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Black Robe posted:okay but that all sounds like the best kind of amazing bullshit
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Jul 10, 2021 19:16
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girl dick energy posted:It is, and it's exactly the kind of scrappy but janky RPG I love to LP. I would love to see another shot at LP'ing it, because it feels like there's so wonderfully much jank to document.
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Jul 10, 2021 19:52
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Eye of the Beholder the series always fascinated me, since on screenshots it looked a bit like Might&Magic, and I adore those games. Cue my utter confusion when I got the Game Boy version of Eye of the Beholder and it did this thing where 3D-exploration suddenly changed into a 3rd-person map seen from above in battles and I just went "do not want" and immediately put the cartridge in a drawer and forgot it ever existed. For some reason I really don't like games of this particular era trying their hand at 3rd-person combat like they're pretending to be a strategy game. It looks weird and ugly to me. So, since I can't play the games without my eyes bleeding, I'll at least follow this LP instead! 
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Jul 10, 2021 20:19
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PurpleXVI posted:I would love to see another shot at LP'ing it, because it feels like there's so wonderfully much jank to document.
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Jul 10, 2021 20:22
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I didn't think of Ultima because I only really played 3 for the NES, but forgetting the Gold Box is proper embarassing.girl dick energy posted:I’m looking at GBA EotB again and good lord. There are some incredible bugs in that game, and because nobody really cares enough to dig in deep and fully decompile it, there are probably a ton more. I will literally pay you if you do a bugfix patch and post it to romhacking.net. Also, which FF1 LP? I have recently been playing a bugfix & balance patch for that game that has made that game evergreen for me again. I could never play it vanilla these days. JustJeff88 fucked around with this message at 03:45 on Jul 11, 2021 |
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Jul 11, 2021 03:42
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This one! Which is on hiatus until I finish my Pokémon Stadium LP. Which is on hiatus until I finish my Four Job Fiesta LP. Which is on unofficial hiatus because I burnt out super hard by trying to do daily updates, and my ADHD has taken revenge by climbing up my nostril and strangling me with my own brain stem.
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Jul 11, 2021 04:42
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JustJeff88 posted:I didn't think of Ultima because I only really played 3 for the NES, but forgetting the Gold Box is proper embarassing. Ultima 3 for the NES also had the dungeons in first person but battles in 3rd person. But it's a really hard game to get into, at any rate. Had some pleasant music, though, and they also redid some of the tracks with lyrics.
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Jul 11, 2021 18:12
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Can OP play an accordion during some of this just for old times/new times Legend of Grim Rock sake.
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Jul 11, 2021 21:40
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EOTB 1: Rocks Fall, Nobody Dies The party that will begin this adventure is: Garry Stew: LE dwarf fighter of unparalleled toughness. Leonerdo: LG Ranger/Cleric emulating a legendary sewer hero. Dave Grohl: CG Foo Fighter, Foo Mage, and Foo Thief. Maskmaiden: CE Cleric/Thief and token lore-friendly character. They each start with 5000 experience divided between all their classes, rounded down in Dave's case. Some of them will be staying around for quite a while due to the way recruitable NPCs are spread throughout the game and other things I want to show.  When you begin, characters' health is shown via bars. You can change this to show numbers instead in the preferences menu. Everybody starts off wearing leather armor and carrying mundane weapons. Two of them are wearing boots, which don't really do anything. Multiclassing is permissive, equipment-wise: Mages can cast in any armor, and clerics won't be restricted to blunt weapons. The thieves have lockpicks, and the spellcasters have books or holy symbols that are used for casting. Speaking of which, your characters won't start with spells memorized in any of these games. This room is secure and a good place to remedy that. My clerics memorize Bless (attack buff to the whole party), Protection from Evil (single character defense buff), and Cure Light Wounds (restore 1-8 HP). Dave memorizes Magic Missile, a single-target damage spell. Your top-left character will have a "Commission and Letter of Marque" whose text is also presented in the manual with better formatting:  We're legally entitled to ALL the piss and poo poo!   Short swords are the only melee weapons that can be used in the off-hand. Dual-wielding gives a hit penalty to anyone other than a ranger wearing leather armor. Rangers do not get spells or any other special abilities at higher levels in these games. They are essentially just fighters who take longer to level up. Daggers in this series are strictly thrown weapons, which means they can be put in the belt slot along with rocks and darts plus some other small items. In the east side of the room, we find some extra lockpicks and a skeleton.  The whole thing can be picked up and only takes up a single inventory space like anything else. These are the remains of Tod Uphill, a thief who we won't be able to revive until we reach the game's 5th level. I've also shown what happens when you click on that grate on the floor. Hunger meters are a mechanic of this series. If they get empty, that character will continually take damage and be unable to memorize spells. They must periodically eat rations, by dragging them onto the plate icon, to prevent starvation.  Past the first door we find our first enemy, a single kobold. Since you have basically infinite mobility, it is possible to avoid almost any potential damage. The hallway it patrols also has a changing point for the rest of the level. Using the All-Seeing Eye shows that the way the layout changes depending on your path:  Thanks to vilkacis for making this GIF from my map screens I go east, which leads to this:  Gnomes can translate this kobold rune, which is the only one in the game.  After opening a door further on we come upon a larger group of kobolds. They can fit 4 to a tile. When this happens, the heroes and monsters can both only hit enemies on the same side.  One of those kobolds had a mage scroll. Detect Magic is a spell Dave had from the start which gives magical items a blue glow. We also see a floor plate. This particular one opens or closes the door behind it when stepped on. Some later ones will require items to hold them down.  Yum, rations from the sewer floor.  These are purely decoration.  Two paths from the furthest east hallway have buttons in the form of these slightly discolored bricks. They both remove walls. One of them makes a shortcut back to the center of the level.  The other opens a room with some kobolds in it. After you get past them, you can get a +2 dart, though nothing can be identified until at least the second quarter of the game.  When we get closer to the exit, we encounter the other enemies of this level, giant leeches. They have more HP than kobolds, but only one can occupy a tile. Enemies have very specific patrol areas that can be exploited. Moving just one tile to the left would make these leeches completely unable to get to my party.  The southernmost hallway has a shelf on its north side. It has two scrolls, Armor for mages and Bless for clerics. Armor is the first spell that we could have Dave learn. It sets the caster's armor class to 6, but does nothing that mage already has an AC of 6 or lower. If you're not familiar with 2E AD&D rules, lower is better in this case. Since it's useless to him and he's temporary anyway, I won't bother teaching Dave this spell.  This is also where we will find the game's first special quest. Each level besides the last has a special quest, often rather obscure, which give rewards like experience and items. In this case, putting a dagger on the shelf will upgrade it to +4. No, there is absolutely nothing in-game that would make you think to try that.  The entrance to the second level has a puzzle slightly more complex than we've seen before. We have to leave an item on the pressure plate to the left then press the small button on the wall. We also find a single arrow, though we don't yet have a bow.  This ladder is the way to the next level.  Before we can actually get there, we're met with copy protection. Every other page of the rule book has a picture of an item in the top-right corner. The shield is on page 10, and "certain" is the password in this case. There are a couple more instances of this, but the GOG version is cracked to allow anything in response. Alpha3KV fucked around with this message at 21:41 on Aug 13, 2021 |
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Jul 12, 2021 03:21
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I'm being swept away in a tidal wave of nostalgia! The ding sound is forever stuck in my head!
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Jul 12, 2021 03:59
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sb hermit posted:Ultima 3 for the NES also had the dungeons in first person but battles in 3rd person. I am chagrined to say that I don't think that I got far enough in that game to see the dungeons. It is a very hard game to get into, but there is a patch by a guy named Jeff Ludwig that really helps. The game is not without some charm.
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Jul 12, 2021 05:29
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Can you say what's different about the maps, and/or put them side-by-side? I spent several minutes scrolling up and down between them trying to compare.
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Jul 12, 2021 05:48
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I had a lot of fun with EotB (mostly the first one) but to this day i can't say i understand why the ancient evil feels a party of four third-level nobodies is enough to give any kind of shits about, nor why this manifests as trapping them on the inside. (Nor why Waterdeep wouldn't spring for better-quality adventurers if they are supposed to face an ancient evil.) girl dick energy posted:Can you say what's different about the maps, and/or put them side-by-side? I spent several minutes scrolling up and down between them trying to compare.  This work better?
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Jul 12, 2021 06:31
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vilkacis posted:I had a lot of fun with EotB (mostly the first one) but to this day i can't say i understand why the ancient evil feels a party of four third-level nobodies is enough to give any kind of shits about, nor why this manifests as trapping them on the inside.
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Jul 12, 2021 07:44
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Are those "special quests" hinted at in any way or form or are you just expected to luck into them? Because a +4 weapon is pretty drat big in the older D&D systems, in terms of bonuses to both hit and damage.
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Jul 12, 2021 07:57
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PurpleXVI posted:Are those "special quests" hinted at in any way or form or are you just expected to luck into them? Because a +4 weapon is pretty drat big in the older D&D systems, in terms of bonuses to both hit and damage. Does the changing map thing mean that you randomly and without indication delete hallways you might have passed through before if you go somewhere else in the dungeon?
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Jul 12, 2021 10:24
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PurpleXVI posted:Are those "special quests" hinted at in any way or form or are you just expected to luck into them? Because a +4 weapon is pretty drat big in the older D&D systems, in terms of bonuses to both hit and damage. It looks like the ruleset is more "based on" than pure D&D though, at least going by the HP count (and ranger spell slots) for a 1st level party.
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Jul 12, 2021 10:37
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OK, this game looks a lot better then I expected. Also the combat seems to be in the same engine as the exploration? That's also not what I was expecting, based on my experience with the weird GBA-port. I now feel compelled to go see if GOG has the series available.
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Jul 12, 2021 10:49
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That Italian Guy posted:It looks like the ruleset is more "based on" than pure D&D though, at least going by the HP count (and ranger spell slots) for a 1st level party. They're not 1st-level, though, they're starting with 5k XP each, which would place most of them at level 3-ish. Simply Simon posted:Even a throwing weapon? If I understood it correctly, this dagger is not for stabbing? Depends on whether throwing weapons and ranged ammo are re-usable after being picked up again, which I assume they would be. A +4 to hit is an almost guaranteed hit in most cases, and a +4 to damage ups your average damage by a decent amount, additionally having a +X weapon means you can hit were-creatures and non-corporeal undead consistently(assuming any are in this game). So I would say: Definitely big news.
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Jul 12, 2021 10:49
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I keep finding about more amazing and stupid glitches in the GBA game, but this thread is about the GOOD Eye of the Beholder game and it deserves the focus.
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Jul 12, 2021 10:52
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PurpleXVI posted:Are those "special quests" hinted at in any way or form or are you just expected to luck into them? A couple of them are... sort of signposted. But a lot of them are extremely random. Buy more guides, etc. Simply Simon posted:Even a throwing weapon? If I understood it correctly, this dagger is not for stabbing? Even so, it's, like, the best throwing weapon in the game. quote:Does the changing map thing mean that you randomly and without indication delete hallways you might have passed through before if you go somewhere else in the dungeon? Without indication, but not randomly. It basically makes it so whichever direction you go in at the start becomes the way forward and the one you neglected a side area. Libluini posted:OK, this game looks a lot better then I expected. Also the combat seems to be in the same engine as the exploration? Yeah, it's "sort of real time" exploration and combat, you just click on a weapon to swing it, and then it has a small cooldown before it can be swung again. quote:I now feel compelled to go see if GOG has the series available. They certainly do.
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Jul 12, 2021 12:57
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vilkacis posted:Yeah, it's "sort of real time" exploration and combat, you just click on a weapon to swing it, and then it has a small cooldown before it can be swung again.
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Jul 12, 2021 13:13
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Yapping Eevee posted:Ah, the Legend of Grimrock approach then, to draw a more modern comparison. Yup Legend of Grimrock is the modern version of these games. More Dungeon Master than EOB because of the runic magic system, but if you get Grimrock, you can get these games pretty easily.
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Jul 12, 2021 14:13
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I'm also quite fond of three other similar D&D games, also available on GOG: Ravenloft: Stone Prophet, Ravenloft: Strahd's Possession, and Menzoberranzan. Always a bit sad that those games don't get more love.dervinosdoom posted:Yup Legend of Grimrock is the modern version of these games. More Dungeon Master than EOB because of the runic magic system, but if you get Grimrock, you can get these games pretty easily. Very much so. I actually rebought Grimrock 2 on Steam not long ago (I already had it on GOG) just to play an EverQuest-themed mod as I used to play EQ back in the early years of this millenium. If you are wondering *why* I played EQ, it's because I'm an idiot, readers... because I'm an idiot.
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Jul 12, 2021 14:47
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I never actually finished Grimrock. Got most of the way through, but put it down for other things and then just didn’t get around to picking it back up.
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Jul 12, 2021 15:35
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I have both Grimrocks but every time I think about playing one of them I end up replaying Lands of Lore instead...
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Jul 12, 2021 16:00
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JustJeff88 posted:I'm also quite fond of three other similar D&D games, also available on GOG: Ravenloft: Stone Prophet, Ravenloft: Strahd's Possession, and Menzoberranzan. Always a bit sad that those games don't get more love. Those are a massive pain to get running, though. Back in the day it was almost impossible to free enough RAM to get mouse and music/sound running, and these days it's just as much of an issue to get them running at a manageable speed. It's a massive shame, because I'd love to play them; you're absolutely right, they don't get nearly enough love.
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Jul 12, 2021 16:03
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PurpleXVI posted:Are those "special quests" hinted at in any way or form or are you just expected to luck into them? Because a +4 weapon is pretty drat big in the older D&D systems, in terms of bonuses to both hit and damage. I believe the last page of the manual has a list of riddles corresponding to each special quest.
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Jul 12, 2021 16:11
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Sweet! Even better, taking a look at other old games revealed GOG had a complete package deal for all 5 Space Empire games! Now I have bought 8 games all at once, because I have no restraint
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Jul 12, 2021 19:29
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vilkacis posted:I had a lot of fun with EotB (mostly the first one) but to this day i can't say i understand why the ancient evil feels a party of four third-level nobodies is enough to give any kind of shits about, nor why this manifests as trapping them on the inside. Since I intend to make some edits anyway, do you mind if I use that GIF? I'll give credit of course. I'm also adding this letter from the manual to the intro sequence post:  The ancient evil we're looking for already has the name Xanathar. On the next page is the commission with the same text in a better-looking format: That Italian Guy posted:It looks like the ruleset is more "based on" than pure D&D though, at least going by the HP count (and ranger spell slots) for a 1st level party. I guess I should also add in the fact that rangers in this series don't get spells or any special abilities at higher levels. Aside from being a bit better at dual-wielding with leather armor, they're pretty much just fighters who take longer to level up. Leo can cast divine spells since he's also a cleric, which is also obviously not imposing blunt weapon restrictions on multi-classes.
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Jul 12, 2021 20:23
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Wait, Xanathar? As in the Xanathar's Guide To Everything rulebook?
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Jul 12, 2021 20:44
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Xanathar is a (almost) famous character in the Forgotten Realms setting, yes.
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Jul 12, 2021 20:56
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For those who don’t know, Piergeron and Khelben are the two main Lords of Waterdeep. P is the paladin in charge, Khelben Blackstaff his wizard advisor. Probably the most powerful male good wizard in the Realms, next to Elminster. I too have played these games and am enjoying this LP.
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Jul 12, 2021 21:15
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I appreciate this game's restraint in not having Elminster be relevant, he already pokes his pointy hat into way too many people's business as it is. Alpha3KV posted:Since I intend to make some edits anyway, do you mind if I use that GIF? I'll give credit of course. By all means go ahead! No need for credit either, i just copypasted the images you posted into a gif editor.
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Jul 12, 2021 21:36
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WAS one of the top two wizards. This game takes place approximately 140 years before 5e starts
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Jul 12, 2021 22:12
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Also wait, why are these people surprised something awful is coming from under Waterdeep? Isn't that where Undermountain is? One of the setting's biggest and most famous dungeons? You'd figure their first response would be to look there every time something goes tits up.
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Jul 12, 2021 22:19
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PurpleXVI posted:something awful is coming from under Waterdeep wait poo poo where did you put the servers Jeffrey where did you put the servers
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Jul 12, 2021 22:38
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Poil posted:Wait, Xanathar? As in the Xanathar's Guide To Everything rulebook? Technically there have been multiple beholders who have taken over the Thieves Guild in the Undercity, all of which have taken on the moniker "The Xanathar", so it's more like a "Dread Pirate Roberts" situation, and the Xanathar referenced by the 5e supplement is a different character than the Xanathar that you face off against in this game. What I like about the first game is that the developers hadn't learned about the Dance of Death yet, and so it was perfectly feasible to have face-to-face slugfests with the most of the enemies, whereas by the sequels' respective endgames if you are not constantly moving in a circle to dodge enemy attacks you are going to die. Though that's also probably a feature of earlier editions of D&D having HP growth stagnate past a certain level (around level 8-10, depending on class), turning higher level battles functionally into rocket tag.
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Jul 12, 2021 23:22
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Other modern D&D fun fact: the little ARG stuff that Wizards of the Coasts did pre their announcement of their two Waterdeep adventures (the latter literally taking place in Undermountain) ultimately led to a clue that was a direct reference to this game. I'll point it out when we get to it, as it's a pretty late-game thing.
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Jul 12, 2021 23:26
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PurpleXVI posted:Also wait, why are these people surprised something awful is coming from under Waterdeep? Isn't that where Undermountain is? One of the setting's biggest and most famous dungeons? In my LPBeach crosspost, JamieTheD made a lore post confirming that Waterdeep is indeed built on top of Undermountain. I'll mention here that I'm not really a Forgetten Realms lore expert. My knowledge of it comes entirely from computer games, the latest of which I played was BG2, and an occasional look at its wiki. Feel free to talk about it as much as you like, since these games are pretty much independent of it anyway. I've made the edits to my updates I was talking about earlier.
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Jul 13, 2021 00:03
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