Monday, October 03, 2005
A couple of Classic RPGs
It's no secret to anyone who reads this blog (all two of you) that I'm a big 'classic' game fan. Not everything old is good - I think the rate of crap to good games is still pretty much constant for our industry - still about 20:1. But I like to go back and mine some of these old games for ideas, since it seems that things were a bit more experimental back then. There were a few more original concepts sandwiched between the parade of clones.
So last week I attempted two forays into very old (and very different) worlds - Final Fantasy 3 (which I think was FF6 in Japan), and the original Wizardry: Proving Grounds of the Mad Overlord. I'm still reserving my opinion of FF3, but I find I am playing it for FUN rather than for research. That's a good sign. However, after having played FF7, FFX, most of FF8 (still on my list to complete), and a smidgen of FF2 and Chrono Trigger... the similarity in the gameplay among all these games gets old after a while. The same strategies get used with a few variants. The storylines and characters is what saves them - they are delightful as always.
The criticisms that get leveled at all games in the series apply quite well to FF3 - it's so linear and story-based that it's sometimes barely a game at all. You can play with a level of passivity that's somewhere above reading a book but far below the level of engagement of a multiplayer UT2004 match. I don't know if that's necessarily a BAD thing so much as a taste thing - a lot of people get pulled into the FF games precisely because they ARE so low-stress and easy to play. Since I'm now an indie, which has started getting (regrettably) defined as "casual game developers," I'm kinda mindful of how important simplicity in a game can be.
Wizardry had me hooked for about three hours on Saturday. It's still fun, but MAN.... It's easy to see why games didn't go mainstream in 1981. The interface for this game is extremely arcane by our standards 25 years later. Actually I think it was reasonably arcane even in 1981 - knowing that you had to go to the Edge of Town to create new characters, then go to the pub to form your adventuring group, figure out why your character wasn't qualifying for any classes, dealing with a random point allocation to determine how strong your character would be --- funky stuff. Many of the strange concepts were lifted wholesale from the dice & paper Dungeons and Dragons campaigns I have little doubt they two creators played. It was an initial foray into trying to replicate the "D&D Experience" on the computer.
It also shows that some elements of that experience should have stayed at the coffee table where they belonged. Things like character aging, or having to send a "rescue party" to recover dead characters (with no "save game" other than backing up your floppy). Though that last has returned in one form in MMORPGs --- while nobody looks forward to said "Corpse Recoveries," they do make for some dramatic and interesting adventuring.
Wizardry I was surpassed in pretty much every way by later, greater games developed for beefier systems. Games like the SSI "Gold Box" D&D series, the Bard's Tale games by Interplay, Dungeon Master, Eye of the Beholder, and other successors really accepted the torch and took it to new levels without missing anything important in the core design. There's no great reason to play Wizardry I today except for historical interest.
Except, well, it's still mildly fun. But I'm not certain I'm willing to play it to completion.
Labels: retro, Roleplaying Games
- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 11:34 AM (Permalink)
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I still have the maps for Wizardry. Part of the fun was exploring. I first played it on the NES, and I have to say that it was done much better there. When I played it on the PC years later, I was surprised that I was expected to spell out the magic spells or traps in order to be successful. On the NES, I moved a cursor to select from a list.
If you can, see if you can play Wizardry 8. I'm still having fun with it.
If you can, see if you can play Wizardry 8. I'm still having fun with it.
Jay, there's actually more than 2 people who routinely read your blog.
I used to play Bard's Tale and the Gold Box D&D games religiously, mainly because they were prominently displayed at the Crown Books store front shelf at the old Diamond Sqaure shopping center (128 and Q.O. Road intersection).
By middle school I became hooked on Ultima IV, which I still believe is the greatest game ever released.
-Sammy G
I used to play Bard's Tale and the Gold Box D&D games religiously, mainly because they were prominently displayed at the Crown Books store front shelf at the old Diamond Sqaure shopping center (128 and Q.O. Road intersection).
By middle school I became hooked on Ultima IV, which I still believe is the greatest game ever released.
-Sammy G
# posted by 
: October 11, 2005 9:18 AM
: October 11, 2005 9:18 AM
GBGames:
I played Wizardry 7 on the PC - still have the disks (and I have a free release on CD-ROM that came with a magazine once upon a time). Under DOSBOX it should work pretty well. I never finished that one, but it had an interesting mechanic in that there were SEVERAL adventuring groups seeking the same goal - it was a race to the final goal.
I haven't tried Wizardry 8. Though I'm thinking I might (eventually) go back and check out Wizardry 7 again. This time with the power of the Internet and spoilers to get me over the humps :)
Sammy:
Okay, three people now :)
Diamond Square Shopping Center... man, I think I actually remember that place. Wow. More nostalgia! I think I spent many a day in that one, looking at that big front display of computer games... unable to afford to buy anything but planning on what I might want to buy the next time I had cash.
That, and I'd read both reviews and the ads in Compute! magazine.
I played Ultima IV in high school... after playing (and beating) Ultima III. It was delightful, but I didn't finish it then. YEARS later, I finished Ultima 7 one afternoon in college. I was on a total "Ultima High" at that point, and I wanted MORE! (I don't think the expansion packs were out by then). I happened to have the "Complete Ultima Collection" at the time (which only had Ultimas I-VI, I think), so I popped in Ultima IV and began playing it.
At first, it took a little while to get used to the old-fashioned graphics. But after a few hours, I was hooked again, and played it to completion. I still favored U7, but Ultima IV was a close second as my favorite RPG ever at the time. It is an absolutely brilliant game.
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I played Wizardry 7 on the PC - still have the disks (and I have a free release on CD-ROM that came with a magazine once upon a time). Under DOSBOX it should work pretty well. I never finished that one, but it had an interesting mechanic in that there were SEVERAL adventuring groups seeking the same goal - it was a race to the final goal.
I haven't tried Wizardry 8. Though I'm thinking I might (eventually) go back and check out Wizardry 7 again. This time with the power of the Internet and spoilers to get me over the humps :)
Sammy:
Okay, three people now :)
Diamond Square Shopping Center... man, I think I actually remember that place. Wow. More nostalgia! I think I spent many a day in that one, looking at that big front display of computer games... unable to afford to buy anything but planning on what I might want to buy the next time I had cash.
That, and I'd read both reviews and the ads in Compute! magazine.
I played Ultima IV in high school... after playing (and beating) Ultima III. It was delightful, but I didn't finish it then. YEARS later, I finished Ultima 7 one afternoon in college. I was on a total "Ultima High" at that point, and I wanted MORE! (I don't think the expansion packs were out by then). I happened to have the "Complete Ultima Collection" at the time (which only had Ultimas I-VI, I think), so I popped in Ultima IV and began playing it.
At first, it took a little while to get used to the old-fashioned graphics. But after a few hours, I was hooked again, and played it to completion. I still favored U7, but Ultima IV was a close second as my favorite RPG ever at the time. It is an absolutely brilliant game.
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