pkk234: What's with all the hubbub surrounding this game?
Well... the dev has a... peculiar ego and, has, hmm... strong feelings toward what most, but not him, consider to be human beings. For reference:
dtgreene: Some things I'm wondering about this game:
* Once you start, is your party set in stone (like in Wizardry 6 or later), or is there a place where you can leave party members behind and create/recruit new ones, changing them out later if you feel like it?
* Is there an option to get the main interface to display numbers for health and other resources, rather than (or in addition to) bars?
* How do a character's skills improve?
* Does age matter, and if so, is there a way to reduce it?
* Can enemies or effects (this includes things like resurrection) cause permanent damage to your characters?
* How is healing magic? Is it strong enough to be usable? (Wizardry 6 and 7 had a problem with healing magic being so weak later on that bringing a character back to full health after a fight was extremely tedious, even with a high level caster; Wizardry 1-5 solved this with MADI, but had issues until that spell appeared.) Is it worth using in combat? Are there any healing abilities that work in interesting ways?
* What's the level cap, are level ups random, and does anything other than a choice made at level up time affect stat growth? (Also, can stats go down? This might sound like a silly question, but remember that classic Wizardry did this.)
Edit: Thought of a couple more:
* Is the game well balanced in its current form?
* When a new party is fighting low level monsters (the sort that new characters would be expected to be able to defeat), do attacks consistently hit, or is there a lot of missing going on?
No answers for you here - as I have the same questions, but I'm actually surprised, given your expertise, that you have not played this one yet.