Prepare To Become A God (Wizardry VIII (PS))

Member Name: Sue Hoskinson

Product:	Wizardry VIII (PS)
Date:	19/02/02 (273 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Involving storyline, beautiful graphics

Disadvantages: Battles can be tedious

Okay, I admit it; I’m a game junky. So you can understand how excited I was when they finally released Wizardry 8 after waiting for almost seven years.

I don’t know whether you are familiar with the Wizardry series, they are the first RPG games that were made for the computer and the first one was released way back in 1981 and have revolutionized the way people think about this genre of games.

The last episode in the series was Crusaders of the Dark Savant, which was originally released way back in 1993; it was then re-released under the title of Wizardry Gold in 1995. From what I can understand there were a lot of problems getting the game into production before it was taken on by Sir Tech which ultimately caused the huge delay and speculation as to whether it would ever actually be released? There is also a rumor that I read that you can only buy this game from a very limited amount of suppliers including Electronic Boutique but I don’t know how much truth is in this – I ordered my copy on-line from a company called Chips & Bits.

Anyway, is the game worth the wait? In my opinion, yes it is!

The basic storyline continues from Crusaders but it doesn’t matter whether you’ve played or not because it still stands on its own.
“The universe is on the brink of change and vast forces are preparing for the final confrontation. A small group of heroes from afar must plunge into this storm, uncover forgotten secrets and bring about a new era. If they succeed they will gain the powers of the gods themselves. If they fail, countless worlds will fall into the grip of a never-ending darkness…” (Taken from the Wizardry packaging).
You’ve been recruited to find something called the ‘Destinae Dominus’ and to ascend to the ‘Cosmic Circle from Ascension Peak’. The only problem with this is that you’re not the only group trying, you have to conte
nd with several other factions who have the same ultimate goal. Some of the other groups include the Dark Savant, Umpani, Trang and Higardi – great names don’t you think. It is possible to make alliances with some of the others and this definitely helps.

Starting the game is almost the same as most RPG’s in that you create your characters from different races and choose which profession you would like them to take. As usual there are definite advantages and disadvantages to each race so that the choice really does come down to what you prefer. I won’t list all the choices available otherwise you’ll still be here next week, so I’ll just say that you can choose between 11 different races 15 different professions.

Magic plays quite a large part in Wizardry and the spell effects are brilliant. Another aspect that I haven’t seen in many games is the use of musical instruments; these are used to cast different types of spells and are not affected by ‘silencing’ spells – very useful!

The land travelled is very large and the graphics are beautiful, the colors are very vivid without too much distortion when you get too close although I haven’t see any leaves on the trees yet. People are represented quite well in a 3 dimensional fashion (I don’t know the technical term for the shape used, sorry) and during battles you can actually see the physical damage building up as bruises and cuts.

Battles can be very tedious although you can play in continuous or phased combat. It took me a while to realize what they meant by ‘phased’ and all it means is giving your party instructions as a group before they’re carried out instead of individually. The other thing that can help is being able to speed up the monsters by up to 5 times faster, otherwise you can be sitting for ages waiting for them to make their move.

Skills are very important in Wizar
dry and you have to use them to advance. Your fighter has to learn to swing his sword otherwise he won’t hit anything and your mage has to practice his spells or they’ll end up backfiring or just fizzling out. Every time you gain a level you get 6 points to spend on things like strength, dexterity and vitality, these statistics can go up to 100. You also get 9 points to spend on your other skills like magic and weapons as well as lock picking, communication and artifacts (identifying items).

I find myself cheering when things go really well and my characters finally get it right and then I’ll cuss them out when they mess up; I think it’s time I stopped playing games so much don’t you.

The game manual is very good and has all the information you’ll need. It lists every spell, skill, profession and race plus a bit more. One thing that did surprise me was an orange piece of paper that came in the box. How many times have you loaded a game only to find that it’s full of bugs that really spoil things? Well, this time Sir Tech have admitted that the game was distributed before all the bugs were corrected and instruct you to download the patch from their website.

Overall this is a good game that should take a long time to complete, I’ve heard mention of times in excess of 50 – 60 hours but that usually means it’ll take me anything up to 3 months to complete. If you enjoy RPG’s from the ‘old school’ style then you’ll love this one!
If you’re still not completely convinced then head on over to www.wizardry.com where you can view some screen shots from the actual game and have a browse through their site. They have quite a few bits that you can look at including the monsters, weapons and there is also a link for the most frequently asked questions.

In case you’re interested, here are the system requirements:
IBM & 100% Compatible
s
233Mhz or better
64MB RAM
Windows 95, 98, or 2000
1.2GB free HD space
4X CD-ROM Drive
3D accelerator card with minimum 8 MB texture memory
Sound Card
Mouse

The game is also rated ‘Teen’ for the violent content.

Summary: