From TheGamersPress

Wizardry 8

• Platform: PC/Windows

• Genre: RPG

• Publisher: Sir-Tech - www.sir-tech.com

• Developer: Sir-Tech - www.sir-tech.com

• Good Thing 1: The best CRPG since Wizardry 7

• Good Thing 2: More skills and professions than 20 Diablo clones

• Good Thing 3: Tactical combat that never gets old or boring

• Bad Thing 1: The non-linear nature allows you to do stupid things like get killed real quick

• Bad Thing 2: Some combat can be too hard in certain areas

• Bad Thing 3:

• Summary: The best Computer Role Playing game in ages that stays true to the Wizardry legacy.
• Score: Buy

The game that seemed to be in development hell forever (that place where games like Tenth Planet and Dress up Victoria Secret's doll disappear too) has finally made a graceful entrance. While years went by following the simply amazing Wizardry 7, the game industry has changed tremendously. Diablo brought back a renaissance in Computer Role Playing Games (CRPG) and the Baldur's Gate games proved that RPG's had a very solid position on gamer's hard drives. Wizardry 8 has been in development through all of this; it has lost publishers, faced bankruptcies and at times seemed to be a labor of love more than anything else. Finally the game was released and so far it is everything that the Venerable name Wizardry should be and much more.

Following the events of Wizardry 7 your party of adventures took on a mission to seek out the Dark Savant. In the process, your ship crashed landed on the planet Dominus. The only things left to do is explore your surroundings, kill stuff, and try to figure out where the Dark Savant has disappeared to and at some point ascend to the Cosmic Circle, all in a days work eh? I don't want to spoil the plot by rehashing it for the nth time so let's leave it at that, this is not a traditional fantasy game, it features some high tech items like spaceports and guns. This is in keeping with the Wizardry tradition though, just be prepared for more than simple Elves, Orcs and Mithril jock straps.

The first task is to generate a party of characters. This is a time-honored tradition in a Wizardry game, I can't remember how many hours I have wasted rolling up the perfect party to take on an adventure, and luckily, this incarnation is no different. Once you spend some time looking at races, all 11 of them and the 15 professions it is time to get to work.

Should you pick a front line feline like Felpur to be a Samurai? Rather go with a hard-hitting lizardman that is all brute strength with little in the noggin? How about a Mook Gageteer, the Chewbacca wannabe of the game who can construct weapons of mass destruction like MacGyver with a new Swiss army knife in an abandoned nuclear weapon factory. How about a Faery Ninja? Sure, she is small and light on her toes but she can critical hit like no ones business, knocking opponent's unconscious or simply killing with a single blow.

You will also need a mage to take along for those area effect spells like Fireball and mass sleep. Watch him summon an Earth elemental to help in battles when the going gets tough. The Priest or Bishop is also a necessity since you will need to have someone able to heal party memebers. Each has it's good points, the Bishop is able to identify things while the Priest gets early access to the Instant Death spell which is a hoot when you take out a high level monster with just a couple of words. Variety is the spice of life here, but if you wanted to create a party of all Lizardmen there is nothing to prevent you from doing so.

Each character has a number of skills to focus on when increasing levels, but more than that, as you use skills in the game they are also affected. If you successfully lock pick expect that skill to rise accordingly, if you want your cross dressing skill try on different clothes. The last time I saw a character building system this powerful was in Daggerfall, a wonderful but slightly flawed game.

In Wizardry 8 you get up to 8 characters to fiddle with when taking into consideration the 2 vacant RPC (that stands for Recruitable Player Characters, as opposed to NPC in other games) slots you can fill from the assortment of characters you will meet through out the game. So don't feel guilty about leaving a certain race or profession out of the game, you will probably have a chance to pick one up at some point.

Speaking of Combat, this is where you will spend most of your time. In grand Wizardry fashion, the combat mechanics are true to the series. You pick your moves then hit the turn button. A typical turn might consist of having your two - four front line fighters going for pure damage. If they have a special skill like Berserk this is the time to pick it. If you had a Bard, you could have her use a musical instrument to cast some affliction on unsuspecting beasties. A Mage might want to cast some area damage spells, or possibly summon an Elemental to take front line damage while taking heat off the magic users. Your priest would probably pick a buff spell like Soul Armor or elemental shield to pump up defenses. Now it is time to hit the turn button and watch all hell brake loose since some of the things you picked may not play out.

For instance, lets say I was being crafty and decided to use my mage to cast Freeze All, my Priest is going to cast Magic Shield so I can repel other types of assaults. The enemy is still pretty far away so I let the rest of my party use bows or crossbows. The first enemy is quick though, he casts Insane, which causes my Lord to loose it and giggle manically, kind of like me after a drive home in Deathrace 2000, aka the freeways of Seattle. Two of my fighters get of a shot but another enemy casts sleep and my priest and mage fall for it. Suddenly I don't have anyone to cast magic shield and I can't freeze anyone. The tide of battle has turned before I knew it. The point here is that every creature has different methods of inflicting pain on your party, it is a good idea to plan out your battles strategically, don't go in guns blazing ala Diablo, use strategy to take advantage of the combat system and you'll do great. Although the game is non-linear, be aware that if you wander off somewhere you shouldn't be and your party of 8th level fighters see a couple of Deathlords, about the only thing you can do is RUN! Running away from a battle may take a few turns but it comes in pretty handy at times.

Your alter ego's in the game world each have a unique personality. For instance, I have a Mage named Kruppe; He's a great spell caster and talks about himself in the 3rd person which is endlessly amusing. He will bellow out "The great hero struck down his bitter enemy" after a big fight. I have a Priest that utters "You Bellowed?" whenever I click on him. The fact that you can add any sort of personality from kind or gentle to downright aggressive works well in the game.

The game world itself is vast and rendered is full 3-d via a first person interface. Speaking of the interface, Wizardry 8 has one of the best ever created. Every important control is on the screen without it being too cluttered. Right clicking on objects gives you info while left clicking selects or picks things up. Each character has 4 full screens of detailed information, inventory, skills, magic and stats all for your viewing and tweaking pleasure. This way every important piece of information is on one or two screens. Even the magic interface is cleverly tucked into the bottom of the screen.

you'll need a good interface too since the game may literally consume you. I have spent every (free) waking moment in this game over the last 5 weeks. The locations are interesting and you will travel back and forth between them to meet the goals of the game. Some will have you scaling mountains, others diving through an underwater realm.

Puzzles are sometimes insanely devious and will require you to collect items from one locale and bring them back to one you may think you had already finished. Again, I don't want to spoil any of the game so I won't include any examples of the puzzles.

This is quite simply the best CRPG I have ever played, it is also the first time I have awarded a game a perfect score. There were some minor bugs at the start but sir-tech had patches out faster than you can say, "uh is this a bug?"

From the moment, I launched Wizardry 8 and started the superlative task of creating characters I was caught, hook, line and sinker. The rich background, races, professions and locations make this game easy to start over and over once you have finished it, which won't be an easy task. Expect to spend between 60 and 120 hours depending on how much you like to explore and how much you enjoy Easter eggs (the rune puzzle, which may be the big-daddy of all Easter eggs, had me obsessing for days). This is game of the year material and the game that may allow me to finally remove Wizardry 7 from my hard drive. If you are even remotely interested in CRPG's or thought that Baldur's Gate was the pinnacle of gaming you owe it to yourself to check out Wizardry 8.

Below are some general hints that I found useful, it is not meant to be an all-inclusive list and some may change a lot as I play through the game again. For those wishing to be completely spoiler free I recommend you not read them.

• You get a rogue pretty early, I advise against creating one, put some points into lock picking if you have a Ninja, instead. Although a pure rogue that pick pockets from merchants then sells the goods, back to them is very entertaining.

• Dracon was one of my favorites in Wiz 7 so why didn't I have one in this game. I wish I would have! I miss that Dragon breath. It comes at a cost though; expect to dump a lot of points in Piety to build up Stamina.

• Take a Ninja over Monk. My monk is cool and all but at level 15 she still can't freaking critical very often, also I have a certain artifact that only a Ninja can use ... it's something from Wiz 7. Faery Ninja's OWN martial arts.

• Gageteers look cool on paper, I'm not so convinced about them being useful, they can make stuff alright but until about level 10 there is nothing to make! I classed mine into a Bard at about level 7 after I got tired of draggin his useless normally poisoned, worthless 1 or 2 HP damage per Omnigun-round ass all over the place. Plus he's a Mook and looks like Chewbacca, UGH!

• ROLL UP A BARD!!! These guys rock with their music ability, you will find a lot of instruments for them to play which can range from driving groups of enemies insane, though silencing them musically to instruments that cause pure destruction.

• I have a Lord and don't really like him much, except when some enemy casts insane on him and he cackles like a madman, the actor they used has this great deep MUHAHAHAHHA laugh that cracks me up every time. I wish I would have gone with a Lizardman fighter instead, still he is good around and can cast heal in a pinch.

• Samurai's just plain rock. He is doing upward of 40 - 50 points of damage with one stroke, lots of Asian armor to be found too.

• Have a Priest or Bishop (Bishops can identify stuff which helps a LOT early on!) Priests have a shot at the Instant Death spell later on which has saved my ass so many times it's not even funny... Seriously, this guy took out an NPC that NO one could touch, on his third Instant Death attempt WHAM! We were 50,000 XP richer each.

• Mage's can be devastating, focus on water and fire spells.

• With spell casters dump all your spell points into Wizardry and then pick a couple of fields and pump them up, i.e. fire magic, Divinity for priests... don't try to hit every single school of magic until later on in the game.

• You can go anywhere in the game world at anytime but do yourself a favor and stay in the Monastery until you are at least level 4 - 6, the road is tough!

• If you see into an enemy named a Deathlord, RUN if you are under level 15!

• This reminds me you don't have to win every fight. If you are being slaughtered RUN. The monsters will give up after about 3 rounds of chasing you.

• Not every door can be opened right away; this is not Baldur's Gate you may need to bring an item back from another dungeon/area.

• Write stuff down, I was out of the habit of keeping notes after all the lightweight RPG's of the past few years. One thing I neglected to write down forced me too retrace some steps and cost about 2 hours of game play.