The Bard’s Tale remaster is really good. In addition to the automap it now allows you to save anywhere, which is absolutely a game changer. No more lost progress trying to get back to the Adventurer’s Guild with zero spell points.
Apparently I already own it too! When did that happen?? I think I will check it out.
I, uh, kinda did a Let’s Play of this:
Right now I wouldn’t buy this.
30 bucks is a lot for what is not yet a “old school game with modern sensibilities/touches” (or whatever). I mean it’s a lot for that anyway and for 30 bucks I have certain expectations I doubt will get met, but never mind. But it’s definitely EA right now, and rough.
There is no mouse support. The UI is worse than the original since everything is keyed to either arrows or specific keys like L-shift/L-alt/R-alt/q/e. Menu navigation tends to be a bit obnoxious, e.g. the store especially is a chore (l-ctrl cycles through t he store “filters”, but you have to use L/R-alt to switch characters). Shift or space to camp in the dungeon, (I can’t recall), but also space to go through doors/enter a stair. It’s very weird. Certainly, improvable.
No reach/range weapons that I can see (that’s some modern accoutrement that ought to be there).
There is a sort of “old school/new school” options menu that controls modern touches like an auto map being present. And, you can tweak both character creation and leveling. To the former, you can toggle to a fixed amount of bonus points on creation. This seems to be a terrible ideal, but you can do it (it’s 12ish). Allowing it to roll, I never saw more than 20 but everything seemed to be 6-10 or 17-20 ish, with the high teens rolls being fairly common (20 is not enough for a human samurai, but just enough for a Dwarf). More intriguing, you can toggle whether level ups produce old school randomized stat gains or provide assignable bonus points. No idea what happens on class change yet, of course, as I only played like 10 minutes.
I started with zero money, but 800 gold mysteriously appeared in my inventory. Not before my first dungeon trip, which produced a death predictably. No pooling/divvying, gold at least is just a party thing (inventories are individual otherwise).
There is a “quick action” button in combat, but all the combat hot keys are weird. And, you have to watch some minor animations play out, which is obnoxious (Halito in particular felt janky, but again EA).
Yeah, you can really see the influence it had on JRPG combat, because it is classic JRPG combat. Seeing this, I can’t help but think Wizardry is a evolutionary dead-end at blobbers and strictly old school throwback dungeon crawls I played back on the DSlite.
The direct evolutionary descendant of Wizardry is Shin Megami Tensei, so not sure dead end is the right term.
Yeah, that’s as Wizardry under the hood as Apple Pie is American (I was at 17 hp at level 3 after starting with a good chunk and going +1/+1 the next two level ups).
I don’t think I’ve seen more than three attribute points on a levelup. But I’ve seen 2-3 a good portion of the time.
I’m currently using the premade thief (there’s six premade characters all starting at level 2) because. . . well you know. This is my third thief.
Mahalito, game over.
Mage spell gains were kinda crapy before this level (was only at 3/2 casts, where the priest was at 5/4). Another Wizardry staple.
One thing this does well - on inspect you auto select the person with the highest chance (thank you), and likewise you don’t need to remember the trap. It both tells you and then when you go to disarm it’s all you’ll see. If you have multiple people inspect IDK what happens. Also, chance to inspect/disarm successfully is shown.
Controller support is solid, better than just using keyboard (which seems like it’s built arrow using the arrow keys to maneuver). But again, early access.
The automap has no persistence (not even while exploring on a single level, it’s obnoxious). Until you cast Dumapic. It’s sort of weird. Also possibly a touch buggy. It’s weirder than I thought. The smaller floating automap on the UI (maybe 5x5?) does not persist between dungeon sessions and when you move off the shown section for that matter. But X brings up a “known map” that reflects your last casting of Dumapic. But X doesn’t show you on the map, which is extra weird. Note, this is “New Dumapic” and there’s an option to have it just give coordinates old school style.
The level-up distro of attribute points is probably a good change, worth it to get rid of obnoxious random stat losses. They really should implement a proper automap and just have it cost you a casting of DUMAPIC to enable it, similar to how you typically want to cast LOMILWA and MAPORFIC for each dungeon trip.
I would maybe kinda miss the thrill of accidentally setting off a chest trap via typo, but I’m weird that way.
There is no old/new school setting for that, sadly (or not, depending on one’s taste).
I forgot to mention but they ditched age and replaced it with “the more easily understood stat of Vim”. Which, uh, I have seen no explanation of. It costs Vim to rest at the inn. That’s about all I can tell you.
I love Wizardry.
I love Digital Eclipse.
I love the concept of making old games accessible to new players.
…I don’t get this.
Wizardry 1 is extremely playable (if commercially unavailable) today. It actually holds up better than many games from, like, 2005.
I also am going to “press X to doubt” that this uses even the slightest trace of the original code, which was Apple PASCAL, lol. That’s ok, of course. It would be silly if it did. But weird if they’re claiming that.
… you must be extremely near-sighted or hallucinating in nostalgia. If you want new players to play the greatness that is Wizardry 1, it needs to meet some minimum standards to even try. It doesn’t need to be flashy but it needs something graphically and it doesn’t hurt that the lessons of 30 years of game development and QoL bleed into the hard prehistoric crust of early computer limitations.
I actually never played Wizardry 1 until the 2000s, so it’s not nostalgia!
I don’t actually think any new players will touch this with a ten-foot Joy-Con, but I respect the effort.
Older Japanese gamers might still lap it up. I personally have no interest. It’s a historical relic.
I might nostalgia buy it on sale but I don’t think the present gaming generation would enjoy it.
This is from the regular option to enable the “Legacy HUD” being “high” or something (low and off are the other options). The old keyboard commands don’t work, because this has weird ui functionality wrapped around classic.
The “quick action” button literally just speeds through your party order selecting fight, fight, fight, parry, parry, parry (or whatever variant thereof based on party composition; it’s also slightly obnoxious because it takes like a second to do it). Fight/Take Back just kicks you back to the beginning of the order, a la classic. All of the dungeon screens look exactly like they would in classic, if you have that HUD item on (I keep it off typically).
I don’t think the coded that for shits and giggles, or coded an ineffectual series of UI elements. I’ll turn it on for the next encounter and see if the monster portraits are there.
Dope.
I had to alt-f4. The game seems to preserve state after every combat round. The last time I faced ninjas on level 4. . . well I’m running around with four party members not because I’m trying to power level, but because my options are to run around with four party members, or four party members and two level 1 dudes.
Alt-f4 just leaves you in the tile. And weirdly, the game doesn’t remember buff spells on continue.
So Identification is busted right now. Sometimes Bishops get the option, but sometimes they don’t. And it looks like there’s no I-9. You are supposed to select items and then select Identify (assuming it’s in a bishop’s inventory but also, obviously, unidentified).
The game shows items stats now, which is nice. Got all the way to level 11 and (1) Priest didn’t learn Madi and (2) Wizard is still at 3 Makanito casts. That’s some BS. But I’m ready to move on from the 4th floor anyway.
2009 is still 14 years ago my man.
Ah, the old 4th floor Monster Allocation Center grind. After that, the only floor really worth spending time on is the 9th to gear up before tackling the basement.
Yep, which is what I’m doing now (9th floor). Too slow on the draw twice now and got myself some level drains, but they weren’t on anyone important (one of the two frontline Samurai). I’ve gotten a +2 longsword, a +1 longsword, and a +2 shield (also a +1 shortsword for the thief but he’s hiding in the back still). I probably need to start leveling another caster (just running 5 right now). I have to be very careful, because there’s so much that can kill me and limits to what I can actually do about it.
I don’t recall if I can get +3 breastplates on level 9 anymore. But +2 shields and maybe +2 breastplates and +2 longswords seem like the minimum before I try 10. Sadly xp grind gets slow until you get to 10, where it picks up again big time (if dangerously so). Oh, and diadems of malor, just for the AC. Which I think I can get on this level. Still a ways off from 12 for the casters - like 80k xp. I think I’ve done MAC the grind all the way to 13 in my life before, but that’s a going to take a long time to do. Still, it’s safer even with gear upgrades. I really desperately need madi and more Makanito casts.
I read something interesting regarding character creation. This may not be true, and if I once knew it I had forgotten. But allegedly it rolls over a modest range of values (what I read was d5+4) and then rolls a d20 and on a 20 you get +10 points, and then another d20 roll (and if that hits 20 you get another +10, and another roll). I don’t think this is true for every version of the game though. I remember things like 12s and 13s being possible, which wouldn’t happen in this system. And it’s not true in this version regardless of what code it’s using; I see something like 6 or 7 to 10 and 17 to 20. A post on the steam forums claims to have gotten more than 20. I don’t doubt it but I haven’t seen it and peculiarly I’ve never seen anything 11-16. Probably easily across 100 rolls at this point (17-20 is fairly common, moreso than I recall in either the original or the Archives version).
point allocation on level up (combined with no stat downs) is chef’s kiss.
Man, we really need a proper Wzi 6/Wiz7 remaster.
I think you can get most if not all the +2 stuff on level 9, including perhaps Plate +2. And the nice thing is that you can just leverage the Chute (!) to hit the teleporter back to the Castle when you’re done with the run, as long as you can beat or run away from that encounter in the Chute room. I remember back in the day it took us forever before we found the way to level 10. It was perhaps the last square on the level that we stepped on when trying to find the “stairs down.”