Devil Whiskey
Devil Whiskey is an old school style role playing game in the purest sense of the phrase. With indie developers Devil Whiskey is a must play for fans of the pen and paper RPG genre.
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Developer: Shifting Suns Publisher: Shifting Suns Release Date: August 28, 2004 Platforms: PC JustRPG Score: 85% Pros: +Amazing story line. +Great dialogue Cons: -Very dated graphics. -Only appeals to pen and paper gamers. |
Devil Whiskey Overview
Devil Whiskey is an old school style pen and paper role playing game that was released for the PC in the middle of 2004. This game may look extremely old to your average gamer, but to fans of pen and paper style roleplay this game is a real gem that shouldn’t be overlooked. Players can choose from many races and classes and set out on their own adventure to battle classic monsters such as orcs and goblins. Although this is an amazing RPG for those who enjoy the style gamers of pretty much every other type will probably not like this game at all.
Devil Whiskey Screenshots
Devil Whiskey Featured Video
Devil Whiskey Review
By: Ariana
| As the Queen said when the Palace staff provided champagne to celebrate her coronation – when it reigns it pours. |
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Bards Tale was a classic CRPG – released in 1985 and followed by Bards Tale 2 and 3 – it is up there withWizardry, Might and Magic, Wasteland, Ultima and a number of others in having a dedicated following that have kept the memory alive to this very day. As discussed in the June 11, 2004 issue a new release based on Bards Tale is being worked on, and may be out as early as later this year for the PS2 and Xbox and next spring for the PC. |
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| A second effort along similar lines has come out with its own Bard Tale Redux – under a different name because they didn’t have the right to the Bards Tale name. Called Devil Whiskeyand produced by Shifting Suns Studios it can be ordered on-line for $25 (download only). For U.S. $43 (North America) or $60 (international) you can order a boxed version which has just become available and started to ship as of mid-August. |
| Devil Whiskey does an excellent job of maintaining the look and feel of Bards Tale. The interface is quite similar, and the classes, dungeons, and general gameplay all are quite reminiscent of the original. Devil Whiskey does have some modern innovations – it comes with a rudimentary automap, and while it keeps the system of casting spells by typing in four letter codes it provides a menu that can be used to select a spell for those that don’t bother memorizing the letters or don’t want all the extra typing. For you rookies that are horrified by the casting of spells by typing in code letters this was a nice convenience at the time. Some of us still remember tiltowait – if you wanted to nuke your enemies in the original version ofWizardry 1 you needed to remember (or look up) the whole name and type it correctly – ditto with the other spells. Later versions were improved and recognized the first few letters so you didn’t need to type the whole name. But back to Devil Whiskey. |
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One might say that Devil Whiskey has brought Bards Tale from the mid eighties to the mid nineties. Graphics and music are not embarassingly bad but they are not exactly up there with the state of the art. The interface is very cumbersome by current standards despite the improvements – far too many actions require repetitive typing or keystrokes. For example, you can repeat the entire party’s actions from one combat round to the next, but there is no way for any character to repeat his or her actions without manually repeating them – annoying when any spell needs to be cumbersomely typed in or found in a menu. Inventories are tiny by current standards – characters constantly run out of room. Each character can hold about 8 unequipped items and there is no party inventory at all. Thank the Gods there is no encumbrance (you can carry 8 suits of heavy plate armor with no problem) or need to carry and eat food (as many early games required – more than one of us were about to successfully complete a difficult game of Rogue and starved to death a few feet from the dungeon exit). |
| Other than an excellent job maintaining fidelity to Bards Tale, the greatest strengths of Devil Whiskey are in its character system. You get eight – count them – eight characters in a party (you need to leave one or more free slots if you want to be able to create or summon monsters to join you or accept monsters that offer to join – but this is never mandatory). There is a choice of nine races and 11 starting classes. The choice of race affects your starting attributes (strength, dexterity, intelligence etc.). Granted that the races aren’t as well balanced as they might be (pity the half orc – gets +1 strength and constitution but pays for it with a total of -14 with each of the other six attributes reduced) and some of the classes are of limited use, but that can be said of almost any CRPG. Wizardry 8 is about the only game I can think of with many classes where each serves a valued function and none is really weak. As is customary, the more characters in the party the less experience each one gets – any summoned or recruited monsters take a large chunk of experience. |
| Each class comes with its own skills. At levels 13, 25, 37 and 50 the character gets new skills. Skills may be combat related (a rogue can try to backstab – and instantly kill – one enemy regardless of distance, a warrior can try and scare an enemy into fleeing, a psi-knight can use telekinesis to inflict damage on a group of enemies etc.) But they also may involve crafting items (different classes can craft magic armor, weapons, potions or miscellaneous magic items). There aren’t that many items that can be crafted but a few of them are important – the best weapon in the game can be crafted at relatively early levels (which takes some of the fun away from eagerly scanning loot in hopes of getting improved gear). |
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This is an old style hack and slash CRPG. Nothing real complicated – you go out and kill things – the more the better. Turn-based combat and moving – nothing is real time. First person view not overhead, but the universe is divided into squares as those of us with extensive collections of dungeon maps drawn on graph paper remember well. In combat you get a screen showing what enemies you are fighting (you can’t see enemies as you are walking around – you know they are there when you get the combat screen) and how distant each group of enemies is (there may be one or more groups). Distance ranges from 10′(melee range) to 90′ (most magic and some bows can’t even reach). You can try and move closer or further away – so can the enemies. Magic can affect positioning – there is a spell to push enemies further away and a very high level one to pull them closer. |
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| Devil Whiskey is reasonably non-linear. There is one side quest in town that leads to a dungeon that can keep you occupied for a bunch of levels – or can be bypassed. There is a side quest outdoors leading to another dungeon later on. Another outdoor dungeon goes with no quests – it is just there to explore. And there is an arena that generates combats with specified types of enemies at specified difficulties (largely useless – random dungeon encounters give more experience and loot faster). Dungeon levels are not excessively large – nothing like Might and Magic Six . But there is no Lloyd’s Beacon class spell to allow instant transport between where you are and home. You need not walk though if you have the right type of magic user – there is a spell that teleports any distance outdoors or on one level of a dungeon – as long as you have been to the destination square already and know its exact distance from you. There are also six modest sized dungeons that need to be done to finish the game, and can only be done in the specified order. |
| Now for the negatives. The map is primitive – to put it nicely. Small, gives almost no detail and cannot be annotated. On the other had once I got used to the game I found it was sufficient – just took some getting used to. If you want a wide choice of portraits to represent your avatars on the character screen look elsewhere. One or two portraits per race per gender. Do you dislike riddles – especially the type that have nothing to do with the game? The “what goes on four legs when it is young, two as an adult and three when old?” type of riddle. You will encounter a number of them here and in a bunch of places they are mandatory if you want to progress. But none is really complex – I’m pathetic at riddles and figured out all but one of them without any help – if help is needed the official forum can provide answers to any of them. |
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Do you want to amble around and leisurely explore the territory and map it all out without too many interruptions – won’t happen! Every square you move there is a possibility of a random encounter. In most places a fairly high possibility. Moving five squares without being attacked can be a challenge until you have cleared an area out of enemies – after which the chance of random encounters is somewhat lower. Indeed, merely turning around counts as movement. So if you are facing north and want to look east, south and west before facing north again this simple objective may involve four combats. I found this rather annoying – but I have to admit it was faithful to its roots. Bard’s Tale worked the same way. |
| Devil Whiskey is not a long game – maybe 20 hours if you don’t rush. The final dungeon can take longer but I got through it my first game in 15 minutes. The game is not difficult – my first party died once (before I bothered to figure out that the most useful spell in the game is one that may blind many enemies at any distance – and a blind enemy cannot attack or take any other action other than movement). My second party never lost a fight and was rarely challenged. And that was with only four characters, three of whom were magic users (the first four characters can both use melee attacks and be attacked in melee – the other four must use magic or distance attacks – so three magic users in the front row where they can be beat up on presents issues). |
| The current version is 2.0. This still has a bunch of bugs. Some involve crashes, some involve things like suddenly getting 100 million in cash that you shouldn’t have. The good news here is that I never saw a bug that made it impossible to finish – if I had to quit and reload or was crashed to desktop and had to reload it was a minor annoyance since the game loaded fairly fast – as long as I remembered to save often – no features like autosaves. Not one of the most stable games I have ever played by any means. Another negative – only one save slot and each save overwrites the last. |
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The biggest negative – two totally incomprehensible design decisions. The smaller of the two big blunders – you will probably never be able to use any of the best combat skills. You will probably never use the SECOND best skills either. You get them at levels 37 and 50 and unless you spend many hours – MANY hours – seeking unnecessary random encounters to laboriously generate not millions but TENS of million of experience points you will never see those levels. if you go slowly and milk every dungeon for all it is worth you may finish at level 30, more or less. Not that you need the skills – but many players don’t really love seeing nice looking abilities that they are developing their characters to get prove way out of reach. Icewind Dale 2 had this problem in a modest way – and was criticized for that though the game was generally well regarded. Devil Whiskey does it big-time. |
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| This is nothing compared to the real mind boggler. You get two types of magic users – arcanist and elementalist. Arcanists progress through four classes, and finally reach the warlock class. Elementalists progress through classes tied to earth, air, water and fire and finally get to the most powerful class – the isomancer. But you must be level 12 in one class to move to the next. And to reach the fifth and most powerful class you need to have been level 12 in each of the others. Switching classes at level 12 means you do not get the best spells in your current class; for those you need to persevere to level 13. The issue is that unlike Bards Tale, Devil Whiskey looks only to overall character levels to see how much experience you need to earn to get to the next level. So if you are level 13 and switch to another magic class (non magic users can’t ever switch classes at all) you are level 1 in your new class but your overall character level is still 13. You can only progress to level two in your new CLASS if you go up to CHARACTER level 14 – a lot of experience points later. Then if you go up to level 13 in your next class you switch to your third class at character level 25 etc. Bards Tale had looked only to level in the current class – so in a new class you could go up a lot of levels quite fast because you went back to needing only a few thousand experience points for the early levels not hundreds of thousands or millions of points per level. It took some effort but the best classes were quite attainable through normal play. Wizardry fans will see the analogy – Wizardry made the same change betweeen Wizardry 7 and 8 but they did it in a way that made sense. Devil Whiskey doesn’t. |
| By the time you finish the game you are likely to be in your third magic using class. I have never – not once – gotten to the fourth, much less the fifth class playing normally. Just to test the system I once got to the final class playing with a solo character and churning out TONS of unnecessary random encounters. That was a mind-numbingly boring experience. And, er, how do I put this nicely. OK – I won’t. Classes 2 and 3 and 4 are close to useless. Spells are very similar and you wind up with an annoyingly inconvenient spell book crammed with totally useless spells. To cast a spell you may need to scroll past the fire spell that does 1-4 points of damage, the air spell that does 1-4 points of damage and the earth spell that (you guessed it) does the same. And the game requires you to learn a lot of those spells – you cannot refuse to learn them if you ever want to move to another class. AAArgghhhh. |
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Back to the positives. There have been mods posted on the Devil Whiskey forums so you can leave the official game and get experience playing the mods. This lets you get a bit closer to the otherwise illusory final classes and character abilities. When and if there ever are enough mods it may actually be feasible to get a character to level 50. At least one of the mods is fairly good too – it recreates much of the original Bards Taleand lets you replay it using the Devil Whiskey engine. |
| Despite the negatives I liked Devil Whiskey. I recommend Devil Whiskey – but only to old styleBards Tale fanboys (of either gender) looking for 20+ hours of nostalgia, or people desperate for a turn-based CRPG allowing them to run a party in these degenerate times of single player real time games. A good buy for people like me, in other words. Not recommended for anyone else – too many negatives. Maybe 3.0 will be better. |
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Final Grade: 85% |
Devil Whiskey Screenshots
Devil Whiskey Videos
Devil Whiskey Gameplay