Wizardry I, Ultima I, Might & Magic I

[Anonymous No.371850]

These seem to be the big three super-long-running RPG series.

But have you ever played the FIRST game in each series? Early '80s vintage, brutal, unforgiving gameplay.

I have an idea to get drunk one night and try my hand at Wizardry I.

[Anonymous No.371869]

I've played Ultima 1 but haven't played any Wizardry yet.

[Anonymous No.371893]

>>371869

How was the experience?

[Anonymous No.372197]

>>371893
Ultima 1 isn't that difficult. The lower levels of the dungeons are hard but there is relatively little reason to go there. You can get money easy on the first levels and even get HP after leaving the dungeon. Increasing the stats takes a bit of traveling but has no major problems attached to it.
The space parts are the hardest since you can easily damage your ship while docking or run out of fuel during maneuvering.
Even when you die you can get resurrected with minor losses or load your save-game.

Ultima 2 is a lot worse in those regards. Money is hard to come by and you need random drops from enemies for almost everything.
You start without equipment near the Great Lakes and then have to fight your way to Rome to buy some stuff and then try to organize food before your starve to death.
Hijacking a ship and then grinding to hell is practically the only way to win.

[Anonymous No.372236]

I've played and beaten Akalabeth, because I wanted to finish every Ultima in the order they came out. The game can be hard if you play it legit, even on the lower difficulty settings, but it's pretty easy to completely break the game to the point where it no longer has any challenge.

[Anonymous No.372463]

Yes OP, Wizardry 1 was actually the first game I asked my dad to buy for me after we got our Apple computer in the 80s.

Everything about it was amazing. The box art was extremely cool, heavy duty textured box with foil embossed design (pic related). The game itself was really fun. I loved rolling different characters, and based on their stats, it opened up different classes. There were rare "prestige" classes like Lord, Samurai, Ninja and Bishop that required amazing stats, and some stat requirements for them could not be achieved during initial character creation. You had to get your stats raised through magic or gear or something, and then switch professions mid-adventure (any character could do this at any time).

I had a blast mapping every level on graph paper, noting special encounters, teleporters, secret doors, etc.

Wizardry 2 was even better, with a main plot where you collected the armor of the Night of Diamonds one piece at a time.

I also played Might & Magic 1 in the same way, but it was not quite as appealing to me in some ways. Might & Magic 2-5 however quickly became a favorite series of my friends and I.

Best of all, and released at the same time as M&M 2-5, were the original Bard's Tale games. Those were the pinnacle of this party-based, turn-based, first person exploration that Wizardry started.

Good times.

[Anonymous No.372673]

>>371850
Played and finished Ultima 1-4, about to do 5 next. All 4 of them are pretty much impossible to finish without a walkthrough unless you go literally everywhere and do everything that's possible.
U1 is easy actually, and quick to get through - with a walkthrough of course. Really archaic and boring, but at least it's fast.
Played Wiz 1, got raped at floor 4 by ninjas and mages. Good game, would be better if it wasn't so grindy.
Haven't played M&M1 but I've played M&M2 for about 5 minutes before getting raped by a swarm of beggars. Think I'll do Ultima first.

[Anonymous No.372703]

>>371850
Wiz1 is casual kiddie shit

IV is what real OGs play

[Anonymous No.372761]

>>372673
>All 4 of them are pretty much impossible to finish without a walkthrough unless you go literally everywhere and do everything that's possible.


You don't need a walkthrough, you just have to explore and understand that is the point of the gameplay. Those games are not designed to lead you through every step. They are not designed to move directly from plot point to plot point. Instead, yes, you are supposed to explore every nook and cranny, and you will find the hints/quests/goals/whatever that lead to the next step.

Wiz 1 wasn't grindy; it was an exploration of the maze and a simulator for trying different classes / spells / combat strategies. Those same mobs in Wiz 1 kicked my ass too, until I experimented and found the right spells to counteract them and/or got strong enough to overcome them. But I never went through "grinding" to get strong enough; by the time I mapped every square of the floor I was on I was strong enough.

[Anonymous No.372871]

>>372761
I'm not sure about Ultima 2. A lot of information is on the other planets and you can't reach those until you are strong enough to fight guards in the towns.

[Anonymous No.372878]

>>372703
Some poor bastard did a let's play of wizardry 4 last year. The shit he must have gone through...

Honestly I still have my box, manual, and floppies for wizardry 1, but I gotta rely on remakes/ports to later consoles to actually play it anymore, not that the SNES port of the first 3 is bad.

It's a shame that the only place wizardry styled games appear anymore is japan, and everything that wizardry started is what everyone deems is the qualifiers for a "JRPG" anymore.

[Anonymous No.372924]

>>372878
> everything that wizardry started is what everyone deems is the qualifiers for a "JRPG" anymore.

I think the gameplay elements Wizardry started are found equally in both JRPGs and WRPGs. The turn-based party stuff is mostly in JRPGs, yes. But the straight-forward serious tone, high-fantasy setting has continued on in WRPGs.

I see the connection between Wiz and JRPGs, but the tone is so different, I never really felt like Lunar or Alundra was a "continuation" of my gameplay experiences with Wiz.

I always enjoyed those JRPGs for what they are, but wished there were "more games like Wiz". Just like I've enjoyed a lot of western RPGs, but wished there were "more games like Wiz" (turn based, party).

[Anonymous No.373108]

>>372924
>"more games like Wiz" (turn based, party).
Grimoire. Official Demo here: http://www.rpgcodex.net/forums/index.php?threads/grimoire-demo-availabe.75724/page-121#post-2581715 (that thread has all the recent updates and he's selling it through IndieGoGo)
Legend of Grimrock.
Might and Magic is seemingly getting a new, possibly more simplistic, release with Might and Magic X.

[Anonymous No.373207]

Might and Magic 1 and Wiz1 are still pretty good today. Ultima 1 is the only one that has become unplayable.

>>372924
>straight-forward series tone

What? Wizardry was pretty light-hearted and joking.

Anyway, you can try Swords and Sorcery Underworld if you want something recent that's like Wiz. I would recommend Frayed Knights, but you don't want comedy.

[Anonymous No.373286]

>>373207
>What? Wizardry was pretty light-hearted and joking.

Well.. there were funny / lighthearted illustrations in the instruction manual, but that's about it. The dungeon, classes, mobs, and boss were all presented in a straight, non-humorous way. I'm not saying it was grimdark, just that it was not humorous or silly. It certainly didn't have a juvenile/teen/young hero JRPG tone.

[Anonymous No.373530]

>>373286
Don't forget there was the dumb jokes within the riddles and puzzles in the dungeon, some of the messages and answers were straight up humour. And then there was wizardry 4, which pretty much every time it asked for a password of some sort, it was some pop culture trivia nonsense.

[Anonymous No.373654]

Played MM1. The biggest issue is the lack of cartography. MM2 is much much more playable even with the primitive map.

The gameplay itself wasn't particularly hard, but really isn't worth a replay. Ending was cool though.

[Anonymous No.376648]

>>372236
Yeah. Akalabeth is pretty brutal if you try to just charge in. Take it slow, lots of repetition, and you'll get to where you can survive more than 2 minutes.

Ultima 1 dungeons were similar, but eventually you get to the point where in both games you can find a nice dead-end to back yourself into, hold down the A(ttack) key, and watch monsters as they run into your weapon to their deaths, and rack up gold then exit the dungeon to a gain a shit ton of HP.

[Anonymous No.376693]

>>371850
I kind of played Wizardry 1. I was young so didn't really know what I was doing. My cousin gave me a program called Wizfix which let me boost most of my stats to around 250. And I just kicked around the first few levels until I figured out where to directly teleport to to fight Werdna. Played a little of KoD, but just wandering around. Never got into LoL or RoW.

Played all the Ultimas up to 5, including Ultima 1 in several forms. Original, remake, and unfinished IIGS version. Sometimes you'd fight a blank square where the monster image was not yet created.

Never played M&M, did play The Bard's Tale and BTII. BTIII I didn't get far into.

[Princess Bubblegum !AnVbXjgZco No.376915]

First person dungeon crawlers are for babbies. Play Nethack!

[Anonymous No.376941]

>Wizardry IV

>Another major example that seriously hinders unfamiliar players is the seemingly impossible task of exiting the very first room. The only way out is a hidden door which may be revealed by casting a "light" spell called "Milwa". The only way to do this is to recruit a group of Priests. This seemingly-simple task is made unintuitive due to the lack of any evidence that there is a door to begin with; the necessity of recruiting a group of Clerics, which are ineffective in combat and take the place of effective combat recruits; and the need to enter combat until the Clerics cast this spell. There is no suggestion in the context of the game as to what Milwa or any other Cleric spell name means

2hxc4me

[Anonymous No.376960]

>>372703
>all dem cans of Mountain Breeze

I wish to become him.

[Anonymous No.377019]

>>376960
As long as you're on 4chan, it's an inevitability.

[Anonymous No.377043]

>>376941
It does have a big warning on the box though "HARDCORE experts only/Wizardry knowledge required".
So I guess they can expect players to know what Milwa is.