Game 13: Wizardry II (1982)

 

Okay, here's the essential problem with Wizardry II: you can't create characters in it. Instead, you have to import your characters from Wizardry. Now this would be okay, maybe, if during the import the game auto-leveled you to something sensible, but it doesn't. Also, when you import your characters, it permanently removes you from the original game. You can't even go back and re-import them if they die. Man, these games are harsh.

Remember how in Wizardry I, I kept losing my party because the game auto-saves and death is permanent? Well, the same thing is true of Wizardry II. Now this was bad enough in Wizardry I, when I had to create characters from scratch and build them up to a high enough level to either a) rescue the bodies of my original party or b) replace my original party. But in Wizardry II, if I lose my party, I have to go back to Wizardry I, create new characters, build them up in Wizardry I, then import them to Wizardry II, and finally send them on the rescue expedition. I'm sorry, but I don't have that kind of time.

I might do it if there was anything different about Wizardry II, but the manual that came with The Ultimate Wizardry Archives confirms that the gameplay, classes, races, spells, commands--everything--is exactly the same. Even the names of the equipment shop, tavern, inn, and temple are the same, despite the fact I'm supposed to be in a different city. Wizardry II isn't a new game: it's a new dungeon in the same game.

I did try. As you may recall if you read that entry, only four of my characters survived the final battle in Wizardry. I imported them into Wizardry II along with two level 1 characters I created in Wizardry to take the places of the dead ones. I figured that I could keep them in the back of the party and just build up their experience using the other characters. This worked for a time, and I got them up to level 6 (my other four came in at level 12). Unfortunately, one of the dead/replacement characters was a mage--the only class that can cast the MALOR teleport spell--and on Level 1 of the Wizardry II dungeon, you need the MALOR spell to progress.

 

Wandering around on Level 1, I found a room in which the sorceress Gnilda (the creators' anagrams are showing again) spoke about the main quest. The City of Llylgamyn was once protected by the magical Staff of Llygamyn, which prevented any evil-doers from entering the city. Regrettably, the staff had a loophole: those born in Llygamyn were immune to its preventive effects. Someone evil named Davalpus staged a coup and slaughtered the royal family, and in the ensuing war the staff was lost to the depths of a dungeon and the city brought to rubble. My party's quest is to recover "symbols of Gnilda's favor" so that she'll give me the staff and I can restore peace and prosperity.

Unfortunately, Llygamyn is going to have to remain a smoking ruin, because shortly after receiving said quest, my entire party--even the veterans--was slaughtered by a group of "kobold kings." No way am I re-playing Wizardry just so I can have characters at a high enough level to start Wizardry II. The process of importing, creating new characters, starting up, and mapping Level 1 took close enough to six hours that I feel like I've kept within my rules.

They looked so easy...

Now isn't everything I'm saying also true of Wizardry III? Yes, Wizardry III also does not allow you to create characters; you must import them from the original Wizardry. But according to the manual, you're not really importing the original characters but rather their "descendants," and during the import it re-sets you to Level 1. You don't even get to keep your gold. Hence, since unlike II, III doesn't require high-level characters, I have no cause not to give it a try.

Since Wizardry II is the same game as Wizardry, I see no reason not to give it the same overall score: 37/100.

The manual that came with the Archives is a lot of fun, full of comical little drawings of your characters. I wish I could show it to you, but my scanner is broken. It also explains things a little better than the original manuals. Flipping through it, I have to say, Wizardry VI and VII look pretty cool. I'll get to them eventually.

Edit from 26 March 2014: Nearly four years after I first played this game, I returned to it and won it. The GIMLET score fell to 32 upon consideration of the game in its entirety. I recommend that you read my updated post for more information about the game.

The Bard's Tale: Final Rating

Our heroes discuss the relative merits of this CRPG

 

The Bard's Tale

United States

Interplay (developer); Electronic Arts (publisher)

Released 1985 for Apple II; 1986 for Commodore 64 and Amiga; 1987 for DOS, Apple IIGS, and Atari ST; 1988 for Amstrad CPC, ZX Spectrum, and PC-98; 1989 for Macintosh; 1990 for NES
Date Started: 14 March 2010

Date Ended: 9 April 2010

Total Hours: 45

Difficulty: Moderate-Hard (3.5/5)
Final Rating: 37

Ranking at Time of Posting: 8/11 (73%)
Raking at Game #420: 322/420 (77%)

     

I know: three postings in one day. It's feast or famine with me. I'll try to develop better consistency in the future.

Earlier this week, I outlined a rubric for rating CPRGs in 10 categories. It's highly subjective, dependent upon my own preferences and peeves (but hey, it's my blog). Tonight, I'll apply the GIMLET for the first time to The Bard's Tale. Ratings for each category is out of 10.

1. Game world. The Bard's Tale's game world is not terribly imaginative. It is set in a somewhat generic high-fantasy city called Skara Brae which the evil wizard Mangar has taken over, unleashing scores of monsters into the streets. That's about all you're given. You learn nothing of the larger game world, nor how long Mangar has been a threat, nor where he came from to begin with, nor why your party suddenly appeared on the scene. Your actions do not effect any changes to the game world--not even completing the main quest. Even if you slay Mangar, monsters still roam the streets, and if you return to Mangar's tower you can slay him again! Perhaps the only unique thing about the game world is the implicit importance of bards in the society. Category Score: 2.

2. Character creation and development. For its time, the character creation system is reasonably advanced, allowing you to choose from a number of classes, each with their own strengths and weaknesses. Hunters do very little damage but have a decent chance of scoring a critical hit. Thieves are worthless fighters but necessary for trap-removal if you don't want to waste spell points. Spellcasters can cycle through four different classes, learning new spells each time. For all but the spellcasters, though, leveling up after a certain point doesn't seem to do anything but give you additional hit points. It's a little odd that you can only select male characters. There are no alignments, and there is no--absolutely no--character-based role playing. Category score: 3.

3. NPC Interaction. There are essentially no NPCs with whom to interact. In some squares, you stumble upon people and objects, but they mouth a few scripted lines at you and send you on your way. As with all games of this era, you have no dialog choices, no real opportunities for role-playing, and certainly nothing as advanced as romances. Category score: 1.

4. Encounters and Foes. As I noted when creating this evaluation model, I like random encounters and re-spawning, and this game is all about both. There are some scripted encounters, but they re-spawn the moment you leave the level and return. One memorable encounter has you fighting four groups of 99 barbarians each. If you have the right spells, you can survive it, it takes a good 10 minutes, and it nets you more experience than any other battle in the game. It's nice to be able to return to it now and then for a boost. The monsters are relatively well-distinguished, especially for a game of the era, each featuring different types of attacks, magic, and weaknesses. The manual doesn't really describe them for you, though, and of course there is no opportunity for role-playing in the encounters. Category score: 5.

5. Magic and combat. Combat in The Bard's Tale is identical to Wizardry, with the first three ranks having the ability to attack and the others able to use items and cast spells. The combat is very tactical, forcing you to choose your actions carefully to maximize your chances of survival and minimize your expenditure of resources. Since your six characters are all piled on to one screen, though, there is no way to role-play them individually in combat. Category score: 5.

6. Equipment. The game has a very large variety of equipment, from normal weapons and armor to special musical instruments (usable only by bards) that cast a variety of spells, rings, staffs, wands, lanterns, magic carpets, and so on. There is no description attached to any of these (no game will have item descriptions for years yet), but one unique aspect to The Bard's Tale is that you sort-of have to fiddle with your plundered objects to figure out what they do. My one gripe is that it's relatively easy to achieve the lowest possible armor class, after which finding new armor doesn't seem to do anything. Also, the damage you do in combat is overwhelmingly based on your level and not your weapon, so there's no particular reason to keep upgrading and comparing. Except for a few quest items, equipment is thoroughly randomized in the game world. Category score: 5.

Those horns do some serious damage.

7. Economy. Gold is very plentiful in this game, thank God, because you need a constant supply for healing. Healing is really all you need it for. After your first trip to the equipment shop at the beginning of the game, there is no need to ever visit again to buy anything. But because resurrecting characters, un-withering them, and turning them back to flesh from stone cost so much (and rise with levels), there is never a point that you're not grateful for a hoard of gold. Category score: 6.

8. Quests. The Bard's Tale has a main quest, but there is only one outcome--killing Mangar. There are no side quests or any opportunities for role-playing in quests. Category score: 2.

9. Graphics, Sound, Inputs. The graphics are quite good for the era--leaps ahead of Wizardry. Some of them are lightly animated. On the DOS port, there are no sound effects except for the bard songs, which suck a bit. Controls are by keyboard or mouse, and both work fine. Category score: 4.

10. Gameplay. In some ways, the gameplay is fairly linear--you must progress through the dungeons in a specific order. But having done so, you are free to backtrack to previous dungeons. Skara Brae itself is fully explorable at the outset; there just isn't much reason to explore. The difficulty is "pleasingly difficult," as I wrote in one point, because you can only save in the Adventurer's Inn and you have to carefully ration your spell points in dungeons. Towards the end, though, it becomes incredibly difficult, especially with the ability of certain monsters to turn your characters to stone, which you have no spell to redress. Every stoning requires a trip back out to a temple, if you're lucky to survive long enough. Monsters that drain your hard-earned levels also make you tear out your hair. There is absolutely no replayability; you'll get the same experience no matter what party you use or what decisions you make. Category score: 4.

The Bard's Tale's total score is: 37/100. On my master ranking list, that ties it with Wizardry I and suggests I liked it better than anything I've played so far except Ultima III. That feels about right.

     

*****

  

Further Reading: My coverage of The Bard's Tale II: The Destiny Knight (1986), The Bard's Tale III: Thief of Fate (198), and Dragon Wars (1989). I also have updated coverage of The Bard's Tale from 2021.

The Bard's Tale: Won (at last)!

I'll be back to collect Shamino in a few weeks.

Well, my roller-coaster journey through The Bard's Tale is over. I know my postings on this game have been a bit schizophrenic, sometimes seeming as if I liked the game and sometimes as if I hated it. If so, then the posts are accurate, because that is exactly how I felt.

The game is challenging from the very beginning, thrusting you into a Skara Brae full of monsters in which the difference between survival and death depends primarily on luck. Run into some kobolds and you'll make it; stumble into a house with six barbarians, and your level 1 party is history. The game became more stable once I started dungeon-crawling, and for four out of five dungeons, my characters rarely died. But once I hit Mangar's tower, the vagaries of chance returned with a vengeance. Turning a corner and blundering into a party of six demons, four master wizards, and three red dragons is relatively commonplace, and if you can't run from the battle, there's essentially no way to survive it. Demons, dragons, magic users, and several other creatures are capable of launching deadly attacks that do more than 100 HP damage to all your party members, against which you have essentially no defense (the anti-magic bard song seemed, in my experience, to do nothing). If my characters were 10 levels higher, they wouldn't survive such an encounter, and I don't think there was any realistic way to get them 10 levels higher. It would have taken millions of experience points (most battles, even at the end, were giving me 5,000-7,000 each on average).

This is the bastard causing all the trouble.

So my winning was mostly luck. I made probably 20-25 forays onto Level 5 of Mangar's tower, dying each time, before I found the path that led me to Mangar himself. After that, I traced that path about 12 times before I finally got lucky and defeated Mangar. I would have recorded it, as I usually do for end games, but I never knew which time would be "the" time, and by the time I finally won, I had given up on recording.

  

Mangar is surrounded by two demon lords and three vampire lords. Vampire lords can stone you with a single touch and demon lords can belch fireballs. Mangar himself is no pushover, capable of some serious damage. Again, I just got lucky. The monsters decided to go after my summoned dragon, giving me enough time to kill a couple of them. The demon lords decided to cast spells instead of spewing fire. One lucky round is really all it took.

(Incidentally, the summon dragon spell is the most awesome spell in the game. The dragon almost always gets the first attack, and if you're lucky he'll breathe fire and wipe out an entire group of monsters.)

   

Winning gives you 300,000 experience points--like I really need those now, thanks--and returns you to the Adventurer's Guild, where I was happy to save and quit. I never finished mapping Level 5. As I allow myself to do once I've finished, I consulted a walkthrough and discovered I didn't really miss anything, although he found the final battle "disappointingly easy." Whatever. Apparently, I could then have gotten a cool magic item, but I don't see any reason to keep playing after I've won.

I'm going to do a quick posting with a final ranking for The Bard's Tale. After that, I have to regress to Wizardry II and Wizardry III (I ordered The Ultimate Wizardry Archives after my first attempts to play them didn't work) before moving on to Phantasie.

One final thing: most of the messages scrawled on the dungeon walls turned out to be clues to one thing or another. Even the message "Thor is the greatest son of Odin, "found in the first dungeon, turned out to be helpful in the fifth when answering that question gives you a little Thor figurine you can use to summon him. But one message I never did figure out, also from the first dungeon: IRKM DESMET DAEM. It doesn't seem to be an an anagram ("mirk Ed Mets made?") and it doesn't give enough letters to be a solvable cryptogram. Googling the phrase just turns up references to The Bard's Tale. Any ideas?

The Bard's Tale: AAAAAAAARGH!!!

Bard's Tale, have you no sense of decency?! No sense of pacing?! This is not how you craft a good CRPG. You don't make it moderately difficult ("pleasingly difficult," I said a few posts ago; oh, how you must have cackled at that) for 90% of the game and suddenly introduce battles with 12 demon lords on the last level! You do not include a host of creatures--oh, those %*#$*& vampires--who can level-drain you with a single touch. Do you know how long it takes to gain levels in your game?

You do not--above all, you do not--allow creatures to stone you with one touch and not include a freaking stone-to-flesh spell! And if you do--you utter, irredeemable pricks--you do not make such battles inescapable so that the last 50 hours of playing your game boil down to entering the dungeon, climbing up five levels, getting stoned, and having to make your way out of the dungeon to heal the stoned character at a temple. Yeah, nice gameplay. Bastards.

But if you must do all of these things, must you also--hey, I'm talking to you, you heartless time-sucker--must you also make it so that healing a stoned character costs 15,000 gold pieces? Mere moves from the end of the game, must you make me return constantly to low-level dungeon-crawling to build up my finances and experience points? Is there no end to your cycle of futility?

AAAAARRGH!

Ranking and Rating CRPGs

I've been thinking about the process of rating CRPGs. What makes certain games so addictive and enjoyable? I started making a list of everything that occurred to me, and tonight I organized that list into categories. It just so happens that there are 10 categories, and if I assign 10 points to each one, I have a decent 100-point scale.

 

The things I like about CRPGs may not be the same things you like. For instance, I don't care much about graphics. All I ask is that, as I put in my list, they're not distractingly bad. I care even less about music. I know that game developers pay composers and musicians to record extensive soundtracks for their games, but one of the first things I almost always do when firing up a new game is turn the music off.

On the other hand, I do value some unusual things. For instance, I love games that extensively describe the different weapons and armor you pick up. I also love the process of finding new stuff and outfitting my characters. I value strong NPC interaction as much as exciting combat. I prefer my areas to re-spawn so I can return to beginning areas once I'm level 12 and idly fireball rats just for fun.

I could read these all night.

With this in mind, I created this master list of characteristics (titled with a nod to my Reddit user name, and my favorite drink). Each of the individual items combine to create a score of 0-10 in each category, contributing to a master score of 0-100. Let me know if you think I missed anything obvious. Ultimately, over the years, I expect I will create a separate blog post for each of the items in these categories.

CRPG Addict's Game Innovation, Merriment, Likability, and Engagement Test (GIMLET)

1. Game World

• Game world has unique features that distinguish it from other CRPGs
• Creators have endowed game world with history and lore
• You understand how your character and quest fit within overall game world
• Your decisions and actions measurably affect game world

2. Character Creation and Development

• Game allows extensive customization of characters during creation process
• Characters are rewarded for combat and quest-completion
• Character advancement process is satisfying and rewarding
• Encounters and dialogs play differently with different classes, sexes, alignments, and characteristics

3. NPC Interaction

• Game has NPCs with whom you can talk
• NPC Interaction advances the plot of the game
• Game offers you flexibility in dialog choices
• NPC Interaction provides opportunity for role-playing
• PC learns things about the game world from NPCs
• Game offers NPC relationships (romances and friendships)

4. Encounters & Foes

• Game offers unique monsters distinguishable from other CRPGs
• Foes are well-described in game world
• Foes behave in different ways depending on their type
• Game features some scripted encounters with opportunities for role playing
• Game has some level of random encounters so that you never know what's coming
• Areas respawn at some point after they are cleared

5. Magic and Combat

• Player has numerous options in combat
• Combat is tactical, requiring some strategizing to successfully navigate
• Combat offers opportunities for role-playing
• Magic system (if included) is well-balanced

6. Equipment

• Game has wide variety of weapons, armor, and accessories to buy, find, wield, and wear
• Game makes it easy to understand and evalute how items compare to each other (e.g., which weapon does the most damage)
• Items are thoroughly and interestingly described
• Items are at least partly randomized within game world
• Player can create or customize items

7. Economy

• Game gives you monetary rewards for killing creatures/solving quests
• There are interesting and helpful things to buy with your money
• You never reach a point in which collecting money becomes pointless

8. Quests

• Game has a "main quest" the completion of which constitutes winning the game
• Main quest has different outcomes based on player decisions
• Game features side quests that offer opportunities for character building
• Side quests have opportunities for role-playing

9. Graphics, Sound, and Inputs

• Graphics are not distractingly bad
• Fun and realistic gameplay sound effects
• Interesting and immersive background sound effects
• NPC dialogue, if spoken, is well-acted
  
• Controls are intuitive and responsive

10. Gameplay

• Game is alinear, allowing freedom of movement throughout game world
• Game is highly replayable, offering different experiences for different classes and alignments
• Game has the right level of difficulty: challenging without being exasperating
• Overall pacing is good; game is not over too quickly, neither does it drag

After I finish The Bard's Tale, I'll rank the games I've played to this point on the scale. Without overly demanding criteria for graphics and sound, I suspect that some of these older games (especially a few of the ones coming up) will hold up quite well.