[DS]Fighting Fantasy: The Warlock of Firetop Mountain

El Fantastico

Yes, this is a DS game by the same guys who made those books you used to read 15 years ago.

Premise:

Are you a bad enough dude to climb Firetop Mountain and destroy the Orc Warlock?

Gameplay:

When you start the game, it asks you a series of questions (6 in total, I think) which depending on your answers, sets the class you'll be when you start. If you don't like the choices you made, or screwed up somewhere, you can opt to customize your character from scratch. In general though, the game is built around the golden three: Warrior, Rogue, Caster. When you level up, you're given 1 attribute point and 1 ability point to spend, and most of the equipment you find will also give stats in chunks. You earn new ability "slots" as you level, and those can be filled with skills like Dodging, Winning Streak, Lockpicking or different schools of spells like Elemental, Light (Healing), or Darkness (Curses, DoTs) to name a few.

The game has a very Oblivion feel to it, while the graphics look like they're out of Daggerfall/Morrowind. That's not necessarily a knock against the game - I'm actually rather impressed at how decent it looks on the DS. The controls for moving around are unique. The control pad moves you back and forth, and strafes you left and right, while the ABXY buttons turn you left or right and let you look up and down. These can also be switched around for left-handed players.

Fighting control happens on the bottom screen. Your main attacks can be accessed with the shoulder buttons and you can quick-set up to 6 other commands which you will need the stylus to activate. The useful menus are also only accessible via the touch screen. You also touch the center of the screen when you're in front of chests or doors you'd like to open.

Speaking of chests, 75% of them are locked, and there's a cool lockpicking mini-game which is a bit like playing Operation. You use your stylus to guide the green dot in the top screen to avoid touching the walls or turning gears while you push all the pins in the lock and get to the finishing point before a timer runs out. If you fail, you take a bit of damage and can try again. Unless you build your character from the start with Lockpicking and throw points into it, you'll only ever be able to pick the first two levels of chests. Chest loot is completely random, ranging from bits of gold (1-5) or some food, to bigger amounts and decent pieces of equipment.

The game is tough. Balls to the wall tough. Not quite unlike the books which the game is derivative of, but there's less page-turning, paragraph reading and dice rolling and more omg, I just got two-shot by magic spells wtf. The good news is, when you die, you can opt to load immediately from your auto-save, which it does every time you enter a room. The game does warn you to make liberal use of the regular save points (blue orbs found in special rooms - they are conveniently marked as blue rooms on your map) as your auto-save might have you dying quite easily when you enter a room with 7 orcs, or a couple of spellcasters immediately facing the doorway. If you entered the room on low health and magic, you'll have to be quick on your fingers to dodge or spin around quickly and exit.

Those big rooms loaded with enemies, however, are also a nice way to level up. Kill them all, leave the room, thus triggering the auto-save, then immediately load it up and re-enter the previous room to kill them all again. You won't gain sick amounts of loot this way, but it does seem to be the only way to farm some levels when you just end up getting killed trying to progress normally.

The dungeon has NPCs offering you side quests for exp too, and your dashboard compass has a green marker giving you a direction to follow to help complete some of them. These NPCs seem to be the closest thing to giving the player the feeling of "If option X, turn to page ##, else, turn to page ###". For example, I came into a room and immediately found an orc who didn't want to kill me. After accepting his quests, I found a dwarf behind him who was dead and the text seemed to indicate that if I hadn't dealt with the orc first, I might've been able to help him. Also when dealing with NPCs, a few times you will have more than one paragraph choice. Obviously picking certain ones will lock out other options and may change your encounter with the NPC to avoid/enter combat or miss/receive a quest.

So far, I'll admit, I'm finding the game a bit on the difficult side, but it's addictive, and when you beat the game, you do have a New Game+ option.

UncleSporky

That's pretty cool. I watched some trailers for this and it does look like a decent game. Nothing super top of the line or anything, but worth a look. Reminds me of old PC games like Dungeon Hack. I might have to keep an eye on this for price drops.

El Fantastico

I kind of wish I'd gotten in on the pre-order for this game. It was the only way to get the book they wrote for the game. I haven't read a Fighting Fantasy book in at least 15 years and I used to love those things.

Unfortunately, I only found it recently. I remember this game being on my radar for a while but it took an episode of Reviews on the Run to remind me this game was already out.

Jam Warrior

Reminds of Orcs and Elves for DS which was a fun romp whilst it lasted.

Are battles real-time or turn based?

Edit: Just checked some reviews and they really slam the controls and stone wall difficulty. Knocked out a lot of my enthusiasm.

El Fantastico

The moving controls are not that bad. You can use the stylus to do your looking around which keeps it ready for attacks and opening things, but for some reason, I do prefer to use both hands for exploring. It just means I have to keep the stylus in my hand and juggle around a bit to point it at stuff.

Combat happens a lot like it does in Oblivion. Think of it as an FPS game. When you see a knife, arrow or fireball coming at you, you can dodge it to avoid taking the hit. You can run circles around the mobs if you're in an open enough area shooting off your own arrows and fireballs. And unlike the enemies, who always fire at the same y-axis level, you can aim slightly higher. What's that good for, you ask? If their fireball or knife hits an object in the room, it's gone. That table in the middle that you've got between yourself and a fire elemental? His spell keeps hitting the table, but if you aim a little higher, your spell will hit him in the face.

The game is still difficult, no bones about it. There's no real indication that the room you're about to enter has mobs that are significantly more powerful than you are, because unlike traditional RPGs or games with definitive "levels", the mobs don't level with you, or are separated by clear roadblocks like "ye must get this key and kill this boss before ye can pass!" Your progress in the game is largely dependent on your skill at avoiding shit and only somewhat helped by your gear and selected abilities. That said, I am playing a mage and I'm squishy as fuck. I have ranged attacks though which means I rarely get hit as long as I avoid thrown objects and keep room furniture between me and them. I can't say how a pure warrior fares just yet or just how much of a difference higher armor class on equipment is. Warriors at least can use bows, so they're not completely screwed, and there's no ammo slot or capacity to worry about.