Giving up on Wizardry Variant Daphne

Usually I don’t even bother to write any long winded article when I make an exit from a Gacha game for any sorts of reason. But given the recent great blunder made by Drecom for their Wizardry Daphne game and refusal to make any meaningful subsequent follow up action or make any amends after significant period of time has passed. Therefore, I decided to write an extensive Blog post to articulate the issues that I had with Wizardry Daphne which ultimately make me decide to quit the game after sticking around for almost 6 months.

My main grievances toward Wizardry Daphne stems from the mismanagement of Blade & Bastard collab which is supposed to be the high point of this game, yet the Devs never even bother to fix the issues over a month duration of this game. It was folly of me to stick around a little bit longer to expect Wizardry Daphne change to be a better when I should have just quitted as Drecom’s Blunder with Blade & Bastard event was a massive red flag. Ultimately, these accumulations of massive blunders along with minor ones make me deem Wizardry Variants Daphne to be managed as Kusoge and unworthy successor of Wizardry series legacy and conclude in making me decide to make a departure out of it.

This article will contain my criticism toward Wizardry Daphne which is bad enough to make an old-timer Gacha player ragequit and make a scathing commentary on it. This is actually quite an achievement since not many games could make me do the latter action apart from Netease with their shitty treatment on Super Mecha Champions. Even so, my primary driving force to write arguably what can be considered as hit piece and harshly criticize Wizardry Daphne is due to the lousy management by Drecom. As the owner of this game that will ultimately ruin Wizardry and deny its rightful potential with their arbitrary Greedy pricing policies.

The source of my frustrations towards Wizardry Daphne mainly stems with the poor execution of Blade & Bastard collab event. For a supposedly major collab event of this game, Blade & Bastard event dungeon is a very poorly designed with a massive Roadblock boss that has serious Powerscaling issues. In the dungeons filled with Sahagin creatures, the player will face a Dragon as the Final Boss of the dungeon which is supposed to be an epic showdown. The problem is, this particular giant red lizard statline has serious issue of powerscaling as Level 50 party are given statblock of Level 60 Boss to face and expected to have Abyss 3 equipment for the encounter.

To explain how absurd this particular Dragon boss fight of Blade & Bastard event which is essentially a DND CR20 Boss in a CR5 campaign. This thing takes 2 actions every turn and have Fire Breath weapon that hit all party member, two of these AOE attacks used simultaneously will guarantee a TPK. This shitty lizard also has Roar attack which also hit multiple parties and have stun probability and 1-2 hit combo with Fire Breath also pretty much a TPK as well. If you have level 50 team party, you are facing the hardest setting of the fire Dragon which apparently have around 15k HP and with average loadout, you can expect to deal around 500-750 DPS per turn. Good luck on surviving 20-30 turns with this Roar spamming firebreathing lizard. Supposedly you can try to cheese the Dragon boss with Mimic Secretion Paralysis and Katino sleep combo, but the odds are still very low if you don’t have a minmax party. 

Personally, I could have put up with the nonsense and go for munchkin minmax build to slay this Lizard, but I am not going to waste 20 hours of my already scarce free time for a badly designed roadblock. Through this stupid debacle that shouldn't have happened if Drecom doesnt have their Dev  constantly overworked likely in Hamachi fashion. I just don't have much faith that Drecom capable to do the right thing as a Dungeon Master to make good use of the Wizardry Legacy handed to them. A product that came out of from a Soulless corporation which allows no passion to play significant part in the process will simply have a very limited quality, because the primary driving force is faulty one after all.

To rub salt into the wound, my gacha experience from the Blade & Bastard event is truly abysmal one. Considering the event supposed to be a high point of Wizardry Daphne, I do make an appropriate action and save up to 20000 Gems before the event lands to get the featured character of the Collab, Iarumas.

Ultimately, I do obtain this reverse Samurai along with his Signature weapon, but I absolutely despise the process which are exacerbated with the poorly designed event. I have expected for Iarumas to appear as Samurai class like the one he had from his Manga. But Drecom decided that players should be content with him as Mage class and 20k Gems wasted for a single copy of 5 Pts Iarumas is just a plain insult.

Had the Blade & Bastard collab event been a well-made content, I wouldn’t have minded too much with these losses. But the shitty quality of the event which make me have no obligation to put with the Nonsense by Drecom. Considering the content quality of Blade & Bastard reflects the attitude toward Wizardry IP and perspective on their playerbase, especially F2P.

With the bad aftertaste from Blade & Bastard event, I have been teetering to quit Wizardry Daphne which finally found the Nail to the coffin with the recent Shelrionach banner. Over the course of past 3 weeks, I have wasted around 14000-16000 Gems which accumulated in 80 pulls without any single copy of the Elf Mage waifu. I have had mostly given up with Wizardry Daphne since the Blade and Bastard blunder, but with the recent gacha result expected from a Kusoge which served as the straw that broke the camel's back, finally I got a proper excuse to give up on Wizardry Daphne. 

I have to admit that Wizardry Daphne do have some superb waifu design, courtesy from a veteran Fire Emblem illustrator. But at the end of the day, the game’s contents are not good enough to make me tolerate their Kusoge practice. I could just have sucked up with the Gacha salt just like what I did with many games before but to me Shelrionach Banner is truly the straw that broke the camel's back. If Drecom can make Gacha results so shit now, there are no reason for them to make things any better.

Deep down,  I do still believe that Wizardry Daphne had the potential to be a good Dungeon Crawling game with Old School difficulty but It does need different publisher other than Drecom to be in charge. Because at the end of the day Drecom's Shoddy practice ultimately will bring upon downfall of this Game eventually and deny its potential.

The only game I can put up with the shitty treatment toward the player is Fate/Grand Order and Wizardry Daphne is nowhere at the level of the former even when it comes to content which is actually quite a low bar.

Saving up gacha currency gems in Wizardry are not exactly easy as you can only earn around 1500 Gems every month at most through daily grind which include annoying Weekly quests criteria. Therefore, as F2P players you will rely heavily on Gems Handout which are frankly really lacking over past two months as Drecom does not do their job properly to balance the unfair gacha Economy. Like even for Adventurer’s bone which is a standard Gacha currency, Players will only typically get one or two every week so practically players need 2 months just for a Standard Gacha multi pull making Drecom practically treating Wizardry Daphne playerbase like a Dog who are being thrown a piece of bone or two every week.

Obviously the Gacha currency scarcity of Wizardry Daphne are designed to deliberately coax players into spending real money to obtain some advantage in their game progress. But when it comes to value-for-money and the contents offered by Wizardry Daphne, the IAP options are grossly overpriced. For instance, the mileage you gained from spending 40 USD will only net you Gacha currency enough only for a single Multi Pull which is truly abysmal. With that amount of money you can get yourself many selections of Wizardry Clones physical copy on consoles like Etrian Odyssey Trilogy that will easily give you 40+ Hours playtime and Dungeon crawling experience no inferior compared to Wizardry Daphne.

Prior to writing this article, I did some background digging on Drecom. While there are no clear indication of them being a Black Company, there are clear hints that the workplace satisfaction are quite low due to typical Japanese overworking culture. I won't be surprised that the lousy IAP options among many flaws that Wizardry Daphne had reflects the soulless nature that Drecom had as corporation. Evil cannot create, but it can corrupt.

This is my latest progress of Wizardry Daphne which can be considered to be rather decent and I still have several SSR character that can be raised. However, with the amounts of nonsense that I have to deal with since Blade & Bastards collab, I just don’t have the motivation to continue playing the game anymore. Considering Drecom neither has no intention or vision to shape Wizardry Daphne to be a definitive Dungeon Crawling experience as it only cares about extracting as much money as possible from Whales as they don’t even care for any viable paid option for Dolphin and Casual spenders. Ultimately, I feel that Wizardry Daphne will fail as a product due to the greed of Drecom to fulfill their shareholders unrealistic expectation.

With its current shape, I will not likely return to Wizardry Variants Daphne anymore once I make my departure as I considered the game has failed to be a worthy successor of Wizardry series legacy. I might make a revisit if it ever comes in offline version or there are significant Qol changes but as long as the game is handled by Drecom, I doubt the game will ever go to that particular direction. Such unfortunate outcome for one of the promising candidate for Wizardry’s legacy, but this turn of event will spur me to explore the genre even deeper since the pool created by Wizardry’s legacy in Japanese game runs quite deep.