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Old 05-13-2001, 07:41 PM   #1
mortification
Elite Waterdeep Guard
 

Join Date: May 13, 2001
Location: West Lafayette, IN, USA
Posts: 35
This is a great game...I grew up playing many of the "old school" RPG's and this game continues a lot of the trends established in classics like Bard's Tale, Wizardry, Might and Magic, and Ultima.

I especially like the multitude of races (er, I mean "clans") and classes (er, "roles") to choose from. The feature of being able to change classes in mid-game several times if desired is very cool. I also like stat-based games personally more than item-based games and this is one of those games where a good party can be "naked" and still be good.

Also it's refreshing to be able to play a large (up to 6-person) party; I personally dislike the current trend towards 1-person RPG's. Even when NPC's are involved, I enjoy micromanaging my characters a great deal.

Finally I see this game as having the potential to solidify a new mini-genre, that of party-based 1st person RPG's (that use real 3d graphics). This trend was started IMHO with Might and Magic 6 and up and it is a great way to preserve the aspects of CRPGS that appeal to purists while encompassing the new technology that gains mainstream acceptance.

I have some comments and questions that maybe someone can help with. Keep in mind that I've only played about 1/3 of the game yet so some of this might become moot later. Also I do really enjoy the game, this is just constructive criticism for the sequel:

1. What's the deal with ranged weapons? It seems like it is impossible using the "adaptive time-phasing" system to properly deal with more than 1 character that uses a ranged attack. Unless you've got that guy preselected and ready to go, you can't get off more than 1 shot before the monsters are on you. Also, by the time you switch to the next guy with ranged attack (like a Wizard) you've already taken 3-4 hits. God forbid you need to select a different ranged attack or spell. I have no problem with the phasing system once the computer decides that meelee combat is officially begun, but what about prior to this? Is there some way to turn this on manually (as in MM6 - MM8, by pressing the space bar).

2. Ranged attacks are kind of weak. My Ranger with LVL4 bow and a nice crossbow with +1 arrows still misses mostly, or hits for 2 DMG. Does it get better? Thrown weapons seem absolutely useless, both for characters and monsters (such as the sissy knife-throwing bandits. "looks like someone wants to play the hero", alright, but it's certainly not them after my Barbarian rams about 14 inches of steel down their throat).

3. The thief can't switch classes until much later in the game than the other classes. This really weakens him IMHO, since by the time he switches, he's got to climb very high in levels to get back to the non-penalty leveling bonuses. Also once you get the pry spell the lockpicking skill is really not needed since there are so few chests and doors to open, comparatively. Pickpockets is not so useful unless you invest a lot of skill in it and then your thief is weak in other areas. Maybe a fair balance would be to have all the classes wait until the second city to switch roles.

4. How the heck do you save inside the City? This is a real limitation. Also load times are very long (although I really don't mind this, as it cuts down on the temptation to exploit some aspects of the game by reloading.)

5. The outdoors automap to me is very difficult to use, especially since all of the objects (trees, pathway, stones, etc.) look about the same color in the tiny window. Also there should be a zoom feature in the tiny window like there is in MM6-MM8.

6. The quests and autonotes journal is cumbersome to use. Personally I like the MM6-MM8 style better.

7. It seems like conversation outdoors is really cumbersome sometimes. Outdoors, it is almost impossible sometimes to talk to characters that for some unknown reason are hopping around like the white rabbit on the way to a hole somewhere. Toad-face is especially bad about this, since I blew two elixirs trying to frantically give them to him after the determined our conversation was over and ran away. Luckily I had a third party member with an elixir quest. Also for characters that initiate conversation on their own, they tend to follow you around until they've said all they wanted to say. This means that you or they can get stuck places that they shouldnm't be. Again, my personal preference from the MM6-MM8 games is to have all plot- or quest- sensitive conversations take place in paused gametime or indoors. This also means that you can't accidentally kill the wrong person in the middle of a larger melee (windmill-girl got caught up in the middle of a fight with some bats, and stood right where she should'nt have in mid-swing of the aforementioned barbarian. Hope she has insurance.)

8. Indoor conversation is almost painful sometimes, especially at shops/guilds. I don't need to hear about not completing the Paladin quest for the 30th time before I can click any buttons. Much better woud be to have all quest status conversations on a seperate menu. Also, when I want to interrupt somebody I should be able to without disrupting the game or potentially losing a quest reward.

9. If you don't cheat, at least in the early game gold/resource management is really a major obstacle. It seems almost impossible to afford some of the fancy items and training, especially for 6 people. Maybe this is an advantage to soloing.

Sorry for the length. Comments are welcome. Maybe I'm being stupud and missing something major.

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Old 05-13-2001, 08:38 PM   #2
Sazerac
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Join Date: January 7, 2001
Location: Monroe, LA
Age: 60
Posts: 7,387
Mortification, everything you said is on the money. I can't think of much more to add to it, other than I WISH they had had a better way to get around the Dragonspire, at least after you finished that part of the game! Even Wizardry did that by letting you open up a secret passage or something to let you bypass the main dungeon after you had finished it. Oh well!

But every point you make is correct. It's a fantastic game, but one hopes that they'll address these issues in the next one.

And thank you for keeping it positive! I hate reading threads that do nothing but bash the game without offering other positive points as well.

Very good post!

-Sazerac
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Old 05-13-2001, 10:30 PM   #3
Ryanamur
Fzoul Chembryl
 

Join Date: March 29, 2001
Location: Montréal, Canada
Age: 49
Posts: 1,763
Welcome to the board,

here's a quick list of answers to your questions, I'm sure others will compliment them as required.

1 and 2- range weapon are weak in this game. If you plan on having range weapon, my advise would be to have them pre-selected and to start shooting ASAP when you see ennemies. Once you're at close range, you're characters will automaticaly change to melee weapons if they are equiped (FYI, the best weapons are swords, anything else are almost (not the almost) useless.

3- The thief is at a real dissadvantage. IMHO, the best solution, though unfortunate, is to forget about the thief and to put an extra fighter that will evolve into a barbarian.

4- The game saves itself automaticaly once in the city. To access this feature, you need to REVERT the games. Caution, you can't undo stuff that you did in the city when you revert.

5-8 Some of the interface is very cumbersome, you got a point there that I don't think many would dispute.

9- As weird as this may sound, you don't need to cheat in the early stages of the game to advance. Your normal character advancement should be enough to cover for any spendings that you might REALLY need. You start getting money after the Serpent temple, which coincides with the period where you'll make more role changes, and will need to invest in skill advancements at guilds. Early on, what you get is enough (both in good and stats development).

Have fun playing and I'm sure you'll find this forum a great place for info.

BTW, welcome to the forum.

[This message has been edited by Ryanamur (edited 05-13-2001).]
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Old 05-13-2001, 10:41 PM   #4
adam warlock
Ma'at - Goddess of Truth & Justice
 

Join Date: January 7, 2001
Location: I live inside of my mind.....
Age: 53
Posts: 3,234
first of all, welcome!

in response to these:
4. How the heck do you save inside the City? This is a real limitation. Also load times are very long (although I really don't mind this, as it cuts down on the temptation to exploit some aspects of the game by reloading.)

not a chance, you have to be outside of the gates to save the game..

6. The quests and autonotes journal is cumbersome to use. Personally I like the MM6-MM8 style better.

I agree it is long-consuming especially when they record the repeated conversation. (it did on mine)



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Old 05-13-2001, 10:49 PM   #5
mammawlin
Drizzt Do'Urden
 

Join Date: March 3, 2001
Location: Columbus, Ohio USA
Posts: 650
Hello mortification! You are right, there are some poor parts of the game that with us doctoring it, the game would have been better, but we didn't get to do that, darn it! So Ranged attacks are kinda weak, but do come in handy at times, and with training and the proper arrows, will do more damage. And you must be careful with spells that spew fire and such or you will kill your own crew, not to mention innocent bystanders. And, NO you can't shut those shopkeepers up, as much as we all wanted to; and no you can't save in town - so save before and after and save, save, save! And the Rogue may be disadvantaged in the first town, but they are the only ones who can aquire the assassin dagger and become Assassins. There are advantages! And the map is really good for getting your direction and finding out where you have and haven't been, although an enlargment may have been valuable at times (well there is that one enlargement) but you are way right about this too. Gold, man it is hard to come by, until you find some ways to acquire it. There are ways, we can bump up threads that explain these if you want to see them??? Anyways, again, Welcome to the best forum ever and we hope you stay close and tell us how you are doing! God speed to you and your party.
Mammawlin

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Old 05-13-2001, 11:13 PM   #6
Wyvern
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Join Date: January 7, 2001
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Welcome to the board mortification!!!!!!

Excellent post! Lots of great comments/observations about the game!

I personally gave up on the bows during my first playthrough. I always had my magic users set for range spells so I had something good to toss off right away.
We've had a couple of threads recently in which we've gotten into the problems of developing the Rogue characters. Compared to the rest they really get a slow start in this game. My own opinion is that it wasn't planned that way but ended up that way when the project was rushed to market.
You can't save in the towns. I always made a habit of saving just before I entered and if I was happy with what I had done inside the gates, when I came back out.
Not the best automap. I really disliked that you could never really fill it in completely and in places like the stout mines with overlapping tunnels it was next to useless. My maps ended up with a lot of flags on them with notes like: continue north to next east passage and follow to etc. A pain! That could have been greatly improved!
Agree on all your other points too and still it was a FUN game!! That's rather amazing in a way!

Wyv
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Old 05-14-2001, 01:40 AM   #7
mortification
Elite Waterdeep Guard
 

Join Date: May 13, 2001
Location: West Lafayette, IN, USA
Posts: 35
Hey everyone,


Thanks very much for the warm reception. It's always a pleasure to find a good discussion group on CRPGs. Reading over all of the replys I had a few more comments to make.

I had suspected that the product was rushed to market somewhat. Unfortunately this is all too common these days. Since it was a fairly high-profile game, had been in development for more than 3 years, and apparently switched publishers and names, this usually spells disaster for computer games. However, in this case the game is really fun to play (as many have pointed out) and after all, this is the real measure of a game's success. In fact, it's worth living with the frustrations to get at the meat of the game/engine, which is one of the better replications of pen-and-paper games that I've played in a long time. I wish that more of these types of games were made but unfortunately they aren't very popular in America (as compared with Redneck Deer Hunter Motocross Rampage XXVI or whatever sells at Wal-Mart). Usually the Japanese seem to luck out when it comes to RPGs - maybe they are more patient as a culture. Main screen turn on!

Other games that I liked include the Phantasie series, the Rogue-like games, and Dragon Wars, Wasteland, Anvil of Dawn, etc. My favorite publishers/developers are New World Computing, the old-days Origin, SquareSoft, Interplay, etc. I started playing CRPGs when Zork came out a long time ago. I fondly remember the "good old days" of VIC-20 gaming when you had to type in the program yourself!

Some other thoughts that I had about this game that may be worthy of discussion:

1. I really like the music and use of voices. IMHO, all characters in modern RPGs should talk with recorded voice (see Anvil of Dawn). It just adds so much suspension of disbelief to do this. Some of the voices are drowned out sometimes by ambient noise or music (although this may be because I'm standing too far away from them).

2. The graphics are fine. Personally I see no real need for graphics any better than this for a CRPG. The immersion is almost total. The only suggestion for improvement would be an auto-hide interface so you could go full-screen, and higher resolution. The lighting and fog effects are nice. Maybe some more textures for the next release.

3. There should be some sort of "camp" or rest feature, or at the very least a "wait" command. For one things I can't figure out how to tell what time it is ever other than day/night or listening for the "bongs" of the clock. Maybe I'm missing something. Also, at the very least when you go into town there should be an option to reset the time to dawn, like resting overnight in the Inn. This also heals and recharges mana. Am I missing this feature? It'd make the game a lot easier. True to life, it is really hard to see at night, even with night vision, and I'd prefer to "go home" at night and wait for the next day. (Side Note: you'd have to disable the "wait" feature for some events like the Monk quest).

Thanks again for the warm reception and for reading the post.

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Old 05-14-2001, 08:44 AM   #8
mammawlin
Drizzt Do'Urden
 

Join Date: March 3, 2001
Location: Columbus, Ohio USA
Posts: 650
Good morning, Mortification! You are absolutely right on with your observations once again. Can't help but to laugh about what Wyvern said, even with all its faults, we still love the heck out of this game! Imagine an Inn with no rooms to sleep. . . Funny little kingdom here. And yes, the voices do fade if you walk away from them - well at least that is somewhat realistic LOL! I agree also that the grapics are good, great really and don't need to be any better for me. It is totally too bad that we can't get in on that Japanese thingy with these types of games being more in demand than the shoot-em-ups Although I used to LOVE them, they leave something to be desired now days. Out of curiosity I must ask, where are you in your game?
Have a great day,
Mammawlin
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Old 05-14-2001, 09:12 AM   #9
Radek
Red Dragon
 

Join Date: April 3, 2001
Location: Prague, Czech Republic
Posts: 1,586
Two notes:
1. Bows. Forget them. Use offensive spells instead. They are all ranged and all of them do better than any bow in the game. My own experience: a ranger with bows 12 will miss mostly even with a good bow and superior arrows.
2. Assassin: EVERY CHARACTER CAN BECOME AN ASSASSIN! Not only a rogue! Become a Ninja first and join the Thieves Guild (works safely). Perhaps, a Barbarian will have no problems, too. Perhaps, it is sufficient to finish Scanthril's quest, give the dagger to the future assassin and enter the Pawn Shop (note that you need not enter the guild - you need not be a member of it). My own experience: paladin -> samurai -> ninja -> assassin.
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Old 05-14-2001, 09:25 AM   #10
mortification
Elite Waterdeep Guard
 

Join Date: May 13, 2001
Location: West Lafayette, IN, USA
Posts: 35
Well, you know how it is...I've restarted about 6 times. So one party is pretty far (past the second town) but I've abandoned it in favor of the "super" party described in the other post, which is still waiting to finish the crypt but has the equivalent of 36 levels gained.

Still have yet to finish though. I'm trying to savor this one rather than finish it right away. It's a constant struggle not to break out the Hex editor though. Hopefully I can resist long enough to finish at least once legit first.

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