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General discussion (archive)Pride vs. a game's difficulty(4 posts)(4 posts)
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This is my favourite topic
Posted May 26, 2014
It's common knowledge that Wizardry 4 is known as one of, if not -THE-, most difficult CRPGs ever made. Its brutality is only matched by that of roguelikes from the era of Unix. It also happens to be a game I intend on playing and beating sometime this year.

That said, I want your opinions on something:

Do you think choosing the PlayStation version of Wizardry 4 -- with its addition of an in-game auto-map as well as making Trebor's Ghost turn-based (it was realtime in Apple II and DOS versions... need to take a dump? Hope you can pass that log very quickly, because Trebor's Ghost doesn't take bathroom breaks) -- diminishes the accomplishment of beating the game, by any significant amount? Note that every other difficulty factor remains the same in this port, and ONLY those two mechanics are different (as far as I can tell).

I just like having beautiful hand-painted graphics and excellent music to go with my games. CGA graphics are always such an ugly eyesore (why aren't there fan-made patches for the Wizardry games that add craftily-drawn VGA art and MIDI music to them, like those patches for the old Ultima games did?). But I also tend to be a little insecure about these things for whatever reason.
Posted May 26, 2014
what?

try Pride vs. Prejudice
Posted May 26, 2014
I haven't played the game but IMO auto-map has nothing to do with difficulty and it bugs me when people look down on games with auto-maps. It's just a matter of convenience and preference. If you don''t have time to draw your own maps or don't think it's fun, there's nothing wrong with using auto-maps.
Posted May 26, 2014
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solzariv: It's common knowledge that Wizardry 4 is known as one of, if not -THE-, most difficult CRPGs ever made. Its brutality is only matched by that of roguelikes from the era of Unix. It also happens to be a game I intend on playing and beating sometime this year.

That said, I want your opinions on something:

Do you think choosing the PlayStation version of Wizardry 4 -- with its addition of an in-game auto-map as well as making Trebor's Ghost turn-based (it was realtime in Apple II and DOS versions... need to take a dump? Hope you can pass that log very quickly, because Trebor's Ghost doesn't take bathroom breaks) -- diminishes the accomplishment of beating the game, by any significant amount? Note that every other difficulty factor remains the same in this port, and ONLY those two mechanics are different (as far as I can tell).

I just like having beautiful hand-painted graphics and excellent music to go with my games. CGA graphics are always such an ugly eyesore (why aren't there fan-made patches for the Wizardry games that add craftily-drawn VGA art and MIDI music to them, like those patches for the old Ultima games did?). But I also tend to be a little insecure about these things for whatever reason.
I'll chime in as I am "struggling" with my recent decision to wind the difficulty on Wing Commander 3 down to the easiest just so I can get through the game with my sanity intact. My hand was really forced on this one as the game simply doesn't control adequately to make it any fun, on any of the three input methods I've experimented with. (I made a thread about this in the Wing Commander forum). I'm really bummed about this because I really liked WC1 & 2 but those games, despite being older and pretty damn difficult, controlled adequately after a reasonable amount of tinkering. Wing Commander 3 requires pinpoint accuracy to consistently hit anything on the default difficulty level and the game's built-in joystick support seems to be bugged all to hell on modern systems (or at least it is on mine). Keyboard control is a joke even when keys are mapped to a gamepad like the sticky thread in the game's forum suggests.

So, I'm now breezing through the game on the lowest difficulty just to complete the series and watch the cutscenes. And yes all the satisfaction has been drained from the experience. This game's popularity tells me that others have mastered the controls well enough to beat the game on higher difficulty levels, but I'm done trying to get this game's analog joystick code to play well with my modern peripherals (and I'm convinced you need analog aiming to make this game playable).

So to answer your question: yes, I think taking the easy route to finish a difficult game diminishes the satisfaction of beating the game (for many of us), but you have to weigh that against the con of never playing and/or finishing the game at all, or the con of spending countless hours of frustration just to say you finished a hard game. The case for swallowing your pride and just turning down the difficulty improves even more when the game's difficulty is an artifact of its age rather than solid mechanics that happen to be tough to master.
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This is my favourite topic
Community
General discussion (archive)Pride vs. a game's difficulty(4 posts)(4 posts)
(4 posts)