Wizards & Warriors is it good?

[Butcer]

Is wizardy and warriors a good crpg and is it worth to play? Anybody who has played can you tell me the pros and cons of the game and how would you rate it , and compared to might and magic 6 which is the gold standard of blob crpgs in my view how is it in comparison? It looks like it could be a good blob crpg so im intrested in it

 

[Melan]

Pros:

• it has some of the D.W. Bradley magic
• fun character-building
• stylish graphics (for its time)
  
• the puzzles were complex and interesting

Cons:

• the mixture of real-time and turn-based combat doesn't really work
• horrible voice-acting
• lotsa bugs, uneven quality of design

It is not Wizardry or MM6, but it is entertaining, especially in its first half. I seem to remember the later segments - which I did not complete - were somehow less polished and overall less fun. Or maybe the novelty had worn off.

 

[Great Deceiver]

I think Wizards & Warriors is a pretty great, underrated game. It's a buggy mess and a pain to get running properly on modern systems (windows 7 or 8), but it's a cool take on the Wizardry formula. In my opinion, its combat is superior to MM6 (it has a nice turn-based system), but it's also a very slow, clunky game. Its strengths are definitely the puzzles and dungeons.

Worth checking out for sure, but don't expect it to run well, and be prepared for a lot of bugs.

 

[theSavant]

Maybe instead of failing at challenging RPGs (your topic about Wiz8), make your decision on a single one and play it from start to end. Or wait for MMX. I prefer Wiz8, for a number of reasons: it's very polished (Wizards & Warriors is not), voice acting for everything (Wizards & Warriors has bare minimum), more varied environments (Wizards & Warriors looks all the same ugly and depressing), feel of 100% control and tactical combat (Wizards & Warriors is kinda annyoing clicking with pauses, don't know of any tactics), works without issues on Windows 7 hardly any bugs (Wizards & Warriors is bugfest, pain to run), etc.

 

[V_K]

The game's biggest strength is its level design - I'd say it's better in that regards than Wiz8 and head and shoulders better than anything M&M.
Biggest weakness - lots of technical problems and a very counter-intuitive interface.
All the other aspects are solid but not too exceptional.

 

[Old Hans]

W&W has some of the coolest dungeons that actually feel like proper dungeons. It's definitely worth a try if you can get it working!

 

[Butcer]

Maybe instead of failing at challenging RPGs (your topic about Wiz8), make your decision on a single one and play it from start to end. Or wait for MMX. I prefer Wiz8, for a number of reasons: it's very polished (Wizards & Warriors is not), voice acting for everything (Wizards & Warriors has bare minimum), more varied environments (Wizards & Warriors looks all the same ugly and depressing), feel of 100% control and tactical combat (Wizards & Warriors is kinda annyoing clicking with pauses, don't know of any tactics), works without issues on Windows 7 hardly any bugs (Wizards & Warriors is bugfest, pain to run), etc.

just finished vampire bloodlines although its not exctaly a rpg and i finished gothic 2 notr less then 2 weeks ago

 

[Invictus]

I never tried this game but I love blobbers so it has always been on my list. Kind of weird not to see it on GoG too.
Are there any fan made fixes for the bugs or mods for the performance in modern OP?

 

[Lady_Error]

Wizards & Warriors is hard to find and even more difficult to get running.

It's kinda weird that some early Windows games are way harder to run on Win7 or Win8 than even the oldest DOS games. I even got a virtual Win98SE installed so I can play games that are impossible to run otherwise on modern machines (and it was a pain in the ass to do that installation).

I remember that I lost interest in W&W about 20% through when it originally came out. What turned me off specifically were the "crate moving and jumping" puzzles - that felt more like a jump-n-run than a true RPG. Also, the towns being only one clickable screen was not exactly the best choice.

 

[Fenris 2.0]

I finished the game back in the days, installed it again at some time, it didn't work and then I remembered the at times really bad gameplay, frustrating Places and some mean bugs and stopped bothering.

The Dungeons were great and a bit different, the scope was epic, the Elite-Classes were nice and there were some interesting Characters to meet.

Have I mentioned the great Dungeons ?

Spoiler

I remember a sunken City, a giant Pyramid full of Undead, some southsea Isles and at some point your Party was transformed into some Kind of Ogres... also there were the obligatory Sewers, Crypts and Dwarven Mines.

 

[DemonKing]

I can just barely remember playing this...overall it was a Wizardry style game with the usual bizarre DW Bradley player-character races thrown in. I think I finished it (unlike Dungeon Lords) so it probably wasn't terrible...

 

[mondblut]

It has issues, but generally it is far better than any M&M past World of Xeen, and more fun than the dreary drag that is Wizardry 8.

 

[Zewp]

Does anyone know how hard it is to get it running on modern OSes?

 

[HiddenX]

I like it - cool dungeons and character building.

 

[Lady_Error]

Does anyone know how hard it is to get it running on modern OSes?

I haven't tried, but I wouldn't be surprised if it is impossible to run unless you install an earlier Windows version somewhere (virtually, on a partition or an old computer).

 

[Great Deceiver]

It runs, strictly speaking, but you have to re-encode the town AVI files. There's probably a guide for that somewhere, or you could download the re-encoded files, I'm sure they're around still.

The last time I tried playing it (about a month ago, I'm on Windows 8 now), I had problems with the hardware rendering (on an nvidia card) - polygon faces wouldn't render properly, as if the normals were turned inside out, or flipped. Software rendering would make the mouse cursor get stuck on any interactive UI element, rendering it basically unplayable.

Also, the mouse polling method is weird, I get a weird deadzone and the movement doesn't feel smooth at all, as if it's using some polling method that predates directinput.

You should try it, in any case, if you have the game available. Maybe you'll get lucky.

 

[eric__s]

Does anyone know how hard it is to get it running on modern OSes?

Very hard. You have to re-encode the town video files (the towns are these 2D panoramas but they're videos for some reason) and even after you've done that, scrolling through towns is way too fast. It's very hard to do anything in towns, but I guess you have to live with it. Otherwise it's a very nice game.

http://www.mediafire.com/download/kcfosfhrpy6oe6d/townavi.rar

Oh looks like I had the re-encoded video files on my computer already. Unzip this in the townavi folder in the main directory.

 

[Zboj Lamignat]

From what I remember the town screens are just one of the problems (but the one you notice first obviously, since you start with a town screen). It's one of the few good games that's basically impossible to get running properly and it's not only about os, but hardware as well. The best I did was getting it to run on win xp with some weird ass graphical artifacts, but everything else seemed fine.

 

[Luzur]

really, head and shoulder over anything M&M? hahah NO!

but do play it, it is a charming RPG.

 

[V_K]

I was speaking exclusively of level (dungeon) design, which frankly isn't M&M's forte, like, at all.

(though personally I did have more fun with W&W than with anything M&M, but that's not the point here)

 

[Zewp]

Does anyone know how hard it is to get it running on modern OSes?

Very hard. You have to re-encode the town video files (the towns are these 2D panoramas but they're videos for some reason) and even after you've done that, scrolling through towns is way too fast. It's very hard to do anything in towns, but I guess you have to live with it. Otherwise it's a very nice game.

http://www.mediafire.com/download/kcfosfhrpy6oe6d/townavi.rar

Oh looks like I had the re-encoded video files on my computer already. Unzip this in the townavi folder in the main directory.

Nice! Thanks, I'll give it a shot sometime then.

 

[Baron Dupek]

I was lucky guy and didn't experience any bugs (played on Vista). I really liked music in this game, it's half of my gaming experience.
That's why I can't enjoy modern games - music is so bland, shallow and washed from emotions.

Back to the game - first meet with fancy plants (Amazoni Mantrap) may be unforgetable experience.
Basicallyfrom the dark. Seriously.

Magic and their schools could be cool if not the fact that few of them were useless.

I remember underwater city was cool except two things - grinding shells for scuba bars for 6 people (on the bright side - you can uncover the whole map with it, marvelous) and part with rotating chamber where I changed energy&battery setting (one bright side of notebook, doh) to change performance and pass this chamber.

I missed the Ogres caves (or what was it called) but also missed the tete-a-tete with 3 Amazoni Mantraps in close combat at the end of the cave

 

[TigerKnee]

Maybe I should take a look into this game.

 

[Zoidstar]

One of the most underrated RPG's of all time. Level design, richness of environment, depth. The few bugs are trivial scruples.

 

[Scroo]

This won't add anything to the topic but I just realized that Wizards & Warriors has the same cover art as Necropolis by Gary Gygax.

What's going on here?!