WTB: Wizardry Games

[Arkhan]

Werdna is my homeboy.

[BigusSchmuck]

Gotta get those goody little two shoes. ^^

[vestcoat]

I can confirm all of them are 90% in English hence the reason why I talk mad smack to fan translation groups on why they haven't bothered to translate the rest of the text. On the subject of Wizardry games, the 4th one has never been remade (as far as I know) except on the pc engine so if you want to give that one a whirl I highly recommend it.

I just got III-IV today.  Most of it is in English (menus, shops, monster names, etc.), but the combat descriptions and dungeon text events are in Japanese.  It's very worrisome to be creeping around the dungeon and see unreadable messages briefly flash on the screen.  The music rocks, but I'll play through 1, 2, and 5 on the NES/SNES before attempting this one.  I'd rather disobey and get the full experience from other ports than slog through language barriers.

[arromdee]

Personally I don't see the point in playing 3 and 4 in Japanese (even partial Japanese) when the games were originally created in English and released in English for computers for the English-speaking world.

You also have to remember that the games up to 3 are very unfair in that you can pretty much die at any time due to bad luck.  And most of the game is just hundreds of hours of grinding (back in the day when grinding was a new concept).  I would advise playing using an emulator and using savestates to prevent this.  Or at least emulating the Apple version and copying your disk image, something you can't do on the console port but which people *had* to do on the Apple back when the games were new.  Nobody wanted to grind for hundreds of hours, randomly die, and have to grind for hundreds of hours again.

#4 is notoriously unfair (literally notoriously--people talked about it at the time) because not only can you not gain levels normally, you pretty much have to read the mind of the developer to solve some of the puzzles (one enemy requires getting a specific monster to kill it that you would have no other reason to suspect would be useful).  There's no way you're going to solve 4 with the messages in Japanese.

I ended up playing 1-3 on an Apple emulator, 4 not at all past the first few levels except by using a walkthrough, and 5 on the SNES.  5 has the typical Nintendo censorship (no alcohol for instance) but didn't lose anything aside from that, and has improved graphics.  6 and 7 existed for DOS (you probably need Dosbox by now) with 7 also ported to Windows.  8 is new enough that it's a regular Windows game.

[BigusSchmuck]

Personally I don't see the point in playing 3 and 4 in Japanese (even partial Japanese) when the games were originally created in English and released in English for computers for the English-speaking world.

You also have to remember that the games up to 3 are very unfair in that you can pretty much die at any time due to bad luck.  And most of the game is just hundreds of hours of grinding (back in the day when grinding was a new concept).  I would advise playing using an emulator and using savestates to prevent this.  Or at least emulating the Apple version and copying your disk image, something you can't do on the console port but which people *had* to do on the Apple back when the games were new.  Nobody wanted to grind for hundreds of hours, randomly die, and have to grind for hundreds of hours again.

#4 is notoriously unfair (literally notoriously--people talked about it at the time) because not only can you not gain levels normally, you pretty much have to read the mind of the developer to solve some of the puzzles (one enemy requires getting a specific monster to kill it that you would have no other reason to suspect would be useful).  There's no way you're going to solve 4 with the messages in Japanese.

I ended up playing 1-3 on an Apple emulator, 4 not at all past the first few levels except by using a walkthrough, and 5 on the SNES.  5 has the typical Nintendo censorship (no alcohol for instance) but didn't lose anything aside from that, and has improved graphics.  6 and 7 existed for DOS (you probably need Dosbox by now) with 7 also ported to Windows.  8 is new enough that it's a regular Windows game.

I beg to differ, I played 4 through the PCE with little problem and I don't read japanese very well. In fact, it is a bit easier than the original for the simple reason your monsters actually gain levels and you can go recharge them in the summoning circles by trading in items. About the only thing on 4 I can't stand is the music at the summoning circles and thats about it. However, you'll probably want a map through gamefaqs unless you are brave enough to do it on your own.

[arromdee]

I beg to differ, I played 4 through the PCE with little problem and I don't read japanese very well.

How much did you know about the game before you played it on the PCE, though?  Did you know any of the puzzles or secrets?  And did you get the grandmaster ending?