Together Retro: First-Person Dungeon Crawlers

[MrPopo]

ScummVM outpaced its name's mandate a long time ago.

[Nemoide]

I've officially completed The Dark Spire! The final ending is simultaneously ridiculously anti-climactic, ridiculously over-the-top, and satisfying. I also managed to complete all the quests!

I'm convinced that the game is completely impossible without using a guide. I'm sure the developers actually expected players would use the internet for some of the puzzles. For instance, you can't get the final ending unless you have a VERY high total charisma. To raise your charisma, you have to find a hidden room and pay 10,000 gold and 50,000 EP for a CHANCE to gain one point. So saving/loading as needed in this room is the best strategy but there doesn't seem to be ANY clue in-game that you need to build your CH. The side-quests were occasionally a pain: the archdemon I needed to defeat that I mentioned earlier wasn't spawning will ONLY appear if you visit certain hidden rooms that have automatic battles (but not boss fights or anything special) first. I had visited those rooms, but on a previous trip before I tried fighting the archdemon. Hitting up all those areas in one go is what made him spawn. (Again, the game itself provides NO CLUES about this.) If not for GameFAQs, I would have been completely oblivious to one of the quests, which has a really obtuse trigger and a near-impossible to figure out solution.

But that all actually made playing the game more satisfying: I don't feel like a cheater for looking at guides online! You still need to think about how you as a player will approach your next trip into the tower and even at the end of the game when I was comfortable wandering around the final floor, my party would occasionally get wiped out by a random ambush.

The Dark Spire is a (somewhat) hidden gem among the sea of RPGs for DS. I'm really thankful that this month's TR theme got me to go back and revisit it. Part of me is itching to play more FPDC and 1980s RPGs, but I put so much time in this one that I'm going to need a break. Even though I haven't played the Wizardry games, I would easily recommend this to anyone who likes Wizardry.

[Exhuminator]

I've officially completed The Dark Spire! The final ending is simultaneously ridiculously anti-climactic, ridiculously over-the-top, and satisfying. I also managed to complete all the quests!

Congratulations Nemoide, that is quite the accomplishment!

But that all actually made playing the game more satisfying: I don't feel like a cheater for looking at guides online!

I hate using walkthroughs or strategy guides for games, it always makes me feel like a cheater... or at least like someone else is beating the game for me as I doggedly follow their instructions. But sometimes there are the special exceptions like what you described.

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Made some more progress in W:TotFL tonight. I cleared level 6, the Moldy Fort. Some screenshots of that environment:



Quite moldy indeed! And no I didn't take these screenshots (I'm playing on a real PS2), but I found a comprehensive gallery.

While there I picked up a new samurai. I had her replace one of my warriors. So now I've got a knight, two samurais, two sorcerers, and a priest.



The Moldy Fort had an insane boss. It was a uh... horny demon horse thing. I can still see its hip gyrations in my mind. It humped my warrior to death (resurrected him later).



I killed it with extreme prejudice and made it to level 7! And... level 7 is another randomly generated affair like level 3 was. So I imagine the point of level 7 is just to reach level 8's entrance. Things are starting to get tedious on the return front again. I have to take level 1 to level 5, then I'll have to walk all the way though level 6, then find the random entrance on level 7 to reach level 8. I sure hope a new shortcut opens up soon.

[laurenhiya21]

While W:TotFL sounds like it would be a bit too mean for my tastes, it is interesting to read about your play through, Exhum! I hope you beat it, even if it's not in May.

the Moldy Fort

Also I'm very tired and initially read that as "the Moldy Fart". The green gas in the screenshots didn't really help much I guess ha.
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Unfortunately I haven't had much chance to participate this month (again). This week and the next week are probably going to be especially brutal since they're the last two weeks of class, but at least I participated a little?

[BoneSnapDeez]

Well, I'm not going to finish a game this month and I'm the curator.

I've made a tiny amount of progress in Shining in the Darkness since my last post. I believe I'm on the cusp of finishing level three and ascending to level four. I say "I believe" because the game has gotten a bit non-linear at this point. I can now go up pitfalls using a rope - mainly to grab items - so while I've visited some isolated sections of the fourth floor I'm not yet in a position to explore it properly. Enemies have gotten tougher, and success now seems predicated on having the right equipment. This required that I backtrack and find some more mithril ore (using the rope) and then having a dude in town craft me some quality stuffs.

Oh, and I can warp now which eliminates backtracking through boring easier areas (namely, floors one and two). I really like how warping works in this game. Popo and I discussed this earlier, but let me touch on it again. I've had to ability to warp back to town (via the "egress" spell) since around the game's opening. Warping back to the dungeon is a different story. You can only warp to golden water pools; more specifically, the singular pool that the party drops half a medallion into (the party keeps the other half). So, right now my medallion half is in a pool right at the end of floor two (floor three entrance). I reckon there's another one at the end of floor three (floor four entrance). I can take the medallion half out of the pool it's currently in and try to reach the next pool -- problem is, if I fail to reach it (either through needed to warp back to town to heal or outright dying) then I have to trek all the way back up the labyrinth again. I can't simply warp back to that floor three entrance pool as I've removed the medallion half from it. So there's a bit of a risk-reward thing goin' on. I probably haven't explained this well, but it's pretty cool!

[Exhuminator]

While W:TotFL sounds like it would be a bit too mean for my tastes, it is interesting to read about your play through, Exhum! I hope you beat it, even if it's not in May.

W:TotFL is moderately mean thus far. I don't know how it compares to earlier Wizardry entries, but this FPDC is considerably more difficult than your average PS2 JRPG. That said, I think anyone reading this could beat W:TotFL as long as they played methodically and patiently. I do appreciate you reading my crazy posts here. And yes, I will absolutely beat this game. It's damn good so far, and I want this feather in my cap.

Unfortunately I haven't had much chance to participate this month (again). This week and the next week are probably going to be especially brutal since they're the last two weeks of class, but at least I participated a little?

I'm glad you've got your priorities straight. There will be plenty of time for gaming later.

I really like how warping works in this game.

It sounds a little convoluted, but at least it's there. This is the one thing I wish W:TotFL had. It's easy enough to warp back to town in W:TotFL, but there's no warping back to where you were. You have to get your stroll on every time.

[Ack]

Due to medical stuff, I don't think I will be beating any more games in this genre this month. Instead, I have been turning to gamer comfort food. Oh well, I'll get back to Battlespire eventually.

[nullPointer]

Megami Tensei: I'm back on the grind again. The one piece of supplementary material I've been using is a demon fusion guide. As a 12 year old kid with endless free time it might be fun to work out the 100s of various fusion combinations in order to yield the most effective combinations of fighters and backline support, but as a middle aged guy with a whole host of other things competing for my time ... well it's just not fun or relaxing working out these details when there's not a whole lot of rhyme or reason to it in the first place (especially not when roughly 70% of random combinations will simply yield a Dryad). At any rate, I'm pretty close to meeting the level requirements for fusing some of the more powerful end-game demons, so now I'm just grinding away in order to meet those requirements. I currently have about four levels to go before I can fuse Odin from some of my existing demons. That will be super helpful since it will open up an additional slot in my roster for additional fusions. You can only carry 7 demons in your roster, so it can be quite the balancing act when you need to maintain a party of powerful demons for fighting and survival, but you also need to open up slots to collect additional demons for the purposes of new fusions. It's probably due to some impatience on my part but the whole demon collecting/fusion system sometimes feels like more of a chore even than grinding (partially due to the randomized chances of finding/collecting the demons you need for a desired fusion). It's not my favorite part of the game, but I guess it does lend a unique flavor to the proceedings. Hopefully after I grind my levels up I can put together a roster that will see me through the rest of the game.

I keep on meaning to mention it, but the music in this game is fantastic. Not all of it appeals to me in terms of my own preferences, but it's all quite well composed and executed. It really is one of the highlights of the game.

[prfsnl_gmr]

The water sections in Shadow Tower are really, really annoying...

Also - and because I just can’t get enough FPDC - I’ve been playing The Keep (3DS). It is a fun, portable, tile-based FPDC with real-time combat. It isn’t the most original game in the world, but I am really enjoying it. I think I am coming to the end soon; so, I will have beaten two FPDCs this month...neither of which are old enough for TR. (I will be traveling next week, and I doubt I’ll get through Shadow Tower before the end of the month.) Picdun and The Keep would still be pretty good though, right?!

[Exhuminator]

I’ve been playing The Keep (3DS).

I bought it on 3DS too, but was kinda irked when it was ported to PC.

I doubt I’ll get through Shadow Tower before the end of the month

You're my hero this go around simply for playing it. I do hope you finish it eventually, I liked the end game. The last boss is WTF and I enjoyed how the plot resolved.

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Now that I've finished Bloodstained - Curse of the Moon, I'll be resuming W:TotFL tomorrow night.