Well, I happen to bring another game that's apparently obscure to the RB forum here.
And I dunno why. This is Wizardry. y'know, granddaddy of RPGs both eastern and western, and 8 it's the latest, modern iteration of something that started with lots of text and numbers and wireframe dungeon walls.
...and 3d cubic dungeons as far back as 1987 *shudders at the thought*. Nope, I'm not touching return of werdna with a ten foot rusty halberd. :D
So what's this? Well. FFV's job system is good right? Lots of combinations with abilities and classes opening up interesting variant options for replayability, right? True. That you could train a character up in Knight and pass the equip swords ability to a black mage, or complement a white mage with brawl, so no two characters had to be the same. Combined with the decent number of items it worked. With the ability to switch classes on a whim, without any loss, there weren't any trap choices. (Although T-Hawk's White Mage vs Exodus(Exdeath) was far from "optimal"). In time you could even build up your four-strong party into lvl 99 masters of all the jobs with lots of grinding... yeah we all know that. modern versions with achievements even give you pats on the back for doing that.
What does it have to do with wizardry? Well, Wizardry 8 does just that, but a bit differently.
*Class changing is there, but only on level up, and the game tracks both your overall levels and the levels of your classes, so a level 9 character can be 4 in Psionic and five in fighter. With things such as spell availability and monk damage resistance being a function of your level in your class instead of your total level (which determines what enemies can appear on the encounter table), it's often worth keeping characters either pure or really planning out class changes beforehand.
*This is kept more complicated by ability score requirements (you must meet all the ability score requirements of your new class before or at leveling up), and the four spell schools (Psionic, Alchemist, mage and priest) classes grouping related class levels for determining the spells you can learn (e.g. Lords require level 7 for learning level 2 spells, and level 5 for first level ones. However a priest that swaps to Lord can learn first level spells on level 6 (priest 1 lord 5) and 2nd level spells on level 7 (Priest 1, Lord 6). Bishop levels, of course, are joker cards, giving a +1 for all schools of magic.
*Add on top of it a Skill system where you can increase skills at levelup, or during play by using that skill (fight with swords for sword skill, cast earth spells for earth realm). The rate at which skills can be grinded out depends on their associated ability score (strength or dexterity (whichever's higher) for weapon skills, Intelligence and Piety for magic realms, senses for searching, etc etc.), higher ability scores give bonus to the rate of skill increases. Non class skills are kept but can't be increased after changing away from the class that had it.
*Each class has multiple weapon/other skill options: Rogues can learn swords and daggers, bows and throwing, it's up to you if you specialize in a few, or spend ungodly time to grind them out. Learn stealth or not? Shields or Dual Wield? Melee or ranged? You want a gun-toting battle-nun? Get a valkyrie and work on modern weapons and divinity. Maybe you like spear and bow samurai more than the katana-users? Pump polearms instead of swords, even neglect his magic if you want to.
*items work more or less the same as ffv (which work like wizardry 1), some can be used with the "use item" to unload a powerful spell effect (unlike ffv, this is limited by spell charges, and unlike wiz1, you can't break an item this way) Some items, such as powders, scrolls and bombs (not to mention the obvious, potions) are one use only, so you need to stock up on them. However, selling and rebuying from a vendor does recharge an item. Exploit or not? well, there IS a difference between sale and buying prices.
*There aren't any random encounters: You can meet wandering monsters, but you can often see them before engaging, and they can see and follow you. You can move to reposition yourself in combat, and that can make you lose some of the monsters, or even find yourself in a bigger hairball than expected. Even in this part of the game, there is the Mythology skill that increases the information you can see about a monster (like, it's current hit points, level, XP worth, resistances, status immunities, and status effects that can be inflicted by their attacks)
*Bosses aren't quite the puzzle in this game. Or, not all there is. There are regular puzzles (retro dungeons), some enemies are also puzzles, others are plain run away from types at a level (Screaming heads and any psionic casters until you got 90+ mental/divine resistances), or party composition. Figuring out how to damage Nessie is a puzzle though, not all characters can do that reliably.
With that aside, after grinding/playing with a mixed party of hybrids (Lord, ninja, samurai, ranger, valkyrie and bishop, with a ranger and a gadgeteer as RPCs) that got too easy/tedious to continue, I was looking for a different kind of challenge. I looked at the solo characters, then figured it wasn't my style. So I picked up the four white mages idea, and rolled six priests.
I picked dwarf as their race, since it has exceptional vitality and piety to go with the concept. I put 17-17 in piety and vitality for all of them (Like Endurance in Oblivion, it is in some way the obvious choice, as vitality affects hp gained per level, while piety affects SP gained per level / realm up. If you want to max them, max them early). Then put the remaining 16 in Strength, for a nice cozy 71 total (out of 100). Since strenght affects weapon skill progress and improves to-hit and to-penetrate chances, this is the perfect choice for a low-offense character like a priest.
I picked different spells for each character. I can pick two spells at start, and for most of the party I picked heal wounds (CURE 1-3). A couple of people got Make Wounds (damage spell), some picked Paralysis, and a few oddballs even got charm, which wasn't a too good a choice since I wasn't planning on grinding my divinity skill using it on NPCs. For weapon skills, I picked mace for one guy, and staff for the rest. There are only a few good maces (Disruptor Mace and Diamond Eyes) in the game, while there are more good or good-enough staves for the rest of the party. (Someone said Staff of Doom, but the runner ups aren't quite bad either, with nice spell charges to complement the rather offensively challenged monk lineup). I ignored things like Communication (better prices) and Mythology (ID monsters) and Artifacts (ability to identify items without burning spell points or scrolls). I pumped close combat for everyone and got started.
Our lineup is
Conz: Dwarf Priest. Signature spells: Paralyze and make wounds
Lelei: Dwarf Priest. Signature spells: Make/Heal wounds (Heal and Harm from now on)
PVT Ryan: Dwarf Priest. Signature spells: Charm, Paralyze. Mace user
BC: Dwarf Priest. Signature spells: I don't remember.
Endy: Dwarf Priest. Signature spells: Bless, Charm.
Boro (that's me): Dwarf Priest. Signature spells: Heal, Bless.
Difficulty level is Expert. I'm pulling no punches, and neither will the game
It's harder to damage enemies in this difficulty setting, but that increases my skill gains while fighting, helping me in avoiding overleveling with low skills. I also take more damage, so I get to use my heals more often, increasing my magic some more!
Start game, enter Lower Monastery.
The first group of crabs, usually a pushover, stopped me for real. it took a while to take them down and even after the first(!) fight I had to heal up. Since everyone's got 12 hp each, anyone can be killed at this point in a single turn. I took out the second group of crabs in the shallow water, then didn't head up for the 2nd level (Softshell) crabs on the ramp, instead I packed up the bullet stones I found and entered the monastery. It's usually full of bats and slimes, level 1, lucky to have more than 8 hit points, otherwise known as "Easy XP for getting past this first level madness that plagued D&D games since '77."
Well, someone forgot to tell them that it's supposed to be "Slimes OR bats, not the two AT ONCE!" Yep, third fight in this game and already in a hairball. Luckily I am in a corridor, cast bless, keep whacking with everything I got, since I miss a lot. But they can only have one or two hitting me at once, so I have the numbers advantage. They on the other hand have a hard time NOT missing, even with bless tilting the odds in my favor.
SOMEHOW I win that fight, and not much later hit level 2. 7 more HP makes a WORLD of difference here. The extra spell pick helps too. More heal wounds, more make wounds, some more paralyze, all makes the party stronger. Make Wounds deals tiny damage but it doesn't miss, and early on when my skills are low, this is crucial. It also trains my magic realms, which I have to neglect with the intense pressure to beef up my physical skills ASAP. Paralyze makes enemies take more damage and skip their turn. More HP means more buffer room. And finally the extra level improves my dwarven damage resistance.
As I go through the rest of the early lower monastery, mostly composed of long corridors and corner rooms where I know there are hidden items placed (those can be found in search mode or by having a ranger, or by having the detect items spell cast), I find that dwarven priests aren't the most keen eyed, and with 35 senses won't even find what's in front of them. After quite a lot of searching, I give up on these items, and run into a hairball that wants to take the throne of the "biggest hairball to date" from the slimes n bats.
Slimes and bugs. Many of them. I corner, I use Web (2nd level spell, earth realm, causes enemies to skip their turn and take double damage. Strong enemies can shake the web off), I use bless, and somehow, after thirty or so turns and half an hour (or more), get out of that mess.
Then I meet a trio of slimes (2x level 5, 1x level 3, causes nausea and poison) that forces a couple retries until they stop murdering Ryan.
At this point I'm at level 4 and with decent enough hit points to hold off on leveling (Arnika Road becomes MUCH more dangerous at level 5 and above), so I hit up King Crab (level 2 enemy, spam make wounds since my attacks miss/fail to penetrate), then lose Ryan again, this time to the Tanika Fish just after King Crab's room. It's a full-to-zero single turn death too. No problem though, the Resurrection Powder is JUST after the fishes, so I guess it was "worth it?"
I don't reload this time, instead press on.
Just up the ramp after King Crab lies Gregor, the big hitter of this dungeon. He can paralyze (short range), and spit poison(range)! He also laughs in the face of my staff whacks and mace strike. First try I had a full front-row, and he could swap between my three juicy priests and eat them for breakfast with it's strong melee. Obviously, it was a lot harder to maintain guardian angel on three characters instead of one, so I moved them to the side of the formation (pulling them out of range from Gregor's claws). All I had to worry about after that was to maintain Ryan, and heal up the occasional poison spit which was a LOT less pressuring than the claws. Since my attacks weren't phasing him, it was make wounds time. A couple of tries got it done.
Defeating Gregor opened up the merchant Burz for trading. I sold a bunch of items that my priests couldn't use, then bought whatever weapons and armor he could offer. It wasn't much, so after running away from / somehow evading the first screaming head patrol I saw (I swear those things have NO PLACE in a level 4 area. Even the low level ones can absolutely WREAK havoc on a low level party, with no way to defend against them, not until level 9-12, even with the pumped up piety I had.) I said my goodbye to the lower monastery and headed up.
Some Rabid Rats (Two of them) ate Ryan a few times, but eventually I could reduce their number to ONE (Make Wounds to the rescue!), and it fell to my whacks after it was webbed.
Other encounters on this level were the fixed higardi bandits in the chapel and the main temple hall: Doable with some line of sight work, and of course the Seekers that are everywhere. Those guys required more corner tactics (Hide in a corner and wait for them to appear right in front of you, and block the others' shot) than I wanted to do, but patience got them done. After picking up the usual stuff (Microwave chip, Upper Toseido, Forest Cloak), I waved goodbye to the tutorial dungeon, convinced that I survived the worst Trial by Fire this game could give me. The Priests passed. They weren't fast, but they were tough. Just a little more, and they'd be in Arnika, arm themselves with better weapons, gain some levels, and from then on it'll be smooth sailing right? Oh boy how wrong I was...
And I dunno why. This is Wizardry. y'know, granddaddy of RPGs both eastern and western, and 8 it's the latest, modern iteration of something that started with lots of text and numbers and wireframe dungeon walls.
...and 3d cubic dungeons as far back as 1987 *shudders at the thought*. Nope, I'm not touching return of werdna with a ten foot rusty halberd. :D
So what's this? Well. FFV's job system is good right? Lots of combinations with abilities and classes opening up interesting variant options for replayability, right? True. That you could train a character up in Knight and pass the equip swords ability to a black mage, or complement a white mage with brawl, so no two characters had to be the same. Combined with the decent number of items it worked. With the ability to switch classes on a whim, without any loss, there weren't any trap choices. (Although T-Hawk's White Mage vs Exodus(Exdeath) was far from "optimal"). In time you could even build up your four-strong party into lvl 99 masters of all the jobs with lots of grinding... yeah we all know that. modern versions with achievements even give you pats on the back for doing that.
What does it have to do with wizardry? Well, Wizardry 8 does just that, but a bit differently.
*Class changing is there, but only on level up, and the game tracks both your overall levels and the levels of your classes, so a level 9 character can be 4 in Psionic and five in fighter. With things such as spell availability and monk damage resistance being a function of your level in your class instead of your total level (which determines what enemies can appear on the encounter table), it's often worth keeping characters either pure or really planning out class changes beforehand.
*This is kept more complicated by ability score requirements (you must meet all the ability score requirements of your new class before or at leveling up), and the four spell schools (Psionic, Alchemist, mage and priest) classes grouping related class levels for determining the spells you can learn (e.g. Lords require level 7 for learning level 2 spells, and level 5 for first level ones. However a priest that swaps to Lord can learn first level spells on level 6 (priest 1 lord 5) and 2nd level spells on level 7 (Priest 1, Lord 6). Bishop levels, of course, are joker cards, giving a +1 for all schools of magic.
*Add on top of it a Skill system where you can increase skills at levelup, or during play by using that skill (fight with swords for sword skill, cast earth spells for earth realm). The rate at which skills can be grinded out depends on their associated ability score (strength or dexterity (whichever's higher) for weapon skills, Intelligence and Piety for magic realms, senses for searching, etc etc.), higher ability scores give bonus to the rate of skill increases. Non class skills are kept but can't be increased after changing away from the class that had it.
*Each class has multiple weapon/other skill options: Rogues can learn swords and daggers, bows and throwing, it's up to you if you specialize in a few, or spend ungodly time to grind them out. Learn stealth or not? Shields or Dual Wield? Melee or ranged? You want a gun-toting battle-nun? Get a valkyrie and work on modern weapons and divinity. Maybe you like spear and bow samurai more than the katana-users? Pump polearms instead of swords, even neglect his magic if you want to.
*items work more or less the same as ffv (which work like wizardry 1), some can be used with the "use item" to unload a powerful spell effect (unlike ffv, this is limited by spell charges, and unlike wiz1, you can't break an item this way) Some items, such as powders, scrolls and bombs (not to mention the obvious, potions) are one use only, so you need to stock up on them. However, selling and rebuying from a vendor does recharge an item. Exploit or not? well, there IS a difference between sale and buying prices.
*There aren't any random encounters: You can meet wandering monsters, but you can often see them before engaging, and they can see and follow you. You can move to reposition yourself in combat, and that can make you lose some of the monsters, or even find yourself in a bigger hairball than expected. Even in this part of the game, there is the Mythology skill that increases the information you can see about a monster (like, it's current hit points, level, XP worth, resistances, status immunities, and status effects that can be inflicted by their attacks)
*Bosses aren't quite the puzzle in this game. Or, not all there is. There are regular puzzles (retro dungeons), some enemies are also puzzles, others are plain run away from types at a level (Screaming heads and any psionic casters until you got 90+ mental/divine resistances), or party composition. Figuring out how to damage Nessie is a puzzle though, not all characters can do that reliably.
With that aside, after grinding/playing with a mixed party of hybrids (Lord, ninja, samurai, ranger, valkyrie and bishop, with a ranger and a gadgeteer as RPCs) that got too easy/tedious to continue, I was looking for a different kind of challenge. I looked at the solo characters, then figured it wasn't my style. So I picked up the four white mages idea, and rolled six priests.
I picked dwarf as their race, since it has exceptional vitality and piety to go with the concept. I put 17-17 in piety and vitality for all of them (Like Endurance in Oblivion, it is in some way the obvious choice, as vitality affects hp gained per level, while piety affects SP gained per level / realm up. If you want to max them, max them early). Then put the remaining 16 in Strength, for a nice cozy 71 total (out of 100). Since strenght affects weapon skill progress and improves to-hit and to-penetrate chances, this is the perfect choice for a low-offense character like a priest.
I picked different spells for each character. I can pick two spells at start, and for most of the party I picked heal wounds (CURE 1-3). A couple of people got Make Wounds (damage spell), some picked Paralysis, and a few oddballs even got charm, which wasn't a too good a choice since I wasn't planning on grinding my divinity skill using it on NPCs. For weapon skills, I picked mace for one guy, and staff for the rest. There are only a few good maces (Disruptor Mace and Diamond Eyes) in the game, while there are more good or good-enough staves for the rest of the party. (Someone said Staff of Doom, but the runner ups aren't quite bad either, with nice spell charges to complement the rather offensively challenged monk lineup). I ignored things like Communication (better prices) and Mythology (ID monsters) and Artifacts (ability to identify items without burning spell points or scrolls). I pumped close combat for everyone and got started.
Our lineup is
Conz: Dwarf Priest. Signature spells: Paralyze and make wounds
Lelei: Dwarf Priest. Signature spells: Make/Heal wounds (Heal and Harm from now on)
PVT Ryan: Dwarf Priest. Signature spells: Charm, Paralyze. Mace user
BC: Dwarf Priest. Signature spells: I don't remember.
Endy: Dwarf Priest. Signature spells: Bless, Charm.
Boro (that's me): Dwarf Priest. Signature spells: Heal, Bless.
Difficulty level is Expert. I'm pulling no punches, and neither will the game
It's harder to damage enemies in this difficulty setting, but that increases my skill gains while fighting, helping me in avoiding overleveling with low skills. I also take more damage, so I get to use my heals more often, increasing my magic some more!Start game, enter Lower Monastery.
The first group of crabs, usually a pushover, stopped me for real. it took a while to take them down and even after the first(!) fight I had to heal up. Since everyone's got 12 hp each, anyone can be killed at this point in a single turn. I took out the second group of crabs in the shallow water, then didn't head up for the 2nd level (Softshell) crabs on the ramp, instead I packed up the bullet stones I found and entered the monastery. It's usually full of bats and slimes, level 1, lucky to have more than 8 hit points, otherwise known as "Easy XP for getting past this first level madness that plagued D&D games since '77."
Well, someone forgot to tell them that it's supposed to be "Slimes OR bats, not the two AT ONCE!" Yep, third fight in this game and already in a hairball. Luckily I am in a corridor, cast bless, keep whacking with everything I got, since I miss a lot. But they can only have one or two hitting me at once, so I have the numbers advantage. They on the other hand have a hard time NOT missing, even with bless tilting the odds in my favor.
SOMEHOW I win that fight, and not much later hit level 2. 7 more HP makes a WORLD of difference here. The extra spell pick helps too. More heal wounds, more make wounds, some more paralyze, all makes the party stronger. Make Wounds deals tiny damage but it doesn't miss, and early on when my skills are low, this is crucial. It also trains my magic realms, which I have to neglect with the intense pressure to beef up my physical skills ASAP. Paralyze makes enemies take more damage and skip their turn. More HP means more buffer room. And finally the extra level improves my dwarven damage resistance.
As I go through the rest of the early lower monastery, mostly composed of long corridors and corner rooms where I know there are hidden items placed (those can be found in search mode or by having a ranger, or by having the detect items spell cast), I find that dwarven priests aren't the most keen eyed, and with 35 senses won't even find what's in front of them. After quite a lot of searching, I give up on these items, and run into a hairball that wants to take the throne of the "biggest hairball to date" from the slimes n bats.
Slimes and bugs. Many of them. I corner, I use Web (2nd level spell, earth realm, causes enemies to skip their turn and take double damage. Strong enemies can shake the web off), I use bless, and somehow, after thirty or so turns and half an hour (or more), get out of that mess.
Then I meet a trio of slimes (2x level 5, 1x level 3, causes nausea and poison) that forces a couple retries until they stop murdering Ryan.
At this point I'm at level 4 and with decent enough hit points to hold off on leveling (Arnika Road becomes MUCH more dangerous at level 5 and above), so I hit up King Crab (level 2 enemy, spam make wounds since my attacks miss/fail to penetrate), then lose Ryan again, this time to the Tanika Fish just after King Crab's room. It's a full-to-zero single turn death too. No problem though, the Resurrection Powder is JUST after the fishes, so I guess it was "worth it?"
I don't reload this time, instead press on.
Just up the ramp after King Crab lies Gregor, the big hitter of this dungeon. He can paralyze (short range), and spit poison(range)! He also laughs in the face of my staff whacks and mace strike. First try I had a full front-row, and he could swap between my three juicy priests and eat them for breakfast with it's strong melee. Obviously, it was a lot harder to maintain guardian angel on three characters instead of one, so I moved them to the side of the formation (pulling them out of range from Gregor's claws). All I had to worry about after that was to maintain Ryan, and heal up the occasional poison spit which was a LOT less pressuring than the claws. Since my attacks weren't phasing him, it was make wounds time. A couple of tries got it done.
Defeating Gregor opened up the merchant Burz for trading. I sold a bunch of items that my priests couldn't use, then bought whatever weapons and armor he could offer. It wasn't much, so after running away from / somehow evading the first screaming head patrol I saw (I swear those things have NO PLACE in a level 4 area. Even the low level ones can absolutely WREAK havoc on a low level party, with no way to defend against them, not until level 9-12, even with the pumped up piety I had.) I said my goodbye to the lower monastery and headed up.
Some Rabid Rats (Two of them) ate Ryan a few times, but eventually I could reduce their number to ONE (Make Wounds to the rescue!), and it fell to my whacks after it was webbed.
Other encounters on this level were the fixed higardi bandits in the chapel and the main temple hall: Doable with some line of sight work, and of course the Seekers that are everywhere. Those guys required more corner tactics (Hide in a corner and wait for them to appear right in front of you, and block the others' shot) than I wanted to do, but patience got them done. After picking up the usual stuff (Microwave chip, Upper Toseido, Forest Cloak), I waved goodbye to the tutorial dungeon, convinced that I survived the worst Trial by Fire this game could give me. The Priests passed. They weren't fast, but they were tough. Just a little more, and they'd be in Arnika, arm themselves with better weapons, gain some levels, and from then on it'll be smooth sailing right? Oh boy how wrong I was...