The Gaming Den

I bought the Mystara Chronicles and co-opped two people, at different points, to play it with me. I just finished Tower of Doom, Shadows over Mystara will be forthcoming.

TOWER OF DOOM

For this playthrough, I chose the cleric. When I played this a long time ago, that's what I played and I vaguely remember Sticks to Snakes being pretty awesome.

My little sister--and then my friend--joined me in the game. My sister played the Elf, and when she had to leave, my friend joined in and took over until we intentionally got a game over, when he switched to the dwarf.

I like how much the D&D mechanics do show up in the gameplay. Enemies may make their saves against being blinded. Shake the control stick when you're on fire as a reflex save. Trolls have to be killed with fire attacks.

The move variety of combat is surprisingly deep. My cleric had a four-hit attack routine, charging, leaping, and power attacks. I could also parry enemy hits if I timed it right. Once I caught onto this, combat got more tactical for me. It's also possible to flank and lock enemies down.

Anyway, I can't remember all the choices we took--I know we went to the town to warn them to save the fort, and took the well path. We also tried to fight the Dread Red Dragon Flamewing, which is when we TPKed.

The cleric, I think, really was a lifesaver--Sticks to Snakes and Continual Light were quite useful. The real clencher, though, was Turn Undead being infinite use. I single-handedly made several fights a -lot- easier by just nuking all the ghouls and skeletons.

I like it as example of the beat-em-up genre, which I have some long memories of (Streets of Rage, and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, figured prominently in my early video game days). This is just about the most complex one I ever played, though, with the spells and secret passages and looting.

I definitely didn't like the way it'd rush you along after some fights, though. I missed a couple of chests because of the game changing scenes as soon as you killed the boss.

I like the game as a whole, though. It's a good retro experience, and it was made by people who knew something about D&D and it rewards the players for knowing some, too--I tried to burn the troll to death, but kept missing with the items until I got the other player to give me a hand.

Shadows over Mystara forthcoming. Will try to locate appropriate pictures to add in, so I can be like the cool kids, too.

Shadow over Mystara has much deeper movelists. People have said it almost feels like a fighting game at times.

Avoraciopoctules wrote:Shadow over Mystara has much deeper movelists. People have said it almost feels like a fighting game at times.

That is pretty much how most of the later Capcom beatem up functioned. Alien Versus Predator was the same way.

Shadow over Mystara

I went with my cleric again--I'm on the 10th stage.

Combat is indeed a ton deeper here. My favorite thing to do to enemies is uppercut them into the air and spike them to the ground. It's fluid, it's fun, it looks awesome.

I also killed that Dark Warrior dude with a mace swing that, thanks to how we were lined up, hit him in the crotch.

It's a good deal more flowy. I do have a problem navigating the item menus on the fly, but, well, D&D combat. It's a nice way to keep you from getting Exactly What You Want each time.

Thanks to fighting moves, and being able to dash-attack more easily (with the uppercut), I'm having a lot easier time here.

I do mean to give the Thief and Elf a shot at some point. See how that goes...In the meantime, yeah.

This game really brings me back. I remember when sequels were a huge step above the original-something like Super Mario Bros. and then the step up to Super Mario World. Or the jump from Legend of Zelda to Link to the Past. Shadows over Mystara isn't -as- big a jump, but it takes the good parts of Tower of Doom, and amps them up and expands them. It has been more hack-and-slash than trap-heavy dungeon-exploring, but the hack-and-slash (or in this case, bash-and-nutsmash) is so well done, I can forgive it that.

Also, I found a ring of Fire Resistance before I fought a chimera. I scorned it fiery breath. And popped it on the muzzle with the mace to tell it to behave

The variety of weapons available is great in that game


dual wielding, greatweapons, it's a pity you can't start the game with those load outs.

After finding out about the degree of branching in Shadows of Mystara, I've investigated further.

It appears to be an authentic D&D experience--right down to a superpowerful elf DM PC saving the party from a boss.

And, later, when you fight that same boss, he doesn't use the move that one-shotted you.

Fucking railroader DMs.

There's cursed magic items which have to be purified in a certain way, and hidden magic weapons.

The entire rationale for the Magic User class is "You suck in close combat but you get the strongest spells! Totally balanced in a game where enemies swarm you in close combat!"

At least he gets a couple of slick moves that let him evade and pull out some tricks so he's not completely useless in close combat.

While I'm on the subject, let me talk about magic.

The cleric, the magic user, and the elf all get spells. The elf is sort of the "Magic user lite", with fireball and lightning bolt, and also gets haste, which affects the whole party.

Presumeably, the super-power party would be the Cleric, Elf, Dwarf, and Thief. Each one of them brings in things that only they can do, and the cleric and elf could provide -shredding- buffs. The thief can backstab (which is honestly pretty damn strong)

I like the magic in this game. It's D&D fare--fireball attacks a radius around the impact area, lightning bolt attacks a line. The magic user, after checking what his high-level spells are, gets stuff like Cloudkill and Meteor Swarm.

Healing magic is, however, a wash--not that a spell won't help your HP, but that you just plain don't get enough healing spells, compared to monster damage--and spells don't recover that quickly.

It's funny how in Shadow Over Mystara, the Magic User is the munchkin choice.

See, in this game pressing forward + attack results in a "power attack". A slower strike that deals more damage. Doing this with the magic user results on him doing a very feeble-looking dagger stab. That stab deals negligible damage and has a ridiculously short range. The kicker? In about 1/20 of the attacks there's a red flash and the dagger does some kind of critical hit. That hit deals damage that's relative to the total HP of your enemy. It's like 30% of the total. Oh, and unlike the power attacks, the dagger is fast, and can stun-lock enemies, specially if you're playing with two magic users.

It doesn't matter which enemy it is. So if you're fighting kobolds, 1/3 of their hp bar is usually lower than what you're doing with your normal staff strikes. But against bosses with a ??? hp bar? That makes the fights absurdly faster.

So this is what I remember from playing SoM on the arcades: Some scrub would be playing Magic User, and take a really fucking long time doing the normal enemies (the Magic User has to play defensively there), just to about one shot the bosses once he finally arrived there. (dagger spam until criticals, then spam spells).

I won't even mention the goddamn invulnerability bug.

See, I didn't know about the critical hit. Huh. That's an interesting thing.

I'm still having trouble in solo mode, but that's more me being used to playing the cleric or thief, where I can mix it up some.

I love these games. A few months ago, my four-year-old daughter would ask me to play one of them on nearly a daily basis. I usually play the older of the two because of a bug either in the rom or in MAME that messes up the key-bindings for a couple of buttons.

I didn't know about the power attack option; I'll have to try that out.

I knew about the power attack from the first one--it's pretty nice with the cleric.

My favorite Shadows Over Mystara cheese moves involves anything involving flaming oil or the cleric 'knockdown + stunlock' glitch.

I think this game might be enough to make me spring for a gamepad so I can get 2 players on the same machine. Any recommendations for where someone should start looking?

Avoraciopoctules wrote:I think this game might be enough to make me spring for a gamepad so I can get 2 players on the same machine. Any recommendations for where someone should start looking?

I have a USB Logitech game controller that strongly resembles the PS1/PS2 controller. Any emulator for any system I've ever used recognizes it. It allowed me to play two-player Metal Warriors on the SNES; something that I hadn't done in nearly a decade!

There's a picture of it here, except it appears to be sold out. Too bad, it's only $10!

Any of you guys know how to get a PS3 controller to work on PC?

OgreBattle wrote:Any of you guys know how to get a PS3 controller to work on PC?

I use DS3 Tool.

Link to instructions to install.

OgreBattle wrote:Any of you guys know how to get a PS3 controller to work on PC?

Use Motionjoy.

http://www.motioninjoy.com/

It's a bit annoying to set up but it's the only way that I know of and it world pretty well.