I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention these two games considering my whole website is based on their idea.

Elimage

First off is Elminage from UFO Interactive. They’ve been mostly busy with in house stuff, probably to drum up the money for stuff like this. However if you need a traditional Wizardry fix, this game is it and now it’s in English thanks to UFO Interactive. So go and buy it i you want to see more like this.
Elminage as most don’t know is ‘s “Wizardry”. It uses some of the same races and most of the same classes and is basically a Wizardry game for all intents and purposes. Starfish no longer has rights to the license I don’t think, and it’s now bought up by Aquire, thus this might be the answer to that.
What is cool about Elminage is that you can use your own icons for the faces. They have to be BMP and edited a certain way, but you can customize it further. Later games in the series even allow you to import character graphics for the profile page. This has led people to use characters from other first person dungeon crawlers.
You can buy it form the new PSN Online store here. It works on the PSP and the PSV.

Wizardry Online

Next is an actual Wizardry title, Wizardry Online. It just launched a few days ago and it takes MUCH from the Wizardry formula. First is the “YOU CAN DIE FOREVER” you can die, then ash and then gone… time to reroll a new character. You however can get some of the stats from the old character and use them on the new one. However everything that character was carrying is now GONE unless you put it into a bank.

Being a criminal is pretty brutal too. If you get in prison you have a few way to escape, one of which is talking to a rat. Talk to the rat too early and you reset your sentence….AND EVERYONE ELSE’S. They basically made this game super tough on criminals so being one isn’t any good. Also if you are a criminal in prison, you can’t play any of your other characters. Wizardry brutal.

Wizardry Online – View from Tavern

Overall the game is an action RPG. Mash the mouse to attack, rather than auto-attack and mash skill keys. This means there is some skill involved in side stepping, jumping back and guarding so you take no damage in an attack.
My brief playing with it was enjoyable and the world has a nice feeling to it, however the town music is terrible so it’s good you can groove out to something different in shops.

Overall it’s good to see new entries into the First Peron 3D Dungeon RPG genre.

For those First person 3D Dungeon RPG (Think Wizardry, Etrian Odyssey) lovers out there, UFO Interactive brings us Elminage!
Trailer is under the cut. Nothing too glorious BUT it does give you a feel for the game :D! This is definitely on my list of MUST BUYS.

Why I like Elminage? From the artwork I’ve seen, it didn’t seem to fall into the sexualize everything that’s female category and the radical dimorphism also doesn’t seem to be present.

ALSO! If this is the version I think it is, you can use your own icons for the players that you see at the bottom :3 So yes your entire party can be the main male cast from whatever anime/game of your choice X3 (Not that I have plans or anything!)

Continue–>

Many games out there, when you have to select a race/job/portrait for your character, have very limited options when you select male or female. The men are usually somewhat ugly hulking beasts and the women are dainty little half naked flowers. In the case of JRPGs, the men might look better, however some options might only have the “less attractive” option for the men, and the alternate for the women is the busty scantily clad version.

When looking for new dungeon crawler RPGs I came across Elminage II by Starfish for the PSP. I quickly looked at the jobs and the races. While there is a “Maid” job that might be female only (I haven’t played the game, they might have a Butler option for men), I decided to look at the races.
Normally in JRPGs and even WRPGs, the men tend to be more beastly or robotic and the women will always look human. Case and point is Phantasy Star Online when the robot men NEVER had a human head, while there was more than one human looking head for the women.
Elminage II keeps it equal, even so much that the Dragonnewt women have a drab brown color while the men are a brighter red color (as it happens in nature amongst birds and other things.) Even the Dwarf woman looks scary and the Gnomes look earthy. Another note is that the women also appear to be wearing clothes, and not be dressed any less than the men. You can only really see the top of the shoulders, however you can tell that those are covered (Even the demon race Devilish).
Comparing the Ogre race to the Orcs of Wow, you can see that the Ogre women might even be more burly than the men. While in WoW the Orc women definitely look more “sexy”.

If this game ever comes stateside, I will definitely be picking it up. Not only is it a 1PDC (1st Person Dungeon Crawler), it balances out the portraits of the characters so I feel good about picking certain characters.

Of note for this game is that if you don’t like ANY portraits, and want a picture of lolcats for your party, you can “Face Load” 48×48 BMPs into it that you have put on your memory stick.

Link: Elminage II

I picked up Class of Heroes and Dark Spire wanting to satisfy my dungeon crawling spot.

My first impression is that the game seems a little haphazard. One of the beginning quests want you to go to the inner sanctum of a dungeon to meet the professor there. However there are one hit kill enemies in the newbie dungeon. Not even Etrian Odyssey was that hard. Also, the back row people can’t attack, not even for half damage. This wouldn’t be so bad if the ranged weapons were actually affordable, which they are not. So, I ended up spending a good chunk of my money on revives :P

The game does have voices, the good part is that they are not dubbed, which is unlike Atlus to not rip them out.