Overall most helpful review

Posted on: April 11, 2015

Darcin

Games: Reviews: 37

All the nopes

This game embraces the old 90's era dungeon crawlers to the point of fault. Basic things, like transferring a sword from one character to another, is overly time consuming, tedious, and remarkably easy to mess up. Inventory management is remarkably time consuming and tedious. Gold management, yes just regular money management, is tedious. Buying a healing potion is tedious. You get the idea. All the little improvements to gaming over the many years that made things better, faster, and more fun, have been outright ignored. To add to it, they've turned the difficulty up to 11 and ripped the knob off. I made the mistake of training in the training room and my opponent killed my party. Not defeated. Not bashed to a pulp. Killed. Their bodies were moved to the temple and they're stuck like that. (The bodies keep the gold so I, the player, can't afford it and they can't pay the priest, being dead and all. It's a weird catch 22. I think I'm expected to just reroll.) I could probably learn to deal with the difficulty part if it weren't so monotonous to do anything in the game. Without a serious patch or a modpack, this just isn't all it could be.

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Posted on: April 7, 2015

DCT

Verified owner

Games: 1310 Reviews: 10

The closest thing to Wizardry 1-5

Thac0(To hit a armor class of 0), vast maze like dungeons, deadly traps, deep charecter and party customization, level and stat drains, possible permadeath, large mobs of monsters, anti magic zones, zones of darkness, and all that. If those words start making your mouth water or makes you start thinking back to the old school Wizardry games and fond memories of late nights being glued to the warm glow of a computer screen with a caffinated soda in one hand and a pile of graph paper in the other savouring the fustrastion and the joys of trying to solve a vast deadly monster filled maze. Then this game is for you. This game is a Wizardry clone and one that isn't afraid to really hold anything back but rather embraces the old school nature of those games. Monsters that can drain your stats or levels, it's got that. Possible one hit deaths it's got that. Vast maze like dungeons made to get you lost? oh yeah it's got that and in spades over 94 floors to explore spread out over 16 dungeons, varied monsters it's got that too, it's even has for better or worse the old school Wizardry 1-5 level up system you know the one where you have to rest at a inn and your stats can not only increase but decrease every level up but it is balanced out, characters that can age yup, if it was a part of the old Wizardy rule system it's probably in this game. Now this game isn't for everyone, if you are the easily fustrated type this game will be a major turn off as this game is unapologetically hard and is not only emulates old school Wizardry games in the rules but also in the games style of graphics which take a cue from the japan only PS1 remakes of Wizardry's 1-5 which used 3d graphics for the dungeons and static hi-res portraits for the monsters and the town though the town is still a menu. But if that doesn't bother you and your looking for something that captures the old school Wizardry era dungeon crawler then this is for you.

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Posted on: April 9, 2015

Sarisio

Verified owner

Games: 240 Reviews: 1

Real Dungeon Crawler

To put it blunt, there were no actual Turn-Based Party-Based dungeon crawlers on PC since the days of Demise. This game is basically THE first game in over 10 years which is true to the spirit of dungeon crawlers and it is a true successor of Wizardry series (which got their continuation in Japan). Huge mazes? You got it. Tons of monsters? You got it. Tons of loot? You got it. No auto-scaling? You got it. No level cap? You got it. On top of that - brilliant artwork, vivid colors and font which is easy to read, so eyes rest when playing this game. This game might feel alienous to some for the lack of hand-holding, and let's embrace it: hand-holding and dungeon crawlers are mutually exclusive and that is one of the reasons why people love them. As such, this is a rather niche subgenre nowadays, as people might expect automaps, tutorials up to the very end of the game, which they expect to reach in couple evenings, and streamlined gameplay. This game doesn't teach you how to play it, it gives you the freedom to explore it on your own and learn from your own mistakes. This is one of those games, which you play each evening for "+1 more Level", another dungeon floor explored, etc. This game can easily keep you busy for months. This game is a rare gem of dungeon crawlers and is a steal for its price.

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Posted on: April 11, 2015

Bonegnawer

Verified owner

Games: 375 Reviews: 1

For hardcore nostalgic gamers

Every new generation of games takes the things that worked in the past, enhances them and drops things that didn't work. This game is not discriminating, it embraces the past wholy. Using a evolution methaphor, it's a modern midle aged guy who strips nacked in the zoo and climbs into the primates enclosure only to run around and fling his droppings at the visitors. It's amusing on paper, but in reallity it stinks. Why ? read on.. The game is not optimized for PC, you can feel the console orgins in every menu and option. Play with controller if possible, keyboard and mouse is akward. As the game barely explains even the simplest things ( no description or flavor texts for options) you have to RTFM. Graphics department is a mixed bag - Most sprites are nice, which a big helping of japanese weirdness, enviroment and dungeons would be ok for year 1999 (they give a early quake vibe). Gameplay is classic Wizardry, a unappologic grindfest full of lol random "yer dead, Harry!" moments, "please pay for ressurection (which may fail and destroy your char forever)". You have to pay for everything, even identifing basic trash items. So why not one star ? Beacuse somewhat it still works. There is a satisfaction to get a good set of attributes on char creation after smashing the reroll button like epileptic monkey for 20 minutes. It's a grimm fun to escape another unfair encounter. It's a test of will. Shame nobody cared to polish it.

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Posted on: April 12, 2015

sivant

Verified owner

Games: 575 Reviews: 5

Mediocre AND old fashioned

Elminage Gothic is an old fashioned dungeon crawler. Unfortunately, it is an old fashioned "B list" dungeon crawler. 8 hours in and I would say there are no glaring flaws (except maybe that the mechanics are strongly RNGed) but there is nothing outstanding about this game, except the monster art, which varies between passable, to excellent. The music is nice, I wish there was more, and higher quality. The mechanics are passable. The interface is awful. The dungeon is ugly (early 90's design) and uses a 3d engine, which is incongruous from the rest of the game. Bards Tale, Wizardry, and even many of the console crawlers, such as Arcana are all far superior to this game, offering a richer bit of story telling, more streamlined gameplay, and more enjoyable mechanics. While I love dungeon crawlers, there are far too many good ones out there to spend any time on this one. In many ways, it feels like a sophomoric and all together under achieving effort.

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