Infinitely Inscrutable? Let's Play Legacy of the Wizard!

Yeah, Faxanadu is significantly more fun (and easier to understand) than Sorcerian. I eventually got to the point where I could beat the first dungeon in Sorcerian, and I *think* I could get to the dragon boss of the swamp, but my (lack of) reflexes & (lack of) mastery of the arcane training systems was insufficient for me to actually, y'know, win.

Also, controlling a single platformer character >> controlling a party of 4 characters strung out in a line.

Last time, on Legacy of the Wizard, our hero was trapped in a hell of ladders. Before he suffocates, he makes a quick retreat to the top of the ladder, and returns where hence he came.



Alert readers may have noticed that my inventory is sometimes inconsistent across screenshots. This is because I finish playing a segment and collecting screenshots, and then do my writeups. Sometimes when doing the write-up, I’ll wish that I had specific photographs. I’ll either restore an old savestate, or simply take a few minutes to retrace my steps.



I’d like to draw your attention to the door right above our fishy friend. These fiendish devices are far eviler than any enemy we’ve met so far.

In order to open these doors, you need to use one of your keys (treasure chests also expend them). Simple and conventional enough right?

Not quite. First off, keys are very difficult to collect. Legacy of the Wizard uses a twisted monster drop system that tries to give you whatever you have the least of. So once you collect four or five keys, monsters become far less likely to drop them.

In order to make matters worse, grinding to the collect the keys will generally require expenditure of magic (and for other characters, food). Once your magic gets below about 50%, the game realizes this, and helpfully forces the monsters to start dropping magic jars at much higher rates. The magic jars refill about two points of magic, so you can barely break even. Once this happens, you can kiss your precious key drops goodbye.

Now, the piece d’resistance of the game design is that every time you leave an area, the locked doors all regenerate. This ensures that if you don’t have enough keys going into an area, you’re back to square one, and will have to grind far too long in order to pass through.

This intriguing challenge will dog us throughout the entire game.



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We continue on our merry way through a little maze of twisty passages, all alike. This section seems mainly designers an unsubtle way to railroad the player into using the character the designers intended – the enemies here do murderous amounts of damage.



This elevator shaft is flanked on both sides by areas we will be visiting later.

Helpfully, I am then unceremoniously dumped into a spike-lined pit of death. Spikes in Legacy of the Wizard (at least when they’re facing upward) are subtler than the insta-kill variety we know and love on the NES. Instead, they prefer death by ten thousand cuts, chipping away at your life total. Pochi has an advantage in this section, in that he can simply ride the enemies over the spikes.

Or, if you’re not a bad enough dude to take a ride on the deformed frog-man (seriously, that’s his name), you can hold the up button instead.



This passage of hidden blocks serves a purpose that is beyond our ken.



The “Rock Beasts” on the top of the room serve a useful purpose. They’ll drop down on top of you, and you can ride them back upward. Unfortunately, actually pulling this off is hellish, which is why they thoughtfully used this mechanism over and over again throughout the game.

According to http://www.uranus.dti.ne.jp/~sho-dsl...SDSLds4mm.html, the bug enemy I’m on top of is native to Crater Lake, in my home state of Oregon. No, I don’t know how the page creator came up with that either. (If someone that can read Japanese better than I can would check this, I would be eternally grateful.)



After finishing another puzzle where you touch each tile in hopes that it will magically vanish, I encounter a granite mountain.



I know what they want me to do here, and I refuse. I’m going to take the ladder instead.

Time to gush – this area embodies what I love about the game. It does a wonderful job of standing out from the last several sections, and the solid green background works surprisingly well. The delightfully surreal enemies are just icing on the cake. Even if in fact it’s just another maze of ladders, the art design gives makes it feel very unique, in a manner I’ve seen in few games of this era.



The green fireballs helpfully give me a ride to the treasure chest, where I get equipped with the Power Glove!

The glove will significantly increase the damage dealt by the magic used by any family member (except, ironically, for Pochi). To compensate, each shot takes two mana instead of one. However, the damage increase is significant enough for most characters that you come out ahead. Expect to be seeing this little number a lot in the near future.

Unfortunately, there’s no more beating around the bush. I’ll have to return to the mountain of pain.



Blah, blah, breakable blocks, blah blah. Note that in order to get up here, I lured one of the skeletons into the hallway to use as a trampoline.



I am rewarded for my troubles by being dumped in what seems to be the hall of Gak. I poke along through the maze and head onward.

If I had taken the top path, rather than the bottom one, I would have been stuck. As you might expect, getting from one route to another requires you to traverse the whole maze over again.

I like how the designers carefully made sure that the backgrounds of the two sections line up perfectly, but then threw in an abrupt change of building material.



I don’t mind telling everybody that this is not a fun jump to make. However, the treasure (lots of money) is surprisingly worth it. I’ll have need of that soon enough





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I think this is another really good example of an otherwise (very) repetitive level standing out because of excellent graphic design. The blacks and reds really work well here.

However, for those actually playing this level, all I can say is that I hope you’re using an emulator with speedup. Don’t miss how you have to cross the level five times in order to get to the chest, and three more times to get out.

The treasure chest contained even more money. I use my newfound wealth to make a purchase…



The magic armor (which everyone but Pochi can use) drains your mana while using it, but will instantly kill any enemy you touch. It can be very useful in certain circumstances, and my coffers are overflowing anyway. I’m going to avoid buying items that are used to proceed through the dungeon, but I’m willing to buy utilities like this.



That lion would kill any man.

But I am no man…

(Note the pillar furthest to the right. It always infuriated me that the thing is not breakable, given the space beyond it).

Deeper. Go deeper.



The adorable cat girls in this section are such a non sequitor that you have to love it. I’d play a spin off game just starring on of them.

In a bold attempt at sequence breaking, I traverse the floor of spikes. Note that if you miss even one of these (quite difficult) jumps, you have to start back at the beginning.

In Mario, spikes kill you. In Legacy of the Wizard, spikes make you kill yourself.

The game has mercy on us, and this wall actually is passable. I would not put it past the designers simply to include a sea of spikes with a dead end.

In fact, I’m pretty sure they do that.



I go back down the lower right.



You know how Doom 3 tried to create a tense atmosphere by making everything dark and having things jump out at you? This pastel colored level shows Doom what fear truly is.



The shop buried in spikes contains nothing interesting, I continue on through the deathtrap. At the end, I am forced to spend way too much time maneuvering the enemies around until I can jump up through the hole in the ceiling. Going back the way I came would involve even more painful key expenditure.



I’m back where I started. Maybe I missed something. Let’s go back to the right of this level with the flying kitties, and go up this time.

Pro tip – none of the bricks in this room are breakable.

Well, you've already trumped my grand* experience with this game by showing me regions of that dungeon ne'er even dreamed of by my philosophies.



*It wasn't grand.

Man Netbrian, you are a machine.

Also, as for the portraits of the woman: Once you collect all four masks, you can use them as teleporters, apparently. No idea why I felt the need to spoiler text that gem!

One of the ways in which I really got involved in Legacy of the Wizard when I was younger was playing around with ROM hacking. It turned out once I spent some time with the game and a hex editor that this game is extraordinarily amendable to modification, and you can learn a lot by simply changing random things and seeing what happens (a method of learning that I took with me in my current position, where I deal with hundreds of insurance policies each day).

It got to the point where I started compiling what I discovered into an all-inclusive hacking document (it’s probably floating around the internet somewhere). Unfortunately, what eventually doomed my project was that I hadn’t yet had any experience with real programming, so I was unable to parlay the information I gathered into a real level editor. Later on, I received an e-mail from some Japanese person that figured out more than I could ever have hoped to.

One interesting thing I discovered was that enemies are defined in a manner unique to most of the games I’ve seen. In, say, Super Mario Brothers, a goomba is something that you can put anywhere, and it will behave in a pre-defined manner.

In LotW, each enemy is defined entirely each time it’s played in a level. This means that a given enemy sprite doesn’t necessarily tell you anything about what the enemy will do, because it’s set anew, with different color palettes, AI, and power levels each time. You can even use this to create enemies that are a clone of whichever hero you’re using at the time, though sadly the game doesn’t seem to actually do this.

Much of my affection for this game comes from just how fun it was to play around with. The internal structure was so logical that people of a specific, slightly bent, mindset could derive a lot of enjoyment from reverse engineering everything.

Last time on Let’s Play Legacy of the Wizard –

Having escaped the nefarious femme fatale felines, our hero is trapped in an loop of history, never ending. The loop leads her here, but to what end?

None, as it turns out. This entire section was actually entirely pointless, and one big dead end. It’s part of a general turning point where Pochi’s section of the dungeon turns much nastier, and much more sadistic. The suddenly cuter enemies should probably have given it away.

The last cul-de-sac has no gameplay value whatsoever. It contains no useful treasure, and is there entirely to take up space. I can’t imagine why people say this game is dense, can you?

Note that even though I’ve played this game far more than is healthy for any true human, this fake out has gotten me again and again. I’ve spent countless time getting stumped by this loop, and then giving up in frustration. In fact, I have tried riding the flying ghost enemy next to the fish up the pillar, in a desperate source for fake bricks, only to finally pass out in despair.

The actual route is, of course, back here –



Now, before I proceed, I find it time to stop and reflect. And grind for keys. The next room in the dungeon is a giant maze of ladders, fake blocks, and locked doors. Moreover, unlike the previous dozen such mazes in the game, the enemies in the room are all fireballs that blaze past me instantly, which means I can’t simply farm as I go. Instead, I have to bring all the keys I’ll need with me. If I collect to few, I have no choice but to retreat, and of course, give up all my progress so far because the locked doors all regenerate.

I’ve mentioned before how hellish grinding for keys or money is in this game, and this is one of the most brutal. Once I collect two or three keys, the well runs dry. In this case, I collected a chest in order to force the game to stop giving me money, in order to increase the likelihood of key drops. The fact that this section is Pochi’s makes matters even worse – his range is terrible, and he goes through magic fast. This means, of course, that the player runs out of mana quickly, causing the monsters to drop jars instead of keys. I’ve already quit one playthrough because of this hellish section, and I doubt I’m the only one.

Anyhow, once our hero has been rekeyed to his satisfaction, I jump through the magic portal!

And promptly fall back through, forcing me to climb up the giant staircase of platforms again.



First order of business is that treasure chest to my right. It will take at least two keys (one to open the door, and one to open the chest), but it could be worth it. Let’s take a gamble.



You know how my character is immune to all monster damage? And that he’s the hero of the day? I think this treasure is Falcom’s method of flipping the player off.

I restore my savestate (no, I am not ashamed to admit I used them in this section), and continue to my right. A few keys later, and I find myself…



Note the conspicuous absence of breakable bricks. I’m at a dead end. Hope you packed enough keys!

Back to the right, I continue through this maze. Falcom uses breakable bricks heavily in this part, so I have to check each wall, floor, and ceiling in order to progress. The locked doors often lead to dead ends, slowly running down your precious keys in this lonely dungeon.



Finally, I’m at the top! Maybe things will return to normalcy and simply mildly sadistic.



Or not.

Posting about Legacy of the Wizard in this thread is like posting about Duke Nukem Forever in a vaporware thread. It simply sets the bar so high that you just give it a lifetime achievement award to make it go away.

And if this isn’t enough, one of the next sections consists almost solely of block puzzles (you only wish I was making this up!)

The saving grace of ladder hell is that there are no more locked doors. Maybe that would have just made it too easy to find the path. First off, let’s try the chest. It has to be more rewarding than the last one.



Surprise! The chest is a mimic! Had I not been a fish, the box would have eaten me.

Falcom is never known for its moderation. When they know they’ve found a good thing, you just don’t see them giving up, do you. Remember what I said about the color cues? Yeah, they’re gone now.



I do have the opportunity to visit this side of the last room. However, nothing piques my interest.

I use the evil chest to catapult myself back into the center of the earth. This is required because of my puny little appendages.

It goes without saying that if you ever fall down from the ladder, you have to plod your way back to the far right to try again.



As we continue to make the full circle, I end up back here, near the start of our adventures. When our troubles were just a bunch of ladders to nowhere that were not embedded in unsolid rock.



In great Legacy of the Wizard tradition, going the wrong direction dumps you back at the beginning, forcing you to start all over again.

Finally! The real treasure chest! And it contains something new – I wonder what it does…





Oh bugger. This can’t be good. Double points for the erupting volcano in the background.

At least there aren’t any locked doors, so it can’t be too scary.



Note that the fossils are actually spikes, and will damage you.

After that hell, the boss was mercifully non-epic. It dies to my dies to my “hold down attack and hope he runs out of life before you do” strategy!



Victory!

I actually progressed through much less of the game this time around, but the rooms got unbelievably cruel, and the progress slowed to a dull roar.

Oh, and in case you’re wondering what the crown I found does, the answer is – nothing apparent. Which is disappointing for a game that usually does a surprisingly good job of making items useful in a multitude of situations, and avoiding glorified passkeys.

I almost thought that Pochi would have something more interesting then a big spider for a boss fight, since his section wasn't based around running around smashing monster faces.

C'est la vie.

I nominate you for Let's Play Sorcerian. Synchronized platforming team for the win!

Previously on Let’s Play Legacy of the Wizard, a heroic fish saved the world from an evil spider. This was the very first enemy that had shown any animosity toward our finned friend, and was dispatched with ease.

Now, a new legend is about to again.



Falcom, being the champions of breaking out of gender stereotypes they are, made Xemn, the father in the family, the character with the most powerful attacks, but limited agility. His “magic” seems to take the form of throwing psychic axes at the enemy.

This compares amusingly with his son, who instead throws psychic hatchets. I’m sure there are Freudian implications here.



Unlike Pochi, who doesn’t have any use for items because he’s a dog (err, fish?), Xemn has a large arsenal to choose from. In this case, I’m going to take the Armor, the Glove, and the Other Glove.



Remember this item? We found it in the very beginning of the game, on Roas’s very first outing, when the game was still fresh and happy. The glove allows Xemn to push (for a very broad definition of “push” white blocks. By pushing blocks into enemies, you can also kill them instantly. As this does not use mana, it makes it much easier to grind for blood, treasure, or keys.

As anyone who has so much looked at a game can tell you, the only drawback of an item that allows you to move blocks around is the fact that this means your character will be moving blocks around. And Legacy of the Wizard doesn’t do anything halfway.



This time, we visit the left end of the dragon room. With our newfound might, we can push the block aside, and loot the treasure chest. This chest contains a special scroll that increases our movement speed and magic range for a significantly longer time than mere mortal scrolls. I can’t help but wonder if the game wouldn’t have been better if the scroll just had lasted forever.

This shop contains a powerful cowboy boot, but I’m going to wait until I find it in the dungeon naturally. (Actually, I missed my chance to get it in this playthrough, and will have to go back for it soon next time I get).

Heading to the left gives us a treasure in an unusually accessible location –



Longinus? Xemn can’t use this, but someone else can.



Continuing to the left, we find a chest with a special key. This is actually worth twenty keys. Yes, I forgot this was there before I started Pochi’s keygrind of hell.



Xemn makes heavy use of ladders to nowhere. They reset the room when a block puzzle goes wrong.

Oh, yes, there will be block puzzles. In fact, this entire section of the dungeon could be best described as the “block puzzle marathon”. Doesn’t that sound wonderful?

Unfortunately, I can’t think of a good way to document my progress through these gauntlets. If anyone has any ideas, I’d like to hear them, but I almost think it’d be more trouble than it was worth. Suffice to say, it involved lots of jumping and sliding (blocks).



Another ladder to nowhere. This one also provides you a hint regarding the whereabouts of the treasure I missed.



The exit to this room has always bothered me – it’s very easy to miss, and I don’t see any good gameplay reason to use a fake block rather than, say, a ladder there.

Of course, in Legacy of the Wizard, the solid-looking blocks lead to the new areas, and the ladders are just embedded in solid rock. So had there been a ladder here, I might well have ignored it. Reverse psychology!

The section on the right is simply a more glorified than usual “block puzzle resetter.” There is some food here.



Previews of coming attractions! Amusingly, this room is one of the features the game shows if you leave it on the title screen too long. Out of everything they could have picked, they chose this?



This section simply required me to push a block through the invisible bricks (fun fact – if you push a block through a section of broken invisible bricks, they become visible again. There’s an untinteresting technical reason for this, but I prefer to write it down to the awesome healing powers of moveable cubes.

By the time I got to the spikes, I said to hell with it and dashed through. What is damage to our Legacy father?



There are other characters with block manipulation items (heaven had mercy, and this is the only dungeon section where it gets quite this loopy). Many of Xemn’s puzzles exist solely to prevent sequence breaking.

It doesn’t work, but it certainly infuriates the player.

Note the alternation mineshafts and columns-with-breakable-bricks. It’s a nice throwback to a simpler time, in Pochi’s level.

Dead ends. You can tell that it won’t go anywhere, because there is a ladder. It’s actually the enclave on the far right that leads to progress.

I’m using the power glove right now. It quadruples the damage of my already powerful magic, and allows me to OHKO almost anyone I see.

The armor allows me to destroy enemies I touch. However, it doesn’t make me immune to damage, so the goal is to try and graze them without making full contact. It’s a lot like the Touhou Project, but with less yuri.



That hole is a fake block I’ve revealed. It’s quite the dirty trick. I’ve fallen into the mouth of hell by forgetting which tile is the fake one more than I’d like to count.

Remember this? This is nothing.



This is what hell really looks like.

Gah! No way, man. I honestly loved Dawn of War. I don't know how you and Prime can play some of these old games and escape unscathed.

Maybe it's just a different circle?

Xemn's section is where I had to stop playing Legacy of the Wizard. I just couldn't bring myself to get through all those damn block puzzles.

In fairness, Hydlide was the only bad one. The rest merely suffered from inane puzzles or terrible level design.

I always fall into the mouth of hell. Always. EVERY SINGLE TIME. Even though I know it's coming.