Just finished Dodd the Slayer 2.4 with additional tweaks by Daegan (v3.2).
I´ve to say it´s really impressive and huge mod now.
The main quest is greatly expanded and now it´s probably 1/2 longer than the vanilla, sidequests are elaborated and not just fillers, new enchanting/augmenting abilities offer a lot of possibilities for the beginning/middle game and help gadgeteer and bard to be more respectable throughout, variety of items is overwhelming and offers very diverse potential for character development, new areas look nice with new textures without detracting from overall game´s feeling, opponents are tough and some battles are really epic.
Calling this game Wizardry 8.5 now seems more than appropriate
.
Played the game with my usual party of 8, being curious how well would they fare.
And I´ve to say that lizardman fighter, faerie ninja, mook gadgeteer, hobbit bard (female), elf bishop (divinity/alchemy), faerie bishop (wizardry/psionics), Vi Domina and RFS fared rather well.
Ended at levels 30-33, 3000 kills, 51 party member deaths.
Some other points and mild spoilers ahead.
I was really glad that two places that reeked of unfinished business in the vanilla game are now utilized and incorporated into the expanded main quest. I can imagine that developers have had originally similar plans with them so the changes fit naturally in the game.
The new enchanting ability works well and I was having a lot of fun with trying various enchantments on respective items, waiting for the outcome and then considering which one will be more useful.
I was having even more fun with finding and upgrading gadgets and instruments.
Especially this feature made me glad I went with both gadgeteer and bard.
On top of that, Daegan´s tweaks further helped in making the gameplay smoother and balanced by giving more power to offensive spellcasting and fastening the projectile speed. Vanilla spells were made a bit more powerful and there are some new high level uber ones which are very useful in the second half of the game.
Thanks to it, all my spellcasters were more diverse and fun.
Especially the bard who, thanks to one tweaked instrument, had most kills in the end!!
Giving different icons to various potions and some other items greatly reduced inventory juggling, revamped alchemy worked logically and fresh and some other various in-game surprises were nice touch.
As a big fan of Wizardry 7 I was delighted that both new optional quests were inspired by some of its features.
The first one is basically a very cool reimagination of good old chambers of gorrors with especially nasty baddies and great treasures. There´s a pretty significant twist to it and my gadgeteer was rather crucial in those areas.
The second one is a very elaborated and quite long dungeon romp done by Qusari.
It has its own story with connections to the main line of W8 as well as to some events in W7. It´s full of puzzles, traps, easter eggs and a lot of pretty cool eye candy to boot. It´s a sorta hybrid between rattkin funhouse and dane tower from W7 and I really enjoyed it throughout since I´ve always missed something like that in W8.
As for the overall difficulty, I felt the game was generally a little bit easier than the expert version 1.4, be it for the abundance of new items and upgrades or some Daegan´s tweaks features but I didn´t mind it at all. The gameplay was challenging throughout without being frustrating or too time consuming.
The toughest part was the first 1/3 where party haven´t that much possibilities of dealing with some encounters. Later, the toughest battles were mostly concentrated into new areas.
At the Peak, all the temple battles were great and the battle at Life temple was one of the most fun (and challenging) in the whole game.
I haven´t really seen any glaring negatives in my playthrough and the minor ones were, well, minor
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Ok, maybe, some vanilla encounter which used to be quite memorable are now walk in the park compared to the new ones. I almost felt sorry for Pee Wee and Rapax Prince army and poor Nessie fell in one round encountered at levels 16-18. Maybe some upgrade to such encounters would be beneficial for the atmosphere and would put them more in line with the added content.
The biggest vanilla surprise were L40 magma scorchers who almost decimated my unprepared party. It´s a pity one needs to be really high level to come across more similar vanilla monsters encounters. Putting some high level vanilla monster here and there may be nice.
(The biggest surprise came from the bucaneers ghost encounter though. I always reload there for at least half an hour to get some nice loot, but this time after a fifth reload or so, two bucaneers dropped *Light* sword!)
Also, there seem to be a lot of new mergeable items now. Although I enjoy occasional experimenting with it, I think that putting hints about some of the more obsure ones in-game wouldn´t hurt.
Ok, running out of space probably.
All in all, Wizardry 8 with Dodd 2.4 is EPIC.
Thanks to Qusari and Daegan for their well thought out and elaborated additions and most importantly thanks to Dodd for putting such a huge amount of work into his mod and keeping the last great really oldschool rpg fresh even today!!