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S2 Ep86: Wizard of Legend
74 Plays6 years ago
Join Dave and Jake as they put on their robes and wizard hats in this week's episode!
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Thoughts? Comments? Requests for new episodes? Feel free to email them in!
SoapstonePodcast@gmail.com
Like our podcast? Like our podcast! We'll post when new episodes are uploaded!
https://www.facebook.com/SoapstonePodcast/
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Transcript
Podcast Setup Banter
00:00:36
Speaker
How's it going, everyone? Welcome to another episode of Soapstone. My name is Jake. I am joined by my co-host, as always, Dave. How's it going tonight, Dave? Pretty good. Yeah. Riding a bit of that gym high. Yeah, you look higher than me.
00:00:49
Speaker
I'm always hired. And that your microphone's slightly higher than mine. Yeah, you're also... You're sat down and I am... I have like one leg under my ass, like I'm propped. I'm propped up. I'm not usually in this chair, so the height differential I think is getting to me. Do you like that I finally upgraded you to the cushy chair? I was... I was waiting like a year. No, I honestly never thought about it, but... Jake has always historically had a shidger chair, because...
00:01:18
Speaker
One, it's my apartment. Two, I have back problems. Three, I'm a bad host. So what was actually funny is when we started, I actually did have the more comfortable chair for like one or two episodes. Um, cause I don't think you had either of these big ones here, but you had like a padded chair or something.
00:01:36
Speaker
No, you don't want a better chair. It must have been that one. But anyways, I used it like one night and you were over on like the wooden chair. And then we swapped them for some reason we were moving stuff around or whatever. And it literally never came up. We just always use the comfortable chair from that point on.
00:01:53
Speaker
All right, you know, I understand do the lunches sitting in the living room not being used but we finally wheeled the other one in for a dumb Christmas video, you know unrelated to the podcast actually people probably will never see that one but
00:02:09
Speaker
You know, if it ever goes live. We'll see. It's fun to make those. It's really dumb every single time. But I look at it like, that's my dumb little baby. Yeah, it is. As everyone should think, if they have a baby. That's what my parents said. For 18 years. Only 18 years.
00:02:32
Speaker
And then you moved out and they're like, finally. They're like, finally I can get back to bang without being interrupted, right? No, that's my life.
Introduction to Wizard of Legend
00:02:44
Speaker
But anyways, sometimes in this show, we talk about video games, but usually one at a time.
00:02:53
Speaker
Oh, it's my turn. Tonight's game is Wizard of Legend, which is a game I actually did not know about really too much until Jake. Did you find it? Did I find it? You found it. You suggested it.
00:03:10
Speaker
I already owned it. I don't know at what point I began owning it. It was just there in the library. So when you're like, hey, this one smiley face, I was like, great. Oh, and then I like looked it up and I'm like, oh, it's in my library. Okay. All right. Not today, Gabe Newell.
00:03:31
Speaker
It's this really fun top-down action roguelike. Yeah. I think I just saw it on sale on Steam or I saw somebody else playing. I was like, I'll check it out. Yeah. And it's more fun than it should be. Yeah, it's actually quite good. It feels like the basic concept is
00:03:51
Speaker
Fairly simple. You go around, you have a dash, you have a left-click ability, a right-click ability, and another ability, which is your ultimate move. So as you're kind of slapping around enemies, you build up your meter. If your meter's full, you can pop your ultimate move, but like the super version
Game Mechanics & Strategies
00:04:11
Speaker
of it. So it'll hit twice or have some other crazy effect. And then there are so many moves throughout the game
00:04:19
Speaker
And I use four of them at a time. And it's worth noting that you basically play as Harry Potter and anime Hogwarts, like where it's all fighting. Yes. You're one of many wizards who are trying to go through the trials.
00:04:35
Speaker
Yeah, and it's like Harry Potter if he had to kill all of his teachers in order to graduate. How is this like Harry Potter? It's just a wizard thing. Yeah, that's the other main kind of mechanic is you're going encounter by encounter, exploring the map pretty quickly. But then there will be like an area boss for each of the floors, right?
00:05:02
Speaker
And I didn't I didn't play as much as you to get like as much variation. Um, but it seems like they Uh start out with fewer mechanics fewer lackeys fewer projectiles And then if you encounter the same boss later, yeah, he's like serial business So each area has three floors It's uh, appropriately numbered one one one two and one three
00:05:26
Speaker
Where after each little mini area, you do have a kind of random boss. But then when you're on floor three, that is just the boss for that floor and Snape. It's going back to the analogy. Um, I think there is four different element elemental boss. You can face Freya, the ice queen wind, Lord shoe, who is my favorite, but fucking right.
00:05:55
Speaker
The fire lady whose name I don't remember sadly. Yeah Hmm. I was just I was thinking how they spell shoes name because I never paid attention and I'm what is h you you Okay, they went for the Middle Eastern or not Middle Eastern, but the Eastern Instead of just that instead of the Adidas or night. Oh, yeah, I would have appreciated it. That's fine. That's fine
00:06:16
Speaker
Uh, and then there's like an earth guy. Um, that's his name. They, they got lazy in the last one. It's tough. Yeah. Yeah. It's definitely some tough vibes. Um, but even though his bosses get progressively harder, cause I would, I did a couple of runs and I, you would usually have Freya on the first floor. I'm like, okay, I can definitely get up to her. I can beat her. I know our mechanics pretty well.
00:06:41
Speaker
and then another one i did earth guy first and then i got to her and face two yeah i was like okay cool and then she started shooting lasers and like wasn't ready so each time you're facing a boss later on they probably add two to three mechanics yeah or like they'll extend their hit stun chains yeah it'll give you like more move sets and stuff uh we played like so the furthest i ever got was when we were playing together and um
Co-op Experience Insights
00:07:11
Speaker
It got to the point where I think we were up against Freya on our final one we lost because she would like freeze us against the walls And like for like three seconds while all these projectiles are like pelting us and stuff and it was absolutely brutal I was like, well, this is just watch my health bar go down simulator
00:07:32
Speaker
Yeah, some of the bosses have really crazy combos where if you get caught in something it's likely you'll continue to get hit by stuff Yeah until you like mash dash or some other ability to get out of it. Yeah and reposition but in the same way you as the player are also gifted that ability of Beating the shit out of a boss. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Like I remember when we were doing co-op for
00:07:55
Speaker
I think one of the summoner guys as one of the bosses. As soon as his armor went down, Jake and I just instinctively just pressed all the buttons. Alpha strike, drop all the spells. But it feels really good to do that because you can focus on mechanics.
00:08:12
Speaker
Get the fuck out the way. And then when it's your time to strike, you go all in. Yeah. It's just worrying about like other enemies and their move sets. Cause I have trouble with some of the people on the floor.
00:08:27
Speaker
Like the, uh, just the standard. I mean, it's easy, especially when you're playing with two people, but even sometimes with one person, there's a lot of projectiles, a lot of explosions, a lot of things like that, um, going on definitely way worse with two people because you're, you're just casting spells like crazy.
00:08:43
Speaker
Yeah, and it's i'm like which one of my yeah, um, you're talking about hitstun a moment ago, uh, Which was like one of the the core reasons. Um, like I like my It wasn't a signature move but the special was my favorite is lace lightning Yeah, because I just I just love lightning. It's just great element. Love it. Um, but lace lightning makes like a circle and then lightning arcs, uh through it like going in a um a pattern
00:09:12
Speaker
If a pentagram had more points, and lightning bounced between it. Until it hits an enemy, at which point it will continually strike that pattern to electrocute the enemy. So it kind of seeks in the circle till it hits somebody. But inflicts a lot of stun on whoever's in this, and it lasts for like a couple seconds. So it was really nice area denial, being able to drop that and all the little guys that were running up on you.
00:09:38
Speaker
Have a have the heck of a time in the lightning storm Then you drop all your signatures and stuff like that. It just feels really good. Yeah, it's So the more appropriate breakup than what I gave earlier is their basic which is kind of like your left click You can either have like a melee string or combos or ranged I prefer ranged because every time I'm closer to an enemy I tend to make more mistakes and get slapped and
00:10:04
Speaker
Yeah, like we should play some day. We'll do an episode on it, but you know, uh, then there's your special, which is usually more interesting and usually has a higher cool down. Whereas your basic, you can, as soon as it's done, you can do it again. Right. Uh, your dash, which some of them have effects or you can have just kind of a basic dash. Yeah. I think wind is the, the basic one you kind of start with.
00:10:32
Speaker
Yeah, it doesn't really do anything. Yeah, I don't know like the advantage I don't know. I don't even know if it has the plus maybe like a little distance or something. I don't know It wasn't noticeable and then your signature which is also a special. Mm-hmm But when fully charged those like the added effect
00:10:51
Speaker
Yeah, but what's really cool is as you play the game And get gems Gems is your currency to unlock things for progression. Yeah, it's you're like persisting currency, right? Yeah So I will cash those in and just buy spells and then when i'm in like the hub world before I go on a run They have these test dummies and I will try out different abilities and like this one feels cool as shit Yeah, oh the cooldown that's a little too high. Let's not yeah, so typically i'm going wind
00:11:19
Speaker
I have like I'm just kind of blowing at people Just blowing people as much as possible Yeah Being able to play around with the abilities I think is really
00:11:36
Speaker
It kind of just is useful for a game like this. It also gives you damage numbers. So you can tell if a ability has a bunch of hits, but does really low damage. It's really obvious against the dummies. Whereas like if the game didn't have the dummies, you'd be like, Oh, this is awesome. It like lasts forever. And it does like nothing. And you go into a run, you're like, Oh no. Yeah, exactly. You can tell if like all of your equipped spells or wet noodles or something. That would be a good ability. Wet noodles.
00:12:06
Speaker
That's a water element. The other cool thing is that a lot of the signature moves are, like you said, they're the same thing as the special, but they're just an enhanced variant. So I know that enhance also has like in the special slot, you can get enhanced moves too, right? Like we saw a pickup of one of those in one of our playthroughs.
00:12:31
Speaker
So anytime you're starting out with your spell cards, you can go out into a run and there'll be shops where you can buy spells. So maybe you need it as a requirement for something. Maybe you want to switch it up. If your playstyle finds something that enhances your other abilities a little bit better that you don't currently own.
00:12:51
Speaker
Or you can get the same spell that you already have equipped, but an enhanced version of it, which will usually either boost damage, cool down, or maybe add an extra hit into your string of attacks. Yeah, it's like a minor improvement. But some of those same abilities you can equip into the...
00:13:10
Speaker
The ultimate slot basically and It changes up the ability dramatically it makes it like in the case of lightning It'll like make huge orbs instead of like little tiny orbs or it'll make like a bunch of architects Spin out and things like that. It's just I like systems where you can use the same abilities, but kind of like change the slots for different effects I think that's that's pretty cool. It adds some variety to it
00:13:39
Speaker
It's super good in that way. I really like that you can actually make combos. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Yeah. The way I play now is like full ranged wind. And then for my ultimate super secret special move, I have the earth bolas.
00:13:55
Speaker
Yeah, which hit more root enemies but um the upgraded version is it kind of? shotguns out like this huge fan of like eight to ten Yeah, it will usually bounce in hallways which I like and then for every enemy it hits and roots It makes me a little poison pool. Okay, so that's my fucking wave clear. Yeah
00:14:15
Speaker
But earlier on I was playing around with water and there was an ice fist as like basic arcana. It's kind of cool punches. There was a rapid water punches for my special. And then my super ultimate cool move was this ripple of ice cubes that went out and came back. Right. Yeah.
00:14:36
Speaker
So I would run up, use my ultimate move to push the enemies away. And then it would actually bring them back in when it came back. And then I would do like these combos and then I would try and repeat it on cooldown. Yeah. And it just feels so cool. Mini punch. Get out of here. Get over here.
00:14:56
Speaker
You're not welcome here. Come back. Come back, I miss you. Sorry for what I said. There's a whole lot of variety and the game kind of reinforces some, I'd say like elemental devotion in the form of some of the artifacts.
00:15:16
Speaker
Hey Jake, what's an artifact? An artifact is an item and so anyways they encourage so it's part of the the meta progression of the game is you'll unlock various artifacts you can you can
00:15:31
Speaker
buy them from the store with gems your metaprogression currency and then choose one of them for a given run and Some of them are like just do more lightning damage do more water damage
00:15:48
Speaker
Yeah, and the ones that are specific to an elemental type will give higher bonuses than just everything's a little bit better. Yeah, there's just a do more damage one, right? Yeah. Which I think is cool because it lends to, one, it makes it easier to track your own projectiles because you're like, there's lightning on screen. Statistically, that's me. But it also, you know, you get to double dip. You're like, I'm going to boost multiple.
00:16:15
Speaker
skills at once. But you don't always get the luxury of picking your element for all of your specials because you only get to pick one special at the start of a run, but you have the opportunity to pick up more. Yeah, I think, slotted, you can have one extra ability. I think it's two because you can have
00:16:38
Speaker
101 you can kind of pocket. Yeah. I just don't remember if you have two open spaces past your super ultimate cool boy move.
00:16:47
Speaker
Actually, you might be right. Cause I think it was E and R on, um, then ours, the tab out. Yeah. Ours, the tab out. Yeah. Do you have to go into your inventory? So like, say, um, get out there, Timmy. Yeah. And you can switch it out. Yeah. But it's nice cause there are locked chests where you need to hit it with certain elements in certain order. Um, but I don't always have those elements. So it's nice if you get like a cheap fire card, you're like, I'll use this later. Yeah.
00:17:15
Speaker
Also, I haven't talked about fire at all because I haven't used it as much. Yeah, which is funny kind of because you start with fire, like all of your starting elements are fire and they're not even really bad. It's not true. Your dash is air, the vanilla one. But your your attack is just like unleash a bunch of rapid fireballs on your special. And then your ultimate is like a huge fireball.
00:17:40
Speaker
And that one was interesting because it kind of builds charges over time. So you could tap your- Well the special does. The special does, yeah. Cause like you're like punching, but you're also shooting out these fire dragons. It's basically Avatar. It's not what it is. It's pretty much Avatar. But it feels so good to do it. And they really encourage quicker gameplay because of it.
Multiplayer & Cloak Mechanics
00:18:03
Speaker
Yeah. Because if you wait around, you will get hit.
00:18:07
Speaker
and you don't have to wait long there are some enemies that are like you see them and they've already slapped you yeah yeah so you kind of gotta go in literally hands blazing especially in two player where like the screen averages the distance it does it does the two player brawler thing
00:18:22
Speaker
It's probably the best approach to handle that. Yes. But there have been so many times where I've gotten fucked over because like Jake was doing, you know, I was AFK. It's just a little visually jarring from the single player version. Yeah.
00:18:41
Speaker
Where you're always in the city like enemies can hit you from the corner sometimes because a lot of like Assassin type characters will do a dash in and then a melee swipe. Yeah, so they're just like i'm on the screen and you're hit and you're like, oh Well, that's not that's not nice
00:18:56
Speaker
The fact that it even has multiplayer, I mean, I did technically see it on the main menu. It's like, single player, multiplayer. It was like 2P, right? Yeah. Like that could mean anything. But there's also an artifacting game that you automatically have unlocked called the Friendship Ring. Yeah. Where it's like, hey, everything gets buffed if you're playing with a friend. Yeah. And I was like, Jake, I want to step on this, play this game.
00:19:23
Speaker
It's actually so like This isn't really a review of Steam remote play but but that's the way we did play So technically it only has local multiplayer But because of steam remote play you can just have somebody use a different control scheme Remotely and it actually works like
00:19:44
Speaker
pretty well um you don't have to own the game as far as i can tell because oh really because when i joined on you so the first time we tried it we both launched the game as one would do when you both want to play the game together it's okay invite me to your lobby exactly um but uh you ended up with basically two instances kind of quote unquote of the game running when you joined me
00:20:07
Speaker
And I would constantly tab back into my game and I'd be like, where's Jake? Oh shit. So when I joined on you, I actually just closed the game first. So the only thing open was the, uh, the steam stream. Cause you just play over stream, which is like, it's come a long way since Twitch plays Pokemon.
00:20:25
Speaker
Jake's devising a plan where he never has to pay for games we review Yeah, I mean for the co-op games most of them it would probably work and the downsides are you are running with like reduced resolution because you're kind of like seeing their screen and
00:20:41
Speaker
Yeah, possibly like a little bit of latency, but this is a fighting game. I didn't notice any so I mean we're not the furthest apart geographically either but It worked really well But yeah, it is constrained to like we were using your say or first we use my save then we used your save You had a lot more stuff yeah, I I've kind of played it for
00:21:07
Speaker
Like multiple two to three hour blocks. Yeah. That's something I might stream at a point. I might've already streamed it and forgotten. Right. You did when we played. I did. But the other thing that's cool that I forgot to mention is you also have different wizard cloaks. Yes. So normally when you start out, it's just like red or blue and doesn't mean dick. Yeah. But as you unlock them with more gems, which are a
00:21:35
Speaker
Metaprogression currency. Yes. I was like, uh, uh, Q you can get bonuses to different stats. So depending on the color, like you might want armor and health or evasion and crit, which is what I'm running now. Yeah. It's pretty good. Yeah. It's the purple one. So pretty much any combination of two stats, I'm sure exist for the cloak wheel. Yeah.
00:22:03
Speaker
But they're fairly expensive, so I've not really been going after them so much until I get all the spells. Evasion and crate, if you want to be the real Raven. Oh yeah, it is. What would be, did I really have any dark magic though? No.
00:22:21
Speaker
I couldn't really Azarath Metryons in those people. I know. Is there like a time spell? There should have been. There still might be. Yeah. There's some cool like, um, you'll get like different artifacts through the course of the game. Like you, you, you're in game currency for a run is gold and you can use that to buy. Um, you usually just get that when enemies are wiped out. Yeah. There's a shopkeeper you can buy artifacts or health potions.
00:22:48
Speaker
Yeah, spells.
Artifacts & Comparisons with Roguelikes
00:22:50
Speaker
There's a bunch of different encounters, sort of, like that. Similar to, I would say, Binding of Isaac. Whoa, what a comparison. Which is also a roguelike game.
00:23:05
Speaker
Yeah, some of those are cursed. So I wouldn't be surprised if there's like a dark magic option in there. I just can't claim for our listeners that there is one because that would be pure conjecture. I love cursed items. I love risk reward in these types of games. Devil room.
00:23:22
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. Um, because one at a point you get so used to standard gameplay and you're like, I'm pretty comfortable with the controls mechanics. I know how enemies move. I know what I'm doing. Yeah. I haven't beaten the game yet, so I shouldn't talk too much shit. But at the same time, there was a cursed item that says, Hey, this will increase crit chance for you and everything else. I'm like, I'll take those odds. And it's cool to like the box.
00:23:51
Speaker
Yeah, there are mimics in here, too. You're like, oh, a chest for beating the room. That's cool. I did it. Yeah, no. There's a lot of cool stuff. It's gonna take me a long time to beat this game.
00:24:03
Speaker
Cause it's, it's really hard, especially in single player. Um, I've only gotten to the last boss once. Yeah. And it's a, it's a two phaser. Yeah. Oh geez. Cause the first phase is like, all right, I'm doing okay. His things seem kind of telegraphed and not super complicated cause he kind of stays in the center.
00:24:24
Speaker
And then after you beat him Spoilers, yeah He like takes off his cloak to reveal like a cooler cloak or something. Yeah, right and there's I was gonna say pile of kids And it's the dead baby joke 20 years ago, I would say just stacked kids in the cloak like
00:24:51
Speaker
Well, I remember the first name of a businessman. Yeah. Uh, Justin, could you please call him to the podcast? You know, that's fine. But no, he goes full invoker and he starts dashing around like essentially a player and using all of these different spells. And you're like, I was not ready for this, but it's really cool to see.
00:25:15
Speaker
I mean, I guess the main bosses with the floors as well, but they're usually thematic to I am this element. Yeah, exactly. But also a lot of their abilities you can get as moves. So it's really cool to like beat Freya and then you get a fucking water laser beam. Yeah. And I was like, Oh, I can use that. That's cool. Yeah. Now there's a, there's a lot of variation there actually, like,
00:25:41
Speaker
For the most part the phases for the boss fights are like dodge a bunch and then get some damage in dodge a bunch get some damage in but if you don't know what the move sets are you're gonna get like Haka punished and The fact that their move sets vary depending on what floor you face them means there's a lot of replayable content there Between that so like the game you could probably make the closest comparisons to that would be Hades Which has recently come to steam?
00:26:09
Speaker
I'm getting squints as though you couldn't compare it to Hades you totally could I just it's a knee-jerk me being defensive of Hades and like nothing's like Well, see so the very first time I was playing this was like, oh, it's like budget Hades And then like the last time I played it I was like, yeah, it's budget Hades. So it's budget Hades
00:26:31
Speaker
But this was made by like two people instead of supergiant, which is at least four people and probably more that That no clip documentary definitely implied that there were like 10 people. Yeah, there might have been multiples of four people
00:26:47
Speaker
but not like, well, hundreds of four people. But yeah, I mean, like Hades has a lot more polish. It's got like, well, obviously in the mechanics and the meta progression, there's a couple of things that I liked there that I kind of missed out on playing Wizard of Legend, in particular, the mirror progression, which was basically like, are you bad at the game?
00:27:20
Speaker
persistent upgrades, like every time I get a room, I'm gonna gain three health back. This will increase your backstab crit chance, Jake. Thank God I needed that. It's just like that. Just persistent progression. So like, no matter what your baseline is, what your skill level is, here's an artificial offset. You're just this much better for having played the game a lot. I love that stuff, because I'm not good at these types of games, but I can farm. Man, can I farm.
00:27:38
Speaker
It doesn't matter if you play enough, eventually you'll be okay.
00:27:50
Speaker
Just put me in a rice paddy. I don't know if I call it playing, but I'm getting stuff done. Right. There's a macro home. We're getting there. I mean, I see the similarities as far as it's a very quick paced game. It's always going to behoove you to dash quickly out of an attack and attack back. Yeah.
00:28:13
Speaker
And like even similar ideas, right? Like, um, dashing, for instance, like they function exactly the same. Like this is a room by room game. Um, now admittedly Hades has more distinct rooms where you're just like, yeah, like this is the area right now, as opposed to working your way around a mini map.
00:28:32
Speaker
So actually, all other roguelikes that we have talked about or played, correct me if I'm wrong, will usually actually have a room system. Yeah. Where at a given point, you're in a room. To progress, you need to beat the enemies in the room. Right. Whereas this is kind of free and open. And in certain areas, it might actually close off to say like, hey, this is your stopgap. You need to kill these enemies. But there are times that you will just go into a room and some enemies will be there. Yeah.
00:29:01
Speaker
They don't always do the Legend of Zelda thing where Link turns around like quickly and the door locks behind him. You think like the hundredth time maybe it would be less surprised when the bars come down, but no. Link, thanks for coming over. Come on in. Set your coat down.
00:29:17
Speaker
Boss music kicks in, friends just sitting there on the couch. You're like, do I have to kill you? Link attends his nephew's christening. Welcome Link, we're glad you get me. You said christening, but for some reason my mind went to like baptism and it's just like, there's the kid and Link's like,
00:29:40
Speaker
pushes below water. This is water temple flashbacks. Right? No, he's too young. This is a dark drowning joke. Just crazy. Like a random, like this is kind of vaguely Catholic, right? Right. Becoming more like Chris.
00:29:59
Speaker
which exactly you've heard of like everybody loves Raymond but like everybody everybody knows about Chris um so anyways this game's like that uh i think it's kind of impressive so like i said two people making this i didn't expect that at all um the music's actually
00:30:24
Speaker
Considerably better in certain areas than I would have expected for a really small team as somebody who is dabbled around Making shitty music. Um, these are cohesive tracks, right? I actually like like the wind temple every when I go there. I'm like, yeah The other ones are good. But the wind temple is definitely my jam. Yeah, we can use it for the the outro music or something
00:30:48
Speaker
Watch as I say that and then like, I'll forget about this and then we'll be like queen or something like wind temple music. And it's just like, um, I picked something from skyward sword through it in there. Probably not. I mean, sometimes I do want to use music from other games that I have not played or other like shows or animes. I'm never gonna.
00:31:15
Speaker
Cohesively necessarily. Yeah, I have an episode I have to find a place to expose the universe to this. Yeah. Yeah, you're not gonna click my Facebook link The goddamn podcast. Oh my gosh. Do you remember the music in that I want? I don't know if this is this probably was because we grew up together but the The olden days of like instant messaging where friends would always like pass songs back and forth You're just like, oh, yeah, here's something on whatever like I guess YouTube of the time probably YouTube I
00:31:45
Speaker
You're just like I think there was some YouTube, but there also was there's actually also moving like sending people literal tracks Here's an mp3 downloaded. It was literally mp3 is just like no, it's fine Yeah, I have a friend who torrents and I'll send me music. Yeah, I didn't even know what a torrent was It's all like lime wire and Casa and Napster and nonsense
00:32:05
Speaker
You're just like, well, I had it on my computer and then people just accumulated like single songs from albums, just tons of stuff. Remember when you had a music folder that you labeled music and then you'd be like, highlight all plan. When does media players. Let me, let me put that cool player skin on. Look at this visualizer. Yeah.
00:32:27
Speaker
Visualizer was legit. I like that also if you wanted to get different visualizers for that you had to download them and then drop them in a folder. I did that once and it was like a DLL file which back in the day was real suspicious and currently is
00:32:46
Speaker
Real suspicious. Um, it's like, I want to decompile this shit. What are you about? Show me your secrets. It's like that and win amp. But yeah, that was the other one back then. It was like the lightning bolt emblem and stuff. And people use that stuff for a long time, but that's not the ideal way to listen to the music anymore. Uh, instead you just wait for the intro or an outro to one of our podcast episodes.
00:33:17
Speaker
Do we really run out of a wizard of legend? I mean, I was like, um, gonna ask you, you mentioned earlier, the final fight is like everybody together. I think you have to fight. No, it's, it's one guy who's like, I'm the wizard of all wizards and he can use various different spells. All right. This is first form is kind of like, he goes in the center.
00:33:41
Speaker
Goes a magic shield and kind of has this ghostly avatar. That's sending shit out at you. Gotcha So you have the right to actually fight him phase two. He's like, all right, no dicking around gotcha and he plays just like you do but He's good. This undermines my joke because I was gonna have like all of the different professors at hog hog works hog works and
00:34:04
Speaker
Hogwarts. That's the name of the school. That'll be the name of my pork-based restaurant. Fighting Harry at once, but that doesn't work if it's just a guy. It's Dumbledore. There you go. For the analogy, it's Dumbledore.
00:34:19
Speaker
You've done it landed it The other thing I think that I kind of like about Hades as opposed to Wizard of Legend a little bit This is a trade-off Wizards of Legend is faster Hades has slightly larger areas is a little bit slower, but because of that It gives you a little more room to play with
00:34:42
Speaker
Like, yeah, you can still get caught by projectiles, but a lot of times that's on you. You've backed yourself into a corner. And Wizard of Legends, sometimes it's just like everything, everywhere. Projectiles flying off the bottom of the screen, and the top of the screen. It gets a little bit crazy. There's like the ice spikes. The ice spikes.
00:35:03
Speaker
Why the ice spikes though? That's my question because traps in games The other my one gripe about Wizard of Legend is when you are picking up these spells It doesn't really give you an idea of damage. I know you mentioned. Yeah, you can try them out on the dummies And you can also try out How long after I use my spell is the cooldown gonna be? But I feel that they could just put it
00:35:28
Speaker
Right right on the thing. Yeah, so much easier for me to just scroll through be like, okay, this would fit also, it's harder to kind of take off where like Hades is a constant progression you end up getting a
00:35:44
Speaker
Let's say 30 ish upgrades. Yeah. By the time you get to end game. So you actually have a build you're doing shit and it'll pair with other stuff. Yeah. But here it's more limited because I feel you can get up to.
00:36:00
Speaker
Is it? So like 10, 12 artifacts? Yeah. Cause you can only get like one or two per floor and there's only really like six floors. Yes. You have like a max of like 12 artifacts you can get.
00:36:16
Speaker
And that's like, that's a lot. That's, that's kind of assuming you always have money. You're not spending it on health potions. Like is a shopkeeper, you know, there's, there's options. Um, and that's not likely to happen. I guess the trade-off is wizard of legend haps have like runs go a lot faster than
Player Commitment & Health Mechanics
00:36:34
Speaker
Hades. A successful Hades run can take a while depending on what you're running. Um, but I don't know.
00:36:43
Speaker
potato potato like there's there's advantages to both advantages advantages but personally I like I think I like more the commitment to a Hades run where I'm just like I'm just this close to being super viable right here
00:37:02
Speaker
And on the other hand, I also like for Binding of Isaac, how you can re-roll really quickly to be like, oh, I want to start specifically with one of these, with one of these, with one of these. Like you just hold R and re-roll your first item. And the equivalent's not really there. And that choice sort of isn't really there in Wizard of Legend. Because you can actually pick what you're starting out with entirely. Yeah.
00:37:28
Speaker
But it's like they both have both Hades and binding of Isaac have one early game RNG piece That's like this will help you decide if this is gonna be a good run or not or like how to build your run And I feel like that doesn't really exist in Wizard of Legend and Wizard of Legend It's like I hope I just don't get hit like, you know
00:37:48
Speaker
I would almost say it more so encourages you to get good. Okay. I'm not going to do that though. But I'm saying like, as you're getting progression, it's, you can kind of influence the RNG of, Hey, this is going to be my outfit. These are my spells. This is my starting artifact. Maybe it'll help me sustain better. Maybe it'll give me crit. Maybe I'll have more monies.
00:38:10
Speaker
Yeah. Um, but that's your choice for how you want the run to start. Yeah. You can swap out things as you go, but typically you're going to try and enhance what you're already doing. Right. So it really comes down to how I learned the mechanics of individual enemies or four boxes.
00:38:26
Speaker
Yeah And getting used to that there's even reduced there's reduced rng Yeah for the for the start at least in a legend 99 of these games health is your most limiting resource Because there are health real life too
00:38:41
Speaker
They exist. It's health potions. You have to buy those. You really have to hope you get vampire glasses for a little bit of heal on crit. Right. And hope the game's nice to you because you're not really going to get health back otherwise.
00:38:59
Speaker
Yeah. There's like, I was looking at the, um, all of the relics on like a Wiki. It's like control of health. And there's like, there's a lot of things that modify health and they're almost all like bad. Um, but there's no, I didn't see anything.
00:39:14
Speaker
There's an item or one of the artifacts is Whenever you kill something it increases your max health. Oh, that's right on pickup It takes half of your health max health away. So you go from like 500 to 250 I was like, oh can we got a we got a ways? Yeah, because also increasing your max health is not the same as healing. That's true It doesn't magically heal you. Yeah, I wonder if I don't know if this is true or not Maybe health potions restore percentage of your health which would make that better
00:39:44
Speaker
I'm not sure though. I didn't pay attention. It probably is. In Potions class. At Hogwarts. It's McGonagall. Yeah. Actually, I don't even know enough to make a joke for which teacher is the potions teacher. I know. I feel like I made a comment recently. I think McGonagall was like, he was the guy in disguise, right? I think McGonagall's a lady. The big glasses. Who was the other guy with the big glasses? Who was like... I don't know.
00:40:15
Speaker
Anyways, I don't know what, like, Harry Potter is. It was just filler. I'll come clean. It was just filler. I watched Potter Puff the Pals and that's about it, guys. That's my bad.
00:40:28
Speaker
That's pretty good though. You guys should check that out, uh, to make up all the time that you'll have after listening to a shorter episode of the podcast. What are we at? We're like what? 30, 40 minutes, 40 minutes. So after edits, I'm like, I had like, um, random sound effects, like springs and things like that are like laugh tracks, uh, between everything that you say, it'll be like morning radio sound effects, please.
00:40:54
Speaker
Like an hour and ten minutes. Just after every single one of your lines. There's canned laughter. You're just like, what did you think about that? And then just like, canned laughter immediately. How's it going guys? Canned laughter. This is Phil in the front of a live studio audience.
00:41:13
Speaker
Well, they were alive when we started. So I will say one other cool thing about the controller RNG of the game is they will have red rooms.
00:41:32
Speaker
So buying type folks each time it can be a different encounter, but it's usually like, Hey, do you want to give up something to get something? So you can trade in our kind of for, uh, something else. I don't know what it is. It could be different. You could trade in your Arcana for like, Hey, um, pick one of these five or comment. That's your new thing now. Oh yeah. That one's actually not too bad. It's not.
00:41:54
Speaker
because the choice like you lose one you don't lose one at random yes you get the pick which one you get back yeah yeah but lose one at random pick between like five is you'll probably not get fucked over yeah but my favorite one is the pinata wasn't here to do I saw the pinata did not activate
00:42:13
Speaker
Wait, wait, wait, wait. I did once I saw it once and I barely had enough. I'll give you a clue. It's a pinata You have a set amount of time to beat the shit out of it And if you do and you break it in that time you get a reward if you don't it Resets back to full health. Yeah, so I find it I'd be like motherfuck I don't like I timed everything perfectly didn't have enough damage. Yeah, and then one run I went through and just
00:42:43
Speaker
0 100 or 100 to 0 was beautiful. Yeah, I probably only got like 25 gold out of it, but I felt pretty cool Pretty cool guy. Yeah, like having some diverse random events and characters you can encounter like there's um That's pretty much essential to games like this just add some variety There's a lady who will take like all your gold and give you back a semi random amount of gems It seems to be sourced off of how much gold you give her
00:43:08
Speaker
I mean, definitely the more gold you get for the more gems you get. Yeah, it's just that's like the seed value gives you the there's an upper and lower bound after that. Yeah. Because some people gave her like an equivalent amount of gold to gems and other people give her like tons of gold and they get like a bit more gems. So it's like it's seeded. But that's useful if you know the runs about to lose like the time we beat a boss and then we're both sitting at like 22. We're probably not going to. Do you want to. Can you take point?
00:43:38
Speaker
I guess I'll die. The other kind of cool mechanic that I actually never utilized but I saw was in the hub world where you can buy resources before you go into the trials. You can talk to other fighters on the side or they may have been merchants and you can pay them some gems for different effects.
00:44:01
Speaker
I think one of them was, did you do the completely randomized build at all? No, I didn't trust that. Yeah. I did the one lady where if you give her 20 gems, you'll be like, here's 200 gold. I'm like, awesome. Oh, geez. I think it's not like guaranteed to get one or two artifacts around first floor. You can like invest in around then. That's actually not bad. I actually, like later game where you're like, I've already unlocked everything. Huh?
00:44:26
Speaker
That actually, that undermines my previous criticism about like the, the meta progression. Yeah, exactly. The meta progression, not like giving you enough of an edge. Being able to literally buy an edge with currency from a previous run is literally that.
00:44:44
Speaker
there's the other two I saw was I think you can skip to the later levels what so you can just be like hey I don't want to fight a boss like from the first floor skip me to the second floor um like just skip the first main boss entirely which is kind of crazy now that being said if you did that you wouldn't have any of those upgrades
00:45:06
Speaker
Yeah, that's what goes against my roguelike playstyle. Because I'm like, there's a chance I could get an upgrade here. Like, that's how I play Slay the Spire. I'm like, how many big baddies can I face? Or how many elites? I'm like, this will maximize my thing. I might die, but I'm going for broke.
00:45:26
Speaker
Yeah, there's literally like, we'll probably never cover faster than light, but the whole mechanic of faster than light. I should play that game one year. Yeah, probably. It's actually quite good. I would totally do it right in if you want Dave to play faster, if you want to force Dave to play faster than light.
00:45:45
Speaker
AJ if you're out there, how's your chance? But you do have to literally write in and we don't have a p.o box despite earlier Suggestions that we I do have windows that a carrier pigeon can theoretically fly into right? So just throw out pigeons until they plays faster than light but the whole mechanic of that was like
00:46:07
Speaker
they generate a map basically like a star map with a bunch of random encounters and like uh destinations close to stars and like nebulas and everything and you would you could plot your way forward to like the next area yeah um but you could always fly back you can actually fly back as much as you want
00:46:29
Speaker
under the uh constraint that the rebel fleet is always chasing you forward exactly so if you go like really fast and you're just like get really far ahead of it no problem you know circling back a bit getting a couple more random encounters fighting a couple ships getting some crew members getting some money getting some upgrades um but you're always balancing that with the fact that if you fall behind too much then you're gonna face constant rebel fleet encounters that become overwhelming um
Elemental Humor & Developer Praise
00:47:00
Speaker
And the reason that relates to everything we're talking about is like juicing the most you can out of a run and a rogue like where it's like, here's all of the upgrades. And you just like grab your arms and you just drag them all toward you in the center of the table. You're like, that's me.
00:47:19
Speaker
That's one of the joys and binding of Isaac because you just keep slapping stuff on And it's like what are you doing? I'm like, I don't know but it's damaging them And like the whole screen is just covered with your projectiles. It's like nice tears and blood and poop
00:47:36
Speaker
Those are actually like this game has fire water lightning wind Those are the elements of Binding of Isaac. Yeah earth also And we're earth winded fire Binding of Isaac is tears blood and poop Not as good of a band Parody band
00:48:02
Speaker
So anyways, it's actually a pretty good game. How much did it cost? I don't know because I always had it apparently. I think I got it for around 10 to 15. Was it on sale?
00:48:16
Speaker
Mate, I can look at my seats on Steam or something. This is the easiest thing to research and we refuse on principle to, uh, risk being correct. I mean, as of today, it's still on sale, but by the time you're listening to it, it will not be, but I'm sure we'll go on sale again. But it's just honestly, uh, very fun pickup. I'm still going to keep putting time into it here and there in between some other stuff. It's surprisingly polished. I do like it. I do want to beat that final boss. Yeah.
00:48:46
Speaker
They like props to the developers. They developed a good feel for it. It's got a good pace. Um, I don't know if they were specifically trying to avoid encouraging too much on the Hades, um, gameplay and field, but they are distinct, completely distinct. Um, and, uh, yeah, I think it's, I think it's pretty legit. Um, that being said.
00:49:14
Speaker
Hades also came out on Steam, so if you are interested in this kind of game and you play it and you really enjoy it, go back and listen to our episode on Hades if you're a Steam fan and you don't like Epic Game Store, which is fair. Some people are like that. It's cool.
00:49:29
Speaker
I guess. I mean, I fucking hate that. I mean, everybody hates that. Pretty much everybody does. Yeah. Um, Hades is also on steam. So kind of late news news section.
00:49:46
Speaker
I also need to beat the final boss of Hades yet. Oh, yeah. They probably put a lot more effort. I know they put so much into that since the last time I played. Yes. Is it still black and white? Is the stick figure protagonist? You know the stick fight flash games back on Newgrounds? Oh my gosh. It's basically just that. Well, cool. Yeah. Anything else about this Harry Potter game?
00:50:17
Speaker
Buy LEGO Harry Potter now on Steam. As always, if you guys have any feedback, you've got episode ideas that you would consider to be less filler than the majority of this episode. Feel free to send them in at soapstonepodcast.gmail.com, or you can join the discussion talking about how much filler we put in our episodes at facebook.com slash soapstonepodcast.
00:50:45
Speaker
Or call me directly, Ed. Yes. By just shouting real loud. I have a great sense of hearing. And I'm sorry that you had a bad day. Yeah. But you know, we're here for you, so. We can talk. Not physically, though. No, not really. I mean, unless you're listening, Mike. What was the... I was trying to remember the Frasier Crane thing. That's just like...
00:51:14
Speaker
Oh, it was okay. So my brain confused it. Cause it was like, I was trying to say good night, Seattle. I'm listening. Then I realized that makes no sense. It was like, hello, Seattle. I'm listening, but nice. Yeah. If we were going to appreciate that, uh, phrase your reference without you saying scrambled. And I see him a bit confused.
00:51:44
Speaker
But I'm gonna peg ya. Bum, bum, bum, bum, oh honey I'm in the fucking kitchen gon' make me some scrambled eggs. Hey, and Drake, don't you even dare be hitting me with that axe. No! You guys are a lovely audience tonight. Bum, bum, bum, bum, bum, bum, bum, bum, bum, bum, bum scrambled eggs. Goes like a magic. Bum, bum, scrambled eggs all over my house.
00:53:02
Speaker
Yeah.