Anyone of you ever tried Stranger in Sword City?

cheyane

Recently I got a bit involved in Dungeon Crawlers. It is a first person one similar to Wizardry 8. You move through maps. 

This game has the added bonus of really customizing your classes by allowing you to change classes 5 times while you keep the skills of the former classes. Needless to say with a party of 6 this becomes quite a smorgasbord of abilities to choose and decide which to equip. Quite an intriguing game with the exception of creation which requires you to keep rolling to get bonus points to assign to your stats. Most annoying aspect I grew very tired of and picked the best of the lot without going nuts and trying for really high rolls. 

You also get to customize and create your whole group of 6 including your character. Mine was a 63 year old because as you grow older you get more bonus points for skills while life points go down to one point where permadeath ensues upon death. So the really old one with a max age of 99 was my character that cannot die. My group mates were all 40 plus. I didn't make any teenagers that have more life points but dreadfully low bonus points for stats.

It is an interesting dynamic and quite a change from my usual games. Although it is first person it is turn based, so far I have not been plagued by nausea and headaches.

You also get to pick from a nice selection of portraits for your characters. Relatively complex game with traps and bosses with debilitating status debuffs and some can outright one shot you and your group.

AlBQuirky

This looks interesting!

I had to Google it, so here is the Steam Link:

https://store.steampowered.com/app/409890/Stranger_of_Sword_City/

[Edit]

I saw on the page "bundles." Have you tried any of their other games?

cheyane

No I've not tried the others but this one even on beginner level is hard. Few feet and my cleric died. Damn so I had to go back now the cleric is in hospital. I had to get a reserve party member. The mobs hit hard and the traps are nasty. 

Definitely no walk in the park.

I also used my gold trying to to change classes early to get some evades and other buffs from other classes. So not enough potions. You cannot get any good gear from the shop, they only drop off mobs and you have to use ambushes to get best gear. Surprisingly quite a deep game in terms of strategy.

So far quite enjoyable.

kitarad

The dungeons in this game are very confusing. The level of the mobs also make no sense. There level 12 mobs that are tougher than some level 18 ones. The levels don't seem to indicate the difficulty. It was only later I realised that the type of monster was what made the fight hard.

I had to reload so many times because my group got wiped out by chest traps. Not sure may be these are old school type of game but it is a definitely a hard game.

There were times I got some very good drops only to die on the next fight and lose everything.

I must say the way the classes worked made the game very interesting and provided layers of complexity as far as how to tackle the mobs in a dungeon. Can use a cheat engine and get higher rolls for the starting stats if you want.

cheyane

This is hilarious , I was stuck in a dungeon and unable to get out. I wandered about trying to find a way out and I fell through the ground and my whole party got hurt. Luckily by falling through that trap I came to an area that enabled me to find my way to the exit.

Almost 9 hours and I am still stuck in the first dungeon. I guess I am terrible at this game. I fought the first story boss though.

cheyane

I seem to be addressing an audience of one since no one aside from @AlBQuirky is interested.  I am not trying to bump my own topic but I felt I should express my last thoughts on this game here since I started this thread.

This game would have made an excellent MORPG that was only meant for dungeon crawling. Just multiplayer not massively of course, because of the various classes and abilities you get.

After many hours I am beginning to understand the game. When you face a tough opponent in the game they may come with many rows of other mobs so it is not only a question of killing the big kahuna but you have to contend with his minions too. 

The game has several things. You have divinities that use a separate resource pool called morale, which you earn by defeating monsters and it is where you build the tree in which you put points and is story related, giving different endings depending who you pick to give the blood crystals to. The blood crystals are used as a currency to pick your divinities and you earn them by killing a 'lineage' boss. There is a class that can renew this resource called Dancer but it seems to be a class you pick at higher levels.

The skills and spells you get as you level and depending on what classes you pick you can then choose to equip in the fixed number of slots to place the abilities from classes you had picked before the current one. So with this as you go higher and choose different classes you can see the versatility it provides.

Then you can also get abilities and spells from the items you equip. So when you're fighting you're using the divinity that can be a damage reduction or heal each turn or massive damage or a 100% escape if the mob is wiping your group and so on. You can after that use for each member of your 6 person group skills and spells and items and equipped spells from gear.

Classes also have to be positioned correctly to reach the mobs they target and some skills require a set up meaning you need to use one round to set up a condition before you can use an ability. Since it is turn based you get the time to think about what you want to do considering the array of choices you will have as you get higher in level.

So imagine for one minute that this is a MORPG and how much fun it can be. In spite of the game only offering gorgeous hand drawn 2D artwork for the battles I am still in awe over the complexity the game offers over current MMORPGs.

The classes to which you can change to 5 times. Many players opt to start as ninja to get evade training or knight for trained defense  then change out of the class. If you repick a class it is considered as using up one of the 5 times.

Fighter
Knight 
Samurai
Ninja
Ranger
Dancer 
Cleric
Wizard

5 races to choose from.

Human
Elf
Dwarf
Migmy
Ney

cheyane

An example of a fight in the game.

You won't understand anything about what is going on but it should showcase the artwork.

DafAtRandom

I had to quit the game at the 30 hour mark or so.  I made it to a point where you would encounter enemies that could (and would, often) one shot kill you with no way to retreat back to town.

With the unforgiving mechanics of the game surrounding dying, and bed rest etc. I just couldn't do it.

If you are into dungeon crawlers I recommend the Elminage series instead for a more "classic take" on the genre.  They are hard games but you usually don't feel cheated like I did in Stranger of Sword City.  I'm also very partial to the Mary Skelter series if you want something a bit more original, like SoSC.

cheyane

DafAtRandom said:

I had to quit the game at the 30 hour mark or so.  I made it to a point where you would encounter enemies that could (and would, often) one shot kill you with no way to retreat back to town.

With the unforgiving mechanics of the game surrounding dying, and bed rest etc. I just couldn't do it.

If you are into dungeon crawlers I recommend the Elminage series instead for a more "classic take" on the genre.  They are hard games but you usually don't feel cheated like I did in Stranger of Sword City.  I'm also very partial to the Mary Skelter series if you want something a bit more original, like SoSC.

I'll check them out fabulous, thanks.

I am playing the game on 'beginner' difficulty because I heard 'normal' was very hard. Were you playing on 'normal' per chance?

lahnmir

SoSC is Intelligence inc. putting in a bit of effort.
Undernauts is Intelligence inc. at peak performance.

Seriously, go play Undernauts. It is one of the best dungeon crawlers ever made. It has quite a dark atmosphere though.

Special mention to NIS’ Demon Gaze and Coven Dusk as well, excellent titles in a very well served niche genre.

/Cheers,
Lahnmir

Sovrath

cheyane said:

I seem to be addressing an audience of one since no one aside from @AlBQuirky is interested.  

Sorry Cheyane, the art design is not to my taste an this seems more along the line of Bard's tale or Legend of Grimrock as far as combat.

Not really my thing. Hope you continue though.

DafAtRandom

cheyane said:

DafAtRandom said:

I had to quit the game at the 30 hour mark or so.  I made it to a point where you would encounter enemies that could (and would, often) one shot kill you with no way to retreat back to town.

With the unforgiving mechanics of the game surrounding dying, and bed rest etc. I just couldn't do it.

If you are into dungeon crawlers I recommend the Elminage series instead for a more "classic take" on the genre.  They are hard games but you usually don't feel cheated like I did in Stranger of Sword City.  I'm also very partial to the Mary Skelter series if you want something a bit more original, like SoSC.

I'll check them out fabulous, thanks.

I am playing the game on 'beginner' difficulty because I heard 'normal' was very hard. Were you playing on 'normal' per chance?

I was, which typically is not an issue for me for Dungeon Crawlers that offer a difficulty level.  The mechanic I mentioned where I got "stuck" just rubbed me off the wrong way.  I'm too old and my time is too precious to be wasted on such cheap mechanics.  I probably would have stuck to it if I were still 15 years old though.

cheyane

DafAtRandom said:

cheyane said:

DafAtRandom said:

I had to quit the game at the 30 hour mark or so.  I made it to a point where you would encounter enemies that could (and would, often) one shot kill you with no way to retreat back to town.

With the unforgiving mechanics of the game surrounding dying, and bed rest etc. I just couldn't do it.

If you are into dungeon crawlers I recommend the Elminage series instead for a more "classic take" on the genre.  They are hard games but you usually don't feel cheated like I did in Stranger of Sword City.  I'm also very partial to the Mary Skelter series if you want something a bit more original, like SoSC.

I'll check them out fabulous, thanks.

I am playing the game on 'beginner' difficulty because I heard 'normal' was very hard. Were you playing on 'normal' per chance?

I was, which typically is not an issue for me for Dungeon Crawlers that offer a difficulty level.  The mechanic I mentioned where I got "stuck" just rubbed me off the wrong way.  I'm too old and my time is too precious to be wasted on such cheap mechanics.  I probably would have stuck to it if I were still 15 years old though.

It happened to me too in the very first dungeon. I wandered around for like 45 minutes trying to find a way out and I had one butterfly wing that could teleport me back and was not going to use that for the very first dungeon boss encounter.

By some misfortune that turned into luck I fell through a floor trap and found a way out. I was actually panicking for awhile wondering whether I should just start from my last save.

I can see as you have had the experience of other dungeon crawlers you might be in a better frame of mind to know what are cheap mechanics and dumped the game wisely.

I am very interested in Mary Skelter after I checked some youtube videos and all the fan service which are totally optional has never been a reason I have avoided any anime game so I will be buying it when there is an offer on steam.

lahnmir said:

SoSC is Intelligence inc. putting in a bit of effort.
Undernauts is Intelligence inc. at peak performance.

Seriously, go play Undernauts. It is one of the best dungeon crawlers ever made. It has quite a dark atmosphere though.

Special mention to NIS’ Demon Gaze and Coven Dusk as well, excellent titles in a very well served niche genre.

/Cheers,
Lahnmir

Thanks for the recommendations and I shall be keeping an eye out for some sale.

KnightFalz

I hadn't heard of it, but it looks interesting. Thanks for mentioning it.

cheyane

I just had to close my game down because I could not get out of this dungeon. I had to face this spider boss and she kept summoning more and more spiders. She cast spells that made my group turn on each other and in the end I killed her and her nasty group but then I got dropped down into another dungeon and there was no way out. I had two dead members including my main so there was no way I could face another two bosses. When I saw that I just shut the game down.

God I really hate this game sometimes. It reminds me of Everquest when I fell into some hole and had no way out except to die and have someone drag my corpse out and if possible rez me.

I think I am going to get a couple more levels before I redo this spider boss and the other two after her. This game is seriously hard.

This dungeon was horrible too it had all these poison areas and one part of it poisoned me all the time and I had to keep healing until my cleric ran out of mana. The pathway are so convoluted you have to open switches on different floors and if I did not have a map I would have pulled out all my hair. There are also pits that you have no way of knowing are there until you fall into them.

AlBQuirky

cheyane said:

God I really hate this game sometimes. It reminds me of Everquest when I fell into some hole and had no way out except to die and have someone drag my corpse out and if possible rez me.

Blackburrow? That "trap" in the tree stump that dumps you down into the middle of Blackburrow?

(never seen that...) LOL

kitarad

Blackburrow still remember the very first time I zoned into that gnoll stronghold. The music and whole atmosphere was spot on. Yeah that tree was such a trick. I walked there to rest and fell right down.