Going back to classics :) Wizardry 8!

[Dobri 55]

It has been a long, long time since I gave that 10 year old classic a spin. I was really hooked to in the beginning of the first decade of the new millennium and what do you know - I found it buried deep in a long forgotten directory on my laptop two days ago.

 

Now I'm hooked again. Sometimes I do miss that good old classics that had more thought, creativity and content and used to hook up the player with its thrilling world and background story (if I recall correctly, the wizardry lineage - Wiz 1 to Wiz 8, are actually interlinked) rather than with shiny-glowy-pretty-overbuffed graphics.

 

I am sure there are some people out there who have never heard of Wizardry 8, and that's ok. It's a 10 year old RPG. The game outlook is Wizardry/Might and Magic style - meaning you have an interface with your characters on any side of the screen and a freely movable camera. It boasts 15 classes, 11 races (12 if we count the Android that may join you), 2 genders, 9 personalities with 2 specific character lines for each gender, big map, 1-8 playable characters, lots of quests, well thought-out turn-based combat system, lots of humor and fantasy/sci-fi mixtures, and to top it all, presents a nice challenge and big replayability thanks to its multitude of class/race/number of playable characters combos.

 

It was a big hit back in the day thanks to the qualities I just explained. The combat gives a lot of tactical possibilities, there is a big number of buffs and afflictions that can affect one or all characters (like blind, nauseated, paralyzed, irritated, etc.) There are 7 attributes that govern a multitude of skills (meaning higher value in the controlling attribute means the skill goes up faster) - skills are trained by skill points and respective skill/spell usage (Swinging a sword will increase the Sword skill, inspecting/disarming a trap will increase locks & traps skill, etc.). Classes can be freely swapped around, as long as the character meets the minimum attribute class requirements - with the penalty that the new class starts from scratch (but keeps all knowledge from the previous class). This is like a High Elf in Sacred 2 becoming a SW for 15 levels to master Toughness! This gives the game a great sandbox-type feeling and even greater replayability. For example, a Mage can subclass to Rogue for 1 level to master the Stealth skill and become harder to kill (gives extra armor class which a mage wouldn't normally have), or a Ranger (chance for ranged insta-kills) subclassing Monk, Ninja or Samurai to train Critical Strike (the skills that grants chance for insta-kills, apart from class traits) and improve the chance for insta-kills even more! Outstanding really. Any build you make is only limited to the extent of your imagination.

 

I personally, really love the humor behind every character quote - and they're giving a lot of them, thanks to their specific personalities. For example, Cunning characters will always give a line based gaining profit:

- Everyone must sleep... You sleep, I'll guard the valuables!

- Wow! This is AMAZ--uh, nothing that special! I'll just keep it.

- (after resurrection) I'll tell you what's on the other side for 100 gold!

Chaotic male character (my fave) acts like he's insane (not far from the truth), but he also has a ton of great lines:

- A trap... wonder what would happen if I just PULLED THIS THING HERE!

- (after resurrection) And a big HELLO! from alla your dead relatives!

- (after he's been paralyzed) What do you want me to do like this, BLINK people to death?

- (after being grievly wounded) Now where do ya want me to put my body parts...

- He's dead. Hey, that's an interesting organ!

Or maybe these:

- (after shooting up enemy ship) Coming in for a landing, this is Savant Flight 401. We'll be arriving in PIECES! Ha ha ha!

- This just BLOWS!

- I can't believe we're wasting our time TALKING TO A CHIPMUNK!

- He seems like a kind, generous soul. *pause* I hate him.

- (after doing nothing for a while) Bleccch! Rocks taste bad!

- (kindly female, after getting an affliction) Ugh, it feels worse than when they tell you they love their wives!

- Holy CRAP!

- I must have a sign on my forehead volunteering me for bizarre and unpleasant experiences...

And of course the fact that you can say pretty much to an NPC and expect an answer... Like "S_crew you" and get a response like... Whaddya know: "Well, I'm on break later..." Makes me LOL and fall off my chair anytime!

[chattius 2,537]

I always liked the gadgeteer or however it was spelled. Was it Wizardry 3 or 4 with reversed roles: playing a dungeon keeper to keep this nasty heroes out of the cave.

[essjayehm 58]

For whatever reason, I never got into any of the Wizardry games... maybe one or 2 of the earlier ones but I don't really remember so I probably didn't spend too much time playing.

 

I found the last game I played on my old computer when I bought my new one last month...

 

Baldur's Gate 2: Shadows of Amn. Forget how old that one is, but it must be about the same era, methinks.

 

Good old Advanced Dungeons and Dragons rules in a computer game... it seems when the mechanics were already "written", the devs had more resources to put into the important things like storyline, etc.

 

It was a cool little revisit but I found the gameplay to be either completely boring (with auto-pause set up properly so no moves are wasted whatsoever) or too hectic to comprehend (controlling all 6 player-characters simultaneously in real-time).

 

I did whack away at Diablo 2 for about a month or so, but I found the difficulty jump between modes (Nightmare-Hell) too fustrating to want to commit any more time playing it.

 

Currently playing Sacred/Underworld and realizing what an amazing feature that Sacred 2 has that I have not seen in other games: a shared stash. With the "random drops" becoming the main staple of RPG's nowadays, I feel that being able to store off-class items and being able to retrieve them without copy/paste/import/etc tricks or trading is probably my favorite thing in the RPG universe.

Edited April 21, 2011 by essjayehm

[Dobri 55]

Well recalled, chattius

 

Gadgeteer's the guy. Start off poor, nothing much to show for, but once he upgrades that wicked Omnigun well enough and manages to combine a few gadgets, the enemies have very tough time against him.

 

Even today, I still can't say which was my favorite party. Every single one has so many differences. Any number of chars ranging from 1 to 8 makes the difference - especially the Solo Fairy Ninja

 

EDIT: BTW, Wizardry is the second oldest RPG series in the world I think. Ultima is the first in 1980, Wizardry follows in 1981.

Edited April 21, 2011 by Dobri

[Steerpike1 53]

I played Wizardry VI Bane of the Cosmic Forge on my Commodore Amiga (should give an idea of how old that one is), Wizardry VII Crusaders of the Dark Savant on my first PC and then... the story died for a few years. Wizardry 8 came out a while afterwards, and I missed the initial release I think. I really enjoyed it when I got it, as it was one of the last 'old school' roleplaying games to be released. One vast improvement in Wizardry 8 over the previous games was you could see the bad guys coming - previously, you triggered monsters by treading on certain locations, which meant first trip through you were constantly being surprised, and sometimes finding a place to rest was a nightmare. In W8, you could try to avoid the enemies, if you didn't want to fight them, although they did seem to have a worrying homing instinct when they got to a certain range. I liked the way the NPCs were just that - NPCs. You could arm and equip them, and tell them what to do, but if you tried to take something they viewed as valuable, they'd refuse. They also had their own reasons for joining you in your epic quest.

 

It's a shame that Wizardry died with the demise of Sir Tech (although the writer of VI and VII went on to write Dungeon Runners, I think - David Bradley?). Have fun playing, Dobri - old games can certainly give current ones a run for their money in terms of depth of story and character creation.

[lujate 578]

God! I remember Dark Savant. That was a Wizardry game?

[Dobri 55]

Exactly, lujate - the good old evil Dark Savant, a.k.a. Bubblehead... That's how one of the burly males calls him

 

I also miss the old-style RPG's where you could do anything anyway you wish. For example - make a Fighter that can cast magic and one-hit kill every 7th hit or so - no problem, as long as you're willing to set aside the appropriate time in training. Pretty awesome - few games offer that.

 

To give a clue as to what I'm doing, I started the slowest leveling party - 5 ninjas + 1 bishop. 4 of the ninjas will change to their final main profession - fighters, samurais, rogues, rangers - who knows, depends on the loot I get The Bishop will become a Monk (he already has 1 level in it, I swapped him to train stealth) after he's got 18 levels in Bishop and unlocked all the necessary spells. This way he'll retain his full spell potential and will gain 1-hit kill chance along with some special traits.

 

Sheesh. If only Sacred gave me the chance to swap things around like this. The chars would have been even better

[gogoblender 3,073]

Dobri, I never played this game, but I remember reading a bit about this classic. lol, your first post regarding the game is an amazing summary and I enjoyed the read.

 

Ain't hooked great?

 

 

gogo

[Epox 2]

I still play all baldurs gate games and nwn and icewind dale best rpg game I ever got hooked up with also have some build for nwn on the forum somewere

Edited June 29, 2011 by Epox