To buy or not to buy W&W

Alright I'll get right to the point... I am a terribly indecisive person and can not come to a decision whether or not I should get W&W. I also happen to be the type of person that needs his daily dose of gaming to live through the day and currently there are no RPGs on the market which appeal to me and I haven't gotten (got Icewind Dale, Baldur's Gate, and quickly getting bored with Diablo 2 which playing 8 hours a day tends to do...). W&W is an enigma... I've lurked in this forum and read the various things people have said about W&W. I've checked out the links at Gone Gold and that didn't help very much either.
The general impression of the reviewers seems to be that it has tremendous nostalgia value (I loved Bane and Crusaders, and the various Wizardry games that came out for Gameboy/NES/SNES in Japan so that is a major plus) and the character creation/class system seems to just absolutely rock (being a stat/skills freak this is also a plus). Graphics really isn't an issue for me (not too much at least) since FPS graphics would kill my system anyway, and the graphics doesn't look too bad IMO (maybe my standards just arent' that high...). I don't care too much about bad voice acting (am used to it from most games). Don't care much about music either as long as it isn't bad enough that I can't shut it out while I'm playing the game.
The problem seems to be the extreme bugginess (I'm not counting on a patch either judging from the tone of people's posts) and extremely crappy interface. Well I'm basically here for advice to sway me in either direction...
1) How long did it take you to 'get into' the game? And...
2) at what point if any did the bugs frustrate you so much that you didn't want to see the game for a while?
3) Is night time REALLY that bad? Aren't there spells or something that help you see at night or something?
4) If given a choice to go back to the point in time right before you purchased the game would you purchase it again?
5) Sea Dogs (Bethesda) is coming out soon. Should I get W&W or Sea Dogs?
6) Is the game fun? (THE most important question IMO)
Please no replies like: "the game suxx0rz d00d" I get enough of this on Battle.net (another plus for W&W is that I don't have to deal with homophobic, xenophobic, immature, testosterone-loaded 13 year olds who think they're 1337 (or however this is spelled currently)
gangsta's (yeah like one of them would be playing Diablo 2)).

Hope I didn't ramble on and on for too long... Sorry for all the parentheses (I know it's a bad habit, but I love 'em cause they're kind of like ways to break the rules of grammar without actually breaking them)

1) I was hooked the moment I saw the words "By D.W. Bradley" on the cover. I spent the better part of a year playing Crusaders (got all the way to the Galen Stone hint-free before I had to break down and buy the hint book ARGH!!!).

2) The bugs are certainly irritating, but the game is just so good that they're easy enough to overlook.

3) It's VERY dark at night. The spells you have at your disposal basically just keep you from tripping over monsters, but I like it just fine that way. Adds to the danger element when traveling by night. It also cranks up the creep factor when you stumble out of that crypt ready to head for town and it's actually darker outside than it was in the dungeons. Very nice atmosphere. No complaints from me here.

4) Definitely. No regrets whatsoever.

5) Hey, why not just wait for TES 3: Morrowind? Get 'em ALL

6) Yes. From the wRE:To buy or not to buy W&W

[Wyvern]

YES - buy it!!!

I've been lucky. I've experienced only 2 crashes/bugs. Screen froze up and I had to reboot. I had no other problems at all. The game IS fun. WHile a lot of the quests are Fed Ex in nature there is a lot of enjoyment just moving around in the game. The nights aren't that bad, it's just you can see more of the ambient add ons (like the birds) more easily in the daytime. Yes there are light spells and they do help. W&W has been the most fun I have had in a CRPG in a long time! And there is even more fun to be had just hanging out here on this board!

Wyv

1. Yes its very easy to get into this game...And its very fun to play right from the start with characther creation and all...But its also in the beginning some of the frustration starts...ex hard to target flying objects(Hotkey would have been useful), No chance of ID-ing that rusty sword..

2, I havent been that frustrated about it..I just take it for what it is...But sometimes i think the game story and the so called quest is very silly and downright bad..First of all the main quest could have been written by anyone Its just one of the most used concepts in RPG.ing one good and evil sword and then the side quests is just a matter of doing the main quest, cus if you do the main quest 80-90% of the side quests gets done, and they are just get an item or kill that NPC style. Im sad to say..but I cant see why that D.W Bradly guy is so high ranked...He maybe has a good PC RPG engine,,but for the story..what story??? Im sorry fans !!!

3. Night time isnt that bad...But here is a thing ,why isnt there a camp/option ?????
Hmm strange ..The spells is for me rather useless outside , but inside the dungeons they work rather well...I can take an example of this light/darkness problem..when I came to the first crypt in the game I couldnt see the lever on the wall to get inside,,and this lever must be a obvious one for everyone cus it isnt even mentioned in the games own walktrough of the crypt( meening it was absolutly ment to bee seen by everyone)

4. Well yes ...its still a very fun game..

5. As See Dogs isnt released yet. I find it hard to say...And isnt See Dogs a Pirate clone and no RPG..have a look at Morrowind as stated in another post.

6. The game is fun..I have mentioned it before and do it again..Its nothing great about it and nothing revolutionary, Its just plain fun to play...But It could have been so much better story...But of course thats my opinion of it.

And for the last comment I like to say Diablo 2 ??? I would like to say that that game is played by those characthers you mentioned..Diablo isnt a roleplaying game and has never been one..Its an ACTION game with some small roleplaying elements...And If you like those type of games real RPG isnt nothing for you Im sorry..

to make a long answer short, this game has many flaws that range from somewhat annoying to very severe, but i love it anyway(now if i could only find someone to say the same about me ). My guess would be that if you loved bane and crusaders, you will love this game too.

If I had to do it over again I would buy it. The graphic's are great and it's a very entertaining game.

[Kate]

Entertaining and playable despite the bugs. Reminds me rather of the Might and Magic games.
Worth getting (Although I'm looking forward to Morrowind, I thought Daggerfall was one of the best ever).

Thank you all for your responses. Judging from all the positive things people say about W&W I guess it's about time for me to go out and get myself a copy (as soon as finals are over. Grrrr). I'm just praying that W&W functions on my computer unlike some of the unfortunate people on this board...

About Bradley... Well one of the reasons why I like him is because of all the stats/skills/races he lets you play with when you build your party. Granted the over-all story involves get this Artifact (Cosmic Forge, Astral Dominae, Mavin Sword) and defeat this pure incarnation of evil (the two vampires at the end of Bane (sorry I forgot who they were, it's been a while , and I dunno but even after I finished Bane I never got the sense that they were evil despite the fact that they had done some pretty evil things, the Forge just did such a good job of screwing up their lives I couldn't help myself feel a bit of pity for them. I think the female vampire was actually a 14 year old girl still...name began with an R...), go after the Dark Savant, kill Cet), along the way there he just provides you with so many interesting characters/races to interact with and choose sides from (yeah these often did involve the much hated Fed-Ex quest, but they were still fun), and then there were all sorts of dungeons to explore (I still love a good dungeon crawl every now and there where the goal is to kill things and get loot).

About Sea Dogs... It's pretty similar to Daggerfall from what I could tell. Your 'stats' (more like those of your ship) are determined by who you hire to man them. You have the option of siding with France, England, Spain, or just be a free-lancing pirate and there's also some kind of reputation system involved (like in Daggerfall). If you ally with England, Spain isn't going to be too happy with you. Non-linear gameplay is what I'm looking forward to.

About Morrowind... As much as I'd love to get my greedy little paws on that game it isn't coming out until 2001 (and I believe at least the 2nd half *prays so that it doesn't get delayed*). I have a very very bad feeling my TNT isn't going to be too happy when I attempt to load Morrowind... *sigh* Time to get a new video card...

Diablo 2... Well there's a certain 'zombie-like mindlessness' to it which makes it so addictive (having no jumping puzzles is also a big plus). Click click click click click... I really don't want to think how many hours I've spent clicking away. Customizable stats and skills help too (though far more simple than W&W it still is fun). And I think one thing Diablo 2 does far better than W&W is the random treasure generation system (I swear part of the reason why I play is to get that uber-equipment set-up for my chars). It's also got quite a nice story IMO (couldn't help sympathizing with the Dark Wanderer and his doomed-to-fail attempts to retain his humanity).

Thank you again for all those responses.

[Laurence]

...but no-one mentioned Bradley's next game.

What next game? Well there won't be one unless enough buy W&W.

And I want his next to be published by someone who lavishes a bit more care on the beta testing process. In short I want Bradley to have a choice of publishers, not to have to tout around begging, apologising for poor W&W sales.
To my mind, he is almost up there with Tolkien.

Buy it, and encourage others to do so, please!

[Wyvern]

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