Posted by Kalisiin Kumaki
on 4/29/2009, 10:55 am, in reply to "The Dark Spire"
What platform is this available on? It seems about my speed. I could use a good, old-fashioned dungeon-crawler!
I know, I know...all the young kids out there are gonna think it's boring as hell, but, damn, this is what I grew up with, and it's what I like, and damn what these kids of today like, I want a copy of this one!!
Please tell me this is available on the DS.
--Previous Message--
: Very little of the gaming press seems to be
: aware that this game exists- it was released
: last week and didn't even have a Wikipedia
: page until a few days later- so, as the one
: person who actually went out and bought it,
: I thought I should write up something sooner
: rather than later.
:
: Unfortunately, I have to talk about
: Wizardry: Tale of the Forsaken Land first,
: as I feel obligated to every few months.
:
: Nobody's heard of Wizardry: Tale of the
: Forsaken Land. It was an early-generation
: PS2 game, a descendant of the venerable
: Wizardry dynasty that began in 1981- the
: earliest days of commercial gaming. Like
: those games, it was a first-person dungeon
: crawler; you journeyed to a town, recruited
: party members, accepted quests, and explored
: the One Big Dungeon. While it retained the
: oldschool structure and feel, though, it
: mixed in a good dose of new-school
: sensibilities- the notoriously uneven
: difficulty of the Wizardry series was
: balanced out, some additions were made to
: the bare-bones Wizardry combat system, the
: dungeon and its' environs were rendered in
: pretty polygons, and an actual plot was
: added to drive the action. The plot, while
: it eventually resorts to a set of standard
: anime tropes, takes its' time getting there,
: sends you through a setting that is more
: unusual than it appears at first, and
: populates its' world with an array of
: interesting, likable characters. The art
: style is more westernized than most Japanese
: RPGs, and- if nothing else- provides a
: welcome change from the "Generic
: Anime" look that many JRPGs of the time
: developed.
:
: It had its' faults, sure- the graphics were
: very first-generation-PS2 and the level
: designs in the latter third of the game were
: significantly weaker than what had come
: before, but it was fun. It was refreshing.
: It was quite possibly the most enjoyable RPG
: I've played in the past five years, and
: since then I've been trying to hunt down
: anything else like it and failing.
:
: While there have been a couple further
: sequels to Tale- presumably done in the same
: style- none of them made it to the US, and I
: can't stand playing RPGs where all the text
: is encoded in lunar sigils. The 'mainline'
: Wizardry games- particularly Wizardry 8-
: actually moved away from the traditional
: Wizardry model in the unimportant cosmetic
: ways and did not have the interesting
: storyline or more appropriate difficulty
: level that had been part of Tale's
: atraction. The emulated and translated Shin
: Megami Tensei games weren't really what I
: was looking for, and at times seemed
: entirely constructed of rough edges- my
: wierd relationship with this series is the
: stuff of another post, I think, but at any
: rate they didn't scratch the right itch. I
: picked up Deep Labrynth shortly after I
: picked up my DS hoping for something similar
: to Tale, and was sadly disappointed in it.
: Etrian Odyssey retained the feel of some of
: the early games, but lacked Tale's plot and
: kept the punishing difficulty curve of the
: originals (and I can't say I enjoyed drawing
: my own map, either).
:
: This brings me to The Dark Spire.
:
: The Dark Spire is the most recent
: first-person dungeon crawl I've invested in
: for experimental purposes. Like many of its'
: brethren on my shelf, it's an Atlus release,
: so I do reccomend going out and picking it
: up sooner rather than later if what I'm
: about to say interests you. It first came to
: my attention when one of the promo videos
: was posted over on the Hardcore Gaming 101
: forums, showing off the unique art. I kept
: an eye on it, and noting the Atlus-ness of
: the game, picked up a copy as soon as it hit
: the stores and have now played for a couple
: hours.
:
: Like the Wizardry series and Etrian Odyssey
: before it, the game is mostly an oldschool
: dungeon-crawl through (mostly) one huge
: dungeon, the titular Dark Spire. You control
: a party of four adventurers; as far as I
: know, all of these characters are
: custom-generated. It's not clear at this
: point how much customization is really
: available for characters- each character
: begins with randomly-generated stats and can
: be assigned to one of four
: initially-accessible classes
: (Fighter/Theif/Mage/Cleric), but you are
: free to 'buy' levels in any of the primary
: classes as you go (and, according to the
: manual, 'hybrid' classes become available
: later on, but I haven't played nearly long
: enough yet). You are also allowed to upgrade
: your statistics (which has a huge price tag)
: or buy any of a number of different
: 'skills', which vary from the useful
: ("Lockpicking") to the bewildering
: ("Dancing"). A seperate section
: for "oaths" that a character has
: taken is available as well, and various
: systems seem dependent on the alignment of
: your characters and the favor of the gods.
: I'll have to play more before I can really
: comment on any of that.
:
: The equipment and battle system is kind of
: interesting- it seems to operate like D&D
: (and many of the earlier Wizardry/Bard's
: Tale games) under-the -hood; you've got an
: armor class that starts at 10 and goes down
: as you equip more armor, and weapons don't
: seem to bear any indication of attack power
: save price. A number of 'special' attack and
: defense commands (to, say, make a strong
: attack at the cost of AC or counterattack
: when defending instead of reducing your AC)
: seem to be dependent on what equipment you
: have, but the internals aren't really
: documented at all. Price seems to be a rough
: indicator of a weapon's power, but again,
: it's going to take a while to muddle through
: everything.
:
: The graphics and sound are very nice. The
: music is catchy, and I really dig the
: chunky, stylized comic-book look and feel
: everything has. The various icons and things
: might become a problem- they used
: seemingly-random abstract icons instead of
: the more standard icons to indicate what
: type of item a particular item is- but I'll
: have to see whether I get used to it or not.
: As a bit of a gag, a "classic
: mode" is available, which replaces the
: dungeon walls with wireframes straight out
: of the early Ultima games, enemies in combat
: with Dragon Warrior-style 8-bit sprites, and
: the music with chiptune remixes. It's
: entertaining for novelty purposes, but I
: can't see myself playing it that way for a
: long time.
:
: I've actually enjoyed the game a lot so far.
: The overall package and presentation is
: good, and it brings a new-school approach to
: interface which does away with a lot of the
: little warts and annoyances that mar many of
: the older games I've mentioned above. The
: difficulty level is more reasonable than
: Etrian Odyssey's so far, and much more
: reasonable than the oldschool games it
: imitates ever were. Despite the fact that
: many of the game's features aren't
: documented at all yet, I feel like I have a
: much better idea of what I'm doing than I
: did in Etrian Odyssey. Part of this is
: likely thanks to the more straightforward
: character development system and familiar
: D&D-ish class selection as opposed to
: Etrian's MMO-derived and wierdly-named
: selection (I've played enough D&D-derived
: games to know what a Theif does, but what
: the hell is a 'Landsknecht'?). The fact that
: character development is fairly strictly
: level-based rather than skill-based also
: makes me feel like I'm less likely to make
: an unfixable and irrevocable error in
: charcter 'builds'.
:
: The down side to all of this is that the
: plot- well, so far, it's
: borderline-nonexistent. This is pretty much
: de rigeur for a game of this type, but Tale
: did such a good job of it that I've been
: hoping for something more ever since. I
: can't really comment beyond this, but it's a
: bit of a shame that it seems to have fallen
: by the wayside.
:
: Have I found another Tale of the Forsaken
: Land? Well, with the apparent emphasis away
: from plot in The Dark Spire, the answer,
: sadly, appears to be not quite- but what I
: have found is a solid dungeon crawler which
: seems to be lacking many of the warts that
: typically mar the genre, and one that I
: think deserves more attention than it seems
: to be getting.
:
: - HC
:
Message Thread:
« Back to thread