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General discussionSo, which game should I try first?(17 posts)(17 posts)
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This is my favourite topic
Posted May 29, 2019
It is time for me to try starting a new dungeon crawling RPG, and I am wondering which of these games I should attempt to play first. (Note that I will be using WINE for games without native Linux versions.)

The choices are:
* Mary Skelter: Nightmares (already in my GOG library)
* Serment: Contract With a Devil (will buy from GOG)
* WIzardry: Labyrinth of Lost Souls (since GOG rejected it, will buy from Humble Bundle, even though I would prefer a different DRM-free site)
Posted May 29, 2019
Anyone?
Posted May 29, 2019
Mary Skelter - I tried it and it's good.

Wizardy is delayed.
Posted May 29, 2019
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BeatriceElysia: Mary Skelter - I tried it and it's good.
Have you tried Serment?
Posted May 29, 2019
I second the proposal of Mary Skelter.

A shame about Wizardry. I'm reading about it right now, but can't find any real clues about the IP issues.
Posted May 29, 2019
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BeatriceElysia: Mary Skelter - I tried it and it's good.
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dtgreene: Have you tried Serment?
No, but Mary seems somehow better.
Posted May 29, 2019
I'll take a fourth option and suggest Avernum.
Posted May 29, 2019
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dtgreene: It is time for me to try starting a new dungeon crawling RPG, and I am wondering which of these games I should attempt to play first. (Note that I will be using WINE for games without native Linux versions.)

The choices are:
* Mary Skelter: Nightmares (already in my GOG library)
* Serment: Contract With a Devil (will buy from GOG)
* WIzardry: Labyrinth of Lost Souls (since GOG rejected it, will buy from Humble Bundle, even though I would prefer a different DRM-free site)
Do like Lucille Ball and put em all on the lazy susan...whatever doesn't fall of is what you play
Post edited May 29, 2019 by GameRager
Posted May 29, 2019
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dtgreene:
I'd play MSN first, since you have it. I'd recommend the Wizardry game, given what you probably would like the most, but apparently it's been delayed (and I have no idea if it works on Linux, obviously). Use dxvk with MSN and you will probably not have any problems. Serment is in ren'py, which is slow and bloated, but it does work on Linux. Thing is, Serment is 8 fairly small levels. MSN is just a much, much bigger game. They also just released a patch that changes some significant factors, and it's hard to say if that won't happen again real soon now (but MSN is pretty much as it was at release).

Edit: I should also mention that one way Serment stretches those 8 small levels is to limit the amount of "time" you can spend in the dungeon per "day" (each battle causes time to advance, until you beat the game at least once). You also have to "travel" from place to place in town, which takes lots of time, and cooking and crafting and events take time, etc. The other way is to have 4 unique characters with character-specific cut scenes, so you have to play 4 times minimum if you're a completionist. To be fair, MSN also requires that you repeat the ending with all 10 characters to fill out the gallery, but that's a lot less time and the gallery is not that important.
Post edited May 29, 2019 by darktjm
Posted May 29, 2019
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dtgreene: The choices are:
* Mary Skelter: Nightmares (already in my GOG library)
* Serment: Contract With a Devil (will buy from GOG)
* WIzardry: Labyrinth of Lost Souls (since GOG rejected it, will buy from Humble Bundle, even though I would prefer a different DRM-free site)
As others have mentioned, Wizardry got delayed due to a licensing issue.

As for the other 2 it depends on what you are looking for. Mary Skelter has a very dark, very serious story and will last you about ~100h for a thorough run towards the true ending.

Obviously serment is heavier on the VN side than it is on the actual dungeon crawling (but the latter is actually quite competent i found out). The story is quite light hearted and cute. Each of the 4 protagonists has a different route (using that as a VN term) so replayability is higher than MS.

Personally i have finished MS twice (once on vita and once on this recent GOG release.
Not as deep (mechanics wise) as say... the dungeon crawlers from Experience inc. but i enjoyed my combined ~200 hours with it.
Post edited May 29, 2019 by Hikage1983
Posted May 30, 2019
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Darvond: I'll take a fourth option and suggest Avernum.
That's the wrong type of game for this topic, and therefore isn't something I am considering at this time.

(Also, I believe I have actually played through most of that game.)
Posted May 30, 2019
Trying Mary Skelter, but haven't got it to run on my laptop yet. Currently, with dxvk it complains about extensions that are not supported, despite vulkaninfo listing them as available.

(Bard's Tale Trilogy runs fine under dxvk, aside from the same issue with legacy mode setting names being invisible that I've experienced under OpenGL. It may often drop to around 15 FPS, but the game is still perfectly playable at that frame rate.)
Posted May 30, 2019
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Darvond: I'll take a fourth option and suggest Avernum.
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dtgreene: That's the wrong type of game for this topic, and therefore isn't something I am considering at this time.

(Also, I believe I have actually played through most of that game.)
If you have time someday try getting the older Exile games to run(I believe Exile 3 is the best and it runs in 32 bit windows iirc). Those games have more gritty graphics but to me I liked them a bit better in some cases(maybe it's partly due to nostalgia).
Posted May 31, 2019
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dtgreene: Trying Mary Skelter, but haven't got it to run on my laptop yet. Currently, with dxvk it complains about extensions that are not supported, despite vulkaninfo listing them as available.
I should also mention that I'm a bit behind with my dxvk updates. I'm still using 1.0, which doesn't require the VK_EXT_host_query_reset extension. Maybe that will work better for you. I should really update to 1.0.3 myself, at least, or more likely 1.2.1. I'm still in the middle of retesting my games with wine-4.0, though, and don't really want to retest dxvk as well every time it updates.

And... I accidentally edited out my old post. Oh well, it was quoted in its entirety below.
Post edited May 31, 2019 by darktjm
Posted May 31, 2019
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dtgreene: Trying Mary Skelter, but haven't got it to run on my laptop yet. Currently, with dxvk it complains about extensions that are not supported, despite vulkaninfo listing them as available.
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darktjm: Your wine is probably too old. The only supported vulkan functions are what wine supports, even if your native driver itself supports it. In fact, I take back my statement that dxvk will probably be all you need. For one, I could never get it to not crash with movies, and completely forgot until I rechecked my notes database. To fix this, rename MOVIES to something else and view the movies with mplayer or whatever if you're interested. They're just the main intro and outro.

For another, I was curious and reinstalled msn from scratch using wine-2.04 and wine-3.0.4, and neither worked very well (even though my notes said it used to work on 3.0.x). 2.0.4 crashes on startup and 3.0.4 crashes after the (corrupted) logos. 4.0 works fine. I'm also sure it worked fine on 3.1+-staging, even without dxvk.

Here are some more of my old notes, from my database:
* buggy as hell, apparently even in Windows:
* crash almost guaranteed if you fall in a pit/broken floor
* hang guaranteed if you touch the blue shortcuts on Underground Cave area 3 for the first time without saving/loading first
* hang sometimes when just exploring Underground Cave area 3
* hang on Underground Cave areas when Reposition Gather Points bonus selected

Also, getting controllers to work is a bit more effort. Having multiple devices that map to the same controller is the main issue (it'll constantly ask you if you want to change controllers). For one, I disable the new-style SDL-based controllers entirely by building wine without SDL support. I used to disable it via registry settings::' "Enable SDL"=doword:00000000' under WineBus in system.reg, I think. Even then, you'll have to also disable either the js or event device ("wine control joy.cpl" or registry edits); I usually disable js in the hopes that the game supports vibration (only one game I have seems to work with that, though). I also have to disable my ds4's Motion Sensors device for pretty much every game.
I had this error happen with wine 4.2 on my laptop (wine-development from buster). I hjave also tried with wine 4.0 om ny desktop (wine from stretch-backports) and no dxvk (I get a warning that Vulkan support on Haswell is incomplete, so I didn't bother trying it), and I can get up to the load screen, but it crashes instead of going to the title screen.

In any case, I bought Serment and have it working (though I still do want to play Mary Skelter).

(I did do the trick of renaming MOVIES.)
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General discussionSo, which game should I try first?(17 posts)(17 posts)
(17 posts)