The great debate https://www.strawpoll.me/18889919

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Anonymous Mon Nov 4 00:03:59 2019 No.5990102 [Reply] [Original]

The great debate
https://www.strawpoll.me/18889919

>>	Anonymous Mon Nov 4 00:19:27 2019 No.5990127 I haven't played any of them

>>	Anonymous Mon Nov 4 00:23:48 2019 No.5990134 >>5990102 Wizardry has the best retro game regardless of series' track records.

>>	Anonymous Mon Nov 4 00:29:50 2019 No.5990143 >>5990127 Well you'll need to play every game in every series... if you skip the spin-offs and put your job, family etc on hold it should only take a couple of years

>>	Anonymous Mon Nov 4 01:55:07 2019 No.5990316 >>5990143 >job, family etc Who do you think you're talking to?

Anonymous Mon Nov 4 02:31:06 2019 No.5990354

>>5990143
I got through Wizardry except for 4 in three months.
Ultima should have been a similar amount in aggregate.
I didn't play M&M in order so I'm not sure how long it took in total but if you are familiar with Wizardry it's a walk in the park.
BT are only three games anyway.

>>	Anonymous Mon Nov 4 02:48:50 2019 No.5990373 >>5990127 Based

>>	Anonymous Mon Nov 4 10:34:29 2019 No.5990808 bump

>>	Anonymous Mon Nov 4 12:46:05 2019 No.5991003 might and magic 3-8 are all better than anything from ultima, wizardry, or bards

>>	Anonymous Mon Nov 4 12:47:22 2019 No.5991004 >>5990354 i call bullshit on this. wizardry 7 alone is 3 months at least

>>	Anonymous Mon Nov 4 12:49:28 2019 No.5991008 Might and Magic scratches that casual dungeon crawling/exploration itch so it will always be my favorite.

Anonymous Mon Nov 4 12:53:52 2019 No.5991017

>>5991004
Maybe if you try to solve all the bullshit puzzles by brute force.
It was something like 1 week for Proving Grounds, 1 week for Knight of Diamons and Legacy of Llylgamin, 2 weeks for Heart of the Maelstrom, 2 weeks for Bane of the Cosmic Forge and 6 weeks for Crusaders of the Dark Savant.

>>	Anonymous Mon Nov 4 12:56:55 2019 No.5991027 File: 1.08 MB, 1080x995, 1572890215376.png [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google] I've only played one might and magic game.

>>	Anonymous Mon Nov 4 12:57:22 2019 No.5991029 bard's tale is nowhere close in quality or importance to the other three

>>	Anonymous Mon Nov 4 13:00:34 2019 No.5991034 >>5991029 It should only be Wizardry and Ultima. The rest are upstarts with little relevance.

>>	Anonymous Mon Nov 4 13:47:12 2019 No.5991135 >>5991008 What's a good M&M to start with?

>>	Anonymous Mon Nov 4 13:49:05 2019 No.5991141 >>5991027 coh was pretty good though

>>	Anonymous Mon Nov 4 13:50:24 2019 No.5991145 >>5991008 Can I start with https://www.gog.com/game/might_and_magic_6_limited_edition ?

>>	Anonymous Mon Nov 4 14:15:42 2019 No.5991184 >>5991135 Do you have any experience with RPGs? If yes, 1, otherwise 3.

>>	Anonymous Mon Nov 4 14:30:56 2019 No.5991226 >>5991184 Are these games real time like Grimrock and Eye of the Beholder, where you can cheese combat by backstepping during your swing timer recovery?

>>	Anonymous Mon Nov 4 14:31:59 2019 No.5991229 >>5991226 M&M6 onward allowed to to switch between turn based and real time. First five are turn based only.

>>	Anonymous Mon Nov 4 14:35:27 2019 No.5991232 >>5991135 My favorite is 6.

>>	Anonymous Mon Nov 4 17:52:51 2019 No.5991691 File: 531 KB, 1205x1606, 5b131f9a3aee5_MightandMagic.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google] >>5991145 >this ad I'm getting sold here.

>>	Anonymous Mon Nov 4 18:04:25 2019 No.5991709 >>5990102 >M&M winning that's just because /vr/ is full of HoMM3fag and probably degenerate russians.

>>	Anonymous Mon Nov 4 18:12:20 2019 No.5991730 >>5991709 MM6-8 basically play like fantasy DOOM if you're doing it right, its got a broader appeal than strictly turn based

>>	Anonymous Mon Nov 4 18:23:17 2019 No.5991759 >>5991730 yeah I never played them. but fantasy doom sounds cool.

>>	Anonymous Mon Nov 4 23:46:08 2019 No.5992320 >>5991232 This

Anonymous Tue Nov 5 04:31:38 2019 No.5992661

Series or just the first game?
>Wizardry 1
Could very well be one of the most influential game of all time. It's a fun game but feel the first half is where the game really shines but because of size limitation you could feel they couldn't put as much love in the second half of the dungeon.

>Wizardry series
Sadly it never really could keep up the luster of the first game even when it was really great like 8.

>Ultima 1
It's...not good personally. It's a blender of so many ideas but nothing actually well thought out.

>Ultima series
3 onward is when it really started to shine and start to have some sort of focus. Sadly for me I just couldn't stand the combat system so I couldn't really spend enough time to play them as I should.

>M&M 1
Pretty much Wizardry but a whole world instead of one dungeon and damn easy. Maybe one of the best place to start if you want to start out with dungeon crawlers.

>M&M series
Pretty damn fun if you just want a fun easy dungeon crawler. Which it's nice to have every so often. Think that's mostly why people love it. It's like other dungeon crawlers but doesn't really try to be Tomb of Horrors.

>Bard's Tale 1 and series
I really should look into Bard's Tale. The only really thing I know is that it's Wizardry but a full town plus music which was the selling point. With the remaster out maybe I should look into it.

>>	Anonymous Tue Nov 5 05:57:24 2019 No.5992738 >>5990102 >No magic candle series

Anonymous Tue Nov 5 11:17:45 2019 No.5993176

Wizardry 8 is the best entry out of any of them, but Xeen is pretty damn fun too. It's pretty hard to deal with the sloppy design decisions of the first couple of Wizardry games, and Ultima always felt shallow to me.

M&M > Wizardry > Bard's Tale > Ultima overall.

>>	Anonymous Tue Nov 5 11:24:41 2019 No.5993182 >>5991709 yeah

Anonymous Tue Nov 5 12:09:11 2019 No.5993221

>>5991145
That's a fine place to start. 6-8 use a differing aesthetic than the earlier ones and a realtime 3D engine (fantasy DOOM is right on). They're pretty much differing subseries. Oh but make sure you find the right fanpatches because the math is busted all to hell.

>>	Anonymous Tue Nov 5 12:48:51 2019 No.5993278 >>5990127 Came here to post this

>>	Anonymous Tue Nov 5 13:02:53 2019 No.5993293 >>5991709 >/vr/ is full of HoMM3fag fuck yeah

>>	Anonymous Tue Nov 5 13:10:57 2019 No.5993309 >>5990127 BASED

>>	Anonymous Tue Nov 5 13:17:58 2019 No.5993320 >>5992661 You can cheese most of the second half of the dungeon in Wizardry 1 anyway. Most people following guides will likely never experience being lost in the lower levels.

Anonymous Tue Nov 5 13:23:48 2019 No.5993330

>>5993320
True just saying if you do play it all the fun interesting part is just the first half. Seem each floor showed off a new idea and played around with it. But once the second half hits you never really felt like they used it in any meaningful way. Even the whole totem thing is forgotten quickly. I get why it became a massive success and became the game everyone built upon but actually looking at it you can tell they were starved for disk space. Wizardry 4 felt more like what they might wanted Wizardry to kind of be. A more adventurey item collecting dungeon crawler but just couldn't at the time.

>>	Anonymous Tue Nov 5 13:58:29 2019 No.5993373 >>5993320 >wiz >people following guides complete faggots

>>	Anonymous ~ Tue Nov 5 23:46:01 2019 No.5994332 >>5990102 Story/World building: Ultima Autism ubcks: Wizardry Combat mechanics: HOMM

>>	Anonymous ~ Tue Nov 5 23:47:30 2019 No.5994335 >>5991027 the causal puzzlequest ripoff game? i never could find it offline, and i aint paying ebay prices.

>>	Anonymous ~ Tue Nov 5 23:49:59 2019 No.5994341 >>5992661 >>Ultima 1 >It's...not good personally. It's a blender of so many ideas but nothing actually well thought out. it's like the grandfather of CRPGs, not just western ones, it influenced JRPGs too. all CRPGs wouldn't be what it was w/o it.

>>	Anonymous Wed Nov 6 00:00:55 2019 No.5994363 >>5994332 >Combat mechanics: HOMM HOMM? You meant MM, right?

>>	Anonymous Wed Nov 6 00:21:37 2019 No.5994402 >>5994341 That doesn't make it a good game. Ultima was a series that slowly evolved and innovated. 1 was completely amateurish, barely a step up from Akalabeth.

Anonymous Wed Nov 6 00:39:08 2019 No.5994435

>>5994341
I never said it wasn't influential. It's just that it was such a scattershot of ideas but nothing baked well. Wizardry felt like they knew what they wanted to make and pushed that core idea as far as it would let them and made it perfect. Ultima is a game where Garriott had so many ideas but either didn't have the technical chops to pull it off or didn't take the time to make any of it work well.

>>	Anonymous Wed Nov 6 09:37:52 2019 No.5994986 I definitely feel like Might and Magic (series) has the most directly fun gameplay, while Ultima (series) has the strongest plot and writing. I lean towards writing so I ultimately pick Ultima.

Anonymous Wed Nov 6 17:09:31 2019 No.5995675

>>5991029
This might be true. But you're not understanding how popular it used to be. IIRC in the late 80s it had the highest selling single game out of all 4 series at one point. The series has been considered one of "the big 4 of 80s WRPGs" for decades for a reason.

>>	Anonymous Wed Nov 6 22:25:10 2019 No.5996186 >>5994363 Eh, he might not have. I don't remember how HOMM plays myself, but he might be suggesting that applying the combat from that game to an RPG would be good.

>>	Anonymous Thu Nov 7 06:19:38 2019 No.5996754 >>5992661 >Sadly it never really could keep up the luster of the first game even when it was really great like 8. this, the first game is pure magic and so much better than the rest

Anonymous Thu Nov 7 10:38:12 2019 No.5997113

>>5996754
I mean it really couldn't. 2 and 3 were more expansions than actual sequels that change things up. 4 is a whole thing of itself that turned more people away. Which takes us to 5 which was kind of a strange little game in the series since it was meant to be something completely different. By so by the time 6 happened which was meant to be the actual time the company really tried to start the series fresh the series was almost 10 years old and lots of people moved on at that point.

>>	Anonymous Thu Nov 7 10:45:24 2019 No.5997124 >>5997113 >lots of people moved on at that point. not surprising, especially since the competition at that time made far better looking and playing games I've never been overly fond of 6-8

>>	Anonymous Thu Nov 7 23:22:18 2019 No.5998402 bump

Anonymous Fri Nov 8 00:14:57 2019 No.5998487

Speaking of Wizardry, anyone else have trouble launching Wiz 8 recently? It suddenly stopped being able to launch for me on both Steam and GOG and was wondering if anyone else is having trouble with it? I assume it's a recent Windows update that's causing the problem.

>>	Anonymous Fri Nov 8 00:18:53 2019 No.5998497 Ok which versions of the Wizardry games and Ultima games should I play? They all have like 20 different releases.

>>	Anonymous Fri Nov 8 00:20:16 2019 No.5998504 >>5998497 It's more like which series do you prefer?

>>	Anonymous Fri Nov 8 00:20:33 2019 No.5998506 >>5998497 Ultima 4-6 in order Wizardry 5

>>	Anonymous Fri Nov 8 00:21:15 2019 No.5998508 >>5998504 I can't tell you that until I play them which is why I asked the question. Also I specifically came to /vr/ to ask this question and thought it made more sense to post in this thread thna make a new one.

>>	Anonymous Fri Nov 8 00:22:15 2019 No.5998512 >>5998506 No no, you misunderstand. I'm not asking which games, I'm asking which versions of the games.

>>	Anonymous Fri Nov 8 00:26:11 2019 No.5998527 >>5998512 Ultima: 1+2: Towns 4: xu4 5: IBM-DOS+music patch 6: nuvie 7: exult 8: pentagram 9: Patch 1.19h or better Wizardry: 1-3: PC98, PS1 or SFC 5: Towns 6: SFC 7: IBM-DOS 8: wiz8fast

>>	Anonymous Fri Nov 8 00:27:00 2019 No.5998529 File: 53 KB, 750x559, 1558701256150.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google] >>5998527 Thanks anon.

>>	Anonymous Fri Nov 8 09:41:40 2019 No.5999132 >>5997124 I'm ok with the last 3 Wizardry games. But they like with all of Wizardry for more hardcore players which is a hard pill to swallow when you have games like Might & Magic that kind of throws out difficulty and just become stupidly fun.

Anonymous Fri Nov 8 09:46:24 2019 No.5999136

>>5998527
I know I'm going to get yelled at but how do you actually enjoy the Ultima combat? 3-5 feel like just throw rocks until you gain the experience/money to gain the stats and level you need. Only tried a small bit of 6 but man it feels even more clunky and I have no idea what is happening regarding 7. I love the exploring and talking to NPC writing down all the different stuff people have to say but once fighting starts it just falls apart for me.

>>	Anonymous Fri Nov 8 09:46:31 2019 No.5999137 >>5999132 I found the later M&M games boring.

>>	Anonymous Fri Nov 8 10:25:20 2019 No.5999178 >game requires knowledge of esoteric Jewish mysticism to complete Seriously what the fuck were they thinking?

>>	Anonymous Fri Nov 8 10:26:04 2019 No.5999180 File: 146 KB, 500x764, wiz4.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google] >>5999178 My bad forgot pic

>>	Anonymous Fri Nov 8 10:40:04 2019 No.5999193 >>5998527 >4: xu4 Sega Master System version is arguably better.

Anonymous Fri Nov 8 10:41:56 2019 No.5999195

>>5999136
>how do you actually enjoy the Ultima combat?

No one has ever enjoyed combat in Ultima. It literally was the GTA of RPGs. The whole point is running around doing random shit. The Underworld games have the best combat, and that's purely relatively speaking. Literally no one plays Ultima for the combat. This doesn't even make it "bad", it's just that you can tell that no thought was ever put into developing it. It's barely even there.

>>	Anonymous Fri Nov 8 10:42:57 2019 No.5999197 >>5997124 >I've never been overly fond of 6-8 You're in the minority. I think those are generally regarded as the best 3 in the series nowadays.

>>	Anonymous Fri Nov 8 10:43:58 2019 No.5999204 >>5998527 >5: Towns Really? Why not SNES?

>>	Anonymous Fri Nov 8 10:45:21 2019 No.5999207 >>5999195 9 has the best combat. They why it's so hated.

Anonymous Fri Nov 8 10:47:09 2019 No.5999210

>>5999195
I mean I get that but the game has a lot of combat. Maybe not as much as a dungeon crawler but it's still too much. Plus Ultima has such a weird way leveling works or virtue stuff it just makes it even worse. It honestly stops me from continuing playing for more than a few hours because it's such a badly thought out "system"

Anonymous Fri Nov 8 10:48:32 2019 No.5999216

>>5999204
If you mean the American SNES release it's because it's censored.
The Towns is simply the best of all worlds with high quality sprites, orchestral music and classic interface.
If you want a reworked interface you can play the PS1 or Windows version. I don't really see anything in favor of the SFC.

>>	Anonymous Fri Nov 8 10:49:02 2019 No.5999217 >>5999136 6 and 7 aren't THAT combat heavy. You aren't required to fight every single fucking thing that crosses your path.

Anonymous Fri Nov 8 22:09:12 2019 No.6000390
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>>5999207
No it isn't. It's hated because it's a nonsensical (and at the time extremely buggy) piece of shit that disrespects all of the world building and narrative consistency up to that point. Considering it was the swan song of the series, it's super anti-climactic and disappointing.

>>	Anonymous Fri Nov 8 22:29:54 2019 No.6000407 >>5999217 I mean by that point they knew 4 and 5 were shit and so they just tried making it more automatic and mindless.

>>	Anonymous Sat Nov 9 07:59:13 2019 No.6000983 stranfe choice to include Bards Tale but not the Gold Box games

>>	Anonymous Sun Nov 10 03:03:07 2019 No.6002721 bump

>>	Anonymous Sun Nov 10 03:43:42 2019 No.6002753 >>6000390 exactly, Season 8 of Game of Thrones gave me déjà vu of Ultima 9 for this reason.

>>	Anonymous Sun Nov 10 03:59:43 2019 No.6002771 >>6002753 Makes me glad I never invested a single minute into that fantasy shitshow.

>>	Anonymous Sun Nov 10 04:31:24 2019 No.6002817 >>5990127 Zoom

>>	Anonymous Sun Nov 10 04:56:45 2019 No.6002841 >>5999210 Ultimas were a precursor to the modern MovieGame. Except that Ultimas never forgot that they were games.

>>	Anonymous Sun Nov 10 12:43:42 2019 No.6003440 >>5999210 I remember buying Magic Axes and just pressing shoot button and up button very fast to get over the encounters as fast as possible.

>>	Anonymous Sun Nov 10 13:30:49 2019 No.6003516 File: 189 KB, 800x1222, 308326-wizardry-the-return-of-werdna-the-fourth-scenario-apple-ii-front-cover.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google] what were they thinking?

>>	Anonymous Sun Nov 10 13:39:25 2019 No.6003538 >>6003516 Woodhead basically said that they let the devs run free and the devs wanted to show off that they could make the hardest game ever

>>	Anonymous Sun Nov 10 22:58:59 2019 No.6004515 >>5991691 >...and even more cartography than the best-selling fantasy game we all know the name of. Are they talking about Ultima or Wizardry here?

>>	Anonymous Sun Nov 10 23:30:39 2019 No.6004545 How is Swords and Serpents compared to these games? I know its a bit obscure, but it also has 4 players, and I want to introduce it to some friends.

Anonymous Mon Nov 11 01:34:16 2019 No.6004721

>>6003516
It's admirable in retrospect.

Compare it to Elder Scrolls. I guess you can argue Morrowind was dumbed down from Daggerfall, but Oblivion was *really* dumbed down from Morrowind (scaled loot/enemies, no levitation and limited spellmaking, etc. -- I still think it's a great game, mind). Each successive game after Daggerfall is in part an attempt to amke the series more accessible, until you hit Skyrim which is simplified to hell.

Meanwhile the Wizardry devs very well could have done the same thing for their fourth title -- produced something slightly easier, slightly more accessible than Wizardry 3, and get the sales numbers from the loyal fans and new players attracted by the increased accessibility as well. Instead they say, "Fuck that, we're going to make a game catered entirely to our most dedicated players who know the first three games by heart, and everyone else can get fucked."

It would never happen today because meddling executives and publishers would shoot it down.

>>	Anonymous Mon Nov 11 02:17:53 2019 No.6004763 >>5991034 I'd add the Gold Box games to that list, at the very least.

>>	Anonymous Mon Nov 11 08:38:44 2019 No.6005108 >>6004721 >It would never happen today because meddling executives and publishers would shoot it down. as well they should Wiz 4 was a complete and total financial disaster

Anonymous Mon Nov 11 09:07:06 2019 No.6005135

>>6004721
Eh lots of 80's games did the "extreme" version of games like SMB 2 JP. But I honestly wouldn't call Wizardry 4 a harder Wizardry since the core idea is so fucking different. Wizardry 1 was more bumping around a dungeon looking what's behind the corner not really thinking too much outside of map making. While Wizardry 4 is more actively thinking about item uses and having pretty deep level of knowledge of the culture the team surrounded themselves with.

Honestly what makes Wizardry 4 a really bad/annoying game is that all it really does is try to show off of being the ultimate geek culture of that time. Not only was it full of pop culture jokes (which honestly was a lot of games that had lots of text) but you kind of had to understand the reference since lots of the puzzle aspect was built with those references in mind. Plus there's a whole ending with you fighting the whole LARP group Woodhead was in which if you wasn't actually a part of it you might have no idea what was happening. There's also the whole needing to understand Jewish mysticism to get the true ending.

The game was a mess since you had to have so much outside the game knowledge to really play it fully.

Maybe you could get away with that nowadays with the internet being what it is but mid 80's you could easily be stuck because you happen to not have watched Holy Grail yet.

The failure of Wizardry 4 isn't that it's "Extreme" Wizardry but it's so much up it's own ass even having to remember a quick line during the final fight in Wizardry 1. It's not deeper it's just obtuse just for the sake of being obtuse because "of course you know this LARP group everyone I know is a part of it!" or other shit that you could easily not know because you wasn't completely surrounded by everything the team were.

>>	Anonymous Mon Nov 11 18:57:23 2019 No.6006132 >>6004515 >cartography Wizardry, without a doubt.

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/vr/ - Retro Games