RPGWatch Feature - Return of the Blobber

@SiENcE did you mean to quote my other post? The one you quoted has no relation to your response, but if it was a response to my other post then it would make sense. Could you clarify before I agree/disagree with anything?

Yes, sorry..i have quoted wrong . It was a response to your other quote and also to the topic which includes the name blobber.

I‘ve to say, that i‘m one of the developers of „Aeon of Sands“ and i‘ve done a lot of research in this topic before we started to develop AoS.

Originally Posted by henriquejr
Well, if I could pick only one game for you to review, I'd choose M&M X.

We have an MMX review as well: https://www.rpgwatch.com/articles/mi…eview-241.html

Originally Posted by Kordanor
It just came to my mind: Is there actualy ANY roguelike/lite Blobber, could as well be just with one character. Cannot think of any…

I think Dungeon Hack!

This was an excellent read and a pleasant nostalgic walkthrough some classic parts of RPG history, cheers Forgottenlor for writing it. The piece's release coincided rather nicely with some reflecting upon exploration in classic dungeon crawlers that I wrote in the Druidstone thread. I've also completed a good proportion of the games listed; although I'm decidedly weaker on the Wizardry series, having only finished Wizardry 8. They weren't as easy to find where I live back in the day. They're certainly on my list to dive into further in the future.

There are a few titles I think would deserve further mentioning; particularly the Dungeon Master derived clones and a whole subset of dungeon crawlers that are on the Amiga. Black Crypt, Bloodwych, The Ishar Trilogy and Crystal Dragon definitely come to mind. Like HiddenX, I'm not too fond of the term 'blobber' either.

For PC, I'd agree with Kordanor on the influence of Stonekeep. That was one of the first in the style that I completed during my last high school years along with Eye of the Beholder and Lands of Lore. I also think that another game from that period Anvil of Dawn could get a mention despite from memory not being party based.
One of the more obscure titles I fiddled around with on my Dx2-66 back in the day was "Shadows of Yserbius". https://www.mobygames.com/game/dos/shadow-of-yserbius

I'm sure there are plenty more gems to discover the more you search!

You know, this thread's got me curious about whether fatknacker50 is still butthurt over the fact that MMX didn't fully support 32-bit Windows. I don't think we've gotten an update on that in a while. Looks like the last time was in a PoE2 thread about a year ago. It's still probably the weirdest and most prolonged crusade I can ever remember seeing on RPGWatch.

(And whoops, guess I owe a royalty payment to JDR13 now.)

For nostalgia, below is a link to the full 1993 issue of Computer Gaming World, which contains a review of 90 CRPG of the era (page 34):

http://www.cgwmuseum.org/galleries/issues/cgw_111.pdf

Stonekeep, Star trail and other are reviewed in the above link in other issues.

Originally Posted by lackblogger
Whenever I read an analysis of "the good old days of the blobber" and it's clear that it's a love-project, I'm always disappointed they never mention how the puzzles were so bad there was literally a law brought in to combat them.

It's pure nostalgia to think that those old blobbers weren't as cynically designed as modern loot box games, their primary objective to make players phone 0900 numbers and buy cheats magazines and cheat books etc etc (there were no internet guides back then). And that the primary reason the genre died out in the mid-nineties is because this law made it pointless to design a game around obtuse puzzles.

And that's one advantage of the newer games. When people complain "the puzzles aren't as 'good' as they once were", you might want to imagine some guy posting 20 years from now lamenting how modern games don't "Lootbox like they once did"

Well, this didn't occur to me, because I wasn't actually aware of it when I was playing most of the games in question. I was around 15-17 when playing BT3, MM1 and W6. BT3 I finished without any help, MM1 I played through to a point where I got to a riddle I couldn't solve, and at the time I'd played so long, that it somehow didn't bother me to give up. I got Wizardry 6 on sale in a bundle with its clue book.
In fact the only game I remember being really frustrated with at the time was Ultima 6, which soured me on the series as a whole as I traveled throughout the world and couldn't figure out what to do. I had no idea at the time that there were pay call numbers for hints. That doesn't of course make it good or right, and I don't like any cynical cash grabs, whatever they may be.

Originally Posted by henriquejr
Well, if I could pick only one game for you to review, I'd choose M&M X.
Yes, I played Wizardry 8 and HoMM V (but this isn't a dungeon crawler), though I haven't finished them. And I've played some of the games you mentioned in the article (see post #7 above): Lords of Xulima, Paper Sorcerer and even some other dungeon crawlers not featured in your article (Legends of Grimrock - finished it).

I considered writing a Grimoire review, but after finishing the game, and rereading felipepepe's review at the RPGcodex, I came to the conclusion that I'd just be repeating a lot of his points and in much less detail, so I refer to that excellent review here.

https://rpgcodex.net/article.php?id=10730

The Gamebanshee review is also pretty decent and here:

http://www.gamebanshee.com/reviews/1…ar-review.html

All I can really add is that the game is far less of a handholder than Might and Magic X. I figured a lot out, because I had recently played through Wizardry 7, and the games are similar in many aspects. But the game is very complex and a lot is not explained or not easily found. I'd consult the Steam character guide before making a party, but do know that you meet a lot of recruitable characters who can replace "mistakes" if you make them in character creation. I made two. I made a Wolfin who I wanted to change from priest to templar, only to find out it wasn't possible and didn't realize Aeorbs couldn't be raised from the dead, which is not so cool during the endgame. There are a lot of good Guides on Steam for Grimoire at this point that make up for what the game itself lacks on introduction.

Also I'd like to note that Grimoire has a ton of customization options, such as difficulty raitings, random encounter chance, and whether you'd like faction npcs to compete with you at gathering up stone tablets (which you need to start the endgame) or not. This puts it in my mind above Wizardry 7 where you often had to backtrack through easier areas and engage in seemingly endless pointless battles.

Grimoire is a hard and decidedly nostalgic game. Its is purposefully old fashioned in ways that probably will frustrate modern players. But if you can get by its quirks, it provides a lot of game, and I found it very enjoyable.

More on Starcrawlers later.

Man, Grimoire hit all those old vibes in such good ways! I keep reminding myself I'm due a replay, one trip through just wasn't enough. Really, if you've not played Grimoire and you liked many of the crpg's from the eighties and nineties, you really should give it a whirl.

Originally Posted by forgottenlor
I considered writing a Grimoire review, but after finishing the game, and rereading felipepepe's review at the RPGcodex, I came to the conclusion that I'd just be repeating a lot of his points and in much less detail, so I refer to that excellent review here.

Haha, that's one of the reasons I try to avoid reading reviews before I actually wrote my own one. I might check the final rating and sometimes I follow forum discussions about the game, but going into the details and pointing them out is something I want to do on my own, whcih feels better when writing the review and which let's you more unbiased. Some praise or criticism mentioned on other reviews might be about something you would not have noticed or not have valued as much that it's worth mentioning it. Pretty much as reading about cookie cutter builds before starting a game, then creating a party with these builds, and then complaining that it's too easy.

Thanks for this awesome article. Although I'm not playing blobbers much these days (last one I played and finished was MMX), they always have a special place in my heart and I try to buy every one of them to encourage devs to develop more games like this. It would be nice to see the remastered versions of old M&M and Wizardry games with renewed graphics like Bard's Tale I-III.

If you are having problems running a game on Win10 like Wizardry 8 try using Dgvoodoo 2. It is an easy to use program, solve the running problems for many games on my PC from the early 2000 period. GOG version of W&W uses the same program and works like charm on new systems.

Originally Posted by henriquejr
I pretty much would like to read your full review of Might & Magic X, Grimoire and Star Crawlers. Please, do them

On Star Crawlers. I started this game in summer 2017, which just happened to coincide with the graphic card of my previously computer dying a slow death. After 15 hours into the game I had an awful crash with corrupted all of my saves. This happened again about 6 months later with Ruzar the Lifestone, so I don't blame the game itself. I would have finished it, had my saved games not been destroyed, and I will return to it at some point, but at the moment I have a number of other blobbers in my backlog, which I'd like to give a try first. So these are my impressions from 15 hours of the game.
I think Starcrawlers has a neat, very atmospheric graphic style, which was very clearly inspired by Star Wars, also the setting in pretty unique for this type of game. Starcrawlers is set in a cold war between megacorporations, pirates, and rebels. The faction system plays a big role both in the story and in gameplay as most jobs you do will benefit one faction while hurting another.
Starcrawlers has 8 unique classes (for four characters), which each have 3 skill trees, like we know from Diablo 2. Each class plays differently and can be built differently, so like a classical blobber, there is a lot of ways to play the game.
So far, so good.
Starcrawler's has well done main missions in which revolve around fetching the blackbox of a wrecked ship. Who you give the box too, leads to playing for one of the game's factions. The main missions are well designed and add a nice bit of variety. In between you are offered procedurally generated side missions which are kind of generic, and you see more of the same enemies from the main missions. Building a reputation with a faction does open up extra gear for your character, which is motivation enough to do side missions early on. You simply can't hop from main mission to main mission, because eventually the difficulty will spike too much.
Starcrawler's combat has many modern elements like tanking and cooldowns. For all these to work well, combat usually takes a fair number of rounds, and is much longer than a combat in most blobbers. To be fair so long as combat is reasonably challenging it can be fun. The problem comes when combat is too easy or too hard. I started on normal difficulty and found it too easy. I never felt in danger, because while it took awhile to beat enemies, they dealt out only negligable damage. When playing on too hard of difficulty its even worse since you just seem to be scratching opponents and combat can take forever. Most more classical games like Wizardry 7 feature easy combat where you can destroy enemies in one round, while when its very hard you can be wiped out in one round. While this isn't so compatibable with Starcrawler's cooldown system, I find it much preferable, since you are not stuck in unchallenging or hopeless combat for too long.
So, I liked Starcrawlers, but found the combat less enjoyable than either MMX or Grimoire, which is unfortunate, because I otherwise think its a good game.

M&M X is a great game and definitely lives up to its 'Legacy' title. But due to its technical problems (previous version of Unity has some serious memory problems) it receives poor reviews and eventually Ubisoft pulled the plug of it. If only it would have been a financial hit, I can't imagine the possibilities. I bought three different copies of the game in order to support it, but alas you can't escape the inevitable.

Great article

A while back I got nostalgic for blobbers and started some conversations on here about doing a proceduraly generated blobber world the size of elder scrolls….with changing weather etc…I would love to get a formula style way to tie a huge world in with hand built areas in an epic style adventure. If only I could program more then a little c++

I keep hoping that the folks behind Might and Magic ten might go the kick starter route and try to gain funding that way. So far, no sign of that happening.

@SiENcE , yes, you make some great points.

I decided to deal with Epic so that I could give Operencia a try. It's an odd game, not bad but extremely limited in scope compared to the others. I wouldn't compare it at all to MMX, it reminds me a bit more of Bards Tale 4, but even narrower/shallower and with a more standard RNG based combat system. Still there is something about it that keeps me going for at least a little while and I suspect that I still haven't seen everything the game has to offer yet.

I’ve never been into blobbers, as much as they should appeal to me as they offer most of what I like in rpgs. Something about the player perspective and limited play areas is just “off” to me. I do have some on my wishlist and every once in a while I’ll pick one up to see if it clicks. Excellent article though!