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Codex Review RPG Codex Review: Grimoire: Heralds of the Winged Exemplar

makchanka

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Jun 21, 2017
Messages
244
So what happened to 600 hours of playtime? Is that supposed to include the time it takes to masturbate to climax whenever we remember what game we're playing?

At least after reading this I know where felipepe's biggest anal pain comes from. He can't live with the injustice that Cleve charges 40 bucks for his game while his precious weaboo crap is being sold for the same price as a six-pack of toilet paper.

Try the superdemo, it's free ! herp derp

grimoire is still a mess, but at least it isn't fucking elminage gothic, I'll give it that. jesus christ that game is bad.

or stranger of sword city, holy shit. weebs actually think that one has a good story, because weebs have the emotional intelligence of a five year old. the game is basically a high school drama with boring-ass combat

basically, the Japanese don't know how to make good games.
 

Lord Andre

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Gypsystan
So I was strolling around the horror's crib with my latest peeps when the horror busts in on us.

My niggas were like:

tumblr_mrhqeqQF0C1qdgvago1_400.gif


And the horror looks us up and down and it's like "Theze nigguz crazy for real."

"Where's your armorplate nigguh ? Where's your magic screen, your missile shield ? This ain't no fucking fairytale son, you about to get wrecked!"

and attacks.

Now I ain't gots no faggot ass bards and shit, no maxed out crtical blows, but my warrior had 99 speed and pumped up invocation with wand of webs. Bitch ass horror got stunned before it could even get the lube out. My other niggas were set just to hiding, they were like "It's all you dog, it's all you...".
Now at this point I could've one shotted him with the cosmic gate, but fuck it, I'm an asshole so I blast him away with a deep freeze like he was just another nameless rapper.

As it was fading away to fairy faggot land, it screeched:

"MUH BALAaaaance...."

:smug:
 
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Lurker King

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Messages
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basically, the Japanese don't know how to make good games.
P1. Codexers are either grognards or storyfags.

P2. Grognards love Grimoire.
P3. Grimoire was inspired in Mangas
C1. Therefore, Grognards love Mangas.

P4. Storyfags love Planescape: Torment.
P5. Planescape: Torment was inspired in Mangas.
C2. Therefore, storyfags love Mangas.

C3. Ergo, every codexer loves Mangas.
 

mondblut

Arcane
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Messages
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Ingrija
Yeah well, most fights in grimoire you don't really need any special tactic, you can just melee all, press enter and win without dying. When shit hit the fan you can go to your favorite exploit tactic.

When shit hits the fan it's usually too late to revert to any exploit tactic other than reloading. And then you'll face an entirely different encounter instead.

Past the early game Grimoire combat is like Wizardry: Wild West. Whoever draws first.
 

Viata

Arcane
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Messages
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Location
Water Play Catarinense
basically, the Japanese don't know how to make good games.
P1. Codexers are either grognards or storyfags.

P2. Grognards love Grimoire.
P3. Grimoire was inspired in Mangas
C1. Therefore, Grognards love Mangas.

P4. Storyfags love Planescape: Torment.
P5. Planescape: Torment was inspired in Mangas.
C2. Therefore, storyfags love Mangas.

C3. Ergo, every codexer loves Mangas.
That is because manga is a kind of rpg and codexer loves rpg.
 
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ZodoZ

Self-Ejected
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Joined
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Messages
798
Shadorwun: Hong Kong
basically, the Japanese don't know how to make good games.
P1. Codexers are either grognards or storyfags.

P2. Grognards love Grimoire.
P3. Grimoire was inspired in Mangas
C1. Therefore, Grognards love Mangas.

P4. Storyfags love Planescape: Torment.
P5. Planescape: Torment was inspired in Mangas.
C2. Therefore, storyfags love Mangas.

C3. Ergo, every codexer loves Mangas.

Not everyone loves Mangos. Stop trying to dictate your logic on everyone. J/K funny post

Felipepe has given a fair review that is spot on
Cleve bit off more than he can chew and refuses to admit it due to his massive Thal ego.
Grimoire is not unplayable but if he wanted people to just use NPCs (which would be fine) then market his game that way and let us judge it based on that.

With a lot of work Grimoire could shine. Right now it feels like a 67 Mustang fastback with a straight six and a lot of rust on the body. Sure its a classic and people will stare at it in appreciation of the old muscle cars but it is broke in its current state. One day Grimoire may rise above the clouds and soar like DW Badleys classics. I don't mind waitiing for his baby to evolve.
 

makchanka

Arbiter
Joined
Jun 21, 2017
Messages
244
basically, the Japanese don't know how to make good games.
P1. Codexers are either grognards or storyfags.

P2. Grognards love Grimoire.
P3. Grimoire was inspired in Mangas
C1. Therefore, Grognards love Mangas.

P4. Storyfags love Planescape: Torment.
P5. Planescape: Torment was inspired in Mangas.
C2. Therefore, storyfags love Mangas.

C3. Ergo, every codexer loves Mangas.

that's just what the (((manga men))) want you to think
 

DavidBVal

4 Dimension Games
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PC RPG Website of the Year, 2015 Codex 2016 - The Age of Grimoire Make the Codex Great Again! Grab the Codex by the pussy Insert Title Here RPG Wokedex Strap Yourselves In Codex Year of the Donut Codex+ Now Streaming! Pathfinder: Wrath
all 3 are great RPGs, but none are dungeon crawlers and none are Wizardry games.

It's actually excellent that Wizardry went beyond being a pure dungeon crawler. The addition of scifi was also good. So I completely disagree with your "purist" focus.

If you don't sleep in the stables then it's not real Wizardry. True heroes must smell like horseshit.

Also, 5 is Bradley's and has the best of both worlds.
 
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aweigh

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Florida
DavidBVal

scenario 5 was already designed by the time bradley was hired.

the majority (if not literally ALL) of the dungeon floors were already "made", and since Bradley was a new hire and newly in "charge" he didn't yet dare to change the core gameplay mechanics; to his credit he did add the much needed ranges to weaponry and gave thieves ability to hide.

...although it is impossible to know for sure if those two ideas were his, or if they were already in the vision document given to Bradley by the Sirotek brothers after they hried him to finish the half-made Wiz Scenario 5 and then flying off to japan and other places.

However the focus on actually having to talk to various NPCs which all were tied to items which were tied to "puzzles" that served as a way to gate the players progress through the dungeon floors: THIS was alllll bradley, and he deserves the credit/merit for this improvement.

Bradley didn't really design anything from scratch until Wiz 6, which is why he began by completely changing every single system of the gameplay (usually for the "different", but in some key cases for the worse/casualized).

So... i guess my point is...? Oh, right, that scenario 5 is indeed brilliant, but not due to Bradley.

EDIT: as you yourself just mentioned-- stables? nah son, Bradley came up with something ground-breaking: he called it "let the player rest any time they want! omg it's genius and it means no more having to go back to town! wow I am such a good developer, hee hee!"**

**approximation of what I imagine bradley sounded like as he ate his 1980-era mt. dew flavored Doritos while cartoonishly ripping in half a stack of papers titled in giant font "WIZARDRY: A HOW-TO GUIDE IN MAKING A PERFECT GAME".
 

DavidBVal

4 Dimension Games
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DavidBVal

scenario 5 was already designed by the time bradley was hired.

the majority (if not literally ALL) of the dungeon floors were already "made", and since Bradley was a new hire and newly in "charge" he didn't yet dare to change the core gameplay mechanics; to his credit he did add the much needed ranges to weaponry and gave thieves ability to hide.

...although it is impossible to know for sure if those two ideas were his, or if they were already in the vision document given to Bradley by the Sirotek brothers after they hried him to finish the half-made Wiz Scenario 5 and then flying off to japan and other places.

Not quite, 5 was Bradley's game. He had submitted his full game to the Siroteks, and they asked him to remake it into a Wizardry game, so we can assume most of the content was Bradley's creature.
 
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aweigh

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that is one version of how the events unfolded. it is true that Bradley was hired based entirely off a playable "demo" that he showed the Sirotek brothers; he did not come to them with Wiz Scenario 5 completely made.

there is probably a truth lying right in the middle, though: i imagine what he showed them would end up constituting the brunt of the code base for Wiz 5; which does not necessarily mean that it was "the game" itself.

either way it is inarguable that Bradley did not have full reign to do "whatever he wanted" with the series until the 6th game, as that is when he was promoted to "guy literally in charge of everything", as the Sirotek brothers had better things to do by then such as moving to japan and marrying waifus.
 

DavidBVal

4 Dimension Games
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PC RPG Website of the Year, 2015 Codex 2016 - The Age of Grimoire Make the Codex Great Again! Grab the Codex by the pussy Insert Title Here RPG Wokedex Strap Yourselves In Codex Year of the Donut Codex+ Now Streaming! Pathfinder: Wrath
that is one version of how the events unfolded. it is true that Bradley was hired based entirely off a playable "demo" that he showed the Sirotek brothers; he did not come to them with Wiz Scenario 5 completely made.

there is probably a truth lying right in the middle, though: i imagine what he showed them would end up constituting the brunt of the code base for Wiz 5; which does not necessarily mean that it was "the game" itself.

either way it is inarguable that Bradley did not have full reign to do "whatever he wanted" with the series until the 6th game, as that is when he was promoted to "guy literally in charge of everything", as the Sirotek brothers had better things to do by then such as moving to japan and marrying waifus.

Agreed that he wasn't in full control, and agreed that it isn't 100% Bradley's. But consider that there was already a Wizardry in development at the time so it's unlikely they really invested much into this one in parallel. This is Bradley's side of the story:

I had started work on my first computer RPG about the time the original Wizardry appeared, but I still continued doing business software during the day. Once it was completed, I sent the finished RPG to the publisher, and after about a year's worth of phone calls, they accepted it for publication with one caveat - they wanted to publish it as a Wizardry game. I had to rewrite the whole RPG over from scratch, and rewrote the insides of Wizardry while I was at it. This became Wizardry V: Heart of the Maelstrom.

It was finished in mid-1986, but as the publisher had announced Wizardry IV: Return of Werdna several years earlier and it was still a year away from completion, they ended up holding the completed Wizardry V game for two years. Wizardry V: Heart of the Maelstrom was finally released in 1988, some four years after I had finished the original version.

https://web.archive.org/web/20010217041727/http://rpgvault.ign.com/features/interviews/wizwar.shtml

Now, either he is lying, or the game is mostly his creature.
 

DavidBVal

4 Dimension Games
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You're forgetting that Wiz5 allowed for larger and less uniform levels, which is a no small change in codebase.

Not just that. Weapon ranges (not just bows, also polearms). Detecting secrets, much more tactically interesting spells, picking locks, NPC interaction, the pools, unique (and often humorous) scenarios like Manfretti's, the bank, the Den of Thieves or the Dragon Flagon, Hell, puzzles everywhere... Wizardry 6+ went into a different direction, but as "pure Wizardry" goes, 5 offers you everything the early titles had in terms of gameplay and adds the D.W Bradley creativity and imagination on top.
 
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aweigh

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all of the changes that V_K and DavidBVal mention, i.e. the larger map sizes (And how they interconnect), the weapon ranges, the new abilities, the hard-counters, etc; this was new and first added to Wizardry 5, however:

- this does not mean that:

a) these were all of Bradley's machinations. this are incredibly sublte while simultaenously exponential improvements to the classic Wiz 1-4 foundation of mechanical systems; and there is no evidence whatsoever, not even enough evidence for one to "head canon" this, that Bradley implemented these changes of his own impetus.

b) it is quite possible, and IMO most definitely the truth, that these huge changes (above mentioned) that forever changed how Wizardry's combat and all of its interwoven systems played out during game play were actually iterations that the Sirotek brothers, and/or their "small group of beta testing developrs" friends*** had already thought out and designed on the prep-work for the 5th Secnario--
***= this is a reference to the true makers of Wiz 3, Legacy of Llylgamyn, which was not actually coded/designed by the Sirotek brothers and instead was almost entirely developed by friends of the brothers; these were the same people the brothers had been using to "beta test" Wizardry all the way from the very first "build" of Proving Grounds of the Mad Overlord.

These guys were put in charge of designing the 3rd Scenario because the Sirotek brothers were hard at work thinking up ways of making Wizardry "evolve", and their answer to this was: Wizardry 4: The Return of Werdna.

And before you cry foul, W4:TRoW is indeed the most wildly different Wizardry game EVER MADE, even more than the games designed by DW Bradley!!!! Why? Because Wiz 4 does not place any focus/importance on the acquisition of the enemy's fallen loot nor on the traditional concept of earning experience through battle nor even the standard idea of "leveling" a character in order to implement character advancement and game progression.

W4 doesn't even allow the player to control their party! This is as diametrically opposed to the Wizardry 1-3 (and later 5-8) paradigms as one can possibly get. And the reason I went into this W4 tangent is to heighten my earlier point about how the 3rd Scenario was given to friends of the brothers because they were hard at work with making the most un-Wizardry Wizardry ever made, before and ever after.

Anyway, back on point: to put it bluntly these huge changes that the 5th Wizardry scenario brought to the series were almost definitely not born purely from Bradley's loins; this I guarantee although there is frankly no evidence either to the pro or to the contrary.

He did however completely re-work the code in Wiz 5 to allow ways for the game's (extremely limited) engine to actually allow the player to explore these huge, huge maps that for the 1st time exceeded 20x20 grids.

There is an interesting article out there in Google land where you can read all about how Bradley had to do insanely outside-of-the-box coding exercises in order to accomplish the larger map areas, such as tricks like making tiles "teleport" the player to an entirely different area/floor/map but in-game it would be completely "normal", with the player simply walking to and fro and never once even imagining that 3 steps ago he actually changed memory addresses inside the code.

tl;dr: Please don't attribute the mechanical changes to Bradley, as there's no doubt he didn't implement them; however please do give him all the credit for the coding required to make the new, huge areas work int he Wizardry engine and also for his (IMO mediocre/amateurish) implementation of talkative NPCs and puzzles that served to gate player progression.

EDIT: In any case there is no doubt about the fact that Bradley never wanted to make Wizardry games. He began converting the series into his own version, for good or ill, and suddenly Wizardry was no longer about exploring dungeons and party management/progression; it was now about dumb aliens and stupid races-- er, sorry, I slipped into hate-mode there... it was now what Bradley wanted: something that was not Wizardry but rather, in his own view, "better".

There are many, many, many people (like me) who'd rather play Wiz 1-5 and "miss out" on the riveting sci-fi story telling of Mr. Bradley or his "playful" imagination at work with races that were literallly Chewbacca but rnamed something else, and so on.

And before anyone points out that Wiz 6's combat system features limb targeting and multiple types of attacks; please remember that he then DROPPED this stuff (the mechanical stuff) the further he went along, with Wiz 7 concentrating more on exploring an endlessly large world map (dungeons? what are those?) and then lastly culminating with his magnum opus Wizards and Warriors which features not even half the mechanical depth that his own Wiz 6 featured.
 
Last edited:

DavidBVal

4 Dimension Games
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So basically what you imply is that Bradley's original game sent to the Siroteks was an exact wizardry clone with 20x20 maps and with no relevant engine changes or innovations, and at the same time, the people at Sir-Tech was creating huge innovations into an engine... that they decided not to use in Wizardry 4 which was in mid-development.

Sounds implausible to me, D.W. Bradley arrival and the overhaul of the engine are not coincidental. Not to mention he literally says he did it himself. Everyone else involved in development and production is still alive and could easily challenge that, so unless someone does, I believe we should take his words as truth.

EDIT: and to prove what tale is more likely, he was capable of completely reinvent Wizardry with the next game... and once more with the next after that, while those creative people at Sirotek were reusing the same engine over and over again (IV is very original, agreed, but engine-wise it's just tweak/alterations, not an expansion).
 
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aweigh

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DavidBVal

You're starting to become argumentative when I have made my strongest effort to keep my commentary "neutral". Where have I slighted or painted this picture that you now present where:

- I have said (according to you) that Bradley contributed "nothing of importance" to Wiz 5.
- I have said (according to you) that Bradley lacked in imagination and/or in design capability; yet my lie is proven because of the fact that his future Wiz games were completely different to the 5th scenario.
- and thirdly, that (according to you) I have stated that Bradley went to Sirotek with a cloned scenario of Wizardry; when I have actually made an effort to point out that there is no way for anyone to know the extent of what he came to Sirotek with, but I have stated the fact that Bradley was solely responsible for the major improvements to the Wizardry engine.

I have constantly enumerated all of Bradley's contributions and have made pains to place emphasis on the fact(s):

- the 5th scenario's most appealing aspects (for most players) are all 100% born from Bradley; the npcs, the puzzles, the re-worked code base that allows inter-connected maps larger than 20x20.
- and secondly, I have also numerous times mentioned explicitly that Bradley did not go on to make "bad Wizardry games", rather he went on to make completely different types of RPGs with his own unique implementations.

However I have also stated unequivocally that, IMO, these bullet points are inferior to what was previously laid out in classic Wiz scenarios; that his contributions shaped new worlds, for sure, but they also sounded the death knell of the Western branch of the series.

I hope you don't continue to read too much between my lines, as I think I express myself rather bluntly.
 
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aweigh

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oh, and btw, I much prefer 20x20 over the sometimes aimless and usually derivative long hallwayscorridors/empty spaces of Bradley's "huge maps" in Wiz 5.

My opinion/preference is for 20x20 maps and that is because it is a tried and true "size" for this type of game and this type of "dungeon" exploration gameplay; and the 20x20 scheme allows for brilliant spatial and navigational design that puzzles, excites and provokes.

less is more. always.

So, for one person a 100x100 map = improvement...

For someone else however, a 100x100 map = too much wasted/negative space, and not enough actual dungeon.
 

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