The Bard's Tale II

[azraelck]

I'm not talking about going back to the review board and getting XP a second time; I'm talking the huge amount you get early on when beating whatshisface in the 'starter' dungeon.

The thing there was the game meant to give the entire party the XP if the critter was killed; but dead ones got nothing. So it tried to compensate, which resulted in EVERYBODY getting double. Big difference from just getting the initial experience and it being enough to bump you up a good deal. BT3 isn't the only game I've seen so affected. In fact, I had the same issue in a RPG I wrote years ago that I never fixed. Lost the whole thing, so it became moot.

It never affected me much, because I always had a leveled party from BT2 to play with. I only went through that dungeon once or twice, with pathetic ease. Having two Archmages at level 18 or so tends to do that.

Most older, pre-VGA DOS games had absolutely horrid graphics. Period. Everything else was better in that respect, until the 256 color VGA came out, and DOS managed to catch up to or beat most of the others. The reasoning being that DOS was not considered a "gaming" OS at first, and was marketed towards businesses (and still is! We use DR DOS at work). Later, VGA came along, and coupled with a few other things (including a complete rip off of GEOS) and some good marketing, became what we have today; a complete mess.

[Zeno]

This thread inspired me to go download DOSBox and Bard's Tale 1-3.

Now I need to find graph paper. TO STAPLES! AWAY!

[azraelck]

http://bardstale.brotherhood.de/talefil ... index.html
http://bardstale.brotherhood.de/talefil ... index.html
http://bardstale.brotherhood.de/talefil ... index.html

They have maps available there. Yeah, it's cheating, but I'm old and have played through all three anyway. Still have some of my old maps too, but I printed these out because I can't read my handwriting.

[Zeno]

Heh, I'm am feeling rather lazy today. I guess I'll just go ahead and download the pre-made maps.

On a completely different and only slightly related note, does anyone know where to get the Wizardys? I think they're still commercial, so they're not abandonware just yet. Specifically 7, as everyone seems to think that's the best.

[azraelck]

BWAHAHAHA! Welcome to the Dark Side! Soon you'll be wanting games that play themselves!

Actually, Sirtech went under, so the series in the NA market is in limbo now. Japan still gets them, but that's because the Japanese have better tastes than the majority of NA gamers, and actually buy these kinds of games. At any rate, you can try Amazon or Evilbay for the Ultimate Wizardry Archives. This includes all 7 originals, plus Wizardry Gold, the Win95 remake of 7. Also try to find 8, as it is one of the best commercial RPGs to have come out in the past decade or so.

You might also dig up the PS2 Wizardy: Tale of the Forsaken Land. It's by Atlus, and is somewhat rare. Not bad, it's on my desk right now, though I haven't been playing anything on my consoles lately.

I actually have 6 and 7 on the original disks, plus I had the Archives, plus I bought an unopened copy of Gold for $1 at a library. I just didn't get 4 backed up on a good disk, so I lost it.