What are you playing?

[GasBandit]

Making good progress in Ultima 3.

Anna and Snuff both have their pertinent casting stat maxed out at 99, which gives them max mana and the ability to cast their strongest spells. I've capped out DEX on both Terrik and Gas (Gas is a dwarf, so his dex is max 75), and even had a little money left over to boost their STR a bit.

(As I understand it, DEX is more important than STR because STR is just a melee weapon bonus modifier, whereas DEX determines chance to hit at all, and chance to dodge, so it has higher priority).

And yes, everybody is still level 1, though they have enough exp to get to levels 7,8,10, and 8. But as the money rewards for fighting are the same whether you're fighting goblins or dragons, there's no rush to pull the trigger on that progression until you're done with your major capital expenses.

Though, the grind is starting to wear on me a bit, and I'm wondering if I REALLY need to cap DEX on the casters or not, or even finish boosting STR on the melee characters... Well, no point in fretting about it until I have the exp to get everybody to 25 in one go, anyway. So whatever money rolls in during that, I'll spend on stats, then I can get the marks out of the dungeons, pray for the silver horn and the cards at the shrines, and then it's off to Castle Death to deal with Exodus itself.

 

[Squidleybits]

I’m hunting deviants like Silverwing Nargacuga in Stories 2. I love this game!

Butterball is providing moral support and hasn’t gored me yet today.

 

[GasBandit]

The following five minutes is my life on repeat, right now.

 

[PatrThom]

Pretty sure this is the game my father would play for hours on end on NES (unless it was 2).
I think he ran either 3x Cleric 1x Wiz or else 2/2. The clerics would just throw daggers and heal and the wiz would rot everything. Repeat.

--Patrick

 

[GasBandit]

Pretty sure this is the game my father would play for hours on end on NES (unless it was 2).
I think he ran either 3x Cleric 1x Wiz or else 2/2. The clerics would just throw daggers and heal and the wiz would rot everything. Repeat.

--Patrick

This one. Ultima 1 and 2 didn't get NES ports, only 3, 4, and 5 did.

You get a Cleric high up enough, they can dish out some real punishment with Banish (single target instant kill) and Destroy (Multitarget instant kill).

But I prefer mine to keep her mana for healing, and let the meleers do the damage with the wizard on support (and he can cast Death, which is much the same as destroy, if I need a panic button).

The world record speedrunner for this game, however, (which does it in all of TWENTY FIVE MINUTES) uses a ranger and three wizards. But that kind of speed requires you to have intimate knowledge of the how the not-so-random RNG in this game works. I know that all random encounters, chests, rewards, multitarget spell hits, etc are driven by the number of moves you make since your last encounter. If you know you're about to take a step that triggers an encounter, you can just check your menu or turn in place to advance a "move" and then continue on, but I've never been one for counting cards.

 

[GasBandit]

I got distracted from Ultima 3 by Mini Motorways.

I highly recommend. It's a very chill traffic management game. Until suddenly it isn't chill any more. But it's really good.

 

[PatrThom]

"Mexico City" LOL

--Patrick

 

[bhamv3]

I had a hankering to play some Tropico 4 so I did. Completed the main campaign and the Modern Times DLC campaign.

I realized something during this playthrough.

1. The citizens of Tropico can have different jobs depending on their educational levels, which are divided into uneducated, high school, and college. So, for example, farmers and builders are uneducated, while factory workers and teachers need a high school level of education, and the people running your nuclear power plant and oil refinery need to have college educations.
2. Uneducated Tropicans can start working at a job quite early in their lives, oftentimes as early as their early- to mid-teens.
3. Tropicans will choose their own jobs, you generally can't assign them to different jobs.
4. You can build recreational facilities on your islands, such as restaurants, pubs, movie theaters, casinos, and cabarets.
5. Cabarets do not have any educational requirements.

You can probably guess where I'm going with this.

Anyway, today I found a fourteen-year-old showgirl working in one of my cabarets. How was your day?

 

[PatrThom]

Was she the bouncer? Tell me she was the bouncer. That's talent!

--Patrick

 

[GasBandit]

All work and no play, for Presidente!

 

[bhamv3]

Was she the bouncer? Tell me she was the bouncer. That's talent!

--Patrick

When Tropicans have a job, they get a corresponding title. Teacher, teamster, farmer, miner, doctor, garage attendant, bishop, soldier, minister, etc.

Individuals working in cabarets get the title showgirl.

So... probably not the bouncer.

 

[mikerc]

When Tropicans have a job, they get a corresponding title. Teacher, teamster, farmer, miner, doctor, garage attendant, bishop, soldier, minister, etc.

Individuals working in cabarets get the title showgirl.

So... probably not the bouncer.

Anyone working in cabaret is a "showgirl"? And at no point in this discussion have you explicitly stated their gender.

This is a 14 year old boy isn't it?

 

[bhamv3]

Anyone working in cabaret is a "showgirl"? And at no point in this discussion have you explicitly stated their gender.

This is a 14 year old boy isn't it?

Ah, many (most?) professions have a gender requirement. Stuff like farmers and builders can be either gender, but dockworkers, policemen, and firemen can only be male, teachers and maids can only be female, etc. Sometimes this can get a bit weird, for example journalists and oil refinery workers can only be women.

As for cabarets, I'm afraid that's also a female-only workplace, so no, it really was a fourteen-year-old girl.

 

[GasBandit]

I ground (grinded?) up the cash to cap out STR on both Terrik and Gas. By the time I did that, though, because I did it mostly with chest farming in the Cave of Sol, I'd only gotten enough exp to get the characters to level 12ish.

Still, tired of the same old grind and ready to fight harder monsters (for more exp), I went ahead and got the marks of Fire, Kings, and Snake out of the various dungeons, then went and talked to Lord British

Much tougher now, with a max HP of around 1450 each. Still need to find the Mark of Force so I can pass through force fields, but with the Mark of Fire, I can walk on lava, and I've already recovered the silver horn. So, just another 12 to 13 levels to go (and another tour of all the shrines in Ambrosia to pray to get the cards), and It'll be time to tackle Exodus itself. Fortunately this game predates the idea of exponentially increasing experience requirements to level up, so grinding these levels won't be any slower than the ones I've already done... it's a flat 100 xp per level.

Maybe in the process I'll get enough extra cash to get luxuries like silver bows or more dex improvements for the caster, but I am not going to hold up everything for those things. If I get em, I get em, if not, I move on.

 

[Frank]

Ah, many (most?) professions have a gender requirement. Stuff like farmers and builders can be either gender, but dockworkers, policemen, and firemen can only be male, teachers and maids can only be female, etc. Sometimes this can get a bit weird, for example journalists and oil refinery workers can only be women.

As for cabarets, I'm afraid that's also a female-only workplace, so no, it really was a fourteen-year-old girl.

Maybe she's just in the back cleaning toilets for no money in your 3rd world paradise.

Best case scenario.

 

[AshburnerX]

Alternatively:

 

[ThatNickGuy]

Storyteller (demo)

Well, this is clever. You basically create your own little story with comic panels and placing characters into designed scenes. Nothing particularly fancy, but it all works. Cute little puzzle game. You can check out the demo here.

 

[GasBandit]

Still Ultima 3

I've got people up to the level 18ish range. At this rate, I think I will easily afford to cap out the casters' DEX by level 25. There's a LOT of dungeon grinding going on, but I found a good spot on the second floor of the cave of fire that is right near both a healing fountain and a cure poison fountain, though the monsters are mostly in the 5-8 exp range. An occasional dragon wouldn't go awry, you know.

I tried going to Exodus early, just to be done with the grind, and got my ass kicked before I even got halfway through the castle. Guess level 25 is important.

There are some aspects of this game that, obviously (being a 35 year old game) have not aged well. Why can enemies melee attack diagonally but the party can't? Why does every enemy magic user use the same single target spell that has no projectile or line of sight requirement? Why is healing, the archetypical point of white/cleric magic, so underpowered and mana-expensive? Why do level 1 monsters drop the same loot (somewhere between 25-99 gold per encounter) as the highest level enemies? WHY is the Bobit (the Halfling/Hobbit expy) capped at the lowest max DEX in the game?

I'm getting close to the end, and this is mostly whetting my appetite for an actual decent party-based tactical RPG again. I wonder if Baldur's Gate 3 is as good as people say it is.

 

[PatrThom]

I'm getting close to the end, and this is mostly whetting my appetite for an actual decent party-based tactical RPG again. I wonder if Baldur's Gate 3 is as good as people say it is.

You could pause somewhere in the middle, and do a run of Might and Magic VII: For Blood and Honor.

--Patrick

 

[Frank]

I'm getting close to the end, and this is mostly whetting my appetite for an actual decent party-based tactical RPG again. I wonder if Baldur's Gate 3 is as good as people say it is.

I haven't exactly kept up, but as far as I know you can still only play the first chapter.

 

[GasBandit]

I haven't exactly kept up, but as far as I know you can still only play the first chapter.

Ooh, that's good to know. Thanks.

 

[GasBandit]

You could pause somewhere in the middle, and do a run of Might and Magic VII: For Blood and Honor.

--Patrick

You know, I never really got into the Might and Magic games. I think I played HOM&M 1 for a day and got repulsed by the gameplay. Maybe I should give later games another look.

 

[PatrThom]

You know, I never really got into the Might and Magic games. I think I played HOM&M 1 for a day and got repulsed by the gameplay. Maybe I should give later games another look.

VII is the best one, IMO. VI is almost as good (and has some features that are actually better than VII) but feels... smaller? I guess? I have not yet played VIII. HoMM and MM share the same lore, but they are completely different games. (TBS v. RPG).

--Patrick

 

[Bubble181]

Yeah, I love both, but they have very little in common.
In fact, if you want a more modern take on a very traditional footing, you can do a lot worse than M&M X. I quite enjoyed it.

 

[PatrThom]

Per the Wiki:

1-5B tell the Xeen story, which I know nothing about, but which are cosmic in scope.
6-8 tell the Ironfist story, which is more traditional RPG-ish, all take place on one planet, and use a newer engine than the earlier ones.
9 was the last gasp before bankruptcy and the first to use full 3D (instead of 2.5D animated sprites).
10 was Ubisoft.

--Patrick

 

[Bubble181]

Admittedly, it's Ubisoft, but it was pretty much made by an indie team with minor Ubi oversight and direction. It's very much not a Ubisoft game in most respects.

 

[AshburnerX]

I generally liked 3-5B.

 

[PatrThom]

There you go then, Gas. Play through the whole series 1-X and report back in.

--Patrick

 

[GasBandit]

There you go then, Gas. Play through the whole series 1-X and report back in.

--Patrick

 

[GasBandit]

So it's finally time.

We're as prepared as we can be. Max level (25). Max stats. Full health. Mystic weapons and armor.

We have to fight pirates a couple times on the way to Exodus, but at this point they're a minor annoyance. I still have to be careful to sail clear of any sea serpents or man-o-war kraken-things because, while I can surely beat them, they would use up mana and health, and I want to get into Castle Exodus as close to full as I can.

Castle Exodus is guarded by a giant serpent. But we have the mark of the snake, and the silver horn...

Blowing the horn forces the red serpent to dive below the waves in panic - allowing us to sail straight to Exodus' doorstep.

Inside is a tough battle. There's lava and force fields everywhere, but the marks of fire and force make those non-issues. More dangerous are the constant attacks from Sphinxes, Wyverns, and Dragons. Fortunately I don't get attacked by any Balrogs or Devils this time, and eventually I make it to the altar-console of Exodus itself, where the game's most fearsome enemy awaits me - THE FLOORS.

(Terrik is invisible because his character is blinking because it's his turn to move).

Floors have the same sprite as... well, the floor. Thus, they are functionally invisible. Fortunately apart from that, they are mid-level melee enemies. Anna's low on mana from healing in previous encounters, but Snuff has enough for a high level spell - I have him cast Psi-Kill, and many of the camoflaged menaces die immediately. But not all. So I have the party close up ranks, back-to-back, and on each turn everybody slashes out randomly, hoping to hit something. Eventually, the last enemy is killed!

Or, so I thought. I take another step toward the Exodus console, and MORE FLOORS.

Now Snuff is out of mana, so there's nothing for it but to group up again and attack thin air with our mystic weapons. Eventually, the aggressors are whittled down, though it takes a little searching sometimes since enemies can attack diagonally and player characters cannot. But as stated previously, these guys are mid-tier enemies aside from their invisibility, so we manage to handle them.

Praying at the console activates it, and I place the four cards into the four slots - Love, Sol, Moons, and Death, in that order, as directed by the Time Lord at the bottom of the Cave of Moon. Upon insertion of the final card, Exodus goes silent, and is sealed deep beneath the surface of the world. The Ankh appears, and Snuff grabs it - and Castle Exodus begins to collapse.

The party is nearly trapped inside, but we make it out despite the constant hail of rubble. Roll credits. Woo!



Alright, guess I'll try Might and Magic VII next.

 

[GasBandit]

Ok, so I gave Might and Magic 7 a try...

This took a lot of figuring out. The interface is very clunky and unintuitive, but eventually I got what I thought was a passable party going.

So I'm part of this scavenger hunt, right. I seem to be finding things ok, but not everything is going well. Like, the area right outside of town is full of these dragonflies. I thought, you know, typical noob leveling ground, right?

Oh no, they are beating the crap out of me. Half the time my 3 melee characters are out of range of them even if they can hit ME. So, as often as not I end up sprinting my ass back to the village. Problem with that is, there's like, 3 guards in the whole town, and they are kinda spread out. To cut a long story short, half the peasantry and one of the guards are now dead, ravaged by angry low level dragonflies. And like any good party of murderhobos, I capitalize on the opportunity to loot all the bodies.

Anyway, I've turned in the red potion, fancy hat, lute, sea shell, and maybe some other stuff. Apparently the crude longbow I found in a box on the beach isn't a good enough longbow to satisfy the "longbow" part of the scavenger hunt.

And apparently there was this guy who had a "proposition" for me, offering me up a wand of fireball in exchange for a future "favor." Well, I decide I don't like strings attached so I hit ESC to terminate the conversation but I guess it must have accepted the deal anyway because now Snuffles has the wand.

So I went into the local monster temple to get a floor tile for the scavenger hunt, and got swarmed by giant rats. Snuffles uses the wand, and kills all the rats - but also explodes all of us within a pixel of our lives. Limping back to the healer, all the while wondering, is this really how I want to spend my saturday...

 

[Bubble181]

Ok, so I gave Might and Magic 7 a try...

View attachment 38480

This took a lot of figuring out. The interface is very clunky and unintuitive, but eventually I got what I thought was a passable party going.

So I'm part of this scavenger hunt, right. I seem to be finding things ok, but not everything is going well. Like, the area right outside of town is full of these dragonflies. I thought, you know, typical noob leveling ground, right?

Oh no, they are beating the crap out of me. Half the time my 3 melee characters are out of range of them even if they can hit ME. So, as often as not I end up sprinting my ass back to the village. Problem with that is, there's like, 3 guards in the whole town, and they are kinda spread out. To cut a long story short, half the peasantry and one of the guards are now dead, ravaged by angry low level dragonflies. And like any good party of murderhobos, I capitalize on the opportunity to loot all the bodies.

Anyway, I've turned in the red potion, fancy hat, lute, sea shell, and maybe some other stuff. Apparently the crude longbow I found in a box on the beach isn't a good enough longbow to satisfy the "longbow" part of the scavenger hunt.

And apparently there was this guy who had a "proposition" for me, offering me up a wand of fireball in exchange for a future "favor." Well, I decide I don't like strings attached so I hit ESC to terminate the conversation but I guess it must have accepted the deal anyway because now Snuffles has the wand.

So I went into the local monster temple to get a floor tile for the scavenger hunt, and got swarmed by giant rats. Snuffles uses the wand, and kills all the rats - but also explodes all of us within a pixel of our lives. Limping back to the healer, all the while wondering, is this really how I want to spend my saturday...

Hey, don't look at me - there's a reason I suggested X! It's ten years younger than all the rest and as such has much more of a "play the game" vibe than a "follow the correct path or you'll die or make things harder on yourself" thing going on. I love some of the older M&M's (the red ones with peanuts ) but they haven't all aged gracefully.
Of course, if you're willing to play Ultima 3 by grinding everything out to the max, all of the M&M's should be fairly doable.

 

[GasBandit]

Hey, don't look at me - there's a reason I suggested X! It's ten years younger than all the rest and as such has much more of a "play the game" vibe than a "follow the correct path or you'll die or make things harder on yourself" thing going on. I love some of the older M&M's (the red ones with peanuts ) but they haven't all aged gracefully.
Of course, if you're willing to play Ultima 3 by grinding everything out to the max, all of the M&M's should be fairly doable.

I don't know how it was possible, but M&M 7's interface is EVEN CLUNKIER than NES Ultima 3

But I'm going to keep going for a bit and see how it goes.

 

[Frank]

So in the spirit here, I'm playing the FF1 pixel remaster. I haven't played FF1 since I was 7 on the NES when I borrowed it from my aunt's friend.

I just got Scourged by a Dark Wizard before any member of my party could react. TPK. One spell.

OK.

 

[Dave]

I love all the M&M games. Clouds of Xeen is probably my favorite.