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KD rambles more about games nobody's played
8 years ago
Old games were kind of lame, you know?
I remember spending many hours playing the Quest for Glory games, building up the stats on my characters. They maxed out at 100 x (Installment #). There were pretty easy ways to build up most major stats in the games just by repeating easy actions.
In the first, the Goblin Training Zone could build up combat stats with ease. The Mage's Maze could let you spam magic. The Healer's house had a barred door for lockpicking, a tree to climb, and rocks to practice throwing.
It was hard to practice most stats in the third game, but you could use the wrestling bridge like monkey bars to max out your strength easily. (Also there was a funny response if Uhura saw you try to do that. "That's not how you use the bridge! YOU'RE DOING IT WRONG!")
Don't get me wrong. It's a fantastic series for its characters, story, and pervasive humor. The problem is, while the Fighter needed to get combat stats high enough to defeat certain mandatory enemies, stat building was mostly pointless for Wizard and Thief. Wizard could solve nearly all puzzles with non-combat magic, and that didn't take much mana at all. It becomes sillier in later games as your mana keeps expanding by 100, but the costs for spells don't keep up.
Thief has almost no mandatory skill checks, and they require relatively low numbers. In the first game for example, the standard path needs ~50 Stealth (to steal the kobold's key and sneak past Toro) and enough Climbing to grab the flying acorn and climb over the brigand gate. There is a strength check to open the brigands' secret door, but you can just retry until it opens.
Since I like talking about Cyberstorm, let's talk about Cyberstorm. The Sensei HERC is completely useless. In the first mission, you are stuck with just the Shadow (a scout HERC) and Remora (a superlight assault HERC). The Sensei has the Remora's weapons and Shadow's scout sensors, but costs twice as much as a Shadow and Remora combined and is both fragile and slow. Who designed that?
Most of the Bioderms (pilots) are kind of useless too. If you look up guides or ask old players, they'll probably be like "Tola is the best! Just buy a bunch of Tola!". Guys... no. He costs 50,000 credits. Jarvis costs like 15,000, but is plenty good at both Energy weapons and Missiles, which is all you need to pilot your army full of Demons and Reapers.
I was recently reconnected with an old and terrible game called B.A.T.. I remembered small bits of it from my hatchiehood, but we couldn't get it figured out back then. Watching the longplay of it on YouTube revealed that there's nothing to figure out. You talk to some people, you play Simon at an automated kiosk to earn extra money (What?!?), you have one mandatory combat, and one maze. Game complete. You start off by assigning a bunch of stats that mean nothing, and picking a free weapon where one is way better than the others. Who designed this?!
I remember spending many hours playing the Quest for Glory games, building up the stats on my characters. They maxed out at 100 x (Installment #). There were pretty easy ways to build up most major stats in the games just by repeating easy actions.
In the first, the Goblin Training Zone could build up combat stats with ease. The Mage's Maze could let you spam magic. The Healer's house had a barred door for lockpicking, a tree to climb, and rocks to practice throwing.
It was hard to practice most stats in the third game, but you could use the wrestling bridge like monkey bars to max out your strength easily. (Also there was a funny response if Uhura saw you try to do that. "That's not how you use the bridge! YOU'RE DOING IT WRONG!")
Don't get me wrong. It's a fantastic series for its characters, story, and pervasive humor. The problem is, while the Fighter needed to get combat stats high enough to defeat certain mandatory enemies, stat building was mostly pointless for Wizard and Thief. Wizard could solve nearly all puzzles with non-combat magic, and that didn't take much mana at all. It becomes sillier in later games as your mana keeps expanding by 100, but the costs for spells don't keep up.
Thief has almost no mandatory skill checks, and they require relatively low numbers. In the first game for example, the standard path needs ~50 Stealth (to steal the kobold's key and sneak past Toro) and enough Climbing to grab the flying acorn and climb over the brigand gate. There is a strength check to open the brigands' secret door, but you can just retry until it opens.
Since I like talking about Cyberstorm, let's talk about Cyberstorm. The Sensei HERC is completely useless. In the first mission, you are stuck with just the Shadow (a scout HERC) and Remora (a superlight assault HERC). The Sensei has the Remora's weapons and Shadow's scout sensors, but costs twice as much as a Shadow and Remora combined and is both fragile and slow. Who designed that?
Most of the Bioderms (pilots) are kind of useless too. If you look up guides or ask old players, they'll probably be like "Tola is the best! Just buy a bunch of Tola!". Guys... no. He costs 50,000 credits. Jarvis costs like 15,000, but is plenty good at both Energy weapons and Missiles, which is all you need to pilot your army full of Demons and Reapers.
I was recently reconnected with an old and terrible game called B.A.T.. I remembered small bits of it from my hatchiehood, but we couldn't get it figured out back then. Watching the longplay of it on YouTube revealed that there's nothing to figure out. You talk to some people, you play Simon at an automated kiosk to earn extra money (What?!?), you have one mandatory combat, and one maze. Game complete. You start off by assigning a bunch of stats that mean nothing, and picking a free weapon where one is way better than the others. Who designed this?!
But it also has velociraptors and lets the big dinosaurs swallow people whole, so it makes up for any shortcomings.