Wizardry V: Final Rating

From a more exhaustive reading of the walkthrough post-game, I found that if you take the time to find some secret doors, you can encounter the god Lala Moo-Moo. I can't imagine what level you'd have to be to actually defeat him.

Wizardry V: Heart of the Maelstrom
Sir-Tech Software (1988)
Andrew Greenberg, David W. Bradley
Date Started: 24 November 2011
Date Ended: 18 June 2012
Total Hours: 80
Difficulty: Difficult (4.5/5)
Final Rating: 37
Ranking at Time of Posting: 40/63 (63%)

There's nothing I can say in summary of this game that you haven't heard before.

Wizardry I was a seminal entry in the history of CRPGs. It was the first multi-character game; the first game with a complex spell system; the first game to offer such a wide variety of foes; the first game to offer so many character classes and specializations. I think it was the first game to offer a choice of alignments. It inspired Richard Garriott to offer multiple party members in Ultima III, and in its interface and approach to combat, it directly inspired both the Might & Magic and The Bard's Tale series.

Why were the developers unable to carry that innovation forward? While Wizardry's descendants made enormous strides in the depth and quality of the story, the nature of encounters, the use of NPCs, the variety of equipment, and the complexity of combat, Wizardry offered essentially the same graphics and gameplay experience for four more entries and seven more years.

"Essentially the same" and "exactly the same" don't mean the same thing, though, and it would be dishonest not to recognize a few of the additions to this game, starting with the complexity of the puzzles. I didn't like them, but some players might. The game blended CRPG gameplay with adventure-game-style inventory puzzles, and the game was largely an experience of finding Item A to open a passage to Item B to give to Character C to obtain Item D, and so on. The problem is that, unlike adventure games, most of the items were nonsensical. If they had just been keys and such, I might have found that annoying and inoffensive, but instead we had a rubber duck, and playing cards, and a caged bird, and a bag of tokens, and the whole thing was just goofy.

The second innovation was, to me, a little more welcome: advanced NPC interaction. The ability to talk, steal from, and barter with NPCs throughout the dungeon added a level of complexity to encounters that is present in only a few other games of the era. These encounters, and the hints that you learn from the dialogue, are absolutely necessary to finishing the game. I wish the NPCs hadn't included such a cavalcade of nonsense, but the interface itself was a good idea.

Overall, though, I'm glad that the series took a different approach to its next outing, which I'll play when I get to 1990.

On to the GIMLET:

1. Game World. As basic as they get. The somewhat incomprehensible backstory--involving someone called "The SORN" imprisoning "The Gatekeeper" and upsetting the "Triaxial Balance" is just an excuse for a long slog through a featureless 8-level dungeon. Programming had progressed to the point that the developers ought to have been able to give each dungeon level some kind of character or theme, like in Ultima Underworld, in text if not in graphics. But instead they populated the dungeon levels with silly characters and encounters. The rest of the "world" doesn't fare any better: the castle is a copy of the first game, with very little memorable about it. On the plus side, the game does remember aspects of your progress throughout the dungeon. "Found" secret doors remain uncovered, and slain NPCs remain dead. Score: 3.

2. Character Creation and Development. Although these factors haven't advanced much since the first game, they were reasonably good even then. Few other games of the era restrict character classes based on attributes and alignments, and I can't think of any others that offer "prestige" classes (lord, samurai, and ninja) that become available when your attributes are high enough. Leveling, with the consequent increases in attributes, spells, and hit points, is usually satisfying and rewarding. But as far as I can tell, character classes and alignments don't affect anything about the game, and this is one of the few games that still doesn't allow sexes. Score: 4.

Unfortunately, leveling up wasn't always rewarding.

3. NPC Interaction. As noted above, we finally get some in this game. If only the NPCs themselves were more sensible and interesting rather than mostly comedy walk-ons. There are no "dialogue options," but there are Ultima IV-style keyword options. (Everyone responds to "HAIL," much like "JOB" in Ultima IV.) Talking and bartering with NPCs is necessary for quest completion and game progression. They could have done better with this, but it was definitely an improvement over the previous entries. Score: 5.

NPC interactions were technically good but narratively stupid.

4. Encounters and Foes. Aside from the NPCs, "encounters" were mostly of the inventory-puzzle variety and left little role for role-playing or even logic. Encounters with monsters almost inevitably led directly to battle. Most levels featured a host of roving monsters and two or three boss-level fights. This is definitely a game in which it's worth noting each monster and its special attacks, because you have to plan defense and offense carefully. Adding a twist to this process is the fact that you don't always know what foes you're facing. The game just gives you general descriptions ("5 weird monsters") and you have to guess.

I think the "fiery entity" is a fire elemental, but I'm not sure what the "demonic figure" is.

Again, a lot of the monsters were just dumb (Quasimodo, Beauty and the Beast, King Kong), but they were certainly memorable. Respawning is no problem; you can grind on any level as long as you'd like, but the "(R)un" option usually works if you're just trying to get somewhere. Score: 5.

5. Magic and Combat. I highlighted the combat system of the first game as a major strong point, and I still have to give it credit even though I was sick of it by the end. Wizardry is one of the few game series in which you feel an authentic sense of fear as you explore the dungeons. Even allowing for reloading, the permanent-death nature of the game has significant consequences (at best, you have to take the time to quit, restore the backups, reload, and re-add your party members), meaning that you can't half-ass the combats. From the moment you leave the castle, you're balancing the length of your exploration with your available spells and diminishing hit points. One bad combat that kicks your characters into the single digits can leave you with a palpable sense of doom as you creep towards the stairs and back to safety.

In many postings, I've emphasized the differences between Wizardry's approach and other games' approaches, but they're worth repeating. In Might & Magic, which otherwise seems a lot like Wizardry, you can rest and restore your spell points and hit points at almost any time. This means that for Might & Magic, the difficulty is in individual combats rather than accumulated combats. Pool of Radiance was similar to Might & Magic except there was more of a risk associated with resting. Wizardry V remains hard-core, though: you don't replenish a single spell until you return to the castle (barring one pool on Level 7), so you have to ration your spells carefully. You have to watch your hit points, and the success or failure of your attacks on enemies, and know when it's time to just let your melee characters finish the combat, or when it's time for one more LAHALITO.

Now would be a good time to start heading for the exit.

 
I don't necessarily love the spells themselves. Too many of them seemed useless. The priest's MONTINO ("silence") spell should have worked more often. There should have been a party-wide heal spell. Some of the high-level spells are one-use only; they disappear from your book the moment you cast them. There is no spell that adequately protects against the game's multitude of spellcasters. Basically, as with many other games, you find yourself over-relying on the same selection of mass-damage spells rather than carefully plotting your spell attacks. That's my experience, at least; I'm curious if other people see it differently. Score: 5.

6. Equipment. The game certainly doesn't spoil you. At the end, my best armor was a plate mail +2 and my best weapon was something like a battle axe +2. But since there's such a variety--melee weapons, ranged weapons, armor, helmets, gloves, potions, scrolls, rings, and other special items--and since the game seems bent on robbing you of your gear through thieves and magnetic traps, almost every expedition results in one or two useful upgrades.

Identification of equipment is needlessly annoying. It's too expensive to do at the store (the price for identifying is the same as the sale price of the item), so you have to rely on a bishop. If you choose not to adventure with the bishop, you have to keep one hanging around Gilgamesh's Tavern, but since he doesn't level with you, he has trouble with some of the more advanced items. Every attempt at identification has a chance of causing fear, which leaves the bishop unable to identify anything else until you cure it. For me, identifying my equipment was tedious process of repeatedly curing the bishop until he finally got it right. Towards the end, I just started paying for it, even though I could ill afford it along with all the resurrections.

Crooked Bee with his equipment, and a few unidentified items.

I never did quite understand what was happening when I "evoked the power" of some of my items. It would usually cause some change in my attributes or health, but these changes never seemed permanent, and I couldn't get a handle on what caused them to wear off. Sometimes "evoking" caused the item to disappear, but sometimes it didn't. This aspect of gameplay was not well explained in the manual. Score: 4.

7. Economy. You get money for killing monsters, and you spend it on healing, item identification, and occasional quest-related purchases. I never had too much money, which (as you know) I prefer, but the system isn't complex enough to give it a very high score. Score: 4.

8. Quests. The main quest consists of a series of stages leading to just one outcome. It never really made all that much sense, partly because "The S*O*R*N" has no compelling back story. There are no side quests in the game. Score: 2.

9. Graphics, Sound, and Interface. The wireframe graphics are pretty awful at this point, although I thought some of the monster portraits were well-done. The game is best played with the sound off. I do give it points for the interface, though, which I found very intuitive. It was all keyboard-driven, but the keys made sense and I was able to enter even complex strings of commands very quickly. I like how holding down the ENTER key allows you to blow through combat with easy foes. Score: 3.

10. Gameplay. Here's where, in my opinion, the game fails. The nature of the inventory puzzles makes the game extremely linear. It has virtually no replayability. If you don't spend hours and hours grinding, it's too hard (especially at the latter stages), and if you do spend hours and hours grinding, it's too long. I thought the dungeon levels were far too large and empty to hold my attention. What makes all of this particularly notable is that the creators didn't intend for the player to restore backups. A "straight" player would have all of these problems plus the annoyance of constantly replacing dead characters. A challenge is good, but this game ends up being repetitive torture. Score: 2.

This gives us a final rating of 37, equivalent to the first Wizardry. While this game improves upon NPCs, equipment, and a couple other areas, it lacks the first game's brisk gameplay, and many of V's "innovations" annoy rather than impress. I didn't deliberately engineer the rating to come out equal to I, but I think it says something accurate that in seven years, Sir-Tech was unable to fundamentally improve on the experience that they first offered in the CRPG Bronze Age.

"Heart of the Maelstrom is a complete revision of the Wizardry gaming system..." Wow, Sir-Tech had some balls.

Dennis Owens gave Heart of the Maelstrom a positive review in the February 1989 issue of Computer Gaming World. I don't understand why the game's throwback graphics and sound didn't spark any disdain. One thing he did complain about was long loading times and frequent disk access--something I fortunately don't have to deal with 24 years later. He concludes that "the game is a must for any adventure gamer's computer-game library," a statement with which I will unfortunately have to disagree.

It looks like this was Andrew Greenberg's last contribution to the series that he co-created--and frankly, I'm not sure if he had much of a role in the game; MobyGames's "trivia" section claims that David Bradley designed this one on his own. Greenberg's next credit is on Dracula Unleashed, a 1993 adventure game, and I don't think I'll play another of his games until Dungeon Lords in 2005. Bradley continues to be credited on the next two Wizardry games, and I look forward to seeing how they develop.

And with that, my friends, we are finally out of 1988 and ready to move on to 1989. I'm going to have a transition posting coming before I jump into NetHack, version 3. Thanks for sticking with me through this difficult year.

Alas, the intrepid party did not survive the battle with La-La-Moo-Moo. Their names, I'm sure, shall live on in infamy.

Wizardry V: Won!*

The hearts really make this special. The people love me.

 
We're going to have to call it a tie. I won, but I played like a jackass. And I cheated.

I'm looking across the void of years at the younger CRPG Addict that played Wizardry I in the winter of 2010. How innocent he was. He had set a mission to play games without cheating and without looking at spoilers, and by the gods, he didn't cheat or look at spoilers. He mapped all the levels faithfully and carefully recorded each encounter for posterity. When one of his characters died, he raised the character. If the character became "LOST" during the raising, he started over with a new character at Level 1. If his party died in the dungeon, he mounted a rescue expedition, brought them to the surface in groups, and raised them. It took him a while, but he played the game like it was meant to be played, and victory sure tasted sweet.

Of course, Wizardry I only occupied about 3,000 squares. Wizardry V is closer to 8,000 (even accounting for the unused ones). What was new and exciting in 1981 was old and tired in 1988. But I'm just rationalizing. Being older, and more jaded, and more cynical doesn't excuse the deceitful way in which I "won" Wizardry V.

To take it from the top: when we wrapped up last time, I had just finished Level 6. At the time, I thought there were four more levels to go (I had it in my mind that the game had 10 levels, just like the first one). But it turned out that there were only three more, and two of them were so small and predictable that it wasn't even worth mapping them. Level 7 was really where most of the endgame took place.

On Level 7, we finally found some symmetry.

Mapping Level 7 took a long time, mostly because I kept running into monsters bent on killing me for good. Repeatedly, I had to fight parties with multiple spellcasters who thought nothing of casting mass-damage spells like LAHALITO and LADALTO, wiping out half my party members in a single round. Eventually, I got so sick of returning to the surface to raise my dead party members that I simply started reloading every time one of them died. Thus did I start on the slippery slope to the CRPG scum that I ultimately became.

I was just sick to death of being killed by a shirtless Kris Kristofferson.

In various places on this level, I found four magical staffs--air, earth, fire, and water--in places that required me to have certain inventory items to pass. For instance, in order to get past a gust of wind, I had to have a lark in a cage that would sing to the wind. Who would have guessed?

The game also had one last bout of goofiness to throw at me: an encounter with King Kong and Fay Wray. I don't think they did her justice in the portrait.

By the time I reached Level 7, I also had three cards, and it turned out that I needed to show them to the guardians of the Triaxial Gate to get passage to Level 8. There were four guardians, and four portals to Level 8, but I only got the fourth card after doing some fighting.

 

On each of the four sections of Level 8, I had to face a party composed of my own characters. Someone--The S*O*R*N, I guess--kept cloning my party and sending them against me. Since these characters had all the items and spells of my regular party members, they were reasonably tough. 

 

Level 8 had me fight myself. It was very metaphysical.

After defeating them, I encountered glowing orbs that corresponded to the four elements. Using the appropriate staff on these orbs (it took some trial and error) caused a talking head to ask me a riddle.

I had no idea how to solve this riddle. There were multiple options, and I had to make multiple selections for each element. None of it made any sense at all, and there was nowhere that I encountered any hints as to how to solve them. And thus did I engage in the next level of cheating: I looked up the answers in a walkthrough.

Friends, I can't overestimate the significance of that. My rules clearly say "no walkthroughs," and for over two years, I have faithfully played each game, winning most of them, through my own wits and copious notes. I am appalled and embarrassed that I capitulated here. But the good news is that I never would have come up with the solution without the walkthrough. Figuring out the answer would have required finding some obscure NPCs back up on Level 5--wandering NPCs that I didn't even know existed--and then asking the right keywords of NPCs back on Level 1 that I thought I was all done with. So between cheating and abandoning the game, did I make the right choice? I give myself to your judgement.

Ah, but it's not over yet. After I "solved" the four puzzles and broke down the barriers keeping me from the Gatekeeper's prison, I marched up to the Gatekeeper himself. At this point, The S*O*R*N (Are we supposed to read something into that? Is it an abbreviation?) whisked him to another dimension before attacking me with a host of demons. They slaughtered me quite badly. Part of the problem was that she had a magic shield around her that prevented me from doing any damage. It turns out that the solution was to cast the SOCORDI mage spell, which normally summons an elemental to aid you in combat, but which for some reason summons back the Gatekeeper in this combat. I have no idea where I was supposed to get that information, but I was cheating at this point so I got it from the walkthrough.

"To remain forever!...unless you think to cast an obscure Level 5 mage spell."

 
It still didn't do me any good. Even with the Gatekeeper on my side, her minions killed me again and again. I realized that I hadn't really paid my grinding dues. Most of my characters were only Level 14-15, and my constant avoidance of combat on Level 7 meant I wasn't really getting any better. I needed to buckle down and spend a few hours killing demons before I could hope to defeat The S*O*R*N.

But I didn't want to do that. I was sick of the game. So I engaged in my third form of cheating: save-scumming so bad it would have horrified a 13-year-old playing a first-person-shooter. The S*O*R*N's companions seemed to be chosen at random, so I just reloaded, reloaded, and reloaded--probably 40 times--until I finally encountered her with a relatively pathetic set of minions. I won, but just barely; only two of my characters were alive at the end. Fortunately, one of them was my mage, and I was able to get back to the castle and get the winning screenshot above.

I really came to over-rely on the mass-damage spell TILTOWAIT.

 

Killing The S*O*R*N freed the Gatekeeper, who had a little narrative for me:

I am the Gatekeeper, and guardian of the Triaxial Balance. It is through your courage, and more importantly, your understanding and wisdom, that the Triaxial Balance of the forces has been restored.

Hereafter, I bequeath to you the power to guard this mortal plane, for none are more worthy or more deserving than thee. I thank thee, both for my life and for thy effort.

And now that I have found worthy successors, my duty is done in this world, and I shall soon return to that higher plane of the everafter. You shall be remembered, and I offer this small token, from which I hope that you shall remember, not me, but what you yourself have done this day.

Fare the well, my friends.

Is he being sarcastic? Does he know I cheated?

 

This all sounds great, but what if I had been playing with an evil party?! That's not much of a reward.

In college, I felt bad about cheating on a term paper, but I was still happy to get my degree. And here, I feel bad about cheating in this game, and yet I'm still happy that I won. Let's GIMLET this baby and, for La-La's sake, finally get the hell out of 1988.

The shamefully victorious party.

Wizardry V: Two Steps Forward, Two Steps Back

Yo mama's so frigid, the only man who will have her is called the "Ice King."

Damn, this game takes a long time. I thought if I made a major push, I could win it this weekend, but now I'm thinking I've got another week or so at least. The bloody game does a brilliant job trying to revoke every bit of progress you feel you've made. I've been level-drained so often it's a wonder my characters aren't all Level 1 again. It seems like every level throws me up against armor-eaters (you can figure out what they do). Thieves and magnetic traps rob me of my hard-earned quest items. A few crucial items are hidden at the bottom of pools, but exploring them runs the risk of attribute and hit point drains. This game is brutal.

In 1988, I would have torn the disk out of my floppy drive and run it through a blender.

 
I can guarantee you one thing: I never would have won this without backups ("cheating"). I suffer a full-party death about once every 20 minutes. Three or four times, I've teleported into rock, which renders your party lost forever. My characters have suffered more failed resurrections than I can count. Any hard-core gamer that finishes this without frequent backup and restoration has my highest respect--and concern for his or her mental health.

In terms of overall progress, I've mapped six levels out of, I think, ten. The levels have been crazy in their size and shape--so much so that I'd assume I was missing something if I hadn't exhaustively searched every wall for secret doors. Here are Levels 4 and 5, for instance:

I feel like the shape is supposed to suggest something, but I can't figure it out.

On Level 6, I nearly put out a plea for hints, because for the longest time I couldn't figure out how to get past one encounter involving repairing a mannequin. It turns out I needed to steal a gold medallion from a character so I could wake up a character who told me how to fix it. I haven't had to "steal" prior to this part of the game, and it was only because I was trying every possible action that I was able to figure it out.

Fortunately, I finally found the answer, because there are 7!, or 5040, possible combinations of these different items.

 
I recorded a couple of videos over the last few days. The first, a short one (c. 5 minutes), shows how I go about the process of mapping in Excel as I explore the levels (I keep saying "Level 6" when I mean "Level 5," though):

The second illustrates other gameplay elements, including combat and puzzle solving, and it's almost half an hour.

I know some of you don't like to watch narrated video, so to summarize: I leave the castle and MALOR (teleport) my way to Level 6 (03:00), cast some exploration spells (04:25), and head out. After a couple of combats, I make my way to a pool (09:00), where my thief dives to the bottom level, triggering a tough encounter with Lady Neptune and her minions (10:00). I am victorious. I continue on, defeat some undead (13:52), and arrive at another part of the level, where there's a puzzle involving the repair of a mannequin (17:07). After solving the puzzle, I find myself encountering the Ice King (19:49), who kills two of my characters and reduces the rest to single digits before I finally kill him (21:42) and escape by MALORing back to the castle (23:00). After that, I resurrect my dead party members, identify my new equipment, swap some equipment around, and rest in the inn.

MALOR has made getting around quite a bit easier. As you can see from this screenshot, my mage somehow acquired priest spells. I have no idea how that happened.

I have to say, I have been enjoying some of the graphics. They're not nearly as polished as the colorful animated characters in The Bard's Tale III or Pool of Radiance, but they're very detailed, and the monochrome imparts an aura of gothic horror.

This woman looks scary.

The creatures themselves, on the other hand, continue to tend towards goofiness. We've got the "yomamas" that lead this posting, a whole level full of storybook monsters such as Frankenstein, the Wolfman, Dracula, and of course that terrifying symbol of French horror:

I don't remember Victor Hugo giving him an axe.

 
A pair of creatures that kept attacking me were labeled "Beauty" and "The Beast." They would have been fun if they hadn't kept paralyzing and killing my characters.

They'll paralyze your men / On your corpses they will feast / Fighting them is hell / They resist every spell / Beauty and the beast

 

On every level, I encounter some runes or glyphs that I am completely unable to decipher. I'm hoping I don't need them for the endgame or something. Hints appreciated here.

What is this? "Cive?"

I haven't really described the "plot" much, but you'd probably just think I was on drugs. I know I already covered this in my last posting, but it drives me crazy that the developers didn't even try to create a sensible plot that hangs together. To describe it, I'd have to say stuff like, "Today I met a thief called The Snatch who told me to use a pocket watch in the chamber of the Loon. The Loon--technically 'Thelonius P. Loon, Master of Time and Prophet Extraordinaire'--told me that I need to go into the triaxial gate four times holding a rod and cast a spell of summoning. Oh, and I bought a bird in a cage from him, but a thief stole it later so I guess I have to go back and get it again."

They might not mean that as a compliment.

I suppose we have to give it points for originality, at least. But I'm really ready for it to be over. Hopefully, it doesn't take much longer.

LOLCRPGS

"Bouh se souvient!... mort, le nain, a mort!" There is no language in which Minsc isn't funny.

Different people find humor in different things. I like it most when it grows out of situation and character. I like it slightly less in the case of outright parody, but I can appreciate it: witness my positive review of Ultima IV, Part 2. I like it least of all--hate it, in fact--when it's just absurdity. I can't watch more than five minutes of Jim Carrey as Ace Ventura, early Steve Martin, or unscripted Robin Williams. And they don't pretend to be doing anything but making comedies. It gets worse when such absurdity is plugged into otherwise-straight films or plots.

Wizardry V is full of absurdity. Goofiness. And it is beneath the game. The book of lore supposes to tell a serious story of a kingdom in crisis, but it tosses you in a dungeon full of adventure-game-style inventory puzzles in which nearly every NPC and encounter is a CRPG equivalent of a child's knock-knock joke. So far, I've encountered:

• The "Duck of Sparks": a sentient duck with a yen for a rubber version of himself
• The self-same "rubber ducky," which for some reason allows my characters to swim without fear of drowning
• The "Mad Stomper": a giant cursed with a case of athlete's foot
• A nightclub named "Manfretti's," encountered on the fourth level of a monster-filled dungeon
• A beast whose primary characteristic is that it goes "Hurkle! Hurkle!"
• A priest who follows a god called "La-La"
• Another priest named Lord Hienmitey
• A talking kettle that takes my gold in exchange for hints
• A water monster named "Nessie"
• "Thelonius P. Loon, Master of Time and Prophet Extrordinaire [sic]."

Sigh.

 
You've seen me complain about this before, particularly in Might & Magic II, which abandoned the previous game's limited realism for NPCs named "Hari Kari" and "Thund R" and had encounters with goofy characters like the Gourmet and the group of lower-class residents upset that you'd eaten "roast peasant." Ultima II had those dumb in-jokes, pop-culture references, and one-line NPCs. Maybe the developers are trying to instill the game with a sense of whimsy, but to me it suggests that they didn't have courage in the integrity of their game worlds. If you're trying to set an immersive story in an original fantasy world, walk-ons from Carrot Top do not enhance enjoyment.

I have no idea what Richard Garriott was making fun of here; just that it was stupid.

There are plenty of analogues in film. Probably my favorite comedy moment comes from a little-known Glenn Ford-Marlon Brando film called The Teahouse of the August Moon. Post-WWII Army Captain Fisby (Glenn Ford) is feebly trying to explain to his superior how he's been helping a Okinawan village rebuild by forming a cooperative.

Captain Fisby: "Everybody in the village, they're all partners. Don't you see? You know, share and share alike--"

Colonel Purdy: "THAT'S COMMUNISM!"

If that doesn't sound very funny, well, it shouldn't, because you have to know the characters from their previous scenes to fully get the joke. Most of the humor in good comedies like Frasier, Scrubs, and Arrested Development are based on character; if you tried to describe these moments to someone unfamiliar with the personalities, the jokes would fall flat.

Complete parodies can also be funny if you're in the right mood. Airplane!, Mel Brooks films, and Robot Chicken are just full of outright gags, and they're funny because that's what you expect. The "plot," if it even has one, is just a thin excuse for the gags.

But then we have goofiness: Madea ruining every scene in the otherwise-serious Diary of a Mad Black Woman; Chris Tucker's character in The Fifth Element; any comedy that requires a male protagonist to dress as a female. When limited, I suppose it's inoffensive. The singing bush in Three Amigos doesn't bother me because it's over quickly and makes a funny joke about fanciful landmark names. Larry, Darryl, and Darryl's appearance in Baldur's Gate is silly but inconsequential. But when a CRPG (or film) is just relentless in its goofiness, I want to shut it off.

I didn't get a chance to do much playing in the past week, so I thought it would be fun to talk about authentically funny moments in CRPGs. The genre doesn't often lend itself to laugh-out-loud comedy, and yet I can remember a few moments in which the developers were in rare form:

1. The dialogue of HK-47 in Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic. The homicidal droid insists on calling humans "meatbags," although he refers to you as "master"--except when he slips.

2. Minsc's dialogue in Baldur's Gate and Baldur's Gate II, particularly the latter. This is a perfect example of humor that grows from characterization. What might otherwise just be "goofy" becomes funny and endearing when you learn Minsc's story, alignment, and approach to life. ("Eh? He is like a bad penny, this one. An armored, deep-voiced penny of most sinister evil!")

3. Many of the throw-away "scenes" in Skyrim, including one that includes a bed, a copy of The Lusty Argonian Maid, and a potion of fortify one-handed.

4. Several moments in Icewind Dale II in which the NPCs poke fun at conventions of CRPGs. One character wonders why you're carrying around a dead cat, and you say something like, "I was kind of hoping it would be the solution to someone's problem and I could learn from the experience. I guess not this time."

Icewind Dale II makes fun of hauling around "quest items."

5. Smith the Horse providing me with the password INFINITY in Ultima V, instead of the previous game, in which it would have actually helped.

What do you think are the funniest moments in CRPGs?

Reboot: Wizardry V

I decided to go with a "good" party this time.

Wizardry V is fresher in my mind than either Sentinel Worlds or Star Command was when I "rebooted" them, but it's still been over three months, and I really couldn't remember what was going on in the game when I last left. I'll keep my maps, but I'm going to start over with a new party.

This new party, incidentally, is my permanent party. I'm done with this swapping-out characters nonsense. It takes too long. From now on, if any of my characters dies and the resurrection turns him to ash, I'm re-loading. I'm also re-loading if I suffer a full-party death. Even typing that, I cringe. Somewhere, I can hear Andrew Greenberg laughing at me. "You may win the game," he's saying, "But you won't have truly beaten me! Bwu-hah-hah-hah!" Screw you, Greenberg. 1980 called; they're looking for their graphics.

My party comprises three fighters, a thief, a priest, and a mage. I spent a lot of time rolling and re-rolling until everyone started with a bonus score of at least 20. That wasn't enough to make the first two characters a lord and a samurai, which is what I wanted, but their stats were just on the cusp of what they need for those two classes, and I planned to switch them after a few level-ups increased their stats.

Jack basically needs one more of everything to be a samurai.

 
If you don't remember the plot, it takes place beneath the Kingdom of Llylgamyn. A rogue sorceress named The Sorn has created an "unnatural, magical vortex" deep within the dungeon called Maelstrom, and she has imprisoned the Gatekeeper, a demi-god who is our only hope of stopping her. I have to make my way down to her level and find some way to free him.
 

Advice from a priest whose god is named "La-La."

 
Unlike the first few games, which were fairly straightforward dungeon crawls with the occasional inventory puzzle, Wizardry V relishes multi-level puzzles involving goofy characters. For instance, I had to buy a rubber duck from some giant called the "Mad Stomper" on Level 3 so I could return it to a character named the Duck of Sparks on Level 2 in exchange for a wand that I need...somewhere, I guess.
 

Sigh. Could you at least pretend you're an entry in a seminal CRPG series?

 
The puzzles chain together. In a long day of playing yesterday, I:

• Visited a tavern on Level 2 and got a clue that I needed to search a room for a hacksaw; found the hacksaw.
• Got a recipe for a "Spirit-Be-Gone" potion from the Duck of Sparks.
• Used the hacksaw to cut the chains off a door leading to a lab.
• Mixed the potion in the lab.
• Used the potion to scare away a ghost guarding a chest.
• Found a jeweled scepter in the chest.
• Used the scepter to enter a temple on Level 3.
• Fought and killed the temple's guardian, winning a blue candle as my prize.
• Used the blue candle in front of a dead-end wall to find a secret door leading to a set of stairs.
• Descended the stairs to find myself at a place called the "Jigsaw Bank & Trust," where I now have to manipulate some disks to...do something to open the vault, maybe.

My current puzzle.

 
I don't yet have any clues about the right disk order, but I'm sure I'll find something in some unexplored part of the dungeon.

Unlike the linear progression through the levels of the first Wizardry, this focus on puzzles requires you to frequently backtrack, often finding new sections of previously-explored levels. As I indicated in my December postings on the game, the levels are quite large. Level 1 alone took up 30 x 39 coordinates, although the game doesn't use every space. At least, I don't think it does. Some of the secret doors have taken multiple searches, and I don't have time to search every blank wall multiple times.

I think I'm done with Level 1, but you never know when a new staircase or portal is going to make use of some of this filled-in space.

Blackadder and Jack Burton eventually got their lord and samurai class changes, although I didn't realize the game resets all your attributes to 8 when you change classes. That seems a little unfair. But the two prestige classes get spells (priest and mage, respectively), which makes it worth it.

Changing from a fighter to a lord.

I elected not to adventure with a bishop (a combined priest/mage) this time. The major advantage to this class, other than the spells, is the ability to identify unknown gear. Identifying items costs as much as their sale value, which gets into the tens of thousands of gold pieces for some magic items. Fortunately, reader Jonesy, who commented on my original Wizardry postings a few months ago during his own replay, gave me an idea: create the bishop, but have him just sit in the tavern. Swap him in when I need to identify something, and then boot him out when I'm done.

"Identifier" prepares to get to work on a load of unknown items.

This has worked out fairly well, but items have a chance of instilling fear in the bishop trying to identify them, a condition that prevents any further identification until cured. In some ways, his services have been more of a hassle than they're worth.

At this point, my characters are a couple levels below the last party I played in my December-February bout, but I've explored more of the map and solved more of the puzzles. I'll pick up from here with more detailed descriptions of the gameplay.

As I prepare to finish exploring Level 4, I have one mystery: On Levels 3 and 4, I encountered several pools of water that gave me the option to swim in them, and at multiple levels each.

In a comment in December, Delmoko tried to explain these pools to me, but I'm not getting anywhere with them. My characters keep drowning in the pools, which is a huge pain in the neck, because I have to haul them up to the temple for healing. Delmoko suggested that there were stats increases in some of the pools, but all I've managed to find are damage, poison, stat reductions, and encounters with monsters. Do these pools really serve any useful purpose? Can I just ignore them?

Finally, I think we might have a new entry in the "Most Annoying CRPG Enemies" list. Their name says all you need to know about them:

Nothing like watching a $6,000 platemail +1 disappear in one bite.

Despite my barely-disguised disdain for the silly NPCs and plot elements, I had a reasonably good time building up my characters and re-exploring the first four levels of the dungeon. Things go a lot faster when you're not continually rolling and building new characters, nor dealing with full-party deaths. I want to try to bang this out in a week. I have big plans for NetHack.

Wizardry V: Sub-Contracting

My party gets damaged by an oddly-out-of-place Japanese warrior.

A few weeks ago, commenter Jay said that Wizardry V has "as much game time as Skyrim does." When I read his comment, I thought, "Sure. If you're a n00b." Well, now I owe Jay an apology. If anything, he understated. Wizardry V is killing me.

The game does not feel as if it's notably more difficult, in terms of the encounters, than Wizardry I. The difficulty, rather, comes in the size of the game. Each of the levels is at least twice as big as the ones in the first game. Here's Level 3:

I can't color in all of the areas until I'm sure there isn't some kind of transport from a lower level. Also, there's a door I can't open yet that, for all I know, fills in the entire remaining part of the lower half of the map.

The levels are not only large but irregular. Level 3 is at least somewhat square, even if a lot of the space in the upper right and left corners isn't used. Level 4, on the other hand, proved to be extremely long and narrow, although I still haven't explored one stairway there from Level 5 (which I've also partly mapped), so for all I know the part I've mapped is only a small part of the level:

At 47x7, even this section of the level is 46% larger than any level in the first game.

I still find a certain amount of joy in mapping. In these old tile-based games, where there are only a certain number of squares, every square you map is incremental progress towards the end of the game. Even if you could map modern games this way, you wouldn't have the same surety that you were advancing slowly but surely towards the conclusion, as modern games re-use areas frequently. When I played Dragon Age: Origins with my wife, I honestly had no sense of how much longer the game was going to last. When the darkspawn army started attacking Denerim, I figured that was the conclusion, but you never know--the dragon might have flown away to some darkspawn HQ that opened up a brand new set of maps.

Anyway, it's not so much the size of the maps in Wizardry V that makes the game take a long time. I haven't gotten all the way to Level 10 yet, but I'd be willing to bet that, just like the first game, the literal distance between the dungeon entrance and the final square--owing to elevators and portals and such--is less than 100 steps. If you had a party with a high-enough level, I'll bet you could finish it in less than an hour--something that would be impossible with Skyrim. The difficulty comes from the sheer risk associated with exploration. In a permanent-death game, you put your party in peril with every step that you take, and when the levels are more than double the size of Wizardry, that's a lot more chances to run into a party of monsters that kills you. I lost three members of my Christmas-themed party to failed resurrections, including my mage, and I began to dread the prospect of grinding up new ones again.

So when my wife, who has this week off--a week that I'm away on business--announced her intention to do nothing, aside from her daily treadmill session, but sit on the couch and re-watch all seven seasons of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, I hit upon an idea.

"How about you do a little light work for me on your laptop while you're watching TV?" I asked.

"No."

"Come on. You owe me a favor." This, strictly speaking, wasn't true. But I'm absent-minded enough that it's possible she owed me a favor and I just forgot. The look she gave me told me that not only was I wrong, but that even suggesting such a thing after putting up with my Skyrim epoch was pushing things too far.

So I pulled out my nuclear option, which I'll tell you about at the end of the posting. She listened, asked a lot of questions, and finally agreed, with one annoying condition: the party had to be good.

"It really doesn't make any difference. It's not like Dragon Age--you don't really make any choices that...." I stopped because I could see I was getting nowhere.

We installed the game on her laptop and spent some time side-by-side rolling up a new party. This took a lot less time with double the computing power, and she seemed to have a lot more luck on the high bonus rolls than I did. She even got a lord. I spent some time getting them up to Level 8 or so while showing her the basics of the game.

The new party.

And so, for the next week, while I'm attending a conference in Los Angeles, she'll be sitting on the couch, watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and grinding my party away. I honestly don't know if she'll be fanatical about it, and I'll come home to Level 40 characters, or if she'll just get them up to the level of the three characters I just ditched, which was around 13.

Her task is easy. There's a portal on Level 1 that takes you to an area of Level 2 where you can get an elevator to Levels 3, 4, and 5. I made her memorize the way and gave her the following set of instructions:

1. The moment you get to Level 2, cast LOMILWA (light), LITOFEIT (float so as to avoid traps), and MAPORFIC (protection, which the priest doesn't have yet but should before long).

2. Stand just outside the portal on Level 2. Spin in place and let the monsters come to you. Concentrate your attacks and use mass-damage spells (she has a list, including those she should expect to get later) on any groups of 3 or more.

3. At any point that you run out of damage spells, have less than half your healing spells, the party has less than half its hit points, or any character is afraid, paralyzed, or poisoned, immediately go back into the portal and return to the surface and heal everyone.

4. When you're able to win at least 15 combats before returning to the surface, take the elevator to Level 3 and do the same thing--spin in place right next to the elevator, fight, follow the same rules, and jump back into the elevator if you encounter problems. Once you can win 15 combats in a row there, go to Level 4. She's not to proceed any further than Level 4, though--there are some enemies on Level 5 that can kill even high-level characters in one hit.

To help with the combat and healing, I left her the items and gold from my previous party. I don't think that's cheating, since the game seems to encourage you to swap party members in and out--the key unit of gameplay is the "scenario," not the specific party. I told her just to drop any new items--I figure her chances of finding anything better than the party already has (the previous party had been to Level 5) is low. If she messes up and loses anyone, I still have three characters from the old party alive. We'll have a Buffy/Christmas Story crossover.

So what did I have to promise? Here it is: Irene's mother died of breast cancer three years ago, and for the past two years, she's done the Avon Walk for Breast Cancer. She has to raise $1,600 by April, and with few family members left and mostly-poor co-workers, she finds it difficult. I told her I would raise the money for her. In a few days, I'll be posting a link in the sidebar of my blog, and if you're feeling charitable, you can contribute to cancer research in the name of the mother of the woman whose tolerance makes this blog possible. (Please, no pressure, though: I have other ways to raise the money, too.)

While she does my level-grinding for me, in California, I'll be exploring dnd and making my revisit to The Bard's Tale III. When I get back next weekend, I'll try to finish up Wizardry V with my newly-buff party.