What's helpful or not depends entirely on individual. If I would get to get to decide what people can and can't say depending on what I fond helpful/useful/smart/etc., 99,9 % of mankind on this Earth wouldn't be allowed to say anything.

Perhaps you didn't notice, but there is a tiny "Is this helpful to you?" question on the bottom of every review on GOG.com with "Yes" and "No" options for answer, as well as option to order the reviews by the ones found most helpful by the community.

The point is that judging by personal taste isn't helpful to people that like a specific type or genre. And that while you can pick reviews that are the most helpful is does not change that the overall rating is skewed so you don't know if reviews are accurate or not.

Armikrog for instance got bad overall reviews because it was buggy and by some accounts even unplayable and unfinishable. Now we have a game that's judged by some according to Wizardry 8 standards when the whole point of it is to be like Wizardry 1&3. So how do I remove those reviews and even votes without reviews but keep the ones that judged it by the intended standard without even knowing which those are? The entire rating on this game would get an unhelpful mark from me if I could.

You can get your fruit back by deleting the save file.

I believe that saves are located in C:\users\$USER\Local Settings\Application Data\Wizardry_LoLS
There should be two files there. Delete both of them, and the next time you start the game, the option will be New Game instead of Continue and you will have your Growth Fruits back. (Of course, you will lose everything else, as you just deleted your save!)

Do people often do this? Is it basically a mandatory thing, to put some spells on everyone? Let's say if I want a character who's a mix of magic and fighting for the fun of it, can I make him a warrior, then take 1-2 levels of Wizard of Bishop, and then go back to warrior, will he have enough SP to cast any spells? Since you said they're halved? How many levels of magic classes do you usually give your whole party? And do you do it at once or separately (few at a time), so your whole party isn't just magic classes and can survive the dungeon?

I'm used to Might and Magic and DnD dungeon crawlers, so this is interesting/a different approach, since you can't usually respec or it's not advisable unless you have it well-thought out and planned in advance.

In Elminage all skills carry over when transferring, right?

Have you tried the 47 bonus points hack btw? Does it work? It would be interesting if it had carried over.

The way SP works is that you have a separate count for each level, For example, maybe your character has 4 level 1 SP and 2 level 2 SP; after class change those values will become 2 and 1. As long as you have at least 1 SP of a spell level, you can cast a spell of that level. Also, I've read that apparently, class changing can't lower your SP for the level to 0. In other words, if you take just 1-2 levels as a mage, you will be able to cast spells, but only of the low levels. (In any case, since level resets to 1, XP requirements reset, so you should be able to get more levels than that in a short time.)

I often give all my characters all the spells; currently I have all spells on 4 characters (though one of them is a Biship so she doesn't really count). I generally do it separately so I don't have a situation with no good fighting characters, though in some games strategies like solo leveling or a gold to XP conversion can make things go faster at the expense of focusing on just one character. (Wizardry: Labyrinth of Lost Souls allows you to convert gold to XP by tithing at the temple, and it's not as if there's any other good use for large amount of gold.)

Elminage handeles it similar, thout the specific mechanics are different; you keep only 1 SP per spell known, to a maximum of 3 per spell level, but if you know at least one spell of a level, you can learn the others by leveling up regardless of class (if your level is high enough). Also, Elminage has the "Innocent" mechanic: Certain pieces of equipment can't be used by characters who have changed class. (Unfortunately, the implementation in Elminage Gothic doesn't feel meaningful; Innocent equipment is not top tier; instead of putting that restriction on equipment (which seems like an interesting trade-off), they instead made much of the top tier equipment male only, which is sexist and feels like poor game design, since that's a choice you don't expect to matter that will possibly hurt you dozens of hours down the line.)

I don't know about the 47 bonus point thing; whether it works the same way depends on whether XSEED ported the RNG algorithm over or just used the target platform's C library or something.

Am I the only one who can't launch the game because of neverending install? Or is it just Galaxy?

UPD. Finally! It installed. Apparently there was some glitch.

Thanks for the explanation! I thought the games had mana-based system, if it's just casts like in DnD, that makes sense and it's not that bad. (I assumed SP was short for Spell Points, I guess you have a number of casts to use with your spell list, like a Sorceror?)

Yes, that's very sexist! I hope someone makes a hack that removes that, or adds in the same armour for female characters - I don't see why a specific gender (the same goes if it was female only) should have better armour. Can I ask which classes have the top tier equipment for males, if it's tied to classes?

Yes, like a D&D 3.x Sorcerer (or BG2 Sorcerer, which is a backport of that class to 2e).

Of course, it just so happens that the (JP only) sequel to this game has a class called a Sorcerer, but still uses the same magic system for all spell-casting classes. (The Sorcerer's special abilities is to cast spells with boosted effect at the cost of defense.)

By the way, the Mage's Magic Boost (and, in the sequel, the Sorecerer's Overmaster) works with Priest spells, so a Magic Boosted healing spell will restore more HP.

(Note that all the information I have about the sequel comes from a Japanese site and a few Youtube videos.)

It turns out that the game (Elminage Gothic) is actually not that hard to mod, and if I go back to play the game again, I would probably perform that mod myself.

After some googling I've found out that supposedly you can enchant gear to remove gender restrictions, does this make you lose anything (eg. a slot to put another enchantment it), or does it completely remove it, so it negates the gender disadvantage without any loss?

In the PS3 version there are three female-only Samurai gear pieces which add charm and other bonuses/resistances, and altogether are about 3 def points less than the male gear according to one geek site, so it sounded like the female exclusive armour might actually be better (or better yet, combine all of them together). The fighter exclusive gear is better though, and that's supposedly it, besides the female only class Valkyrie.

One thing that perplexes me about this game is changing classes. When to do it, and what the benefits are.

(Assuming you're talking about Elminage Gothic here)
You can remove gender restrictions on equipment, *but*:
* You do lose the opportunity to put a different enchantment on the item.
* Most of the top-tier weapons can't be enchanted at all, so there's no way to remove the gender restriction period. (The main exceptions tend to be cursed, which I *think* is removable, but there's a race that can ignore the restriction. You can't create characters of said race, but there's a late-game event that can change characters into that race, and you can get characters of that race buy using Spirit Pact on many summons.)

Also, in addition to male-exclusive weapons and a female-only weapon for the Valkyrie (which is obnoxious if your Valkyrie isn't female), there's also a rather powerful weapon, usable by Lords, that can't be used by male or female characters.

(If you're confused at this point, perhaps it's worth pointing out that Elminage Gothic actually presents you with *three* gender options when creating a character. Valkyries are allowed to choose the third gender. Items with gender restrictions might or might not be usable by such characters, depending on the item, but the window that appears when you examine the item doesn't tell you. Top-tier weapons with gender restrictions are generally not usable by such characters, with that one Lord weapon being an exception.)

The main benefit is that you keep your spells from the previous class. You also keep half the HP and SP you had from your previous class, all of your stats (Unlike Wizardry 1-7!), and are now level 1 so you will not need much experience to level up. Also, unlike in classic Wizardry, you will get meaningful HP bonuses at level-up, and can end up with higher HP than if you never changed classes. Also, you don't need to worry about losing that HP when you get level drained, as level drains don't cost HP in this game. (The sequel changed that last point.)

Another benefit is that certain classes (particularly Lord and Ninja) are hard to create, requiring either too much re-rolling of bonus points or the use of multiple Growth Fruit (remember you only get 5). Class changing allows you to bypass this, as while you still need to meet the class requirements, the stats you gain by leveling should (hopefully) allow you to do the class change.

As for when to change classes, generally I would say this:
* If your final class does not learn the same type of magic, change once you get 8 SP of all levels (typically in the low 20s), and it's recommended to go directly to your final class because SP gets halved. If your final class doesn't learn magic, changing from Bishop is the only way to end up with 4's in every spell level.
* If your final class is Samurai or Lord, you can change from Mage or Priest (respectively) once you've learned all the spells. (If you want spells of the other type, get them after learning the spells of the first type, or just go Bishop.) Samurai and Lord only learn half the spells of their type, but can still get 9 SP of every spell level of their type by leveling up.

(By the way, Ninja are not that good in this game. Lords are good, but Ninja are not.)

Thank you for the detailed answer. I think I understand now why Bishop/mage/priest were inserted before the final class. I couldn't figure out the reasoning behind it.

Yes, I was talking about the top tier exlusive armour in Elminage.

Right, that makes sense!

By the way, I've just seen 10 minutes of an LP from Wizardry:LotLS, and I want to ask - how do you feel about the sound your steps make? It seems so much unreal, and compared to all the various step sounds I've heard, this one for some reason sounds more like a menu sound (or a weird, blunt attack sound). I'm not that much fan of it. How do you like the dungeon environments? I'll be honest, the ones in Elminage and Western dungeon crawlers look much more better and have better quality, these look so...simple and copy pasted?

I don't pay too much attention to the step sounds, though I do note that, if you have a Levitation spell active, the sound changes to a "whoosh" sound.

The dungeon environments aren't that interesting, unfortunately. They do change every 3 floors in Shiin's Dungeon, though I haven't yet seen 10F so I don't know if that floor has a unique appareance. (Actually, I've seen that floor in videos, but don't remember it.)

The sequel, only available in Japan, looks like it has some more interesting environments, including some outdoor ones. (I'm hoping that XSEED ports and translates the sequel; I think they said they might if this game does well.)

(Also, the dungeon environments still look much better than in computer versions of Wizardry 1-5, and are still more varied than Wizardry 6's brick walls everywhere.)

I prefer the animated Wizardry 6 brick walls over this game's dungeons, they have more charm and look more real, versus the dimly lit, barely detailed corridors. I haven't played Wiz 1-5 yet, but I do like the visuals of the old games. :)