Warwind on the way?

Also, sad to hear that when this was originally released the "the graphix must be hawt n steamy" bug had already gotten around.

Remember this! Danke!

You mentioned Wizardry. I didn't hear about Thunderscape before, but I was wondering, if it somehow can be compared to Wizardry. I played Wiz8 a lot and real time exploration, turn based combat, a party instead a single hero... that all sounds quite like Wizardry. Any opinions about that? Thanks!

Very Kool! One step closer to the gold-box series. It's nice to see more SSI titles arriving up here. Wishlisted!

I guess it depends on how fine a comparison you want to make, but yes, in general terms Thunderscape is very much like Wizardry, as well as other RPGs from the 80s and early 90s such as Might and Magic. You create a party of characters, explore a huge world in first-person, fight tons of monsters, build up your characters, and ultimately figure out how to progress on your own. The story is very loose; there are no cutscenes or long dialogues to break up the gameplay. It's just you and the dungeon.

If you want to compare specifically to Wizardry 8 in detail, I would say the three main differences are the combat, the character building, and the focus on dungeon-crawling.

Combat in Thunderscape is easier and MUCH MUCH faster than Wizardry 8. It's also a bit simpler (and less fiddly); your party doesn't have a strict formation, enemy positioning isn't as important, and you don't generally have to worry about your party being completely shut down by status effects like insanity. Enemies are visible wandering around the field, like in Wizardry 8, so there are no random encounters. There are a bunch of different options for combat like feint, mighty blow, etc., kind of like the fighter's berserk option in Wizardry 8, but for the most part they aren't that important.

Thunderscape is level-based but there are no character classes. You gain skill points as you level up, and you can put them in any skill you want. Any character can use (almost) any piece of equipment, as shown in the screenshot of the elf wizard-type (judging from her stats) wearing plate and wielding a hand cannon.

The game world in Thunderscape is quite large, but rather than an overworld dotted with towns, fortresses, etc. that is mostly just for traveling through, it's a megadungeon. You start off in Skelon's Gorge, make your way through the troll caverns, then into Vanguard Keep, and so on. You're in enemy territory all the way through. There are few if any safe / rest spots in the game, fairly little backtracking, and only a handful of friendly NPCs and shops. There's no real dialogue system like Wizardry has, although you can recruit some NPCs into your party, if you have room (if I remember right, you can create between four and six characters, and can recruit NPCs if you have fewer than six). The emphasis is on exploring large, intricate zones, finding keys, puzzle items, secret areas and so on. It's more like Wizardry 6 in that regard.

Last time I bought RPG game was in June, during the summer sale. Then I realized that I had ~50 unfinished RPGs and since it takes forever to finish some of them I decided not to buy any more. I somewhat broke this oath and got Darklands during Atari goodbye promo but it was justified because I was a bit afraid that it would be removed from the catalog. This time, however, I was very tempted but I resisted. I really have to finish some RPGs first and then buy some more. It's cruel to make them collecting virtual dust...

Thanks for sharing the extra info Mentalepsy. Hadn't heard of this one before either (other than the other thread guessing as to the showers coming our way on GOG) wishlisted for now!

Thanks for your detailed answer. That makes my picture about the game much clearer. Over all it sounds very good. I think I will try it. However, I'm a bit afraid that it will become one of the games, I never finish, but that's another issue... ;-)

Waiting and looking forward to Entomorph: Plague of the Darkfall.

So, a place protected by a defensive shield in a narrow pass -- until the enemy manages to take down the shield... Did the SyFy series "Defiance" completely rip that off from "Thunderscape", or is it just a coincidence?

About the game...

How bad is the respawning? (At most once or twice the whole game? Or every time you turn around?)

Does this game level monsters to match you (like Wizardry) or do the monsters stay at a fixed level (like Might & Magic)?

What about inventory management? That's about the only "feature" that bugs me when I go back and play Might & Magic games -- it feels like I get a few seconds of killing/looting, and then it's time to make another trip to the store/town because I'm full. Games end up being about 90% inventory management. How I wish I could take my cart from Daggerfall and drag it into Enroth. And IIRC there was also a "convert item to gold spell" in Daggerfall (or is that some other game I'm thinking of?) that got used on lots of cheap loot.

Me too. (And it doesn't help that some games developed by SSG were published by SSI.)

Warlords I and II are available from the http://www.warlorders.com/ website. (It's run by "KGB" who is one of the people that worked on Warlords IV -- I think those downloads are legit freebies. If you want to make sure they are, you can post in the forums there and ask him to confirm it.)

I plan on making my next gaming box a Win 7 Pro with its VM support just so I can get Warlords III to install (the installer is a 16 bit windows app). It would be nice if GOG would make such contortions unnecessary.

Oh my. :-)

Maybe it was a late-game vs early game thing. Early game (low Light Magic skill expertise) you don't get back as big a % of the item's value, you have a lot less spell points to spend on that sort of thing, and you can't afford to not get full value for your loot. So I probably tended to not use that spell at all early in the game, but use it on low value junk "at will" later in the game.

EDIT: Another difference between Daggerfall and M&M was that in Daggerfall you had the item maker which you could use to enchant heavy items with "feather-weight" (making them weigh practically nothing) and/or with "fortify strength" (increasing how much you could carry) and the limit to what you could carry was purely weight and strength based whereas M&M has those stupid item slots where you end up repeatedly playing the "rearrange the items until they fit like puzzle pieces minigame". Anyways, whatever all the reasons were, I found inventory management much more of a pain in M&M than it ever was in Daggerfall. (Though the "one big linear inventory list you have to scroll through to find your stuff" interface in Daggerfall was a bit annoying).

Some monsters will respawn, but most won't. Once you clear out an area, it will remain clear, for the most part. There are a handful of rooms in the game that continually respawn monsters.

There is no level scaling and each area hosts a specific set of pre-placed monsters.

There is no inventory Tetris and you have a decent amount of space to carry things. Hauling loot back to the store frequently isn't feasible anyway, since most of the time you'll have a very long walk. However, you won't have much need to purchase things anyway after the beginning of the game, nor any shortage of gold, so you can easily leave lesser loot behind.

Ha - "inventory Tetris" - learned a new term today.

Thanks for the info. Sounds like I'll have to give this game a try.