Star Wars Jedi: Survivor

GWJ Conference Call 864

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Rich, and Amanda are joined by returning guest Beto O'Bryrne from Radical Evolution, creator of The World of Kir, to talk about the interesting challenges of games with a licensed world.

Games: Labryrinth of Zangetsu, Star Wars Jedi: Survivor.

To contact us, email [email protected]! Send us your thoughts on the show, pressing issues you want to talk about, or whatever else is on your mind.

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Comments

00:01:45 Labryrinth of Zangetsu
00:13:04 Star Wars Jedi: Survivor
00:58:45 Intellectual Property vs. Original Game
01:30:58 Thread of the Week

It's interesting that Jedi Survivor dropped a day after I was at Star Wars: Galaxy's Edge in Disney World playing what I think is the best albeit most expensive Star Wars video game ever made: Smuggler's Run.

Ya got me on Labyrinth of Zangetsu—the activation code was "Wizardry". I'm glad it's on Playstation, because our Switch is about to be mega-occupied come next week.

Also, to paraphrase Homer: I find the world of Kir intriguing and have subscribed to the newsletter.

Good luck! I strongly caution you to always listen to the voice in your head that says "go back to town" when it pops up. Its never a bad idea to go back to town. I have never regreted going back to town whereas I definitely have some runs that I deeply regret pressing forward on lol. (Still playing LoZ and loving every moment of it.)

Welp, I downloaded zangetsu and it’s all in Japanese, with no way to turn it into English … looks like I’m waiting on a patch.

Felix Threepaper wrote:

Welp, I downloaded zangetsu and it’s all in Japanese, with no way to turn it into English … looks like I’m waiting on a patch.

That's wild! I wonder if the English version only launched in North America/Europe or something. My version was English from the jump, and I'm in direct contact with the dev right now if you need me to investigate/troubleshoot (they downloaded the podcast, ran it through a translator and wrote a lovely note thanking us for the coverage and discussing their DLC plans.)

In my very limited research (ie one dude on YouTube) it appears that a recent update switched it all to Japanese … could be because of Australia’s region. The ps store said it was available in both languages — normally you can’t accidentally get a Japanese language-only game.

That’s very nice of the dev btw! I would be very grateful (and impressed) if you let the dev know.

Word on the street is the problem should be resolved soon! New patch is under review.

Wow, thank you! Can't wait ... wanna roll me some characters

May the RNG gods be with you!

Some stuff I wish I had known early that could be helpful:

-Make your Monk Good aligned (they have a useful early power that can only be accessed by good characters. My silly Neutral monk can't use it.)
-Make your Thief Neutral or Evil (same reasons)
-Monk is the early level super star, but Samurai outstrips it for damage later on.
-Warriors are tanks, but might be worth dipping to another class once you unlock their passives (which transfer over)
-For elite class planning, don't hesitate to make the jump to Sage with your spellcaster(s) as early as you unlock it.
-Cleric to Paladin is also a potentially interesting jump, but the stat requirements are pretty high (I'm level 16ish with characters that haven't swapped classes and the Cleric is still coming up shy. Though they are also shy on Sage and have been the most RNG despised character lol.)
-I haven't had a chance to play with the advanced classes that aren't Sage (Paladin and Ninja) yet but if the jump to Sage from Wizard is any indicator, get them ASAP. Sage unlocked around level 15 or so for my high stat Wizard.

Thanks for the tips … it all sounds so much like how we played Wizardry back in the day — no manuals, just word of mouth on classes and builds.

Labyrinth is now in English!

After an hour or so, I feel like a dog in a car: enjoying the ride, but with no idea how anything works.

That's so very much the experience. You sort of just ride along and the mechanics are half intuitive, half obscure, with the obscure ones slowly revealing themselves over time. It definitely helps fight the optimization pressure most RPGs impose as the paths towards optimization are obscure and there are no real guides online (or at least weren't when I dipped into the game. Looks like there are some things on Steam now, including a preview of character class abilities by level. Discovering them was neat though, so if you haven't looked anything up, don't!)

I'm definitely enjoying this without looking stuff up.

nice surprise: discovering that you can target the back row of monsters in combat.

not-so-nice surprise: selling all my storage to raise 3.5K gold to resurrect my lvl 7 Samurai, only for him to turn to ASH and now cost 7K to resurrect. I got him back, though.

Can't wait to play again tonight! what even is Zelda?

This is scratching a long-lost itch. Totally Wizardry. Up to the third labyrinth.

Changed my Cleric to a Paladin so he can do more damage from the back row, poking stuff with spears.

I changed my Samurai to a Ninja. Then I noticed the ex-Samurai couldn't use most of the cool Ninja skills because he was good. I remembered some message that attacking 'friendly' encounters affects alignment. After making 2 of those attacks, he turned evil, along with my Paladin and 2 others.

So I guess we're an evil party now ... in RP terms I figure the horrors of the labyrinth are taking their toll on the party.

Felix Threepaper wrote:

This is scratching a long-lost itch. Totally Wizardry. Up to the third labyrinth.

Changed my Cleric to a Paladin so he can do more damage from the back row, poking stuff with spears.

I changed my Samurai to a Ninja. Then I noticed the ex-Samurai couldn't use most of the cool Ninja skills because he was good. I remembered some message that attacking 'friendly' encounters affects alignment. After making 2 of those attacks, he turned evil, along with my Paladin and 2 others.

So I guess we're an evil party now ... in RP terms I figure the horrors of the labyrinth are taking their toll on the party.

This is thrilling to hear and I'm super glad you are digging it! I'm deep into the incredible fourth dungeon. RIP your Paladin's powers, which rely on being good, I imagine. (My cleric remains shy on the stats still here at level 17.)

I managed to turn them all good again by looking for those friendly encounters and choosing ‘ignore’ — the party now looks back at the time they all went evil as a weird blip… except for my ninja, who stayed evil

Wow, you can just keep changing class. The HP boosts alone make it worthwhile.

My monk became a samurai and is now a paladin. The initial hit to HP was recovered quite quickly, and the levelling is super fast if you take them through labyrinth 4 or 5.

I'm not sure how it goes if you switch back to a previous class, eg samurai to paladin, then back to samurai ... I'm tempted because I feel like my starting cleric and samurai switched a little too early and missed out on some decent spells/skills. Still, I'm doing OK in combat so it's probably not necessary to fully min/max.

Need to wrap this game and move on! Labyrinth 5 is a doozy though.