Bottom 1024 — Week 23 — Poll 32

[This Old Neon]

Welcome to the #BGE2020 Elimination Round Lower Bracket!

Each game in the lower bracket is still seeded based on its performance in the two opening rounds of pools! Every game in the lower bracket has already been defeated by another game in a 1-on-1 poll to get to this point. This is their chance to claw their way back into the main event... but the stakes are high. The games that lose in these polls are out of the tournament for good! The games that survive will face the next crop of upper bracket losers in the next round.

Polls are updated weekly, typically on Saturday... or Sunday or Monday. Check back throughout the week to make sure you don't miss a vote!

HOW TO VOTE

This is easy. You only get one vote per poll. The game with the most votes wins. In the event of a tie, the higher seed advances, so don't get complacent!

[Kong Wen]

Dark Wizard is a fun old-school strategy/tactical RPG where battles play out on a hex board, and you can create/recruit fresh generic units and level/build them into great heroes.

The game also has 4 completely different main characters you can play as, each with a completely different story path. (The stories of the 4 main characters loosely intersect, but not much, since the events of the game are very different depending on who you play as.) Also notable, thanks to being on Sega CD, for having fully-voiced scenes and some anime cutscenes. Great underrated game. It boggles my mind that Sega hasn't done something with this on a more recent compilation or something.

[Sharecrow]

Dark Wizard is a fun old-school strategy/tactical RPG where battles play out on a hex board, and you can create/recruit fresh generic units and level/build them into great heroes.

The game also has 4 completely different main characters you can play as, each with a completely different story path. (The stories of the 4 main characters loosely intersect, but not much, since the events of the game are very different depending on who you play as.) Also notable, thanks to being on Sega CD, for having fully-voiced scenes and some anime cutscenes. Great underrated game. It boggles my mind that Sega hasn't done something with this on a more recent compilation or something.

That sounds really neat.

This worked last time so here it goes: I wish I could play this on PS5!

[Niahak]

Dark Wizard is a fun old-school strategy/tactical RPG where battles play out on a hex board, and you can create/recruit fresh generic units and level/build them into great heroes.

I've only read about Dark Wizard, but every time I read about it, it sounds a lot like Master of Monsters (maybe with more of a storyline / persistent units)?

Wish I hadn't sold my copy of Master of Monsters. But in the meantime, I'll wish for Dark Wizard on a modern platform too.

[Kong Wen]

Dark Wizard is a fun old-school strategy/tactical RPG where battles play out on a hex board, and you can create/recruit fresh generic units and level/build them into great heroes.

I've only read about Dark Wizard, but every time I read about it, it sounds a lot like Master of Monsters (maybe with more of a storyline / persistent units)?

Wish I hadn't sold my copy of Master of Monsters. But in the meantime, I'll wish for Dark Wizard on a modern platform too.

Yes, very similar actually! Dark Wizard adds a war council / map phase between battles, and of course has the excellent CD quality soundtrack that blew minds in '93. And it was directed by the guy who wrote Final Fantasy 1-2-3.

It was one of the first games I ever played where you could hire and deploy a generic grunt FIGHTER, give him a name "KONG", kill enemies and gain experience and build that generic grunt up into a famed warrior (a tradition I carried on in FFT when I immediately benched every storyline character and fielded hired units only).