Wizardry 4

skavenhorde

skavenhorde

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All this talk over here about Wizardry mods and Might and Magic like games that GothicGothicness wants to make has given me an itch to reload some of these classics or in this case actually try playing Wiz 4 for the first time. I was a little reluctant due to the fact that it has the reputation of being the most unforgiving and difficult games ever but I wanted to see how I fared in this game. So I dusted off some old graph paper that I've had for a long time and loaded it up.

I've got to say that this game has a well deserved reputation. Even from the very start it's difficult. It took me about half an hour to figure out how to get out of the first room you start in. I shouldn't say figured out because technically I got lucky when I tried different combinations of monster recruits.

So one puzzle down then I get nailed by the ghost again. I seriously hate that ghost. The rest of the level wasn't horribly bad. Never died once against the "good" guys, just the ghost. So I head on up (you start at the bottom of the dungeon) and now I have thieves stealing my hard won items, one squad of good guys that just trashes me and a captain that laughs at me when I approach and then turns my monsters into mush. If the captian doesn't flat out waste my guys then I'll have my mummies running for the hills, who ever heard of a mummy running? ;) Anyways I have to say it is a lot more fun that I first thought it would be. I'm still very early in the game but it's one of the most challenging games I've played. Not impossible, if you can figure out the right combo of monsters and spells but still very difficult. The best thing about this game though is that it has a Dungeon Keeper vibe to it because you're the evil master trying to rise to power once more. Still not sure about how you level up since there is no expierence meter but I'll just keep wacking the hordes of good guys and maybe I'll get past level 2.

The text goes a little too fast, even with Dosbox set to 500 but luckily there are a lot of places where you have to push enter to get rid of the text.

I was just curious if anyone else has played this and actually passed it or almost passed it?
 
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Anyone whose intersted of wizardry thers an enhanced japanese version of wiz1-3 that has been translated by fans to english in underdog games that is called:"Wizardry I-II-III: Story of Llylgamyn":
http://www.the-underdogs.info/game.php?id=3384

Wizardry I-II-III is an excellent remake of the first three Wizardry games for the Super Nintendo, combined in one "game" that lets you play each of the three titles in any order (with the ability to import your party as well). Needless to say, the game sports much better graphics than the earlier Nintendo versions (which were already a far cry from the stick-figure graphics of the original Apple II classics). The gameplay, fans will be happy to note, remains the same: a tough first-person dungeon crawl that many die-hard RPG fans cut their teeth on back in the 1980s.

If you have never played a Wizardry game (and if you consider yourself a fan of computer RPG, you simply must play the series), here's a synopsis of the main plot that flows through all three games (which, it must be said, is never the main focus of the series, at least not until Wizardry V: the story takes place in the fantasy kingdom of Llylgamyn. In Wizardry I, you (that is, your party of six adventurers) journey deep into a ten-level dungeon of Trebor, the "Mad Overlord," to defeat the evil archmage Werdna and retrieve the magical amulet. Following your success, you are inducted into Trebor's personal honor guard. Unfortunately, Trebor's obsession with the amulet drives him to suicide. Spotting an opportunity, another evil mastermind named Davalpus invades the castle and declares himself dictator. Fortunately, the Prince of Llylgamyn successfully fought and killed Davalpus using the Staff of Gnilda. But the god Gnilda, annoyed at all these fights, takes the staff back and places it deep within his six-level temple. You therefore must retrieve it back, but first you must find five pieces of the legendary Knight of Diamond. This is your mission in Wizardry II. In the final game of the trilogy, you must venture forth to search for the magical Orb of scrying (protected by a fearsome dragon) that can save the kingdom from natural destruction, as earthquakes and tidal waves ravage the land.

In each Wizardry game, the basic gameplay is similar: you control a party of up to six adventurers and send them into a 3D vector dungeon to fight monsters and find treasure on your way to fight Werdna/find the staff/find the Orb. Be warned that the games are difficult: for the first few hours you spend playing, it is not too uncommon to lose battles and restore the game from a saved position because your party members are all dead. Persevere, though, and you will be gradually lured into the wonderful world created by Robert Woodhead and Andrew Greenberg, a world where monsters come to life, full of magical weapons to find and wield, secret areas to discover, and mind-boggling riddles to solve. The "traditional" school of hack-n-slash RPG just doesn't get better than this, and the SNES version stays very true to the spirit of the original Apple II classic. The game was released only in Japan, so the English version was never available until AEON Genesis, a group of SNES fans, released the English version patch in 2000. Thanks to them and great emulators like ZSNES, Wizardry I-II-III is now accessible to all nostalgic fans, as well as RPG beginners who find the Apple II originals too primitive for them. Two thumbs up, way up!
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I have played only first wiz 95% through (the original) - with one arm. My second one was broken at the time so I couldnt use it. It was a real one hand finger practise.
 
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@skavenhorde:
Whoa. My respect for you has just gone up pretty damn much.
There are people who like to reminisce and feel nostalgic about those great ole' games... but it's the true phucking warriors that actually load them up and start playing - especially if it's a game that they havent played before (and a game that looks like crap by modern standards). I've done only Ravenloft and M&M3,4,5 so far but this summer I'm gonna set up my 133mhz thinkpad and start playing some cool old hardcore dos crpgs again.

Keep going, man! That's great. I'm happy for ya! And don't use walktroughs... (unless you absolutely have to) that's just... sad... why even play the game if you're just gonna read up on how to finish it.

Oh.. and I need to start playing the wizardry series too... just not sure which one.. it has to be earlier than 8 - that's for sure. I've been thinking maybe the 6th one..
 
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Zakhary said:
Oh.. and I need to start playing the wizardry series too... just not sure which one.. it has to be earlier than 8 - that's for sure.
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Wiz7 is very hard to complete or so Ive heard. Has anyone here finished it ?

Maybe I'm one of those guys who tire soon, who lack patience. But I've tried -- I've TRIED! -- to make progress in this game. I've trained my heroes. I've fought thousands of battles. I've tried and died, tried and died until I finally finished a quest. I've played Wizardry 7 more than once. But on some point, sooner or later, I've always given up. I cannot recall another game which frustrated me more, confronted me with impossible battles all the time and made each situation as difficult as possible; like an oyster that desperatly tries not to be broken open. Did anyone out there finish Wizardry 7 without cheating? He's earned my respect.

Summary
Easily one of the most difficult games of the 90's.
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Which is the one where DW Bradley started, with a deeper plot and all... the 5th one? Perhaps that would be a wise place to start?

EDIT: A thread hijack, sorry about that mate :D I'll shut up now.
 
Zakhary said:
Oh.. and I need to start playing the wizardry series too... just not sure which one.. it has to be earlier than 8 - that's for sure. I've been thinking maybe the 6th one..
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If you can grab The Wizardry Archives (if you don't already have it) It has every Wizardry game made except for 8. I've had this laying around for a few years and only played Wizgold from it. That is also an unforgiving game. If you try Wiz 6 or 7 my only suggestion to you would be to switch classes at least twice to get the spell points. I seriously got spanked in Wizgold because I tried to play it without switching classes. Also I know it is tedious but keep rerolling your characters until you get 18 or more bonus points to raise your starting stats with. It helps a lot. On my fourth run through with Wizgold I put enough points in my characters to switch to a better class later. Like I made a fighter character that had the required stats to switch to a Ninja whenever I wanted to. Also, Wizgold's Diplomancy skill is broken. Don't bother putting any points into it.

As for Wiz4 I've no intention of giving up so fast or cheating. I never liked paint by numbers pictures ;) So far both levels I've played, luckily, weren't that hard to map. Actually really easy, not looking foreward to higher levels though. I have a sinking suspicion they will get harder. As for that captain, I finally killed him and recieved a twilight cape for my troubles, not sure what it did when I invoked it but it had to of been something good lol. I miss being able to identify items and read what they do but with these old games it is trial and error. You have to use it before you know what it does. One other thing is I have only 8 slots in my inventory so I have to be really choosy with what I pick up. Ahhh, I miss the good ol' days of physical map making and tiny inventories. I forgot how part of the strategy of these old rpg games was knowing what items to keep and what to ignore. Its a little strange that my character has to run around naked because he can't use any good armor and the robes aren't worth keeping because they take up valuable inventory space.

The graphics aren't totally horrible, just really old. Like wireframed dungeons old, but the monsters are in color ;) That's what an imagination is for though. When reading a book there isn't any graphics at all.

Anyways I'm back to the dungeon to smash the hopes of the good.

Edit: Thanks Zakhal for the link. I didn't even know about the Japanese version being translated.
 
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The Samurai is way way overpowered in wizgold it can kill almost any boss in one hit, I killed a late boss in one hit at level 4, for A HUGE amount of XP and level and over 1000 in damage, with him hehehe.
 
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zakhal said:
Wiz7 is very hard to complete or so Ive heard. Has anyone here finished it ?
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Not sure how different Wiz7-gold is from vanilla, but it's reasonable. Never managed to sit down and finish it (It's very *very* SLOW paced) but have gotten close... I think... Aside from a couple of battles (Beast of 1000 Eyes is thankfully voluntary, and I could only kill the easiest Gorror) it causes no big trouble.

Mind you, this is back in the day when I could spend most of said day grinding away without issue.
 
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I'm starting to believe that you are a walking link-bank-slash-encyclopedia ;)
 
15th said:
Not sure how different Wiz7-gold is from vanilla, but it's reasonable. Never managed to sit down and finish it (It's very *very* SLOW paced) but have gotten close. Aside from a couple of battles (Beast of 1000 Eyes is thankfully voluntary) it causes no big trouble.
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Wiz 7 doesn't have as many bugs as Gold. Gold has speech and better graphics, but there are a lot of pauses right before battles and after, which slow down the game. The narrator in Gold is one of the best I've ever heard. Whoever that guy was I wish he would of done some work on Witcher.

There are a whole bunch of other differences like the diplomancy being broken in Gold, but I'm unsure about what the other differences are. I never played Wiz7 original and just have read about the differences in forums. A lot of people agree that Wiz7 original is a much better version than gold but I like the speech and don't mind the pauses, so I always stuck with gold.
 
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Dark Savant said:
Great forum for Wizardry fans
http://www.softwarespecialties.com/cgi-bin/rpgforum/dcboard.cgi?conf=DCConfID1
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LMAO I was just about to post that. You'll find me there too under the thread "HELP!!! This is my 4th try through Wizgold" All the above hints were what they helped me with. I've set that aside for now (again) while I try an even harder Wizardry. I've tried D. W. Bradley's Wizardry, but I want to see what the original Wiz guys made. Got to say that the originals are a wee bit better. It's nice to see monsters like "Creeping Cruds" in Wiz4. It was a surprise to see a lot of the monsters from 7 all the way back in 4, probably in 1 too but haven't played that yet.

Ahhh now no more talking back to getting my butt kicked in this game :)

Sorry about the double post. Didn't see his post till after I was done writing.
 
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15th said:
Not sure how different Wiz7-gold is from vanilla, but it's reasonable. Never managed to sit down and finish it (It's very *very* SLOW paced) but have gotten close... I think... Aside from a couple of battles (Beast of 1000 Eyes is thankfully voluntary, and I could only kill the easiest Gorror) it causes no big trouble.

Mind you, this is back in the day when I could spend most of said day grinding away without issue.
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Thats I guess the main problem. If Id have the time Id be sure to try the whole wiz series including 7 but I have huge amount of other games so I can spare time only for the last one - wiz8.

Rare are the days that I can just grind away most of the day. Such free time simply doesnt exist anymore. But who knows.

skavenhorde said:
There are a whole bunch of other differences like the diplomancy being broken in Gold, but I'm unsure about what the other differences are. I never played Wiz7 original and just have read about the differences in forums. A lot of people agree that Wiz7 original is a much better version than gold but I like the speech and don't mind the pauses, so I always stuck with gold.
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I would propably choose whatever is easiest to finish! The gold version has som ingame help features if I remember correct.
 
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Hey Zachary, you think you can tone it down on the ph word? I've noticed you've been using it a lot lately and we don't usually go for that around here.


Skav, you level up in Wiz4 by finding floor tiles that do just that. My least favourite encounter are Dinks. Those nasty little 1hp coins do nothing but call their buddies so you are there all day pounding the low XP little things trying to get more of them then they get of you.

Personally, I think DW Bradley hurt the franchise - his games just aren't Wizardry to me. I mean, he got rid of Tiltowait for crying out loud. By the time I found copies of 5 and 6 though, they were too old for me to play.

I was disappointed with WizGold as I just didn't feel it was enough of an improvement over Wiz7's interface. Things like the Automap just crowd out your interface for example. That said I did enjoy the amount I played it. I'm told the faction system makes the game non-linear and makes it very, very good without falling into the trap of being generic.

Well, Skav, you got me interested in Wiz4 again. One tip I can give you if you find a level too hard is try to find a ladder to the next level as quickly as possible, find the level up tile, then retreat to the previous level with your better monsters.

And I'll also warn you some of the levels aren't self contained. I found that out after I quit playing. There's a level with a push of pits for example but that's all I'll say.

One could say that Dungeon Keeper has a Wizardry 4 feel about it. Wiz4 bragged, and probably correctly, it was the first role reversal game out there.

Do I remember right? If you die, Karl Mulden comes in quoting his lines from his American Express commercial of the time?
 
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there are a lot of pauses right before battles and after, which slow down the game
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Just replace the sound, in the folder it is in wav format with a 1 ms sound, and there is no more pause. Or you can replace it with a very short sound, so you still hear an encounter.
 
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Lucky Day said:
Hey Zachary, you think you can tone it down on the ph word? I've noticed you've been using it a lot lately and we don't usually go for that around here.
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Allright. I think that is within the realm of possibility, even though we Finns sure like to use power words every now and then! :D
You'll try getting my name right next time, then? ;)

Speaking of names... I've been meaning to ask you if yours is coming from the spell in Might & Magic?
 
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zakhal said:
Rare are the days that I can just grind away most of the day. Such free time simply doesnt exist anymore. But who knows.
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I think that applies to most of us nowadays.


Btw: What do you guys mean by "ph word"?

*Edit* ...Duh :lol:
 
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