Wizards & Warriors - DW Bradley

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DigitalMonk
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Re: Wizards & Warriors - DW Bradley

Post by DigitalMonk »

jman0war wrote: Mon Apr 20, 2020 6:38 pm I enjoyed MM6 but didn't play any of the others
MM6 was the best to my mind, but I liked the comparative freedom and ability to grow any character. MM7's light/dark and human/elf (IIRC) decision points offered some replayability, but MM7 began the path of tightening down on what each class could learn. MM8 has the interesting tidbit of being able to have dragons in your party, but that completely destroys any chance of balance - basically, because it is possible to have a party consisting of one cleric and four dragons who let the party fly for free and have unlimited dragon breath as their standard free attack, the mid to late game mobs have to be huge and mostly impenetrable. I can't imagine trying to get through them without the dragons.
jman0war wrote: Mon Apr 20, 2020 6:38 pm Wizardry8 was a slog. People rave about that game though and i'm not really sure why but i played to the end.
I found the Tinkerer character underwhelming.
I really enjoyed the first "level" (which was also the demo). But I loathed the second level because the difficulty jumped crazily. And I had that problem through the whole game -- a few levels that were enjoyable surrounded by multiple death march slogs. It was a little more interesting to me because I'd never played any of the other Wizardry games, so the setting and the oddball character types and settings kept me going. But it was right on the ragged edge. At least it was less weird-coz-it's-funny than Wiz7 was... I tried to go back to Wiz7 after that, and when the Dallas Cowboy Cheerleader on a rocket cycle came down to give me a quest hook, I decided I couldn't go there...
jman0war wrote: Mon Apr 20, 2020 6:38 pmI recently played MM10 - (i guess i don't really consider this as part of the same MM series as it's UBIsoft and not New World Computing).
I'd forgotten about MM10... Given how astoundingly disappointed I was by MM9, I'm not sure that it being by someone other than NWC would bother me. But my patience for "step into room, grind through 100 bad guys, open door, repeat" is much lower than it used to be, so I dunno... Oh, and I refuse Steam on principle (I want to own my copy of the game, not lease it, because I play games for >20 years, durnit!), so that got in my way, too... Glad to hear something about it, though!

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jman0war
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Re: Wizards & Warriors - DW Bradley

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I used to feel the same way about Steam but realistically i have hardly ever re-played a game through to completion.
And i haven't had a CDROM/DVD drive in a pc for quite a few years now so owning a physical copy is truly redundant.
It's actually efficient having almost all my games stored in a cloud service.
Plus with Steam you get access to at least one pretty great game for free : Path of Exile.

Wizards & Warriors
In my imagination i can envision this game incorporating a low-tech steam powered world InterKarma.

-SPOILERS below-

Spoiler!
You have to ride an elevator inside the crypt.

Then deeper-in you meet this scary looking necromancer named Scabban.
https://1drv.ms/v/s!An4TIiBt2x9fmgeRNT9 ... w?e=gUJo6F

I notice the Undead spawn in these sort of pools so maybe they are filled with Scabban's concoction.
https://1drv.ms/v/s!An4TIiBt2x9fmgZpJhF ... F?e=hx4gV6
Find my Vibrant Terrain Flats mod at Nexusmods: https://www.nexusmods.com/daggerfalluni ... ?tab=files

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jman0war
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Re: Wizards & Warriors - DW Bradley

Post by jman0war »

After the cool Crypt i ended up at this Toad village.
They are simpletons and it's quite lame.

Additionally they introduce a hugely annoying bug: these 2 can literally block your path and force you to reload or kill them.
Which then makes you KOS for Toads.
I'd debate scrubbing them from the game if i were a Dev.

Image
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jman0war
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Re: Wizards & Warriors - DW Bradley

Post by jman0war »

This guy that wrote THE definitive book on the history of CRPG's https://crpgbook.wordpress.com/, has recently wrote about what makes a good dungeon.
Daggerfall gets a mention as well as a particular dungeon from Wizards & Warriors - Shurugeon Castle.
https://medium.com/@felipepepe/what-mak ... 5180c69d00

I'm just now entering it.
But already i can tell you that the game has wasted opportunities on rewarding exploration.
Why allow the player to climb up and around the top perimiter walls and then just run me into an invisible collision object, preventing me from continuing?
Surely the devs should have just prevented me from getting ontop of the walls in the first place.
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mcarss
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Re: Wizards & Warriors - DW Bradley

Post by mcarss »

Great article. Thanks for posting it. That CRPG book is certainly intriguing too.

Good luck clearing out Shurugeon Castle. ;)

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jman0war
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Re: Wizards & Warriors - DW Bradley

Post by jman0war »

DW Bradley's Dungeon Lords is on sale at Steam today, i picked it up for $4, not bad.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2717 ... m_Edition/
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jman0war
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Re: Wizards & Warriors - DW Bradley

Post by jman0war »

Played through the dungeon Felipe Pepe talks about in his article.
I thought the place was good, but only good in-the-rough sort of way.

It's pretty buggy - discarded items seem to have a little collision and persist on the ground, only to trip me up sometimes and interrupt my movement.(although maybe that's actually what should occur..).
You can get stuck in Spiral Staircases, fortunately i've always gotten out of it.
There are some neat places, but also unrewarded exploration.
I'm putting by a video of my run through a section or two, to go into a boss fight.
https://1drv.ms/v/s!An4TIiBt2x9fmiBz54k ... v?e=W52fCj

This is, i think THE definitive era of computer RPG's
Thief, Arx Fatalis, and this one all share this moody, dungeon crawling niche.
BattleSpire: what a pity, maybe it could have been in this list.

I think actually that the low poly models, choppy animation and low
rez gfx is way under appreciated by ppl today.
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