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girl dick energy
Sep 30, 2009

You think you have the wherewithal to figure out my puzzle vagina?

In 1991, both Dungeons and Dragons and computer games were a Big Deal, and a little company called Westwood Associates created two games under the D&D license for MS-DOS. This game was good enough to get ported several times, and the first of two one and only sequel was even better. It's a reasonably faithful adaptation of the system, especially given the technical limitations, and once upon a time, you could probably start a fight by proclaiming it was better or worse than the Gold Box games. Sure, it hasn't aged perfectly, but it's a classic, in every sense of the word.

:frogsiren: This is not an LP of that game. :frogsiren:


That game was good. This game is an unholy abomination created by a company called Pronto Games who spent the next few years pumping out GBA and Wii shovelware before they dissolved and went on to make F2P cell phone shovelware instead. The wonderful people at Pronto somehow managed to actually make a game with less content than one that came out on MS-DOS, including cutting out the ranger and paladin character classes. The gameplay is changed from real-time to turn-based isometric with shoddy AI. Item effects are bugged or broken, AI can glitch out, the game can even straight-up freeze on rare but not unheard-of occasions. It is, by all accounts, a terrible game and not worth your time.

Which is why I am going to play it for you. Unfortunately, I shelter a small amount of nostalgia for this atrocity, as it was my first real exposure to D&D and the only non-Pokemon RPG I owned on my GBA until a friend took pity on me and gave me his copy of Superstar Saga. Which means I am in the unique position of being able to tolerate this game. That does not, however, mean I am going to be nice to it. I will save-scum, I will use whatever broken strategies are still left in the system, and I will make this awful, awful game my bitch. Because therapy is expensive.

This is going to be a screenshot LP, and because just complaining about what's broken all the time will get old fast, I will also be attempting to make it a trivia-heavy, humorous/informative LP. Monster lore, bits of mythology, quirky D&D rules, anything I've got that's a bit more interesting than just listening to me whine and moan about everything wrong with this game (and there is a lot wrong with this game).

If someone else decides they want to LP the original games, then I will gladly link it here.

Oh, and one other thing. I have a bad reputation of abandoning LPs. It's nothing new, and I plan to get out some kind of update just about every week to ten days, keep myself to a schedule. But just in case...

I will make some kind of substantial update (gameplay or informational) at least every three weeks until the LP is finished. :toxx:

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Gameplay Updates
Update 01 - You All Meet In A Clunky Interface

Procrastination Information Updates
How Turns Work and What The Stats Mean

Fan Whatever
None yet.

girl dick energy fucked around with this message at 17:15 on Sep 10, 2015

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girl dick energy
Sep 30, 2009

You think you have the wherewithal to figure out my puzzle vagina?
Reserved for w/e.

girl dick energy
Sep 30, 2009

You think you have the wherewithal to figure out my puzzle vagina?
Reserved for w/e.

girl dick energy
Sep 30, 2009

You think you have the wherewithal to figure out my puzzle vagina?
Reserved for w/e.

girl dick energy
Sep 30, 2009

You think you have the wherewithal to figure out my puzzle vagina?
Update 01 - You All Meet In A Clunky Interface

Pretend there's a video link to the opening here. :effort:







Evil monsters began appearing beneath a town, and that town's king hired a bunch of expendable, heavily-armed lunatics to wander down there and hopefully kill whatever's the source of all that poo poo, and find out who or what this Xanathar is. (I'll give you a hint: It's in the title of the game, and it's not a dragon.)

P.S. I didn't gently caress up the resizing, the images actually do look that bad. :ssh:
P.P.S. You should check out the filenames of the screenshots at some point.





Selecting a new game immediately dumps us into this menu, where we're asked to choose and/or roll up four characters to make up our party. There is, however, absolutely no context given for what any of this means, so you better hope you read the manual or know what Combat Reflexes does, rear end in a top hat! As this came out in 2002, the game switched from AD&D to the then-new D&D Third Edition, so anyone expecting low AC to be better got a nasty surprise, too.

Each character is made up of several things, which I will cover briefly here, and in more detail in another post. If you already know all this poo poo, you can probably skip this. For a fully authentic experience, while scrolling through this list, occasionally misclick back to the top of the page, and make sure you're listening to the sound of a duck farting through a trumpet the whole time.

Name: Names have an eleven-character limit.
Gender: Changing which of the two equally-annoying stock death screams you use.
Alignment: In D&D proper, a rough description of how you act, both on how Good or Evil you are, and of how much you prefer order or freedom. In the game, affects precisely one spell in a way that I'm pretty sure is actually bugged to not work at all.
Race: Human, Dwarf, Elf, Gnome, Half-Elf, Hobbit Halfling, or Half-Orc, all the D&D 3e player races. This is just about the only time you'll actually see a complete set of options. They change a couple of your starting stats and maybe give you an ability or two.
Ability Scores: Strength, Dexterity, Constitution, Intelligence, Wisdom, and Charisma. What they do will be covered in another update, but real quick: Dudes who hit dudes want good Strength and Constitution, sneaky dudes and snipers like a high Dexterity, those self-righteous holy jerks cast off their Wisdom, wizards need high Intelligence, and no one cares about Charisma.

Choosing a really bizarre time to be authentic, the only way to determine your stats is to roll them. You can't arrange them at all, and you've already chosen your race and appearance (and so probably have your class in mind already), so your only real option is to keep rerolling over and over until you get something decent. You don't want to know how many rerolls it took to get a decent set of stats for each of my jerks.

Thirty-five times just for my first character.

This is getting boring, I'm sure.

Here's a picture of a beholder and his pun-loving ghost buddy. (Art by Mike Franchina)

Class/Level: There are four classes in EotBGBA (reduced from six in the original DOS version :what:), covering the four basic character archetypes. Clerics use holy magic, but can wear decent armor and carry themselves in a fight if they have to. Fighters are the best at hitting things, and are crucial in the early game but kind of useless by the end. Rogues are the sneaky fuckers, and are way too fragile for a class that's expected to get behind enemy lines and stab monsters in the rear end. And Wizards blow everything the gently caress up... eventually. Right now, they're made of tissue paper and hit about as hard.
Feats: I really don't want to spend too long going over this, but Feats are little ways to min-max personalize your character. But all of the interesting ones were cut out, of course, so it's basically just choosing which of your secondary numbers you want to increase slightly. (There are two exceptions, but I'll get into that later.)
Skills: There's a huge gently caress-off list of skills that the game asks you to put points into, and half of them are literally useless in this game. Ironically, the one that IS useful for everyone could have been made obsolete by someone remembering to bring a goddamn compass.

Portrait and Sprite: Technically come up between Race and Class, but gently caress that, this parses better. Shows how your duder show up in menus and in battle. There's 24 faces, a surprising number of which clearly made Charisma their dump stat. There are 16 sprites, but getting pictures of them, too... :effort:

This is normally in an LP where I'd talk about the choices available to you and put things up to a vote, but there's so few good options compared to how many hosed up ones there are that it's not even worth the time.



Our party is done, so we can start the game!




Immediately upon starting, the entrance we saw in the opening collapses. Now, the only way is forward. By fate and our own choices, we are bound to progress, to move ahead despite our growing dread, overcoming terrible trials, until the deed is finished and the LP is in the archives.

But first, let's look at the shmucks I rolled up.


ActionHank the Human Fighter
Feats: Improved Initiative, Iron Will, Quick Draw
Skills: Appraise, Climb, Intuit Direction, Listen, Search, Spot
Magic: None


Munchkin the Human Rogue
Feats: Point Blank Shot, Precise Shot
Skills: Appraise, Disable Device, Hide, Intuit Direction, Open Lock, Tumble, Use Magic Device
Magic: None


Neil Sporin the Human Cleric
Feats: Martial Weapon Proficiency, Point Blank Shot
Skills: Concentration, Heal, Intuit Direction, Spellcraft
Magic: 3 Level-0 and 2 Level-1 Divine Spells


DUNJINMASTA the Human Wizard
Feats: Combat Casting, Improved Initiative
Skills: Appraise, Concentration, Hide, Intuit Direction, Listen, Spellcraft, Spot
Magic: 3 Level-0 and 3 Level-1 Arcane Spells

You may have noticed that I chose four humans in a fantasy game, and this is for one very simple reason: Humans have no stat modifiers, but get extra skill points and a free feat. In the tabletop game, where feats are a huge part of making most characters effective, this is ridiculously important. In EotBGBA, it's... still pretty important, if only because I don't actually trust many of the other racial benefits to actually be coded in properly.

I also chose four males, but I have no clever reasoning for that.


Like the original, exploring the dungeon happens in first person. And like the original, aside from the music in the opening and while making the characters (and the ending song, which is just the opening theme again), this game actually has no music whatsoever. So instead, listen to this really good track from the Sega CD version. Or the pretty respectable soundtrack from the SNES version. Or even the much better character-generation music from the original DOS game.

This is not the first time this game will be outshined by one made before the fall of the USSR.


Pressing Start pulls up a map that autofills as you explore, though it doesn't actually show any of the contents of the map, aside from closed doors. You can check every wall for a secret door or passage, but there is exactly one wall in the entire game with an actual secret area behind it.


A bit further down the hall, we find our first door.


It's unlocked, so pressing the A button opens it. On the opposite side, it reveals a kobold, representing a squad of enemies that we'll have to fight. Kobolds are weak, fragile enemies who can still make a mockery out of you if you built your characters wrong. Good thing this game has thorough and readily-available documentation about how the combat system works!


Sure, we could try talking to the monster, but they've never got anything interesting to say. Attacking gives you a pretty decent bonus towards getting the first turn, and diplomacy is just about completely useless, so there's never not a reason to go murderhobo if you have the option.


Welcome to combat. If you're familiar with any tactical RPG, just imagine whatever the most simple system you can think of is, and then remove anything interesting from it. The game actually does have a few hidden modifiers, but never mentions them anywhere outside of the manual. Basically: Try to surround enemies, don't cast spells in range of someone who can whack you, and don't shoot at dudes already melee fighting.


Munchkin here goes first, so he's going to try and peg one of those monsters before they get a turn. As a Rogue, he gets Sneak Attack, which does extra damage to a surrounded ("flanked") enemy, or one who hasn't gotten to take a turn yet. So, if he hits, he'll do an extra bit of damage.



...kind of a big if in the early game.


Hank, being our Fighter, is best-suited to introducing the kobolds to the particulars of the combat system and what a decent attack and damage rate looks like.


God dammit, Hank.


God dammit, Hank.


I guess that's as decent an excuse as any to transition to talking about magic. Clerics and wizards can cast spells. Generally speaking, wizards spells have greater range and are more damaging, but also have a chance to automatically fail if the caster is wearing armor. And casting a spell within melee range of an enemy lets them get a free shot at you before you get the spell off. Screw this up, and your caster can be straight-up killed before you know what's happening.


Healing spells like Neil's Cure Light Wounds can only be cast on yourself or someone adjacent, so he has to waddle closer to the front line in order to keep Hank alive. (The floating number is his current HP, by the way, not the amount of healing the spell will do.)


There's a little sparkly effect that's hard to capture in screenshots with the spell, and I can't be arsed to go make a gif of it. But the developers couldn't even be arsed to make the numbers a different color when it's healing, so we're even.


Despite being made of wet paper and having maybe a half-dozen good shots before his spells are out for the day, DUNJIN is still our best chance at the moment of killing a monster that we want dead. And why is that?


Unlike just about everything else we have access to right now, physical or magic...




Magic Missile has perfect accuracy.



And the game actually throws us a bone here. Remember what I said about enemies getting a free shot on a caster? That's called an Attack of Opportunity (renamed to the much less awkward Opportunity Attack in later editions), and it happens whenever a creature tries to perform a 'threatening' action next to an enemy that can perform melee attacks. Trying to move while already in melee range is a threatening action. (Most of the time. It's... complicated.)

Short version: That kobold tried to run past ActionHank and Hank clotheslined him with a longsword. (Sprites don't change to suit the wielder's actual weapon.)


Most of the enemies just stood around because they were boxed in, so it's come back around to our turn.

...and that's pretty much the entirety of low-level D&D combat. Lots of missing, the occasional lucky shot, and way-too-complex rules about getting stabbed in the kidney for doing the wrong thing within arm's reach of someone who wants to stab you in the kidney.



Forgive me if I gloss over it most of the time.


Victory! But we're injured, and most of our spells have been used. How do we fix that? Why, with the wonderful mass of bullshit that is Resting! There's no need to eat or drink in the dungeon, but sleeping for eight hours is the only way to get back your spells, and to refill ranged weapon ammo.

This leads to a phenomenon known as the "ten minute adventuring day", where a party of adventurers will get into one fight that lasts a matter of minutes, then turn in for eight hours so they can actually have the tools needed to win the next fight.


To rest, you need to do three things. First, find a nice cozy little dead-end corner. Second, have a character with a high Hide skill perform the Rest action from the menu. Third, pray.

Each time you rest, there is a non-zero chance that you will be ambushed by a randomly-generated encounter based on the difficulty of the area. While this can be useful for grinding for gold and XP, it's a bit of a problem that these encounters interrupt the restoration and healing you would normally get. Realistic and faithful to the rules, perhaps, but ambushing a player who is trying to save after just barely beating a difficult fight with nothing to blame but random chance when they get wiped out is a very, very good way to get your game turned into a balistic missile or a dog toy.

Thankfully, our first one goes off without a hitch, but it's not a matter of if I'll eventually get killed while trying to save after a difficult section, just a matter of when.



I'm not going to describe every room and hall in detail, since they're all very same-y and dull. Instead, I'll just show shots of the map and speed-bump encounters along the way, only taking out the proper time when there's something interesting (like a bullshit new enemy or a bullshit trap).

For example the area behind the door to the north is completely empty.


More kobolds!


This time, they're joined by two Kobold archers, who hit just as hard as Hank, while also actually being able to hit the broad side of a barn.



Case in point.

But remember when I said I was going to use every bullshit tactic at my disposal?

:slick: It's just a jump to the left. :slick:

How To gently caress Up Archers, A Guide:


Step One: Holler at animals.


Step Two: Get banned from the zoo.




Step Three: Face God and walk backwards into hell.

Dated dril reference aside, what just happened is actually very simple, and comes down to two things:

First: Except for a few scripted sections, encounters won't trigger if you can't see them unless you're adjacent.
Second: Due to one of this game's many, many bugs, when the game rotates the party's starting formation, it also rotates the enemy's starting formation.

These two things together total up to a very easy way to cheese a lot of ranged-focused encounters.


Just be sure to set your party order back to normal when you're done unless you want to try having your wizard facetank encounters.


Most of the loot you get from encounters is vendor trash (which is why I didn't mention it before), but sometimes you find something decent. That light crossbow will serve Munchkin very well for a good while.


Behind the kobolds, a door that can't be opened! You can have your rogue or fighter try to force the door open, to show you actually know how the menu works...


But why bother when the switch is in the very next square?

I honestly like this door from a game design perspective as it very clearly establishes that sometimes you need to Do Something to open a door.


Behind it, a certainly-not-at-all-suspicious pressure plate, and a kobold with glowing red eyes. Perfectly normal.


And welcome to our first boss fight. (And yes, the door closed behind us when we stood on the plate.)


Albrik is a Kobold Adept, who actually have a couple of moderately dangerous spells (which I will be going over in detail once the Kobold Adept is demoted to a regular enemy). Incidentally, he is also set up such that the backwards-formation glitch does not leave him immediately vulnerable. Which means the devs knew about the bug, but left it in anyways.


Albrik is a tricky fight because you don't have much in the way of immediately lethal tactics, and trying to rush him usually gets you surrounded and murdered.

Thankfully, I have a plan.

Next Update: The Plan... and The Pub!

girl dick energy fucked around with this message at 01:48 on Aug 24, 2015

Bible Ian Black
Jul 16, 2009

I'M THE GUY
WHO SUCKS

PLUS I GOT
DEPRESSION
Some of the file names seem to be too big and are loving up the links. Other than that I'm looking forward to seeing this trainwreck play out.

girl dick energy
Sep 30, 2009

You think you have the wherewithal to figure out my puzzle vagina?

Steak Eater posted:

Some of the file names seem to be too big and are loving up the links. Other than that I'm looking forward to seeing this trainwreck play out.
A bug that didn't come up in post preview OR the test poster. I have broken the site in a new and exciting way!

Fixed it now.

ohrwurm
Jun 25, 2003

I bought this used thinking it would be like the PC version or the SNES version AT THE VERY LEAST. I was so wrong :cry:

The Vosgian Beast
Aug 13, 2011

Business is slow
Oh hey, this game! I tried to play it a few times as a kid, then gave up because it was too inscrutable.

I tried again when I learned what D&D was, but didn't get far.

StrangeAeon
Jul 11, 2011


oh god my childhood

crime fighting hog
Jun 29, 2006

I only pray, Heaven knows when to lift you out
Remember watching my brother play this back in the day. Thanks for doing this!

wafflemoose
Apr 10, 2009

Oh god those graphics. :barf:

At least this version has an automap, I used to play the poo poo out of the SNES version and got lost for hours because I was too impatient to map things out.

EDIT: That being said, not even an automap makes the GBA version of this game redeemable.

wafflemoose fucked around with this message at 16:23 on Aug 24, 2015

girl dick energy
Sep 30, 2009

You think you have the wherewithal to figure out my puzzle vagina?

Starhawk64 posted:

Oh god those graphics. :barf:


Those are JPEG artifacts. I will never be able to unsee that now. JPEG artifacts in a video game.

kalonZombie
May 24, 2010

D&D 3.5 Book of Erotic Fantasy
This is the game 3e deserves, to be honest.

djw175
Apr 23, 2012

by zen death robot

Poison Mushroom posted:


Those are JPEG artifacts. I will never be able to unsee that now. JPEG artifacts in a video game.

Does this image ever come up in game in a way that matters or was it just an excuse to draw big breasts for their dumb D&D game?

Chokes McGee
Aug 7, 2008

This is Urotsuki.

djw175 posted:

Does this image ever come up in game in a way that matters or was it just an excuse to draw big breasts for their dumb D&D game?

This is rhetorical, right?

MaskedHuzzah
Mar 26, 2009

Come now! Look me in the eye and tell me - isn't this the face of a guy you can trust?
Lipstick Apathy
On a more positive note, the original Eye of the Beholder games are now all available on gog.com . Also, wow - this is impressively bad. It's plausible within the space of the GBA cartridge to fit the game as well as an emulator for it and that would still have been better.

Sloober
Apr 1, 2011

MaskedHuzzah posted:

On a more positive note, the original Eye of the Beholder games are now all available on gog.com . Also, wow - this is impressively bad. It's plausible within the space of the GBA cartridge to fit the game as well as an emulator for it and that would still have been better.

They're still pretty good, nostalgia aside. You'll probably want to dig up a guide for them though, since the 1st in particular is very labyrinthine, and has a teleport system based on items that will basically get you lost the first time you use it. You can also port your party from 1 to 2 to 3, and the items you get (mostly from 1 to 2) will make it a lot easier.

I can't believe what they did to this game in the GBA version, crazy lovely just in the opening first level.

Loksr
Apr 16, 2002

Oh I'm the Arbiter I know the score
This may be really strange to admit in light of the reception it's gotten here, but I legitimately liked this game, enough so to completely play through it a couple of times. Admittedly it's difficult and inscrutable, particularly at a time when I didn't always have easy access to GameFaqs, but it still ended up as one of my favorite GBA games. Might have been because at the time I hadn't really played too much of the original, so I didn't compare it to that. Anyhow, looking forward to your Let's Play of this.

atelier morgan
Mar 11, 2003

super-scientific, ultra-gay

Lipstick Apathy

pictured is the point in the post where i went 'what the gently caress, this isn't eye of the beholder' out loud

Cuntellectual
Aug 6, 2010
This game seemed pretty cool to a ~6 year old me. :shobon:

wafflemoose
Apr 10, 2009

I will say that those portraits are pretty goony, some pretty epic neckbeards going on there.

SystemLogoff
Feb 19, 2011

End Session?

So uh, fun fact.

Nothing in this game is compressed at all.



Text, images, etc all open to digging.

Also for why the large images are bad, it's just some art resized and using the GBA 256 color mode to display one image.

girl dick energy
Sep 30, 2009

You think you have the wherewithal to figure out my puzzle vagina?

SystemLogoff posted:

So uh, fun fact.

Nothing in this game is compressed at all.



Text, images, etc all open to digging.

Also for why the large images are bad, it's just some art resized and using the GBA 256 color mode to display one image.
Well, that explains why all the guides I found had such complete information on how the game is supposed to work.

That also makes the game's size even sadder. To wit: the smallest GBA cart can hold 4 megs of data. A trimmed ROM of this game totals up to just over 2 megs. With everything at the maximum size, this game still manages to barely fill up half of the available data space.

girl dick energy
Sep 30, 2009

You think you have the wherewithal to figure out my puzzle vagina?
I didn't really feel like subjecting myself to this game over the holiday weekend and it's been a couple weeks, so have an info update, I guess. :effort:

How Turns Work:

Dungeons and Dragons 3.0 has quite a lot of rules for how combat works. Lots of special maneuvers and attacks and situations, and honestly it can be pretty obtuse. Normally, I might even give the developers credit that they were just trying to simplify the system to be more palatable to newer players, but I can't have that much faith in this game. Instead, I suspect they cut out everything except what they absolutely had to. It's still kind of wonky even with stuff cut, but here's how it works.

Battle Start: When a battle begins, turn order is decided randomly, with a higher Dexterity and the Improved Initiative feat providing a better chance of getting to go first. Choosing the Attack option from the menu does as well, while being attacked lowers your chances. Once that's decided, it's locked in, and the order goes back to the top after the last character or monster goes. This continues until everybody on one side is dead, there's no retreating.

Actions During A Turn: There are four types of actions, separated by how much of your turn they take up. From shortest to longest, they are...

Free Actions: Things you can do during your turn that don't take up any part of your turn. The only one that exists in this game is changing weapons, and even then, only with the Quick Draw feat. (Otherwise, it's a move action.)

Attack of Opportunity: I've got plans to make an Information Update about just what triggers an AoO, because it is complicated enough to deserve its own post. In short, once per round, you can hit somebody who provokes you, and it doesn't count against your turn.

Move Actions: There are two move actions, moving up to your speed (usually between 4 and 6 depending on race and armor), and changing equipment. Each item of equipment takes a move action, so if you want to change your bow and put on a different quiver, that's two move actions.

Standard Actions: You can use your Standard Action as a move action, or perform one of the two standard actions: Attack or cast a spell. Casting a spell provokes attacks of opportunity, so try not to do that next to people.

Full-Round Action: A character with enough levels in Fighter or the Rapid Shot feat can spend their whole turn attacking to get a second, less accurate attack, but they can't do anything else at all. Like everything else in this game, it's a heavily cut-down version of how it's supposed to work.

You get any number of free actions, one Attack of Opportunity (more with the Combat Reflexes feat), one Move Action, and one Standard Action.

...this info update is coming out shorter than even I thought it would, so let's beef it up a bit.

What The Stats Mean:
This is a lot of stuff that is never really explained anywhere except vaguely in the manual, and I'm not even sure how much of this is bugged. There's a TL;DR at the bottom.

Hit Points (HP): Based on your class, and also your Constitution. When you hit 0, you fall over dying. When you hit -10, you're dead for real, unless you pay a metric fuckton to get your dude revived. (Or just roll up and recruit a replacement.)

Armor Class (AC): How hard you are to hit. Armor, shield, Dexterity, and (theoretically) magic items all contribute. Unlike in older editions, higher is better. Heavy armor caps out how much Dexterity can affect your AC. However, due to a bug with certain late-game equipment, you want your main front-line fighter to have a high Dex. We'll get to that... eventually. Conversely, if you can't wear much/any armor, Dexterity becomes your only line of defense, and thus hugely important to keeping a decent AC.

Initiative: The bonus to your roll for who goes first. Affected purely by Dexterity and the Improved Initiative feat, which adds +4 (the same bonus as having as high of a Dexterity as the game allows). Improved Initiative is unironically a very good feat, as going first is a massive advantage.

The six base stats are what we rolled at the start, and range from 3 (the absolute minimum) to 18 (the effective maximum), with 10 being average. Most races also modify a couple of these stats by +2/-2.

Strength (STR): How hard you hit stuff. Adds to both accuracy and damage of melee attacks. Half-Orcs have a good strength, while Gnomes and Halflings get a penalty.

Dexterity (DEX): How dodgy you are. Add to AC and Initiative, as well as the accuracy of ranged attacks, but not the damage. Also boosts your Reflex. Elves and Halflings get a good Dexterity.

Constitution (CON): How tough you are. Affects HP and Fortitude. Dwarves and Gnomes have a good Constution, while Elves have a bad one.

Intelligence (INT): How smart/educated you are. Affects how many skill points you get and how hard your Wizard spells are to resist/avoid. No races get a bonus to Intelligence, but Half-Orcs get a penalty.

Wisdom (WIS): How wise you are. (Duh.) Affects how hard your Cleric spells are to resist, and Will. No races modify Wisdom at all.

Charisma (CHA): How charming and persuasive you are. Aside from one moderately-useful Cleric ability and a couple of totally useless skills, Charisma does absolutely nothing. Which, at least, is faithful to the source material. Half-Orcs get a penalty to Charisma, but it doesn't really matter much.

Each of the stats also adds to certain skills, but since most of them have absolutely no consequence for failure, that's getting relegated to another info update.

Your Save bonuses are used in purely passive manner, mostly to resist the effects of spells. Each is modified by a stat, as well as your class levels.

Fortitude (FORT): Resist poison and physical spell effects. Uses CON. Fighters and Clerics have a good FORT.

Reflex (REF): Dodge some of the damage from certain spells. Uses DEX. Rogues have a good REF, and later on get an ability that lets them completely avoid those spells when they succeed on their Reflex save.

Will (WILL): Resist stuff with willpower. Most of the spells that use it hit the 'soul', or are fear-related. Uses WIS. Wizards and Clerics have a good Will.

Generally, Will is the most important, as several early spells that use Will can render a character completely helpless with no recourse.

That's about it for stats. If your eyes glazed over for most of that, don't worry, it's not just you.

TL;DR: STR is good if you wanna hit stuff, DEX is very good for everybody, CON is good for not dying, INT is good for Wizards, WIS is good for everybody, but especially Clerics, and CHA is loving useless.

Next Info Update: I have no Class.

girl dick energy fucked around with this message at 17:18 on Sep 10, 2015

anilEhilated
Feb 17, 2014

But I say fuck the rain.

Grimey Drawer
So I played this game because I figured the GBA can easily run the original EotB so it gotta be a port, right?
Boy was I wrong.

Ofecks
May 4, 2009

A portly feline wizard waddles forth, muttering something about conjured food.

Huh. I enjoyed the SNES version (by Capcom I think) quite a bit. It's a shame they didn't just port that over, but I guess it's in licensing hell since Cap's D&D contract ran out in the late 90's.

marshmallow creep
Dec 10, 2008

I've been sitting here for 5 mins trying to think of a joke to make but I just realised the animators of Mass Effect already did it for me

The combat looks adorably ugly, like turn and grid based Dark Lands.

Jothan
Dec 18, 2013
To answer your question, each enemy gave you 225 exp, for a total of 1125, which was then divided among your 4 party members, rounded down. I think.

PurpleXVI
Oct 30, 2011

Spewing insults, pissing off all your neighbors, betraying your allies, backing out of treaties and accords, and generally screwing over the global environment?
ALL PART OF MY BRILLIANT STRATEGY!
How did they manage to make something quite THAT bad on the GBA? I mean, that thing isn't necessarily a powerhouse, but it can handle a pretty decent level of stuff. Really the only excuse is utter laziness.

girl dick energy
Sep 30, 2009

You think you have the wherewithal to figure out my puzzle vagina?

PurpleXVI posted:

How did they manage to make something quite THAT bad on the GBA? I mean, that thing isn't necessarily a powerhouse, but it can handle a pretty decent level of stuff. Really the only excuse is utter laziness.
And a budget unfavorably comparable to lunch money, I'm guessing.

Jothan posted:

To answer your question, each enemy gave you 225 exp, for a total of 1125, which was then divided among your 4 party members, rounded down. I think.
Ten internet points, five for doing math, and five for actually reading the filenames.

JamieTheD
Nov 4, 2011

LPer, Reviewer, Mad Welshman

(Yes, that's a self portrait)

Poison Mushroom posted:

And a budget unfavorably comparable to lunch money, I'm guessing.

EotB for the GBA was a weirdie, because it's both a throwback and a step forward. One of the few DnD games to use the 3.0 - 3.5 system, which was sort of a step forward, but then it had worse than SNES visuals and music... And is basically Gold Box Game, 3.0... Which, for all that the Gold Box games are classics (of varying quality) is... Definitely a step backward. It confused the hell out of me, although, to its credit, it has, er... More story than EotB DOS? Sort of?

Gotta admit, I am tempted to do the EotB games, and have been for some time, but... I've got projects on the go at the mo, and they're all biggies. :(

Only a short while back (unaware of this LP), I wrote a little retrospective on the Eye of the Beholder trilogy (Yes, I know, not many of us like to acknowledge the third game. Unfortunately, I don't have that luxury), and the long and short of it is that the trilogy suffered many of the same problems the game industry still faces. EoB1 was an incomplete product with features they had to cut for time... Credit to Westwood that it's not that easy to notice (one of the bigger hints to this actually requires a trainer or save editing to find, and is not shown on any official game maps). 2 suffered from "Balance Issues" (I'm sure nobody who played EotB2 will thank me for reminding them of the 3-Level Nightmare Dungeon), while 3 was developed in-house due to "Creative Differences" (Which covers a multitude of potential reasons for splitting up the band :v: ) and suffered for it... But funnily enough, I didn't mention the GBA game... Which maybe I should have. It does seem to uphold the trend... :allears:

Still, looking forward to seeing where/how far this goes, and hope you don't get toxxed!

JamieTheD fucked around with this message at 00:15 on Sep 11, 2015

Pavlov
Oct 21, 2012

I've long been fascinated with how the alt-right develops elaborate and obscure dog whistles to try to communicate their meaning without having to say it out loud
Stepan Andreyevich Bandera being the most prominent example of that
All I remember about this game is that I never moved my characters in battle and things would just run into my frontline in 2 by 2 file. I think young me ended up quitting out of boredom.

Pierzak
Oct 30, 2010
Holy poo poo, someone actually volunteered to LP this. I'll be watching because I love the original EotB series to bits and the first combat when I learned how different is this game from the DOS version (and not in a good way) was about the moment I lost interest in it. Goonspeed.

Gridlocked
Aug 2, 2014

MR. STUPID MORON
WITH AN UGLY FACE
AND A BIG BUTT
AND HIS BUTT SMELLS
AND HE LIKES TO KISS
HIS OWN BUTT
by Roger Hargreaves
HA! I have played enough Lords of Waterdeerp to know who Xanathar is! Thanks board game!

Glazius
Jul 22, 2007

Hail all those who are able,
any mouse can,
any mouse will,
but the Guard prevail.

Clapping Larry

Pierzak posted:

Holy poo poo, someone actually volunteered to LP this. I'll be watching because I love the original EotB series to bits and the first combat when I learned how different is this game from the DOS version (and not in a good way) was about the moment I lost interest in it. Goonspeed.

My sentiments exactly. Wow. I mean, the original game was what inspired, like, Legend of Grimrock, and then they tear out and replace the combat?

Looking... forward?... to this.

girl dick energy
Sep 30, 2009

You think you have the wherewithal to figure out my puzzle vagina?
Expect the next update some time in the next couple days. I'm aiming for Monday, or maybe Tuesday. At worst, I'll have another info update on Friday, but I don't wanna keep copping out on that.

The time I set aside today to get this done kind of evaporated when the water pipe running to the toilet burst.

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Ariamaki
Jun 30, 2011

"I'm the most powerful
search engine in the world!"
-- The GoogleProg
Sorry to post in a functionally dead thread, but the OP did put a Toxx on themselves and it has been well more than a month, in addition to being way past their deadline. So I guess this is just a post to inform whatever mod is in charge of that for the LP Subforum to come and take care of that? Shame to see the LP die, it had been an interesting opening.

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