A look back at: Wizardry VI: Bane of the Cosmic Forge

 

Character portraits! Animated enemies! Harder gameplay! I pretty much summed this all up more or less. Wizardry continues to go by its formula but makes things, at least in my opinion, much harder. Perhaps it's because of my low luck with certain enemies, especially larger formations as well as the powerful party-breaking spells they always seem to employ. I've been throwing my lot around quite a bit with this title for sure. You don't even get a nice hub area to rest with since in this game, you get trapped in a castle and basically go the scavenger route more or less. But then there's some areas that seem completely unwinnable until you grind an excessive amount. Lots of healing, lots of frustration, lots of grinding, and lots of luck.

Interestingly, despite being at that part of playing the Wizardry series where I'm tempted to give a lower score due to my fatigue with the series in general, I gave this one a higher score. This mostly comes not just from a few tweaks in the gameplay to make them more interesting (if harder), but also due to how well the plot is this time around. Yes, there's going to be multiple endings as well as branching paths. Do you believe a scornful woman's lies? You'll probably go for the bad ending. Otherwise, you see the remorseful king kill himself instead. There's also the choice of taking that freakin' magic pen for yourself or not too. This is the kinda stuff that definitely peaks my curiosity with this game, even if I get rather annoyed gameplay-wise.

A look back at: Wizardry V: Heart of the Maelstrom

 

I've been doing Wizardry on and off for some time and to be frank, it is getting boring right about now. With this said, I still do possess the drive to go through these games despite all the grinding and the annoyances of powerful enemy attacks and what not. This is of course, in between all of my rom hack reviewing and my new reviewing of platformer games. I alos decided to check this one out on its SNES port, probably because on a personal standpoint, SNES emulation is somehow a lot more fun.

So seeing a few reviews, it's obviously way different than that previous fourth game which had spiced things up considerably, but it retains the aspects that the first three games have. So a lot of that fun customization stuff is there, although it's going to be a bunch of brand new characters created this time around, so no importing. Not that that would be possible between consoles of course. But despite this, and the subtle improvements to graphics and all, I just don't really see a lot of fun to it. There could have been more to the gameplay in this game. That's generally what makes RPG sequel games a little more interesting each time, but Wizardry V just feels like more of the same thing those last three games did.

Yes, I do think sequel games should have substantial improvements to make them seem like better games. It is what can make an entire series shine. While the first two sequels get a pass, especially given a few different plot points, V doesn't really get that kind of pass in my opinion. This game's plot feels like a combination of the first three games' plots all at once. First you seek out some seer (like in III, except that was a dragon), then you appease Card Lords by finding respective suits (similar to II's plot), then you battle an evil magician at the end (similar to I). It's sort of cute but cuteness isn't really the thing to save an RPG sequel from being a bit bland.

A look back at: Chocobo's Mysterious Dungeon

 Well, surprise! Guess I did play something Final Fantasy-related after all. Always gotta look out for those weird spinoffs as they might be hidden gems, and that's the case here. Now, when you think of Mystery Dungeon, you'll probably first think of the Pokemon Mystery Dungeon games perhaps, or if you're a real retro nut, actual roguelikes. Chocobo no Fushigi na Dungeon is the Final Fantasy variant of such a thing, and well, it's got Final Fantasy elements incorporated into a rather fun roguelike game.

It does the interesting thing by combining the already popular Active-Time Battle System with the real-time movement of roguelike battles. It's sort of reminiscent of certain action RPGs I've played, such as the Ys games, but with a little more interesting strategy with waiting for your bar to fill, in other words you don't have to to do an attack, but it's probably better if you could for best damage. Gameplay-wise, I hate how exploring seems to do the maximum drain to my stamina, yet the randomized dungeon really does emphasize this kinda playing style, cause you wanna see everything before moving into the next floor. You wanna get all the items you can, and get as much experience from monsters as you can. And those traps sure make things even harder.

It's a shame that with a randomized dungeon, there's not much you can really push for in plot, but Chocobo's Mysterious Dungeon at least tries well enough. You do go through floors, get the help of a mysterious hooded figure, and fight a couple of bosses, but the whole thing is just a chocobo and a moogle adventuring together without much else in substance. What really sells this better than other games has to be the FMV cutscenes. Hey, it's Square doing this. Their FMVs for mainline Final Fantasy games are great enough!

A look back at: Wizardry: The Return of Werdna

 

Holy freakin' crap, where do I start? Should I start with the fact I found a PSX remake of the first few Wizardry games that basically made them in a nice console style? Or how about the new shift from hero to bad guy? Wizardry 4 does seem like one of the first, if not the first, RPG that has you in the shoes of an actually established bad guy. Werdna is indeed back, though he is a squishy wizard and must summon monsters to help him survive. Game overs were wrought, as unfortunately this is a game where you lose if you lose your main character, and lord knows this has to easily be the hardest CRPG made ever.

It seems it was especially made for such a purpose too. You've got segments where you have to walk in landmine-infested areas, which basically entails to mapping each step. Tedious, tedious, tedious. There's this dickish Trebor's ghost that keeps floating around and can kill instantly. Enemy guardians actually REVIVE if you save and load often, meaning repeat battles that can be more trouble than they're worth. Your squishy wizard status never leaves either, so armor tends to be moot when enemy fighters who break through your monster ranks can cut you to pieces in a single blow. The final boss requires a stupid afterthought, get the weakest enemy as a troop in the game as it seems to be the only one that can defeat (or even damage) it. Oh, and guess what? Your monster friends are AI controlled! They can do some stupid things in battle. Take my word for it and practice the hell out of the Wizardry series before even ATTEMPTING this one. It's a hell of a ride. Being a villain sure is hard.

Doom Musings: The Mockaward and jokewads in general

So my last Doom Musings post has to do with the Worst Wad Cacoward, which naturally has been discontinued due to, well, you probably can guess why. Should I pay attention to the Mockaward category? The wads that are made as crummy jokes and in general were just things that the writers of the Cacowards found funny at the time? Jokewads are incredibly fickle, because apart from the joke the substance you find in the jokewads is fairly minimal. The Mockaward, like many others, has been discontinued due to the lack of actual funny jokewad material (and possibly those Terrywads that the creators of those things try to put off as jokes themselves, since they try hard to be funny but are completely unfunny).

2004's Mockaward was given to Doomworld Forums 3, made by some anonymous creator who basically made something with basic ZDoom scripting. It deals primarily with Newdoom but is fairly standard overall in terms of quality.

2005 actually made a legitimate wad the Mockaward, perhaps because of the complete lack of actual jokewads. Kama Sutra made it based off of that last level alone, although the name of the wad is another thing to take into consideration.

2006 tells us that maybe jokewads really are dying out? Seeing as how one doesn't make the cut for straddling the line between joke and worst wad, while another has an unfunny premise, they awarded How Not To Be Seen as the winner. Or so you'd think? As Xaser ended up hijacking things with TurboCharged ARCADE! One of the few gems of the ZDoom scripting era with weird mini-scenarios, sped-up monsters and weapons, and killing the player upon succeeding. Such strangeness.

2007 gave us It Only Gets Worse, by the same author as How Not To Be Seen. Several weird ass levels all made in some weird fun. This was accompanied by the unfunny stuff that seemed to have been released during the same year (after all, this was the year Glassyman got the worst wad cacoward).

2008 gave us the legendary Community is Falling 3, a fantastic megawad with lots of appeal, decent in-jokes throughout Doom community, PO'ed weapons and monsters, extremely tanky bosses, and an overall interesting game system. Through all the jokes this manages to be one of the most competent games ever created and probably the truest winner of the Mockaward ever given.

Sadly this of course means that no other wad can outmatch CIF3 in Mockaward status, as it seems that jokes are dying out. Killing Adventure was the winner of 2009's mockaward, almost entirely on the premise of being "so bad its good". It was an interesting exercise in dumb concepts and as dumb as the creator was in making it it proved to be a cult classic for a game that is pretty much in cult classic status.

2010 was when they attempted to retire the Mockaward, but this was saved at the last minute by a last-day release of the TurboCharged ARCADE sequel. Still funny, still turbocharged.

2011 was a temporary retirement of the award, but 2012 renewed things with Call of Dooty. It plays homage to the modern FPS, as well as action movies, honestly this thing has revived the Mockaward for what it held in comedy and gameplay.

2013 went with an actual gameplay mod called Extreme Weapon Pack, an excellent dose of complete sarcasm. Weapons that blow you across the room, trying to get that shotgun to stop being rusty, cleaning a pistol or a nail, and a goddamn toothbrush weapon. It actually has to be seen to be believed.

It's kind of strange that the Mockaward still manages to survive almost entirely because of how perception of jokewads have been. Earlier jokewads were "make a level but make it stupid fun with a few scripting", then they come up with stranger jokes and a weird-ass weapon pack. 2014 gave way to Brutalist Doom, something that takes art in the form of a joke. Just imagine a bastardized Doom in every aspect and you got it. Hell, they even had runner-ups for the damn award in WOOO 2 (just a megawad of silliness) and Laundry 2 (something of an attempt to spook or something). Yeah.

2015 had Instadoom taking the whole damn world by storm. I'm not kidding, it really did. Something so basic as to having social media incorporated into the game, with "filters" that change the way your game looks as well as the infamous selfie stick mod. Made entirely for fun.

Ludicrium, I believe, is the last of the Mockaward winners, made in 2016. It's oddly enough, a jab at critics of slaughterfests by making it all about slaugtherfest gameplay. Many other wads actually tried to compete with this one (100,000 Revenants for instance), but this was made especially for the purpose of jabbing. Jab away.

Finally 2017 shows the real obituary for the entire thing, as not only has the ethos, pathos, and logos all changed each year on what truly constitutes a Mockaward winner, which explains why it would be discontinued. Sure enough, some of these sure got the mainstream attention despite being one-off jokes, but perhaps there needed to be more room for all the good stuff to be shown. That being said, the Mockaward is now rebranded as Machaward, for stuff that is unusually creative. It's a cool segue, going from joke-y stuff to more interesting and unordinary creations.

Oh well, might as well talk about my opinion on jokewads that I remember. Some of the earliest jokewads from before Doomworld Forums 3 are stuff still in my mind. I can remember when Paul Corfiatis made New Adventure, a strange and notable journey that amounted to just defeating a creator's head. Yep. There's Big Crappy Shit Megawad (yes that's the name), another "intentionally bad" megawad but without anything of basic interest. Some would say DOOM JR. is a jokewad, filled with lots of newbish quality. The one that comes to my mind first actually is 1337.wad. It pretty much predates Killing Adventure especially given the rather odd humor you can find in the textfile, as well as the levels that seem stupidly impossible because the creators saw fit to throw cyberdemons all around levels. Not to mention 4 Ball of Hell levels that are the exact same. Many of these jokewads have lost their luster in the modern age, but in any case, you have to experience them to understand what and perhaps why they were even made. The age of awarding jokes is over though.

A look back at: Pokemon Gaia

So I did manage to finally finish this rom hack, even though frankly it should have been a lot sooner, I was quite wrapped up in a lot of other things while playing it. That being said, this is so far my favorite rom hack because content-wise, it delivered tremendously. Remember when I said the Dark Rising games overwhelmed me with all sorts of new stuff? Well Gaia does all this, so much more, and keeps the difficulty rather tame! The story is actually well-written, you get access to mostly every single mon up to gen-6, and even abilities and moves of the future gens are put into this Fire Red hack. I often found myself standing in the same locations trying to get everything I could, and managed to get over 600 mons owned by the end of it all. There's perhaps a few loose ends such as hatching special eggs and maybe a few other things missed, but I don't care, there's not much in post-game content in Gaia and for once I'm glad for that.

Interesting that the Regi mons tend to have some sort of role in most of these rom hacks I'm playing, particularly Regigigas who was pretty much the focal point (having been on the box art and all too). Resolute I remember Wind tried to use Regigigas, and Brandon in Dark Rising 2 had the full team to use as enemies. It sucks you can't actually catch them in this version, though oddly, the three main Regis are listed as owned once you use them in the "dream" battle sequences. Kinda weird. Only legendaries able to be caught are Deoxys and Rayquaza, but I'm not really complaining ever since those stupidly well-hidden legendaries of Altair and Sirius last year took up a lot of walkthrough time. HMs were actually quite frequently used which is one mark against it, and even Dive found its uses often (heck there's even trainers underwater now). Apart from post-game most trainers don't have above Lv60, a decent curve to end on more or less. Having to remember all the current ways to evolve mons (yes, even those who have different evolution methods introduced in Gen-4+) as well as figure out how to evolve the current sets (and even breed them since some first forms aren't available in the wild, and yes trade evolutions evolve by level or sometimes by stone) was quite a challenge. There's also an actually decent bug-catching contest where I savescum to get some more evolution stones and such. There's more than enough to overwhelm me with Gaia, but it sure did its thing and managed to be the best ROM hack I played in 2020.