Ok, so I finished the demo last night, no problem! (was up until 2 am doing it, though, LOL!) I fired it back up again today from the beginning to catch a few screenshots for those of you who haven't seen the demo yet...hopefully this will whet some appetites.
(I've posted the same thing over in General Discussions, so if you've seen that thread, this is the same material.)
The first is a shot of the screen with all character faces shown. The play screen is smaller in this case, showing the treasure chest.
This shot is the entrance to the demo level, the abandoned temple.
One of the first group of monsters you have to fight in the temple is a group of slimes. This is a good shot of how a ranged attack will work. In Wizardry 8, attacks are "phased", meaning that in each round, characters can either move forward or use range attacks; opponents will do likewise. The default combat option is the "turn-based" one rather than real-time, although real-time (continuous) combat is also supported.
Ouch! Small spiders ambush the party by throwing webs at them. You never know when something's going to sneak up on your rear, so be careful when entering rooms and make sure to look everywhere.
After the combat, an examination of the room. Notice the detailing involved. Small treasure caches lie in corners, so one has to be careful to search well.
Heh...while I was taking the last "Kodak moment", a group of bats decided to investigate. As in the Baldur's Gate games and Icewind Dale, one gets to select each character's actions before starting the round. The characters keep those "default" actions until you pause (continuous play) or until the round is over (turn-based).
Anyway, the interface takes a little getting used to, but after the first couple of combats, I was starting to feel like a pro at it. The game runs very smoothly and NO BUGS (as far as I can tell!) I think Sir-Tech has a winner here.
Cheers (and hope you guys enjoy),
------------------
Welcome to Ironworks...over 4100 happy members and one old buzzard!