What's a good baby's first blobber?

[Crooked Bee]

Labyrinth of Touhou Okay, maybe not baby's, but definitely one of the best. Perhaps even the best. Fairly accessible too.

Wizardry 8 is just too slow, even with WizFast, and free movement in a blobber is just blegh (personal opinion, in before DraQ and Grunker). Personally I believe Wizardry 7 is the best Wizardry game, but it's much more punishing than Wiz8. Of course the best option is to go for a Wiz6-7-8 playthrough (if you have the patience).

Etrian Odyssey's really good, though if you can stand anime art style you should play Labyrinth of Touhou instead, and if you can't, there's always The Dark Spire. Great art style, solid blobber gameplay in the vein of early Wizardry games except less punishing.

Also Shin Megami Tensei: Strange Journey -- a unique take on the blobber formula because there's demon fusion and stuff. SMT1 (that SCO recommended) is good too, but that depends on the level of complexity you're looking for -- it's fairly simplistic compared to Strange Journey.

Also Generation XTH though I'm not sure the beta English patch can be freely downloaded yet. Perhaps felipepepe can tell you more.

If you go for Might and Magic, then 2, 3 and WoX are the best imo.

Okay, so basically anything from the above.

 

[felipepepe]

Also Generation XTH though I'm not sure the beta English patch can be freely downloaded yet. Perhaps felipepepe can tell you more.

The guy promised the full release before X-mas, so it should be coming soon. Still it's a good bloober, not a fantastic one like others in your list.

 

[SCO]

baby's first blobber

Labyrinth of Touhou

Spoiler

 

[m_s0]

Etrian Odyssey is a bit tedious. Not a great introduction, and that goes for any of those japanese games that are really heavy on grinding (and shitty art style). Which is probably every single one of them.

Easily World of Xeen. It's got good graphics, it's not that hard, definitely not overly complex, and there's a good sense of humor to it. You really can't go wrong with it.

 

[Zboj Lamignat]

Wizardry 8 is just too slow, even with WizFast, and free movement in a blobber is just blegh.

It's not if you're coming from the later generation of gaming and want to learn the genre.



Sent from my RM-821_eu_poland_360 using Tapatalk

 

[Excidium]

Right now his choice of babby's first blobber includes every famous blobber, these threads are always useful.

 

[m_s0]

I don't see the problem here. Famous or not, say, WoX is one of the best games to recommend in this case and since tuluse isn't familiar with the genre, he has no way to gauge accessibility, which seems to be what he's looking for.

 

[felipepepe]

Maps

Generation XTH has a place in my heart for their cool map designs:

Spoiler

 

[codexian reject]

I guess you are a grown up man, so why would you want to play baby's first anything, instead of a real deal ?
Play Wiz8 as the first and the last one, if you are sane.

Baby's first blobber ? It's easy. You won't get better answer than WOX.
All you do in this game is move forward and button mash an A(attack) key, while admiring campy colorful pixel art and listening to sweet MIDI music.
After few weeks it will take you to scan every single tile on the minimap, you will say goodbye to half of your brain cells.
CD version is a must, the voiceovers to this game are something truly special. Your lobotomy won't be complete without it.

 

[DraQ]

I mean if it worked like in Eschalon where each spell level creates a different teleport location, it might be feasible. Or if it was linear like Diablo. One portal per caster in an open-world game however is not a fast travel system but a joke.

You will likely have multiple casters, so you will have multiple portals.
Two portals are enough to set up back-and-forth route between a trader and current location,
plus there is a teleporter hub of sort you can reach after some time allowing teleportation to several spots spread all across gameworld.

There are other fast travel options that can be unlocked even before the portal spells. And people seem to forget that Shift-ing around mob spawns is actually often perfectly viable, especially on more open maps.

Also this.

You can run.

 

[V_K]

You will likely have multiple casters, so you will have multiple portals.
Two portals are enough to set up back-and-forth route between a trader and current location

That'd be enough if it was a dungeon crawl. But it's an open-world game with lots of backtracking, so not even close.

plus there is a teleporter hub of sort you can reach after some time allowing teleportation to several spots spread all across gameworld.

Good to know. I never found anything like that on my first play - I gave up out of frustration about 30 hours in, which in this game probably counts as "at the very beginning". But I still doubt it'll be enough to speed it up sufficiently.

Shit, now I want to play it again and I don't have the tiiiiiiiime.

 

[hicksman]

Why in gods name are they called "blobbers"? I would call them Dungeon Marches

I would highly recommend Grimrock

• Good puzzles, not terribly hard or obscure
• Not an overwhelming amount of combat
• It has an automap, which is a good option for beginners
  
• You don't have to check every wall for a hidden switch to progress
• Does a lot of the traditional mechanics of the dungeon crawler pretty well
• Character creation and leveling is pretty straightforward, except for leveling the magic user
• Easy to run, easy to buy
• Steam workshop has lots of new campaigns, most notably Eye of the Beholder and Dungeon Master remakes (both incomplete) so if you like the genre, you have access to the old school stuff in the new engine

Overall, a good intro. You'll be prepared for more old school shit having finished this one.

 

[Lady_Error]

Realms of Arkania 2 is a pretty good introduction into the genre. 1st person towns & dungeons, the best map exploration of any game and isometric TB combat (which some people seem to dislike for some reason).

And I definitely second The Dark Spire for the DS.

 

[Lady_Error]

Why in gods name are they called "blobbers"? I would call them Dungeon Marches

Ultima Underworld is a Dungeon March, but not a blobber. Blobber = 1st person party-based games where the characters are moved around as one blob.

I would highly recommend Grimrock

The Grimrock RT combat is not everyone's cup of tea, just as the one dungeon exploration without any NPC's or story.

 

[Kaucukovnik]

Why Arkanias? Except for the world exploration perspective they have nothing in common with blobbers. Combat is isometric, turn-based, there is no abstraction of party members and their positioning.

The only problem with Wiz8 is that there is nothing else quite like it - once you get addicted, there is no other fix.

 

[V_K]

Why Arkanias? Except for the world exploration perspective they have nothing in common with blobbers. Combat is isometric, turn-based, there is no abstraction of party members and their positioning.

And that's exactly what makes them perfect "transition" games.
Also, RPGMaker games don't have positioning, but it doesn't make them blobbers, does it?

 

[Lady_Error]

Why Arkanias? Except for the world exploration perspective they have nothing in common with blobbers.

Except for combat, Realms of Arkania has everything in common with blobbers. And I agree, the isometric combat might make the transition to blobbers easier.

 

[Kaucukovnik]

Except for combat, Realms of Arkania has everything in common with blobbers. And I agree, the isometric combat might make the transition to blobbers easier.

I'm not sure any RPG with party and 1st person exploration qualifies as blobber. Even Wiz8 is often considered borderline thanks to the formation system.

At any case the smoother transition is a good point for the RoA series.

 

[Edward_R_Murrow]

Wizardry: Tale of the Forsaken Land

You might need to emulate it (it's a PS2 game), but it is probably one of the better intros to blobbing I can think of. It dispenses with a lot of the antiquated mechanics of the old-style Wizardries (1-3, 5), without compromising the overall feel. Gone are things like losing stats on level up or a not-insignificant amount of random ambushes that could cripple/eliminate the entire party with little interaction from the player. Because it's systems are rooted in the old-school Wizardry titles, it's not nearly as complex when it comes to character/party building; it even offers a bunch of unique NPCs to fill in the party should the player be uninterested in creating any characters beyond the main character when prompted. Finally, there's no strange idiosyncratic mechanics or a plethora of "weird" races a la Wizardy 6-8 making it simpler and a bit purer as well...suffer not the xeno, yo. I like the Dark Savant trilogy, but the mechanics are somewhat obtuse/opaque. TotFL is pretty simple; build a party that has what you need and level them up, maybe making a few class/character changes along the way as you feel necessary.

The abilities the party is capable of performing via the Allied Action system allows a skilled player to really control combat and reduce a lot of the variance inherent in blobbers, especially the old-school ones. Being able to interrupt enemy spells and attacks are probably the most useful Allied Actions, but there are plenty of other ones with unique properties to play around with. Examples include a technique that has two frontline attackers combine moves to deal a powerful blow to one foe that ignores defenses or a maneuver in which a mage in the back levitates a frontline warrior up in the air to protect them from melee attacks and allow them a powerful attack at the end of the turn on one unlucky opponent. The abilities are a bit "gamey", but I like the way many of them play with the nature of phase-based, two-row blob combat...kinda cool to see that design space explored.

The game is still difficult, however. You can't make permanent saves in the dungeon, so progressing deeper often forces the player to take the risk of losing progress if they happen to suffer a total party wipe. Good play can reduce the chances of this occurring to infinitesimally small probabilities, but it may take a bit to get a hang of the systems and encounters.

Dungeon design is more "modern". Gone are the 32x32 (or greater area for Wiz 5) grids and in are more content-dense dungeon levels, many of which contain multiple elevations that play into traversal puzzles. Levels and the individual areas within them are more visually distinct as well. The closest thing to old-style Wizardry dungeon maps are the 3 procedurally generated floors dispersed in the labyrinth and that completely make up the (possibly) infinite bonus-dungeon. Because the levels are no longer grid-based, a Dumapic (coordinate reporting) spell wouldn't work here and the replacement actually shows the map for the entire floor the party currently occupies. It sounds a bit popamole, but certain maps make liberal use of things like teleport mazes, one-way doors, or can be up to six floors deep...all of which greatly blunt the power of the Maps spell (not to mention spellcasting is a "Vancian", spells per level/day, affair). Put it this way...graph/grid/engineering paper is still advised but solid memory and dungeoneering intuition can see one through.

The game also boasts some decent aesthetics. It's not cloyingly animu (contra Wizardry: Labyrinth of Lost Souls) and it mostly looks and sounds like typical fantasy fare you may find in the West. Well, besides some of the music sounding like it came out of a Mega Man X game. Special mention goes to how *good* the devs made a first-person blobber look through extremely creative use of camerawork. Really impressive.

tl;dfr version: Tale of the Forsaken Land is basically a modernized old Wizardry that takes out most of the bad, adds in some good new stuff, and makes for some relatively accessible blobbing fun.

 

[DraQ]

Except for combat (...) blobbers.

 

[Jaesun]

Wizardry VI

Don't forget to get the ring (and import your save game into VII).

 

[Zboj Lamignat]

Right now his choice of babby's first blobber includes every famous blobber, these threads are always useful.

They would be useful if people would refrain from acting retarded and recommending Wiz7 or Arkania games for someone who wants to get into blobbers. It's like recommending Op Flashpoint or Stalker for someone who never played fps.

 

[V_K]

Right now his choice of babby's first blobber includes every famous blobber, these threads are always useful.

They would be useful if people would refrain from acting retarded and recommending Wiz7 or Arkania games for someone who wants to get into blobbers. It's like recommending Op Flashpoint or Stalker for someone who never played fps.

That'd be a valid point if the person asking was a total noob with no RPG experience whatsoever. But since he's not, it's the recommedations like WoX or LoL that could do much more damage by giving him a first impression of the blobber genre being something simplitic and silly.

 

[Infinitron]

If Arkania is a blobber, then so is Betrayal at Krondor!

 

[V_K]

In b4 a 1000-page discussion on what makes a blobber.