new to W8

[D*one]

Just wanted to preview some games before I end W&W......I was wondering if anyone could give me some thoughts on Wizardy 8..........really appreciate it

[Saltheart Foamfollower]

Thoughts on the game... Open invitation...

I really enjoyed the game. From the character creation till the ending of the game and series.

Combat is pretty intense at times, with some battles being large and drawn out. The magic system, spells and effects, are quite nice. Very balanced spells, without any uber spells that will utterly unbalance the game.

Plot is not bad, and the dialogs among NPC's in actually pretty humerous at times. Check out the thread on the forum about some of the things that the NPC's have uttered.

Game play is not linear, Granted you have to do a few things in order to advance the plot. There are a few times you are under the gun, timewise.. But, you can actually do most quests in any order you desire..

All in all, I actually agree with all of the gaming magazines and gaming sites that gave Wiz8 high scores in all areas. It is a wonderful way to end a great series of games. I highly recommend playing it before Morrowind and NeverWinter Nights come out.

[Psycho]

There's a playable demo on the home-site... www.wizardry8.com , then click downloads.
It's big '150MB', but you can play the lower monastery , altered in some ways to make it harder than the normal 1st level.
You can't create a new party, you have to play a fixed one, but you get to know the controls and environment.

Check it out, and you'll be sold...

Signed,
One sick Psycho

[Charmy]

Wizardry 8 rocks! You really can't go wrong with this game if you've enjoyed any of the other games in the series, or any hard-core, traditional RPG games. IGN is right in that "They don't make games like this anymore." alhtough I disagree with the low score they gave the game. Its got just about everything you could ever want, great length (although this game can never seem long enough), wonderful voice acting, and decent graphics as well as some pretty catchy battle music.

Gameplay is VERY deep, with tons of stats and skills and character customization and party configurations are so numerous that the possibilities really are endless. This game has massive replay value because even after you finish the game, chances are that you haven't experienced all the classes and skills and races the game has to offer. There are so many battle strategies, and so many of them are effective, that its a joy to try new ones, and the vast selection of awesome equipment only enhances this fact. Granted, there are a few tried and true strategies (Fairy Ninja with CoC, cheap-ass Bishop [img]tongue.gif[/img] ) but you really can do great with just about any party you want.

The game's interface is VERY VERY elegant. Pull down menus, pop up widnows, you can make the game show you EVERY detail at all times, or be totally spartan, allowing you to see more of the world and less numbers and bars. You can highlight items to check on what they are, merge items into new potions and gadgets, items stack automatically, and there are a whole bunch of other nice nuances which people take for granted. Wizardry is a JOY to control. Few games are so highly polished in this area.

Flaws that I can see is that unless you use quick-save and quick-load (which is not recommend all the time, because if I remember correctly, quick save games are ERASED after quitting!!!), loading and saving games can be a slow process. There are alot of area transition load times as well. RPCs (recruitable player characters) tend to be less useful than they should be due to the fact that many of them have critical areas of the game where they just refuse to go. If you force them to go, they will take a massive hit to their abilities for the duration of your stay. Therefore you really should rely primarily on your own guys.

The combat system, while intuitive, can be slooooooooooooow and boring when fighting large groups of enemies. Even if you set your combat speed at maximum (which you really, REALLY should do), it can be tedious to watch as the 50 crabs you just ran into scuttle into their little formations as they march towards you. If you can picture 50 objects, moving one at a time, taking at least 5 seconds for each, EVERY round, you can imagine that sometimes you may need a good book at your side during combat. Fortunately later on, in such situations you can just pull out your Infernal Horn of Nuclear Blasting and pulverize them all before they can move an inch! *very evil grin*

The storyline, while not mind-blowing, is quite decent fare, I'd say. A really elaborate storyline like the ones in Final Fantasy just wouldn't fit in with the way this game works. You can't have that kind of drama and depth with characters which are different for every person, but what they have done here is QUITE nice. You can forge alliances with different factions on the planet, and your actions really do have meaning, and are often reacted to realistically by the world around you. Dominus feels like a living, breathing place, with events happening all the time which you aren't necessarily accosted to. However, it isn't like Wizardry 7 where, if you don't get a move on many key items (legend map, anyone?) will be gone by the time you get to them. This was just frustrating. Some of the characters in Wizardry 8 are memorable, and as I mentioned earlier, the voice acting and lines are top notch. You will get close to your characters, and find it quite a pleasure when they thank you for a piece of top-notch equipment, or spill out their gratitude for having been resurrected from the dead.

Yikes, this post is dragging on to long. Suffice to say, I loved Wizardry 8, and you really will do yourself a favor if you pick it up. Sir-Tech may be gone, but its memory shall live on long after!

[Wolfie]

Originally posted by Charmy: Flaws that I can see is that unless you use quick-save and quick-load (which is not recommend all the time, because if I remember correctly, quick save games are ERASED after quitting!!!)

Actually, quick saves are kept. In fact, it keeps three "rolling" quick saves. By rolling I mean,

1st time you quick save = "Quick1.sav"
2nd time you quick save = "Quick2.sav"
3rd time you quick save = "Quick3.sav"
4th time you quick save = "Quick1.sav"
5th time you quick save = "Quick2.sav"

...and so on. So there is always your most recent quick save, and the two most previous quick saves available. Plus there's an auto-save feature, which overwrites itself every 5 minites or so, very handy for sudden power-failures (ie, junior finds the power cord and pulls it out because he likes the funny dance daddy makes when he does).

[img]smile.gif[/img]

[D*one]

I would like to thank you guys for your input. It has really sparked my curiousity now...... [img]tongue.gif[/img]

[MasterPooBaa]

i like the nice 3d interface... gives good atmosphere, specially inside.

i also like that i can run in 1024x768 in very high detail, yet unlike the baldurs gate series the characters & stat screens stay the same size (which is GOOD).

one thing i dont like is the AUTOMAP
for me it takes absolute AGES to come up sometimes!!!
why is this???
i have a super fast computer, athlon 1400 & 256mb ram. quite annoying this point.

[Knip Dyolf]

As mentioned above....try the demo. You will soon know if wiz8 is your style of game.
As you have played wizards and warriors I suspect that you will absolutely looovvee wiz8. You will have done the two games the right way around.
However I played wiz8 and then tried to play wiz and war's. I kept comparing the two. Wiz8 won out and I am replaying wiz8 while my unfinished wiz and war's gathers dust.
Wiz8 just got everything right IMHO.

Knip

EDIT - After reading Masterpoobaa's posting I have to admit that they didnt get everything right. Apart from the long automap loading time (which by the way only affects me the first time I load the map (pentium4 here)) the automap feature is a real pain to navigate with multi levels. If they had just got that right Wiz8 would have been perfect in my eyes. I suppose nothing is really perfect but wiz8 is damm near close.

[ 04-16-2002, 03:18 AM: Message edited by: Knip Dyolf ]

[Gothmog, Lord of Balrogs]

Originally posted by MasterPooBaa: one thing i dont like is the AUTOMAP for me it takes absolute AGES to come up sometimes!!! why is this??? i have a super fast computer, athlon 1400 & 256mb ram. quite annoying this point.

How can you not like the automap? sure, it's slow, but it's far better than the Wiz7 Journey Map Kit and Mapping skills, which made your ONLY map not useful until you got 70 points in mapping, which was usually right before you got to the last part of the game. My first party never got the JMK, so had quite the trouble at times, especially in the Hall of the Past.

So remember: Better late than never!!

[Sirius_Oz]

Regarding the map-loading problem, I changed my display from DirectX to OpenGL and that fixed it! Auto-maps now load very quickly. (I'm using a Geforce 2 MX vid card).

Drawbacks to this approach are:

Wiz 8 uses 16-bit OpenGL on my system so I also had to set my Windoze desktop to 16-bit, otherwise Wiz8 wouldn't start.

Brightness (gamma) must be set using NVidia tools or whatever BEFORE starting Wiz8 coz the brightness slider in the game doesn't work in OpenGL mode.