Wizardry 8

Hearts and souls have been poured into Wizardry 8 and it shows. [Mar 2002, p.87]

If Wizardry 8 truly is the last game in the series proper, its engaging and addictive gameplay and surprisingly good graphics and sound make it a worthy finale to the Wizardry series, as well as an excellent RPG in and of itself.

An extremely entertaining RPG and one I see myself returning to over and over, even after some 60 hours clocked.

It has everything you could possibly ask for in a roleplaying game and then some.

Even the most jaded fans of the series should be delighted with the enormous strides in quality Sir-Tech took with this title.

While over time I came to appreciate the vastness, complexity, and sheer amount of love and labor poured into this project, I never fell so in love with the game that I could overlook its flaws.

It's a shame, because this game, while merely good, does hint at the possibility of a truly great RPG, given another development cycle or two.

10/10 will play again. truly a industry-defining gaming up there with the best.

While it's true that the graphics are sub-optimal, everything else is amazing and makes it a 10. What other game has so many great unique classes (ninja, samurai, bishop, gadgeteer, etc)? This is one of the best party creation RPG's ever made, if that's what you're looking for.

the first game that introduced me to the world of old school RPGs. Quite original.

There are a lot of good things about Wizardry 8. It allows you to create up to 6 core party members. (You have two more slots for NPCs.) It has a lot of variety of races and classes. The spell list is extensive and the tactical combat is fairly deep. It is an old series, built upon a very free-wheeling mixture of science fiction and fantasy -- strangely refreshing in comparison to the narrower tropes of many of today's RPGs. The high-level plot isn't terribly deep, but it does not compare unfavorably to more modern RPGs. It is a hard game -- brutally hard on "normal", and not remotely easy on "novice". "Save early, save often" is the mantra to live by with this game. Whether that is bad or good depends on what you are looking for, but you want to go in with your eyes wide open. Wizardry is not forgiving of mistakes. Depth is a double-edged sword. Unless you research extensively, you _will_ make mistakes in your initial party design. Depending on how big those mistakes are, you may later be frustrated. The difficulty is made worse by the Wizardry's depth -- the ideal party for the beginning of the game will not be ideal in mid-game, and the ideal party for the end will again be different. So, that's the good. The bad: There are continuously wandering monsters in many zones (especially initially, but they _do_ respawn). These fights are hard, and you can easily go from one fight to another, depleted, with no hope of winning it. Sometimes you can run away, but that isn't always an option. At times, it feels like an endless grind. The story is often lost in the mix -- Wizardry relies heavily on this mechanic, and the gameplay can be extremely repetitive. It can get boring. If Wizardry is old-school in a lot of good ways, it's also old-school in some bad ways. The parties of wandering monsters you face often make no sense. There is no sense of story there, no explanation of how this fits into a bigger picture. You can loot NPCs' chests without consequences. Unlike more modern RPGs, there is comparatively little sense of character, of interpersonal story. It's a game built around tactical combat with a thin leavening of plot. In the end, the repetitive game-play and paper-thin characterization make it hard for me to give it more than a 7. If these aren't problems for you, you may enjoy it more.

If you play it today it's so terrible old school you can only watch in terror. Every fight or action has to be prepared, everyone takes his best weapons for the fight, the people in background prepare their buffs, the wizards learn their spells, and voila, the single level 1 cockroach is dead. Or the chest is opened without touching it, it took only 20 nights resting. When you start the game it looks hard but promising, but after a while you find out it remains like that: It's a battle between the player and the rules, and the rules don't like you having fun.