Review Forgotten Gems: Wizardry 8 Review

[theverybigslayer]

Nice review!

 

[theverybigslayer]

There is another mod series for Wizardry 8 by "Deathstryke" (or similar). That mod is really for hardcore Wizardry 8 fans who have played the game through before. It just adds a ton of overpowered items and overpowered creatures, plus changes the recruitable NPCs quite a lot. I don't like it because it changes the game too much, but it is very well done.

It's Deathstalker mod. Very great mod and yes, it changes the game too much, but after playing six times Wiz8 , that was good for me

 

[cutterjohn]

Good review, but you should have emphasized how long some of those later battle can take. ...and I remember how quickly I learned when outside and near enemies that were likely to go hostile to quickly find the party a niche to back into to circumvent/limit surrounding of the party o.w. they were dead meat most of the time...

*sniff*

I never did bother to install it again on my machine this summer once my massive round of upgrades was completed. Never got around to trying the couple of mods available either. Probably should go grab copies of the patches & mods just in case for when I do get around to re-installing it again.

Devil Whiskey: Not nearly as good Wiz8. It is MUCH more faithful to the early Bard's Tales than Wizardry 8 was to the early(pre 6) wizardries... which is to say mostly stats and hacking'n'slashing. i.e. I'd be willing to bet that even alot of hardened codexers wouldn't take to it too well...

Damn! Now I am almost looking forward to Grimoire...

 

[Limorkil]

Good review, but you should have emphasized how long some of those later battle can take. ...and I remember how quickly I learned when outside and near enemies that were likely to go hostile to quickly find the party a niche to back into to circumvent/limit surrounding of the party o.w. they were dead meat most of the time...

*sniff*

True. What should be emphasized is that the game is mainly about turn based combat. It is not as good as TOEE in this respect because you can only move your party as a group, you cannot send character A there and character B here. Most of the tactical choices are about which character will cast which spell and how to keep your party alive. The fun is inflicting mass effect spells on large groups of enemies, and praying that your samurai resists the insanity spell and does not INSTAKILL half your party.

But you cannot really fault the game for long combats. After all, most RPGs are mainly combat. In many games you fight something in room A, something else in room B and the boss in room C, along the lines of traditional D&D encounters. Wizardry 8 adds a touch of pseudo-realism in that if you attack someone in the castle, you end up fighting the whole castle all at the same time, rather than getting attacked by 1-2 foes at a time. While it's nice that your enemies in most games give you a chance to rest and heal up, it doesn't make too much sense.

 

[ady5]

I say try W8 with DS 3.0(deathstalker's mod). You won't have so many battles as before, but the ones you get are certainly something to remember days later. The monsters don't autolevel(or they do, but at a higher level), and that means you get very tough monsters early on, wich can be fun...for masochists. Seriously, don't go in a battle in DS 3.0 without selecting the proper spells and weapons, or it'll be frustratingly hard to finnish it.

 

[cutterjohn]

@Limorkil
Actually there was some limited party positioning. IIRC the party had slots 3 deep, and several "formation" positions which limited who they could attack and be attacked by and with what types of weapons/spells. The problem being, that in outside areas monster mobs could surround the PC party and negate that limited positioning, being able to attack all of the party, i.e. no wimp protection in the back, hence the niche tactic.

Also IIRC spells were NOT uber at all in W8, and actually seemed to be kind of nerfed from prior wizardry's spells. And, I don't think that it was really possible to make some sort of uber instakill party in W8 either, or at least as compared to prior Wizardry's and some other games...

 

[FrancoTAU]

Great Review. Looking forward to ones on classic RPGs that I haven't played yet.

Anyone complaining about the excessive auto leveling hasn't gotten that far into the game. Wiz8 is really hard until you clear out Arnika maybe. If you're having trouble getting into the game than set the combat speed to max, slide the difficulty meter to easy until you fully equip everyone in Arnika.

Another tidbit is to walk along the mountains while you're outside. If you get spotted by monsters than back yourself into a small niche in the rocks so your backrow guys can't be flanked.

Also, constantly use your buff spells. Not just for power gaming purposes... you'll actually need the little boost up for the first half of the game.

Don't get intimidated by the character creation process. Unless you're purposely picking the worst combo of class/races, you'll be able to beat the game at normal difficulty.

 

[SkeleTony]

While I could agree with a few of the comments, the "Would have been nice to have *this*..." stuff, the review overall is not good.

First of all, why is it that people try and lump every RPG as being rooted in AD&D or obviously inspired by D&D?! That is often not true and especially so in the case of Wizardry 8. Anyone familiar with P&P role playing games in general or D&D in particular will know that comparing Wizardry 8 to D&D in terms of design is like saying that Microsoft's Flight Simulator is an obvious rehash of Activision's Atari 2600 classic River Raid.
AD&D/OD&D was simply one of the worst game designs ever and easily one of the two or three worst RPGs from a design standpoint while Wizardry 8 is actually surprisingly GOOD and nothing like AD&D.

Besides that, the author seems to glance over the party formation thing and assert that there are no real tactical options in combat, then he later acknowledges the wonderful feature, almost as an afterthought, but dismisses it as irrelevant!?

Don't get me wrong...I agree that it would have been nice to have individual PC movement/control in combat but barring that, Wiz 8 is about the best you can hope for.

Those are my main issues with the review. My other issues are minor nitpicks but this could have been much better.

 

[taxacaria]

I was a fan of the wizardry series - played wizardry 7 again 2 years ago and found it as great as I found at release. First time I needed 6 month to complete it with several restarts and without any help from any forum/ hintbook/cheats. I think it's been the most difficult RPG I ever played. The Windows Version has integrated walkthrough and is a kind of cheatware - so I suggest to play the DOS version if someone is interested in.
wiz6 Bane of the Cosmic Forge was a pure 'dungeon crawler'. Because of the weird humor and some very hard puzzles - combined with a tremendous story it has a quality of it's own, so I've never complained about the lack of a map or the poor graphics - which was much better as at the 'Mad Overlord' at the begin of the series :D .
wizardry 8 wasn't my favorite game in the series, because of the dumbed down puzzles (compared with the Crusaders' they were most disappointing) and the instantly respawning monsters a lot of the things I loved in Bane of the Cosmic Forge and in Crusaders of the Dark Savant get lost. But it was a great RPG, too - and I'm looking back without any grudge.

thxs to role_player for the review - now my memories are refreshed again

I've been thinking about giving the game a try, but I wanted to play 6 and 7 first, but from what I read it's a whore trying to get 6 to run :evil:

wiz6 has a prob with speed, because the integrated counter gets an overflow when testing the system at start. You can avoid it by slowing your processor speed via setup or you'll have to try several (or many) times to get a playable speed. Don't know if in DOSBOX the integrated brake will work properly. wiz7 will run in DOS and in Windows version, but you have to slow down the speed if you want to read long text which is containing hints and passwords sometimes.

 

[dagorkan]

Another great review, which puts the commercial 'review sites' to shame. Thanks. I found out where I can buy Wizardry 8 although now reading about combat and formations has made me hesitate.

edit:
Hey admins, I was thinking of writing a review for 'Return to Krondor' which I see is hardly mentioned except by me on these forums. What do you think? Could somebody give me some tips on how to write (structure etc) a good review?

 

[Vault Dweller]

The structure: overview, setting & story, character system, quests & role-playing, combat, anything game-specific (i.e. party system, magic, hacking, etc), conclusion. Basically, your goal is to write a review that should answer most, if not all, questions about the game. Describe every aspect of the game to the best of your abilities.

If you (or anyone else) wishes to write a review for us, we'll gladly review your submission in the staff forum and either post it, ask for some changes, or politely decline.

 

[taxacaria]

Hey admins, I was thinking of writing a review for 'Return to Krondor' which I see is hardly mentioned except by me on these forums. What do you think? Could somebody give me some tips on how to write (structure etc) a good review?

Are you still writing your Krondor review, dagorkan?

 

[KazikluBey]

Ahum. Maybe this review could be reformatted so as to be readable?

 

[DraQ]

Ahum. Maybe this review could be reformatted so as to be readable?

I'm with the

 

[Infinitron]

Ahum. Maybe this review could be reformatted so as to be readable?

Crooked Bee DarkUnderlord Come on dammit, people are clicking through from Steam and getting BBCode gibberish

 

[Crooked Bee]

Done. Should look fine now.

 

[DraQ]

Ahum. Maybe this review could be reformatted so as to be readable?

Crooked Bee DarkUnderlord Come on dammit, people are clicking through from Steam and getting BBCode gibberish

How unprofessional unprestigious.

 

[DarkUnderlord]

Such is the price you pay for love.

 

[DraQ]

Such is the price you pay for love.

That's not the price I paid for love.

Do you pay for love?

 

[KazikluBey]

Thanks.

 

[Amasius]

Thanks for the necro, I'm reinstalling right now.

 

[jdinatale]

How can Wizardry 8 be a forgotten gem if literally no one has forgotten it, dumbass.