Wizardry 8 (PC)

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Alucard1191
Posts: 476
Joined: November 16th, 2016, 12:55 pm

Wizardry 8 (PC)

Postby Alucard1191 » September 19th, 2017, 7:59 pm

With GoG being available, many of these great games are super easy to get. Wizardry 8, if you're into that first person RPG style, is an absolute must play.

The very basic storyline is a group of galactic explorers is shot down over a planet, and must complete an epic quest collecting 3 sacred relics to go to a mountain to ascend as a cosmic lord. In essence, become a galactic god being. Exciting? Most definitely.

But not at all because of story or substance. To be honest the game has just enough to be passable, but even so, I consider this is the top 5 RPGs of all time. Up there with Baldur's Gate 2. Yes, I went there.

Why is this game so absolutely fantastic? Dept of play, and replay value. The game allows you to create 6 heroes from a pool of 15 classes and 11 races. The thing is, playing different races as the same class will yield a surprisingly different gaming experience. A Lizardman fighter will behave substantially differently than a Hobbit fighter even though they have the exact same skills.

This absolutely immense combination of classes and races gives the game such an immense replay value that I often find myself having 2 or 3 parties going at once.

The difference in the classes and races is also very extreme, as the game combines things like androids, guns, and spaceships with your traditional mages, rogues, and knights.

To facilitate such a large amount of classes, the game has the classes grouped into 4 groups. Pure physical classes level the fastest, pure spellcasters next, then hybrid warrior-caster classes, with 2 elite classes that level up the slowest of all but have the highest potential of all the class types.

The game has all sorts of hidden goodies, retro dungeons taken from previous wizardry games, areas that aren't even remotely necessary to go to but provide treasure and exp, little hidden treasures and goodies, and a very healthy mix of set items and randomly generated enemies and items.

The combat system is fun and has a fair amount of depth to it. The graphics certainly weren't exceptional for the time, being early 3d, but they're definitely passable. The sound is honestly not great. The voices of the characters, which you get to choose at character creation, are fun at first, but get old fast. I find myself playing with all the sound muted and the voices on subtitles, far more enjoyable that way. The game also has some atrocious load times when accessing things like the automap, which is required because it is a wizardry game.

In essence, the game isn't any sort of technical achievement in anyway. And in a lot of the ways that computer RPGs are supposed to stand out, like storyline and interactive dialogue, Wizardry 8 tries to accomplish but really doesn't.

But the games strengths are numerous, and fantastic. I've played games with a gnome bard, hobbit bard, and lizardman bard and all were completely different and enjoyable in their own way. (Dual wielding sword and wand lizardman bard with points in mostly strength and vitality = amazing) This extreme depth to each class and race gives the game such that 'I can't wait to try a party like THIS' factor that you'll want to come back to the game again and again.

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scotland
Posts: 2561
Joined: April 7th, 2015, 7:33 pm

Re: Wizardry 8 (PC)

Postby scotland » September 20th, 2017, 9:38 am

Thanks for writing this. I do use GOG, but I have never played Wizardry 8.

Alucard1191
Posts: 476
Joined: November 16th, 2016, 12:55 pm

Re: Wizardry 8 (PC)

Postby Alucard1191 » September 20th, 2017, 10:02 pm

I forgot to mention that the game has the common wizardry option to import characters from Wizardry 7. In fact, it is possible to play the same party through from wizardry 6 through 8. The strongest items available are only available from importing characters that way. They'll start at level 5 as opposed to 1, and have a ton of great gear. The intro is different if you import characters, etc. The game really has a huge amount of depth to it. I could probably write a large volume on the character creation and building process.

If you do have a GoG account, I would highly recommend it. They also have 6 and 7 lumped together for a single purchase if you felt like diving into a 100+ hour over 3 different games adventure. I have found character files online though that you can use to play an imported game. You won't have the freedom of choosing what you want that way, (unless you happened to find the exact race/class combos) but it makes it possible to play the game with imported characters and items without investing loads of time into the previous wizardry games.


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