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Grimoire vs Wiz 7 and others.

Andhaira

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How do you think Grmoire (the 98 beta) compares to wizardry 7, and others like it? Has it made you want to get the latest version when its released in a few weeks? Is it a good game initself?

I like it, but the interface is clumsy and I hope it has been touched up. The walking speed needs to be improved, and some monsters need better animation.
 

mondblut

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Wiz 7 > Grimoire > Wiz 6 > Wiz 8

Walking speed is allright. You can set it up to instant or to 3 gradations of smooth scrolling.

The art annoys me, but that's a matter of style. I hate them cartoonish.
 

Shagnak

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Haven't tried it yet, sorry. I'll stick it on tomorrow's todo list.

Has it made you want to get the latest version when its released in a few weeks?
Released this year? I have my doubts. This baby's release date has been pushed out so often, it will be second nature for Cleve to push it out again.
 

SkeleTony

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Wiz 8 => Wiz 7 => Grimoire =>Wiz5/6

The above only takes into account the merits of gameplay itself and does not reflect on the developers of said games(as far as political views and what not. I would never pay money for Grimoire even it if were as good as Wizardry 8 because that would be like giving money to conspiracy theorists or the KKK or something).

No Wizardry game or Wizardry-inspired game can touch Wizardy 8(yet). Grimoire suffered developmentally from Cleve falling prey to this absurd idea that D.W. Bradley did not wrong and can do no wrong and hence failed to recognize(in his blind hatred of all things Sir-Tech) that Wizardy 8 actually improved greatly upon Bradley's designs.
 

mondblut

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Wiz 7 was one of the most innovative RPGs of its age (and of all times, really). Huge open-ended world with almost no plot-induced movement restriction, full text NPC interaction, competetive AI parties (!) who fought one another (!!) and scavenged critical items if player was idling (!!!) - not a single game even tried to repeat it, let alone surpass (except gameworld size maybe).

Wiz 8, on another hand, is nothing more than Might & Magic 6 with advanced number-crunching.
 

SkeleTony

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mondblut said:
Wiz 7 was one of the most innovative RPGs of its age (and of all times, really). Huge open-ended world with almost no plot-induced movement restriction, full text NPC interaction, competetive AI parties (!) who fought one another (!!) and scavenged critical items if player was idling (!!!) - not a single game even tried to repeat it, let alone surpass (except gameworld size maybe).

Wiz 8, on another hand, is nothing more than Might & Magic 6 with advanced number-crunching.


Nonsense.

Wiz 7 was truly great for it's time and certainly massive/long but it has flaws. Some of these flaws are somewhat excusable given the age of the game(the 'pop-up' battles for example, even though there were other first person crpgs...SHAREWARE games even, who did not have this flaw and were released roughly the same time) and some, such as the nonsensical usage of words like "Legerdemain" and "Kirijutsu" instead of just calling these skills "Lockpicking/Disarming and "Critical Strike" or whatever and the convoluted auto-map feature, are just dumb.

But in any case Wizardry 8, as should be expected of a game released almost ten years later, made several improvements over Wiz 7. Totally different game than Might & Magic 6 though. You might as well be comparing Wiz 8 to Super Mario Bros. for all the sense that THAT comparison made.

I don't grant "nostalgia points" in my own comparitive reviews.
 

mondblut

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SkeleTony said:
Wiz 7 was truly great for it's time and certainly massive/long but it has flaws. Some of these flaws are somewhat excusable given the age of the game(the 'pop-up' battles for example, even though there were other first person crpgs...SHAREWARE games even, who did not have this flaw and were released roughly the same time)

Design decision. How do you imagine a phased tactical (as far as it is possible in FPV) combat without popup battles? Ranged attacks, sequence of turns before engagement? Cases in point: M&M3-5. Button-mashing.

and some, such as the nonsensical usage of words like "Legerdemain" and "Kirijutsu"

Duh, while the choice of words is strange, it doesn't take much effort to memorize them, does it?

and the convoluted auto-map feature, are just dumb.

What's wrong with mapping skill? Recently released Eschalon does just that, by the way. And most contemporary games had to rely on graph paper at all.

But in any case Wizardry 8, as should be expected of a game released almost ten years later, made several improvements over Wiz 7.

...like switching to limited area-based world and getting rid of any kind of consciousness on behalf of NPCs?

Totally different game than Might & Magic 6 though. You might as well be comparing Wiz 8 to Super Mario Bros. for all the sense that THAT comparison made.

First person 3d engine - check. Crawling TB combat with dozens of opponents taking their turns moving around - check. World cut apart on separate areas, drastically different in enemy strength and often outright inaccessible until unlocked by the plot - check. Static NPCs as quest signposts - check. What else?

Wizardry 8 had more number-crunching than MM6-7, and in place of ugly rendered sprites even uglier 3d models for monsters. That's all difference.

...ah, it also featured level scaling and constant respawn.

For the record: aside of appaling linearity and outrageously cliched plot, what makes Wizards & Warriors worse or different from Wiz8, by the way?
 

Shagnak

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I'm not going to get into the argument about Wizardry 8, because I'm willing to admit I'm an unreasonable fanatic when it comes to the game. To me it's almost the perfect update of the classic "blob with arms and legs" style of game.
However, it sounds like maybe I should give M&M6 another go :wink:
 

cardtrick

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mondblut said:
and in place of ugly rendered sprites even uglier 3d models for monsters.

Not even going to address the rest of your points, as I haven't played any Wizardries but 8, although now that I'm having such a great time with 8 at the moment I'm looking forward to trying them. However, I just wanted to say that Wiz8 actually isn't ugly at all. The textures are low-res and the graphics are technologically poor by today's standards, but I think it looks terrific. I never thought shitty 3D could look so good. Instead of going for photorealism, which would have been unattainable at the time, they embraced the inevitable polygons and went for simple, clean textures that just look good. It looks classy. Plus, the visible damage (bruises, blood, etc.) on the 3-D enemies as you hurt them is a really nice touch.
 

theverybigslayer

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Grimoire:
How can I cure the petrified 12% ailment?
And I got disease and can't find a cure disease thing. Every bat and rat can give me disease and there is a lot of them.


Wiz8 > Wiz6 > Wiz7 > Grimoire
 

Andhaira

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No offense to anyone, but wiz 8 was superior to wiz 7. Wiz 7 was somewhat ahead of its time in the fprpg genre I compltely agree, but in the end Wiz 8 was more fun (one of the reasons being you could actually see enemies coming) Also, wiz 8 was also nmot as huge as wiz 7; I am all for massive rpg's, but only if they actually have something instead of repedtedness. Wiz 8 also had better grafix adn anim, which is expected in a game that came out after 8-10 years of its prequel.

Wiz 7's compettive npcs idea was fantastic though, and the implementation was sweet.


In the end though, wiz 7 was overshadowed (and rightly so I might add) at the time of its release by Ultima 7, and hten Ultima 7-2. Arena also came out around that time (I played the original arena at the time of its release btw)

Also, IMO the ROA series was far superior to wizardry and M&M series.
 

mondblut

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theverybigslayer said:
Grimoire:
How can I cure the petrified 12% ailment?
And I got disease and can't find a cure disease thing. Every bat and rat can give me disease and there is a lot of them.

Stone to flesh potion or spell. It's really imbalanced in giving away nasty conditions early in the game :/ I've found a plenty of potions in and around Crowl, but can't identify any.

At least petrified characters still get xp and gain levels =)
 

SkeleTony

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mondblut said:
SkeleTony said:
Wiz 7 was truly great for it's time and certainly massive/long but it has flaws. Some of these flaws are somewhat excusable given the age of the game(the 'pop-up' battles for example, even though there were other first person crpgs...SHAREWARE games even, who did not have this flaw and were released roughly the same time)

Design decision. How do you imagine a phased tactical (as far as it is possible in FPV) combat without popup battles? Ranged attacks, sequence of turns before engagement? Cases in point: M&M3-5. Button-mashing.

What does that have to do with pop-up battles? How come a shareware RPG like Moraff's Dungeons of the Unforgiven could pull this off(see monsters coming and thus prepare for the coming battle as they approached or try to evade them) but Wiz. 7 could not?

In any case I let Wiz 7 off the hook here due to it's age, as I said before.

and some, such as the nonsensical usage of words like "Legerdemain" and "Kirijutsu"

Duh, while the choice of words is strange, it doesn't take much effort to memorize them, does it?

I did not say I was unable to memorize it. Just that it is strange and thus stupid to have to do so because the designer wanted to show off his vocabulary or some bullshit.

and the convoluted auto-map feature, are just dumb.

What's wrong with mapping skill? Recently released Eschalon does just that, by the way. And most contemporary games had to rely on graph paper at all.

They obviously had the capability to jsut have a normal automap without having to force the player to go find some hidden treasure guarded by shit that will force several re-loads to beat. The end result is going to be the same anyway except that the player has to go through these cumbersome motions to get the automap.
Again, just dumb.
I do not care what Eschalon does. I don't play that game and I do not base my review of Wiz 7 on what that game does. Wiz 7 is a great game. Just not as good as Wiz 8 and that is to be expected given the times they were released.

But in any case Wizardry 8, as should be expected of a game released almost ten years later, made several improvements over Wiz 7.

...like switching to limited area-based world and getting rid of any kind of consciousness on behalf of NPCs?

Yeah Wizardry 8 is not as big as W7 is(some might even say that is a good thing). An unfortunate result of the game not having the staff and support/resources to pull off anything of greater scope but this is hardly a major 'knock' against W8. The game is still pretty big with all the optional dungeons/quests etc.
The "consciousness on behalf of NPCs" thing I perso0nally do not miss. Whatever benefit that Wiz 7 had in this department(and it is debatable IMO) is more than made up for by the clunkiness of having to type in words and having (what should be) quest rewards robbed from you and replaced by "Go pay some NPCs for the map" shopping BS.

Totally different game than Might & Magic 6 though. You might as well be comparing Wiz 8 to Super Mario Bros. for all the sense that THAT comparison made.

First person 3d engine - check.


So is Wolfenstein 3D. Does that make Wiz 7 just "Wolfenstein with number crunching"?


Crawling TB combat with dozens of opponents taking their turns moving around - check. World cut apart on separate areas, drastically different in enemy strength and often outright inaccessible until unlocked by the plot - check. Static NPCs as quest signposts - check. What else?

You are just arbitrarily pulling out comparative points and ignoring all the differences which I can do with Wizardry 7 and ANY FP, part-based RPG as well(including, ironically enough, Might and Magic 6-9).

Wizardry 8 had more number-crunching than MM6-7, and in place of ugly rendered sprites even uglier 3d models for monsters. That's all difference.

LOL. So your entirely subjective and quite laughable artistic sensibilities are the knock against Wizardry 8 here? The above is as absurd as saying "Doom 3 had suckier graphics than Dungeons of Daggerath.". AT least Wizardry 8 did not have entire ARMIES of giant monsters poppy up from behind the bushes at every turn.

...ah, it also featured level scaling and constant respawn.

I will give you that. Level scaling is stupid and so is respawn IMO.

For the record: aside of appaling linearity and outrageously cliched plot, what makes Wizards & Warriors worse or different from Wiz8, by the way?


Bad interface, massive bugs, badly written, equally cliche...etc.

Wizardry 8 is not all that linear. It is at the beginning in the sense that(unless you are importing a party from W7) you are stuck doing that monastery dungeon first but after that you can go do any number of things if you are good.
 

SkeleTony

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cardtrick said:
mondblut said:
and in place of ugly rendered sprites even uglier 3d models for monsters.

Not even going to address the rest of your points, as I haven't played any Wizardries but 8, although now that I'm having such a great time with 8 at the moment I'm looking forward to trying them. However, I just wanted to say that Wiz8 actually isn't ugly at all. The textures are low-res and the graphics are technologically poor by today's standards, but I think it looks terrific. I never thought shitty 3D could look so good. Instead of going for photorealism, which would have been unattainable at the time, they embraced the inevitable polygons and went for simple, clean textures that just look good. It looks classy. Plus, the visible damage (bruises, blood, etc.) on the 3-D enemies as you hurt them is a really nice touch.


Exactly!

Also I did not even get into the tactical formations thing of Wizardry 8! If that is not a major improvement over Wiz 7 then you can kick me in teh face!
 

SkeleTony

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Shagnak said:
I'm not going to get into the argument about Wizardry 8, because I'm willing to admit I'm an unreasonable fanatic when it comes to the game. To me it's almost the perfect update of the classic "blob with arms and legs" style of game.
However, it sounds like maybe I should give M&M6 another go :wink:


M&M 7 is better but all of the M&M 6-8 games lack the formations thing that Wiz 8 had and also limit you to a four person party(but M&M 7 is still GREAT!). make sure you get MoK's Win XP patches for any of these M&M (6 or 7) games.
 

Elwro

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And make sure you have the audio tracks. Some M&M collections you can buy in stores now (at least in Poland) don't have them. BUT you can download them, burn an audio CD with properly ordered tracks and the games (at least the 6th and the 7th) will recognize them :D Music does much for establishing the mood in these games...

But still it wasn't enough to keep me playing M&M VI for more than a few hours recently. Oh well, maybe another time.
 

SkeleTony

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Elwro said:
And make sure you have the audio tracks. Some M&M collections you can buy in stores now (at least in Poland) don't have them. BUT you can download them, burn an audio CD with properly ordered tracks and the games (at least the 6th and the 7th) will recognize them :D Music does much for establishing the mood in these games...

But still it wasn't enough to keep me playing M&M VI for more than a few hours recently. Oh well, maybe another time.


Wow! I cannot even imagine playing the M&M games without the music M&M 6 & 7(and Heroes of M&M 2) had some of the best scores in ANY games ever released. Had no idea there were versions released WITHOUT the music !?
 

Elwro

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Yup, sadly so. Actually, my bet is that if you buy a DVD M&M collection you won't get the music, since it consisted of audio tracks on the games' CDs and the devs / whoever prepared the DVD disk decided it'd be pointless to lose time on fixing this. That's what happened to the collection published in Poland by Cenega - and Cenega told the public they got the files from NWC, I think. (If NWC's still alive at all.)
 

Jasede

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I just acquired MM6 but Google won't help me find those MoK patches, Elwro. Help! I want to get the game ready, even though I am not even halfway through MM2 yet.
 

mondblut

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SkeleTony said:
What does that have to do with pop-up battles? How come a shareware RPG like Moraff's Dungeons of the Unforgiven could pull this off(see monsters coming and thus prepare for the coming battle as they approached or try to evade them) but Wiz. 7 could not?

Battles are either integrated into adventuring, or use separate combat mode. In first case, you can't expect any kind of sophisticated tactics beyond hitting "shoot" or "wait" while enemies take their turns approaching. In second, the adventure stops as soon as the combat is triggered. All attempts to semi-integrate phased/TB combat in first person into realtime exploration engines were failures, as far as I am concerned, be it Wiz8, Wizards&Warriors, Thunderscape, M&M6-8, you name it.

I haven't seen any of the Moraff games, but I suspect he would have to sacrifice a lot of combat complexity to make monsters seen as they are coming. HOW would you integrate a specific Wizardry combat (with order/execution phases, individual skill checks for hiding and running, specialized areas of effect for spells, and so on) outside of a single terrain grid?

They obviously had the capability to jsut have a normal automap without having to force the player to go find some hidden treasure guarded by shit that will force several re-loads to beat. The end result is going to be the same anyway except that the player has to go through these cumbersome motions to get the automap.
Again, just dumb.

I see nothing wrong in attempts to integrate some of the interface features into gaming world to make the experience more immersive. If anything, this should be applauded. Does it annoy you to have to seek specific runes in order to cast spells in Ultima Underworld, too? Finding a clock and a compass in Amberstar? Having to spend some skillpoints in literacy to have a journal in Prelude to Darkness?

The "consciousness on behalf of NPCs" thing I perso0nally do not miss. Whatever benefit that Wiz 7 had in this department(and it is debatable IMO) is more than made up for by the clunkiness of having to type in words and having (what should be) quest rewards robbed from you and replaced by "Go pay some NPCs for the map" shopping BS.

Yeah, right, everything in the gaming world should sit patiently on its behind waiting for the player to bless it with his presence. Choices and consequences my ass.

As for full text parser, for all its limitation it still gives much more freedom in interaction than dialogue trees, let alone dumb keyword selection.

So is Wolfenstein 3D. Does that make Wiz 7 just "Wolfenstein with number crunching"?

First person 3d engine with realtime movement AND integrated turn-based combat in first person with limited movement of the whole party. Wiz8 and M&M6+ are identical in combat/adventuring engine integration, and since it takes up about 99.9999% of gameplay time...

You are just arbitrarily pulling out comparative points and ignoring all the differences which I can do with Wizardry 7 and ANY FP, part-based RPG as well(including, ironically enough, Might and Magic 6-9).

You are welcome. So which are those fundamental differences?

LOL. So your entirely subjective and quite laughable artistic sensibilities are the knock against Wizardry 8 here?

Not really, I don't care much about graphics. But technically, 2d or 3d models is a major difference. As for both being ugly, that is native feature of being in 3d.

AT least Wizardry 8 did not have entire ARMIES of giant monsters poppy up from behind the bushes at every turn.

Right, they were popping out out of sight and then taking hours to advance to party once noticed.

For the record: aside of appaling linearity and outrageously cliched plot, what makes Wizards & Warriors worse or different from Wiz8, by the way?

Bad interface, massive bugs, badly written, equally cliche...etc.

Wizardry 8 is not all that linear. It is at the beginning in the sense that(unless you are importing a party from W7) you are stuck doing that monastery dungeon first but after that you can go do any number of things if you are good.

Linearity and cliches was a stab at W&W, not Wiz8. But I haven't encountered any significant bugs in W&W, and have no reason to complain about interface either.
 

Elwro

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Jasede said:
I just acquired MM6 but Google won't help me find those MoK patches, Elwro. Help!
1. Go here.
2. Download everything there - the last number in the link (not in the file name) is the track number.
3. Arrange the tracks properly and burn an audio CD from them.
4. Have the CD in the drive everytime you play. The game will recognize it (even if it's RW, which was what I did) and vary the music according to the location you're in.

Uh, but MoK patches? Don't know what they are.
 

Jasede

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Oh... you didn't post that, it was skeletony. Sorry, I misread.

"M&M 7 is better but all of the M&M 6-8 games lack the formations thing that Wiz 8 had and also limit you to a four person party(but M&M 7 is still GREAT!). make sure you get MoK's Win XP patches for any of these M&M (6 or 7) games."

Skele, can you point me to them?
 

JarlFrank

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Jasede said:
Oh... you didn't post that, it was skeletony. Sorry, I misread.

"M&M 7 is better but all of the M&M 6-8 games lack the formations thing that Wiz 8 had and also limit you to a four person party(but M&M 7 is still GREAT!). make sure you get MoK's Win XP patches for any of these M&M (6 or 7) games."

Skele, can you point me to them?

Have you just tried playing the games? M&M 6 worked perfectly on my XP PC, M&M 8 did that, too, and for M&M 7 I just had to use compatibility mode for Win98 and set my colors down to 256 colors or 16-Bit-Colors [I don't remember which of the both, but it was something below the 32-Bit-Colors you use nowadays].

Also, M&M 7 has Arcomage which is teh ownage.
 

Jasede

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Yes I tried, but it runs a bit too quickly and I'd be interested in the fan-fixes regardless. It seems like this MoK patch is for the German version only, though, which I don't own. [The only RPGs I played in German are RoA 1-3, Amberstar/moon/Albion and Gothic. And what a fine German it was.]
 

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