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TheEschaton
02-03-2013, 12:34 AM
www.wizardrythegame.com

Edit: Free to play, 2gig download. Looks like it's made in the 90s, but hell, I play WoW, graphical fidelity isn't on my list of must-haves. Published by SoE, who did Planetside.

This game is pretty hardcore, so far. It reminds me of old school Gemstone. It has perma-death, which can mitigated in various ways (like the deed system, you can offer items you picked up to better your revival rate). It has the ability for PKs and to loot the bodies of ppl you kill. There's no health or mana regen outside of consumables or spells cast on you.

You even have to rest at an inn to absorb XP. And it's hard (for noobs). my friend who told me about it said a level 1 beetle killed him. I pwned said beetle.

Oh, and I spent like an hour at the character creation screen because you roll "bonus points" to allocate to your toon when it is created. Max is 70, minimum I've seen is 6, 1% chance to roll >=12. It reminded me of trying to roll 750s in old Gemstone and made me wish for an autoroller.

Combat is whatever so far, but it's more RPG in nature - it's even kind of strategic, in that you have to only use heals when it's not going to be a waste, because the heals consume mana and you can't get that back til you go to town or consume a pot. There's a block system too, where you have a shield that say, has 75 block. You can block up to 74 damage, and then it regens, and you take no physical damage. If you take 75 or more damage, the shield "breaks" and you have much slower regen on both the block and your maneuver abilities. Oh yes, there's a maneuver meter as well, land an attack to gain "OD" (max 200, no clue what it stands for), use it for certain abilities (as a priest, I have one which shields a target to prevent stuns) and for dodging. And a condition system, which I haven't really experienced yet here at level 2. There's even a lawful/neutral/chaotic system, with certain skills having extra effects for certain alignments.

It might be interesting in later levels, who knows.

subzero
02-04-2013, 07:21 PM
Heh, I tried this one. It fucking blows. I saw somewhere, I think on their website, 'Thirty years in the making'... uh, yeah. You should have updated some things. Gameplay controls are awkward and in some instances goofy. You can't jump with weapons drawn because doing so results in a back-jump and you can't cast a spell without weapons drawn either. Oh, and having your weapon drawn I guess slowly drains your 'condition' or something that has an adverse effect, so you're basically encouraged to sheath and draw constantly. Doesn't make for good combat in my book. You have to rest at an inn, drink from a fountain, or use a potion to restore health and mana, which might be fine except for the poor implementation. If you try to rest at an inn for free, rather than paying for a room, you only get 50% restoration. Seems fine, right? I'll just rest twice. No, no you won't. It won't restore you past 50%, so if you rest at 51%, you get nothing. Rest at 40% and you recover 10%. Running even a short distance drains your OD (I guess it's like a stamina meter) very quickly. Race, class, and skill options are all very limited. I tried a mage and the skill tree is basically like this:

first tier- fireball, poison dot
second tier- hurl boulder, ice bolt, air bolt or wall or somethin, and an ability 'bind' (prevents target from using actions)
third tier- earthquake, I think either icewall or some improved ice bolt (server is down, so I can't really check these; I just know I was not impressed at all. Seems that there are four elemental 'branches' that contain very similar skills), better airwall, and a movement bind
fourth tier- more of the same crap plus an action bind combined with movement reduction

There was another tier or two, I think, but I was so uninterested I can't recall what the hell they were.

Dialogs are old, slow 80s style Final Fantasy/Dragon Warrior garbage (thirty fucking years and you couldn't improve this?!?). Seriously... the dialog boxes have like two or three lines and you have to actually click something to make them move to the next half sentence. We're not playing on a goddamn Gameboy sized screen, there's no reason for this whatsoever. Also in keeping with the ancient style, the dialog text appears slowly and not all at once. In general, the starting quests and whatnot were very slow and annoying. I assume things pick up a bit afterwards, but I simply couldn't bring myself to find out.

They have some interesting ideas, but the gameplay just sucks so bad I have no desire to play it even if the character options weren't so limited.

1/10