Wizardry 8

I've sampled a few hours of each of the Wizardry's in the past and the last two games in the series not only made Might & Magic obsolete but I have to admit I enjoyed them much more than even Morrowind & Oblivion... ...thus standing true to the statement that graphics don't necessarily make the game. The last two Wizardys feature much more content, less empty wandering and fair but difficult battles that followed a much less sloppier template than the above-mentioned.

Wizardry 8 is a little light on dialogue, there are hardly any quests, and there are no NPC interactions (Torment this is not), but I've still beaten this game 3 or 4 times since I bought it back in '01, and I still quote some of the plot points to my friends regularly (who will become cosmic lords themselves?! Btw not a spoiler, it's in the opening cutscene.), and the story managed to be both engaging and surprising. IMO the skill and level up systems are the most fun I've ever seen in an RPG. Your skills improve through use and you get to assign points whenever you level, which is often. Combat is fun, but some of the bigger fights can take as long as an hour, ye be warned. I recommend picking up the mod that speeds up creature movement times. There are a whopping 15 classes and 11 races, plus I don't want to count how many individual skills. Each of the six attributes, when maxed out at 100 unlocks an awesome prestige skill for that chracter, as well. The graphics aren't fantastic, but they're very playable still, and the music (Arnika theme especially, youtube it) and sound FX are possibly the best I've found in an RPG. Bottom line is this was a great pickup by gog. I wish they had more extras bundled with it, but maybe they'll add more in time. If you're an RPG fan or like first person RPGs at all I'd definitely recommend this game.

I will detail the few but significant flaws before going into what makes this game so amazing. For starters, this game is deservedly one of the worst offenders for 'Level scaling' and horrendously re-spawning monsters. Monsters often spawn at a level higher than the PC party (at least until the middle to latter part of the game). And the turn-based combat can lead to some random battles taking over an hour to finish (however see my 'good' points regarding this further down). Damage spells are very ineffective compared to de-buffs and such. The game is shorter than CotDS by a long shot. And that's about the extent of the flaws. Combat is brilliantly turn-based and Wizardry 8 introduces 'tactical formations' for your party members which, combined with using terrain to your advantage, really adds something to the first person combat. Magic is well thought out and, other than the aforementioned weakness of damage spells (like Fireball), a lot of fun. The exploitative class-changing of Wizardry 7 has been fixed here and makes a whole lot more sense. The designers really improved upon D.W. Bradley's original design in several ways. For starters they replaced the cumbersome "Kirijutsu", "Skullduggery", "Legerdemain" ...etc., with instantly recognizable terms (i.e. "Criticals", "Locks and Traps" etc.). The classes and races are better balanced and more interesting to play than they were in W7.

Sseth here