Wizardry: Labyrinth of Lost Souls - Coming to US

Originally Posted by JDR13
I prefer the graphic style of TotFL. I think it's a nice mix of Japanese and Western fantasy art styles. On the other hand, Labyrinth of Lost Souls almost looks like a pure JRPG.

Indeed, the art direction is quite distant to the roots of the series, but I find the crisp high resolution spirtes much easier on the eyes than the 3D models of TotFL. I could however see how the art direction and design decisions could alienate many fans of the original series. I suspect that the game does not have much in common with the Wizardries of old besides the basic premise of the game and the name itself.

Whilst the underlying mechanics are somewhat similar to that of the classic games I do not expect this game to reach the same levels, but considering the state of the industry I'd happily see games like this become more popular in the west again. Especially if it can lead to more games in the same subgenre.

Originally Posted by txa1265
Cool - thanks for that. I requested it on Goozex (game trading site) and hope to get the chance to play it on the kids' PS2

I'm pretty sure you should be able to play this emulated on your PC once you get it.

I'd suggest playing the virtual apple 2 versions of the first few wizardry's..

Just updating this old thread to say "Wizardry: Labyrinth of Lost Souls" is up for download on Playstation Network for 14.99 USD. I'm about 4 hours in and having a blast. It feels VERY much like the old-style wizardrys. In fact, I've been getting a rather strong Wiz 4/5 vibe from this one, with the only real difference being the JRPG character models and voiceovers. If you're looking for an updated but old-school dungeon crawler and have a playstation 3, I highly recommend it for the cheap price.

Downloading the demo now…

Today is the first day in more than a month that I was able to log into the PSN store. I was hoping there was a PS3 demo for D&D Daggerdale, but I didn't see it.


*Edit*
Played for about 2 hours. Seems like a good game for the price, and it definitely has that old-school feel. Art direction isn't bad, but there's very little in the way of animations.

I don't like that you can't target individual monsters during battle, and combat is a bit of a grindfest. You can encounter some rather large groups right from the beginning, but the difficulty is a bit more forgiving than the classic Wizardry games.

Nice in-depth character creation with some interesting classes (Ninja, Samurai) along with the standard archetypes.

Originally Posted by JDR13
I don't like that you can't target individual monsters during battle, and combat is a bit of a grindfest. You can encounter some rather large groups right from the beginning, but the difficulty is a bit more forgiving than the classic Wizardry games.
Nice in-depth character creation with some interesting classes (Ninja, Samurai) along with the standard archetypes.

Yeah, other than the old-school vibe (think Wiz 1 to 3 with HD graphics and anime characters and voiceovers), the best thing about this is that it isn't brutally difficult. I've got my party to Level 5 and completed the first few dungeon levels and only had my party wiped out once… by a very ugly little shock trap. I've got other games in the hopper, but keep getting drawn back in to play this one. I'm really having a blast with it so far. I haven't played a "true" Wizardry-type game in quite a while and I'm getting constant bursts of nostalgia. Good times…

Originally Posted by JDR13
Wizardry: Tales of the Forsaken Land for PS2.

If you just want to see the dungeon crawling, skip to around 3:20 of the video.

Cheers for posting that video. I quite liked the atmosphere and feel of what I saw. I'll be keeping an eye out for this game now that Ps2 prices are becoming staggeringly cheap!

I'm one of those old timers that also unfortunately missed a good proportion of the older Wizardry games back in the day and have only played Wizardry 8 and the distantly related DW Bradley wise, much maligned fun old school romp, Wizards and Warriors. (Which I liked too, but for different reasons to Wizardry 8)

Ahh, maybe one day I'll go back to the roots and give the originals a good blast.

Originally Posted by Pessimeister
I'm one of those old timers that also unfortunately missed a good proportion of the older Wizardry games back in the day and have only played Wizardry 8 and the distantly related DW Bradley wise, much maligned fun old school romp, Wizards and Warriors. (Which I liked too, but for different reasons to Wizardry 8)

Same here . I've never finished any of the Wizardry games other than Wiz 8. I think I've tried them all, but none of the older titles did much for me. The biggest issue for me was the long gap between the releases of Wiz 7(1992) and Wiz 8(2001).

I did most of my gaming on consoles prior to 1993-94. By the time I got around to trying the Wiz games there were too many other (better) crpgs to play.

I loved Wiz 8 though, and always wished there could have been a sequel.

Originally Posted by JDR13
Same here . I've never finished any of the Wizardry games other than Wiz 8. I think I've tried them all, but none of the older titles did much for me. The biggest issue for me was the long gap between the releases of Wiz 7(1992) and Wiz 8(2001).

I will definetly finish wiz6-8 because of the character import but Ill propably play these new playstation ones first because its so much easier to get started with them. Wiki says that labyrinth is sequel to forsaken but is there really anything between them?

Originally Posted by zakhal
Wiki says that labyrinth is sequel to forsaken but is there really anything between them?

Labyrinth of Lost Souls isn't connected to any other games afaik, and it's definitely not the sequel to Tale of the Forsaken Land.

Apparently this was recently ported over to the iPhone/iPad, and was released to the Japanese market last week.

Given that I sadly don't read Japanese or own a PS3, I can't comment on the game itself. But for anyone who happens to read Japanese and is interested in playing a Wizardry-ish title on their iPhone/iPad, it's supposed to be out there.

Originally Posted by BadYeti
Apparently this was recently ported over to the iPhone/iPad, and was released to the Japanese market last week.

Given that I sadly don't read Japanese or own a PS3, I can't comment on the game itself. But for anyone who happens to read Japanese and is interested in playing a Wizardry-ish title on their iPhone/iPad, it's supposed to be out there.

Sadly it is a pain to buy from a different country's iTunes store (not Apple's fault, same deal with pretty much all international stuff), but there are ways discussed here and here.

love this review on the Llygamyn Saga from someone who barely heard of the game

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N2ZLdScOxvE

If you want to play the first three for the first time this is said to be the best version of it. He claims this is an NES port but I'm sure the NES versions didn't have these graphics. I was aware there was a translation for it but I thought it was third party.

Funny how the NES and SNES versions still have the "flip open the disk drive when you die" exploit.
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Is there a version of this game NOT for the PS3?

This was released a few days ago for the iPhone/iPad in the United States.

My party is around level 8 at this point. The controls/UI are pretty bad, and the localization is shockingly bad, but otherwise I'm having a lot of fun with it.

Originally Posted by BadYeti
This was released a few days ago for the iPhone/iPad in the United States.

My party is around level 8 at this point. The controls/UI are pretty bad, and the localization is shockingly bad, but otherwise I'm having a lot of fun with it.

Perfect summary … there is an average game hidden beneath an appaling port … and for genre fans it is worth finding

There's a free demo out for the iphone as well. Reviews suggest that they think that it may be great for old school gamers but that it's too confusing for the average user. That alone makes me want to at least check out the demo.

Playing through much of the first level in the demo, my biggest complaint is that the dungeon is completely empty and bland. It somehow manages to have even less flavor then the dungeon in the original wizardry 1, it's just lots of corridors and rooms with nothing in them. I'm not sure if it gets better later on. But exploring a barren and lifeless (other then random encounters) dungeon isn't all that interesting.

Other then that it's not such a bad game, there are definitely parts I like and which make me nostalgic for my Wizardry days. But the boring empty dungeon is a pretty huge deal.