First of all: Great game, I will play through it again with a different party at a higher difficulty level. Still, there are a few things that could have made this great game even better:
1) Offensive damage-dealing magic is almost useless.
That is most true in the last part of the game. Any monster has magic resistances of at least 90 in any magic realm, so even a Nuclear Blast at maximum power level deals only 20-30 damage. Thats a real joke considering that monsters also have 300 hp and more and that a Nuke(7) drains my mage of half his fire spellpoints. I found it always far more effecient to beat monsters in close combat. I would have preferred some monsters that are nearly immune to physical attacks (like the adamant slimes) but vulnerable to magic.
2) No character improvement beyond level 21
Besides getting more hp, reaching a new level beyond level 21 or so isn´t very exciting any more. All relevant skills were at over 75 and couldn´t be raised further manually, magic users besides bishops have all important spells. The reasonable thing to do at this level would have been to change class, but the harsh restrictions makes this pointless, too...
3) More interaction and reaction from NPCs
He Li in the Arnika Inn is the only NPC that reacts on your progress in the game. NPCs react if you complete quests you received from them, of course. But after having disarmed the bomb in the savants tower, for example, I would have liked to tell the people in Arnika: "Don´t worry, the bomb is disarmed." Or Bela to show any reaction. Like saying: "Hey, you disarmed the bomb. Now let´s go to Ascension Peak" I also found it dusturbing that killing Al-Sedexus didn´t affect my relation with the Rapax templars.
4) What about critical hits ??
Near the end of the game, my ranger did hardly any critical hits any more, in spite of having ranged weapons, bows and eagle eye at over 100. Even my bard ( equipped with a bow that does KILL 5% ) did significantly more critical hits. And my ninja was the greatest disappointment of all...

I would agree about the critical hits (though I still haven't finished the game yet...) Critical hits were the first things that I worked on to max with my sam, and my ranger with ranged combat and bow and eagle eye, and until I got wearpons for them that had a kill %, I can count on one hand how many times either got crits, especially my samurai. Granted, I worked on dex and speed before senses with my sam, but I still got nuthin' till I started using Fang, which has a 10% crit rate on it. Could it be my senses, perhaps?

however, with my ranger, I built senses and dex first, and still no significant crits until I started using a bow that has a crit count on it.

Well I found magic missiles one of the most useful spells in the game. My mage didn't have much else to cast from her divine spells, except banish which wasn't useful for most enemies, and a lot of monsters have less or no divine resistance compared to other resistances. I also liked spells like tsunami and blizzard, especially useful against rapax, of which I fought many. But then my mage didn't have many disabling spells; my bard took care of pandemonium, silence, freeze all, so she didn't have much else to do but cast offensive spells. Doing a reasonable ammount of damage to all enemies isn't so bad though I don't think [img]smile.gif[/img] .

I do agree about NPC interaction. Like He'Li told me I'd have to lay low after I stole the Chaos Moliri because everyone in Arnika would be mad at me. So I went and showed everyone, Braffit, the Higardi captain guy, and no one cared at all! It was disappointing. And I was surprised after I got offside with the rapax templars that Antone still liked me and sold me stuff. I would have thought the word would have got through to him that I was an evil rapax killer ;)

Geathaa, I agree 100%. I'm not sure why your Ranger wasn't getting crits. At level 22 my Ranger has exactly 99 insta-kills (I've kept
count) out of 516 total kills. That's a hair over 19%. It's actually
a bit higher considering that some of those 516 kills were with magic.

anyway, congrats on finishing the game

Helix

It is very hard to insta-kill monster from the asme level or higher. Just go back to arnika road. Then your critical guys will just make crits on crits.

/
He'li, like some people out here, is a tattletale and a liar. Instead of paying her blackmail to shut up about my alliances, i killed her. No loss.
i recommend avoiding her altogether (once you buy her instrument, if you need it.)

An important thing for spell casters is to have power cast. This will help to make a lot of damage. I also found that mass offensive spells will work better on a highly resistant group then a single target spell. You just multiply the propability of a hit.

Until now the most devating spell is Tsunami, most high level monsters are not so ersistant for water spell. Fire on the other hand is pretty useless.

Hello again! I´m really glad most people agree with my opinion. As I posted this topic I thought: Well, they´ll surely kill me for daring to criticize this great game =)
Another word on spellcasting: Of course my mage had powercast and I don´t deny that some damage can be done, all I´m saying is that considering the amount of spellpoints you waste the damage is not enough. I think you won´t disagree with me that it takes far less rounds to kill a group of 5 Rapax templars in close combat than it would take to kill them with magic. Not to mention that it bothers me not at all that all 5 templars each casts Fireball(7) each round at me... I find it disturbing that even the worst realm resistance for each monster in the second half of the game is so high that spells have a rather weak effect. I played Wiz6 and Wiz7 also, and I think that magic was better balanced there...

Another reason to like Bishops: They get tons of spell points by learning all the spells, and don't notice the expense of the higher spells as much. But i agree about the balance; i liked magic in W-7 better. I always did a lot of class-rotating to build SP's up, and i don't like the fact that there's such a limit in W-8.