''coming soon'' on Gaijinworks page for like 3 years

 

[Dorarnae]

-Already got morale meters in Experience titles, just need to make it affect characters' wellbeing instead of just being usable resource
-Food is big part of RLs in staying alive, so many games to mimic - already have it in Etrian blobbers per expedition, just need to make it visible resource on screen and add some Dragon's Crown minigame

Sounds doable men haha will never happen

I'm still waiting for CoH3, says ''coming soon'' on Gaijinworks page for like 3 years

ah yeah, I wonder what happened to COH3, like if they didn't abandoned the project. because I saw summon night 6 on their page.

 

[Viata]

OP need to fix some images on first post. Also, gotta update Mind Zero and Sword in Strange City being released on Steam. Did anyone buy Mind Zero? How good is the game on PC?

 

[Siveon]

How good is the game on PC?

I heard the port was awful. Doesn't have gamepad support or mouse support, and I think the resolution is locked to the Vita resolution but this is just crap I'm reading on the steam page. Game never caught my eye, really.

 

[Viata]

Don't care about gamepad support, but that resolution is kill if playing on pc. Well, will wait for a sale then.

 

[aweigh]

Dark Heart of Urkul actually features food and drink resource management, but the combat is not blobber-style it is gold-box top-down style.

The dungeons and atmosphere are top-notch but it also features extremely heavy emphasis on Adventure Game-style puzzle-solving, Mozg, something which is not part of the standard Wiz-clone formula.

I only mention that part because there are many (myself included) whom do not enjoy too many puzzles in their dungeoneering, but you might enjoy it.

In any case it's pretty much what you described wanting to play. I don't think there's a crawler spergier than Dark Heart, unless you want to go grim-dark autism and then I would say what you're looking for is a game called "Demise".

Another resource-management heavy blobber except its combat system is neither Wiz-clone style nor is it Gold Box style: it's a weird mix of phase-based and RT.

 

[Kea]

This thread inspired me to try out the Wizardry series since they seem like my kind of RPG. Currently going through Wizardy 1 on the SNES. It's good fun, I can't remember the last time I had to break out graph paper to navigate a game - if only because most games today have automaps or the like and make it hard to get truly lost.

My first party met an untimely end early on the first floor, when a chest my Thief inspected exploded(!), killing five party members instantly. My last, a Fighter, fell to some Kobolds trying to find the ladder to the surface. So now I've rolled a new party and resolved to draw a map this time. As I write this I'm still exploring the first floor, it's pretty expansive for being the beginner level.

Is there any penalty to letting dead party members stay dead awhile? The revival fee is too steep for me and they were only fresh-faced L1s, but it'd be a shame if they could rot away or whatever.

 

[Viata]

I have to read this whole thread, there're some good post here. But good lord, every aweigh post is like reading a review.

 

[aweigh]

you know, my hands actually end up physically hurting from over-typing some nights. prolly will have problemz later on.

EDIT: oh, and i don't mean hurting in a vague sense, i mean like when you play a drum-kit for 5 hours straight and your fingers are swollen...

or my favorite, like when i play a marathon 8-12 hour session of street fighter 4 via STEAM using my home-made arcade stick. the following day my fingers/hands are like fucking sauseges.

 

[Courtier]

When I see a classic aweigh post I get electric tingle like spidey sense, I quickly run to the bunker to mentally prepare myself and have a coffee before the Big Read

 

[Kea]

First floor down, two keys obtained. Drawing maps is fun:

This level wasn't as big as I thought it was, but the whole east half is a frightening maze of secret passages, one-way doors, teleporters and darkness. Much more complicated than I was expecting for the first floor! I even found an elevator to the next three floors, but by then my party was spent from fighting Murphy's Ghost (was there a point in killing him? It seemed like the thing to do) so I stumbled around in the dark until I found my way back to the surface.

Later, I poked around in the second floor and immediately found a spiraling passage leading to the ladder down...which only makes me worried about what the rest of the floor contains.

 

[Viata]

Murphy's Ghost is good for exp. Still, why didn't you draw the dark rooms?

 

[Kea]

Oh, that was just because I had stopped trying to navigate carefully and started stumbling around blindly lol. I'm not even sure where that room with Murphy's Ghost exactly is, but I won't be needing to return to that area so it'll stay a question mark.

Level 2 was pretty simple, though the Gas Clouds were a pain with their paralysis and I would have gotten lost in the dark zone forever if I hadn't realized my Mage could cast Dumapic, but Level 3 is looking pretty scary. Seems to be a repeating pattern that loops in both directions, with some of the intersections being trapped. Haven't seen any teleporters yet, but I'm casting Dumapic every time just in case. The enemies are also a big step up - Lvl. 3 Priests can really wear down your hitpoints in large groups, and they're free to target my guys in the back row, but Ninjas are really nasty: Poison is a death sentence at this point and there's no way to cure it (yet) aside from making it back to town without dying first. Things are getting real interesting now.

 

[Viata]

I have played this game so much I still know every single map by memory. The Murphy's Ghost, ironically, is in the exactly square where it is in the map.

 

[Crooked Bee]

Murphy's Ghost (was there a point in killing him? It seemed like the thing to do)

Some people use it for exp grinding to get as many levels as possible, but I'd advise against that. Wiz1 can be completed quickly and many of the dungeon floors can be bypassed if you use a certain shorcut, but personally I think it's much more enjoyable to explore it properly (i.e. by gradually exploring and mapping out every floor).

 

[Kea]

I definitely am going to clear every floor; they've all been fun to map out so far, so I see no reason to skip over any. Once I find the elevator on Floor 4 I might use it to skip over floors 2-3 though.

Floor 3 was over with in time (more variation there than I expected), and so I moved on to the fourth level. Now that my Priest knows the Latumofis spell I was eager to take on a Ninja encounter...well, that's how I learned that the Ninjas can now instantly kill anybody, as my poor Fighter learned. Guess I'll continue to avoid those guys whenever possible. Anyway, my second Fighter hit L8 on the way back to town, and I was able to change him to a Samurai! It seems to have reset his stats, but his HP was retained and I bet he'll be stronger in the long run - I think Samurai can cast Mage spells in addition to being good fighters? What I'd really like is a Ninja, but my Fighter and Thief are both Neutral so it might be a while before that's an option.

Anyway, going back to floor 4 I explored the left wing this time, which...was very small. In fact I seem to have all of this level mapped out except for whatever's connected to the elevator room, unless there's some secret doors even Lomilwa doesn't reveal. Apart from the Ninjas the monster selection wasn't much to worry about either; Gas Dragons were much less dangerous than I was expecting, coming from FF1, and most other monsters go down to a few well-placed spells. Credit to Boring Beetles for making me laugh though.

 

[aweigh]

Kea

Congratulations on allowing yourself to experience Wizardry!

SNES ports are in my honest opinion the absolute best way for a modern-day gamer to experience the first 3 Wizardry scenarios. The game content is the same and the only changes were those done in scenario 2, wherein they added a ladder down to b2f because in the original DOS/Apple II versions scenario 2 assumes you begin with the same party that finished Proving Grounds and therefore know the Malor teleportation spell.

It is the only legitimate and/or concrete example of content change. I can personally guarantee you that Wizardry 5, for example, is exactly the same content-wise in PC version, SNES version *and* in Playstation version.

I actually started with the 3rd scenario, i.e. Wizardry 3, and it was the SNES version as well. I played backwards then by playing through SNES versions of 2, and then SNES version of 1.

I then played Wiz 5 on SNES as well but that was when I discovered the Playstation remakes. They feature ugly polygonal textures for the dungeons instead of the jaw-dropping 2D sprite art in the Wiz 1-3 remakes (and the mediocre ones in snes Wiz 5); but on the flip-side they feature a great, great orchestral and "moody" soundtrack that was composed for the Playstation remakes of 1-5.

Also Wiz scenario 4 does not have a SNES remake so you'll have to play that one in the PS1.

On SNES: 1 snes cart containing Wiz 1-3, and 1 snes cart containing Wiz 5.
On PS1: 1 ps1 disc containing Wiz 1-3, and 1 ps1 disc containing both Wiz 4, a special "remix" arrangement of Wiz 4 as well, and thirdly the Wiz 5 scenario.

You have to change the language options to english, btw, in the PS1 versions. Wiz 6 and 7 are available for PS1 as well, and feature absolutely atrocious, god-awful polygonal graphics and they were never translated (i.e. there is no english options on those). And no one will translate them I guess because i downloaded them just to see how bad they were and by god they are bad.

I played and finished Wiz 6 on the SNES instead, which, btw, once again features gorgeous 2d Sprites. Only known and documented changes for the SNES version of Wiz 6 on the SNES is the inclusion of an Auto-Map (original did not have one) and it has been documented that the snes version sped up the health/mana regeneration during resting, but AFAIK, and I have researched this exact topic exhaustively, there were no other legitimately game-changing changes done.

It goes without saying that the maps are all the same, with the obvious exception of the Wiz 2 1st floor featuring a ladder exit which I explained why above, and the loot drops and combat encounters are all the same.

For what it's worth the PC and Apple II versions are incredibly different as well. Well, not "incredibly" as all of the maps are the same, but for example in Wizardry 1 they got a lot of feedback about the encounters and about surprise rounds allowing enemies to Tiltowait them to death without possibility of player action so when they eventually did the PC/DOS release (Apple II is original version for purists) a lot of encounters were changed and the surprise rounds were made unable to feature magical spells on both sides.

Those changes are the ones that are in the SNES and PS1 remakes, so, therefore, they were identical to the PC versions in feature and content. They are *not* identical in feature and content to the original Apple II releases. And there is absolutely nothing whatsoever wrong with that.

Have fun!

 

[aweigh]

 

[Kea]

Neat, thanks for all the info. Hadn't realized that the original Wiz 1 allowed spells in ambush rounds, but with how numerous spellcasting and magic-breathing enemies can be I'm glad of it being gone in later versions. I'd done some cursory research into the SNES port of Wiz 1-3 to make sure they didn't make bad changes from the original, but it's good to hear the details. The game controls very well for being a console port; it's got just enough buttons to accommodate every action you can take at any point. The NES port of Might and Magic suffers badly from only having two buttons to work with, you have to open a submenu to do most anything. I'll probably go with Dosbox or an Apple-II emulator for that one.

I've cleared Floor 5 now, and that was surely the toughest one yet. Where Floor 3 was tricky but manageable once you figured out the gimmick and moved carefully, and Floor 4 was dead simple, Floor 5 is sprawling and intricate, and features very strong enemies - higher leveled Priests and Mages especially are a mortal threat to the party, and despite how powerful its become I'm more fearful of a party wipe than ever. I ended up clearing this floor in about five trips total, mapping out a little more of it each time.

Apart from my Fighter -> Samurai change, I'm unsure if I want to have any of my other guys change class. Having one of my spellcasters change to a Thief is my first idea, since my current Thief sits in the back row and does nothing if he fails to hide. If I do that though I'll end up with a Thief with tanked Luck, and I'll have to train up a replacement caster from scratch. My current Thief has 18 Luck and even then he still sometimes triggers chest traps, so I can only imagine the Keystone Kops scenes a 6 Luck Thief would get up to. An extra Matu or Katino caster would be appreciated, though...

 

[aweigh]

Kea

All dungeon crawlers will always work optimally either via keyboard or via console joypad controller because the genre was invented and most healthy around 8 years before the computer mouse started coming bundled together with PCs.

This means that every single dungeon crawler utilizes keyboard-only control, and that additional mouse-driven support for control of the game was added only much later on, and in fact it is Wizardry 7 the first Wizardry to feature mouse controls and they were optional.

The reason a dungeon crawler will always "control well" on console is the same reason they control well on PC: because they do not require a mouse.

A joypad is a keyboard with less buttons, and a keyboard is a joypad with more buttons.

Simply put the entire genre of dungeon crawlers, mainly the turn-based blobber (Wizardry, Might and Magic), or the real-time blobber (Eye of the Beholder); all of these games were designed without the concept of a computer mouse in mind for primary method of game playing.

You are of course correct, though, that any NES ports are inherently tedious to control because of the lack of buttons. That goes without saying

EDIT: Best end-game party for Wizardry 1-3 is:

1x Bishop (End-game Bishop can cast from both spell-schools)
1x Ninja (Completely replaces the role of the Thief)
1x Lord (Cleric spell-casting for healing and end-game instant-death spells and resurrection spells)
3x Samurai (Wizard spell-casting for end-game Tiltowaits to clear groups)

- Ninja makes Thief obsolete as they do the same thing but better and can fight from either rank. If you cannot get a Ninja then keep the Thief; however as soon as you get a Ninja, ANY NINJA, bench the Thief and replace him with any other character.

In Wizardry 1-5 there is no reason to ever keep a character in his Basic Class. The reason Elite Classes are so incredibly hard to get, attribute-wise, is because they are meant by design to replace the Basic Classes.

I almost always start with 2x Fighters, 2x Clerics, 1x Thief, and 1x Mage.

Then I change 1 Fighter to Samurai, the other Fighter to Lord, and then I change 1 Cleric into a Bishop, and lastly the Thief to Ninja and the Mage to a second Samurai.

That means I leave one of those 2 original Clerics "pure", but only out of laziness as it is mathematically optimal to change that Cleric into a Lord or Samurai.

Of course this is a sort of thing that is "on paper", as while playing you simply might never be able to get a Ninja or a Lord, as the two classes are very hard to qualify for. What I wrote down is what one should aim for if given the chance, but it is intentionally designed to be difficult to get Elite Classes so don't worry too much if you can't get a Ninja.

I finished Wizardry 3 (on SNES) with a party of 4 Samurai, 1 Thief and 1 Bishop. Was never, ever able to have anyone qualify for either Lord or Ninja. Samurai are more common though. That meant I had a shit load of Tiltowaits ready to go by end-game, but only 1 character capable of healing.

The best strategy is to have a Cleric -> Samurai so they get both spell-schools, and vice versa, however getting Mage/Clerics l33t enough to qualify for Samurai/Lord jobs is a pain in the ass, which is why the majority of Wizardry Samurai/Lords come from Fighters.

It's a LITTLE easier to get a Cleric into Samurai school though than it is to get a Mage into Lord school. That shit is hard. Getting a Ninja is hard regardless of context. A lot of people finish without one.

 

[Niektory]

I played and finished Wiz 6 on the SNES instead, which, btw, once again features gorgeous 2d Sprites. Only known and documented changes for the SNES version of Wiz 6 on the SNES is the inclusion of an Auto-Map (original did not have one) and it has been documented that the snes version sped up the health/mana regeneration during resting, but AFAIK, and I have researched this exact topic exhaustively, there were no other legitimately game-changing changes done.

Don't the NPC conversations work differently as well?

This means that every single dungeon crawler utilizes keyboard-only control, and that additional mouse-driven support for control of the game was added only much later on, and in fact it is Wizardry 7 the first Wizardry to feature mouse controls and they were optional.

Wiz 6 had mouse controls in the DOS version.

 

[aweigh]

Niektory

- Wizardry 6's remake on the SNES is a 1:1 game script dump, just like the Wizardry 5 remake on Playstation 1.

- Instead of the player being allowed to input questions at the NPCs in Wizardry 5 (PS1) or Wizardry 6 (SNES) each NPC simply spits out the entirety of their dialog in completion.

- I already mentioned in a previous post that there was a second release of Wizardry 6 for DOS that was rushed to market in order to capitalize on the new-fangled mouse peripheral that was being included with PCs.

- I also already mentioned that the mouse controls for Wizardry 6 and 7 are abysmal and only someone who has never played the originals using only the keyboard, as they were designed to be played, would argue that mouse support adds anything at all to Wizardry 6 and 7.

- Wizardry 8, however, was indeed designed with mouse support integration from the very beginning, as one would expect of a PC game coming out in the year 2000 that is in first-person view and features "mouse-look".

- And once again I reiterate: the Wiz-clone genre predates the usage of the mouse by at least 9 years if not more; especially if you take into account games like Oubliette. The turn-based, tile-based dungeon crawler RPG is best played using only the keyboard or in the case of the modern day DRPGs coming from Japan (mainly), then a joypad more than suffices as a joypad is simply a keyboard with less buttons.

- Fun trivia for you: the original release of Wizardry 1 on Apple II utilizes: WAD for movement, K for turning backwards, S to turn on and off the Status display, and C to bring up the main gameplay menu. When you cast a spell you have to type out the name of the spell, and the Enter key functions as the universal confirmation command.

It was only in later releases, such as when they released Wizardry 1 for DOS, that they added the ability to press L to "Leave" menus (previously that function was universally done by pressing ESC) and they also added the ability to turn on and off the complete GUI inside dungeons by pressin the letter O; finally they added the ability to press P to "Purchase" items immediately while browsing Boltac's Shop.

What I'm trying to convey is that there is no need nor any place necessary for the inclusion of a mouse to play a tile-based RPG since it is much faster to press a button than to click a button.

Wizardry 8 gets a pass on the mouse thing because they designed it for an intentional usage of freeform mouse-look, similar to a first-person shooter. Now, the real question is: does that add anything to the gameplay? Nope.

Wizardry 8 would have benefitted from omitting freeform mouse-look and instead utilizing tile-based movement same as all other Wizardry games. It makes for faster, snappier gameplay and it is more efficient as a control scheme to concentrate everything on the keyboard.

 

[Kea]

I've beaten Wizardry 1! The party that defeated Werdna ended up looking like this:

Fighter -> Samurai (w/ Muramasa Blade)
Fighter -> Lord (w/ Blade Cuisinart')
Cleric
Thief
Bishop
Mage -> Samurai
Could've made the Cleric into a Samurai too, but I had accidentally turned him Evil and didn't want to bother farming Murphy's Ghosts to change him back to Good. The Werdna fight turned out to be a breeze - Werdna himself wasted two turns with Zilwan, which gave me enough time to Tiltowait and Malikto everything to death.

Overall, I quite liked the game. Combat was simple but required some thought, and most every encounter later on was dangerous - usually because of spellcasters or level-drainers. The mazes were satisfying to explore and map out, even if the later floors didn't have anything useful in them. I guess for a repeat playthrough you could skip floors 6-8 and head right for the bottom, since all the best loot and XP sources are down there. When I got to floor 9 I mapped it out completely, and felt a little foolish when I found that the entrance to floor 10 is in the next room over from the elevator.

That said, I didn't enjoy the last leg of the game as much as I had the earlier parts. Maybe it's fatigue from playing through the game so quickly, but it was frustrating to get ambushed by eg Vampires and have 2-3 levels drained from a party member, or those times I got a TPK versus some Poison Giants or Greater Demons when a Run attempt failed. By the end I had to run a few circuits through floor 10 to get my spellcaster to level 8 magic and find some weapons better than a Sword of Slicing. But, I'm willing to accept that I was taking the wrong approach to things. When I play Wizardry II at some point, I'm going to take it slowly and not worry so much about party wipes.

 

[Dorarnae]

I've beaten Wizardry 1! The party that defeated Werdna ended up looking like this:

Fighter -> Samurai (w/ Muramasa Blade)
Fighter -> Lord (w/ Blade Cuisinart')
Cleric
Thief
Bishop
Mage -> Samurai
Could've made the Cleric into a Samurai too, but I had accidentally turned him Evil and didn't want to bother farming Murphy's Ghosts to change him back to Good. The Werdna fight turned out to be a breeze - Werdna himself wasted two turns with Zilwan, which gave me enough time to Tiltowait and Malikto everything to death.

Overall, I quite liked the game. Combat was simple but required some thought, and most every encounter later on was dangerous - usually because of spellcasters or level-drainers. The mazes were satisfying to explore and map out, even if the later floors didn't have anything useful in them. I guess for a repeat playthrough you could skip floors 6-8 and head right for the bottom, since all the best loot and XP sources are down there. When I got to floor 9 I mapped it out completely, and felt a little foolish when I found that the entrance to floor 10 is in the next room over from the elevator.

That said, I didn't enjoy the last leg of the game as much as I had the earlier parts. Maybe it's fatigue from playing through the game so quickly, but it was frustrating to get ambushed by eg Vampires and have 2-3 levels drained from a party member, or those times I got a TPK versus some Poison Giants or Greater Demons when a Run attempt failed. By the end I had to run a few circuits through floor 10 to get my spellcaster to level 8 magic and find some weapons better than a Sword of Slicing. But, I'm willing to accept that I was taking the wrong approach to things. When I play Wizardry II at some point, I'm going to take it slowly and not worry so much about party wipes.

you can pretty much just farm murphy ghost on the first floor til you're like lvl 13-14. then go to floor 4 via elevator and get the ribbon and then down to floor 9 to farm a little for some gear and then you can finish the game.