just commenting on the older wizardry 6 here, which kept me entertained for a weekend or 2. I give it:

1 star for challenging gameplay
1 star for good gameplay in general
1 star for addictiveness

So 3 stars out of 5 in total. However it is not really possible to progress at this game without resorting to detailed walkthrough guides and maps, all of which can be found online. If that wasn't enough, the sheer amount of cheating the guides actively encourage in order to complete this game is rather off-putting.

Nonsense. You don't need maps and there are only a couple of puzzles for which you need help. What kind of cheating. Class changing is not cheating, if that's one of the the things you have in mind.

That's really quite a can of worms. Obviously, you don't consider class-changing to be exploitative, but you should know and accept that many people do. At least one of the developers has been quoted more than once on the old Compuserve group with saying that the class-change system (which has been a feature since the first Wizardry installment back in the early 80's) exists primarily to allow you to progress from basic classes to elite ones that are difficult to access from the beginning. Not with the intention of giving EVERY character ranks in ninjitsu and hundreds upon hundreds of skill and spell points by the end of the game. The manual, the guide book, and every conversation ever committed to print with a sir-tech dev makes this fairly clear. No one officially linked with the game in any capacity has ever suggested exploitative class-switching as being an intended strategy for completing this game.

I realize that there are plenty of people who feel that changing classes to exploit the skill/spell point system is an 'integral' part of the Wizardry series, but not everyone feels that way. Hey, you paid for the game so you play it however the hell you want. I'm not going to judge your playstyle, but neither should you judge mine. Or the OP's in this case, if he feels that rampant class-changing for group-hiding and massive spell/skill points exploitation breaks the game and makes it less fun and considerably less challenging.

All that said, he may also have been talking about the fact that nearly every guide posted online for this game recommends such things as using an editor to alter the stat-rolling algorithms and over-stacking your inventory so you can cheat and get multiple diamond rings to bring forward into the next game.

Then why they make it so that when you switch class, you are reset to level 1? As opposed to just being promoted to a new class, but keeping the same character level?
That way there would be no reason to change class to get all those skill boosts.

Easy now; it was an honest question.
All I asked was why the designers made the system to be exploited, when they could so easily have avoided it by keeping the same character level once your stats are good enough for a class change. Either the guy on Compuserve was lying/didn't know what he was talking about, or else it is some serious design flaw.

If you think "playing through the game(s)with a party of super-ninjas with hundreds of spell points in each school and every skill in the game maxed out" is my play style, you are really frothing up the wrong tree.

How would I have any idea what your play style is? I don't know anything about you. However it is you choose to play your games, I was mainly referencing the OP's criticism that many of the guides he found online were so exploitative that it turned him off of the game. Many of the guides he is doubtless talking about do suggest things like giving every single character ninjutsu ranks and changing classes multiple times and doubling up diamond rings and the like. I understand how disheartening it might be for a new player to this series to look online for a little guidance and immediately be told by half a dozen guides and four dozen grognards at rpgcodex that it isn't possible (or is difficult) to win if you don't multiclass all of your characters and exploit algorithms and all of that.

Your reply to his concern was bothersome because I assumed you were clarifying in order to steer him down that exact path under the auspices of it being the only true one. If such was not your intention, then I apologize.

I'm just a little frustrated by the volume of responses between various forums that tell new players that extreme multi-classing is the 'only' or 'intended' way to play the game successfully.

Sorry didn't realise what a big response my post was likely to bring about!

I don't regret the purchase, I thought it was good value for money, and have just tried the first game out, not all 3 as yet.

I found the first game in the series frustratingly difficult when played the way it seemed designed to be played. At the start, I prefer to accept the first characters that are generated and not keep re-rolling until the desired character is obtained.

I don't have a problem with class switching as it is part of the game design, though found the statistical requirements for changing class difficult to obtain. However the walkthrough guides say this is one situation where the game should just keep being reloaded until the desired result is obtained e.g. after each level up, if statistics don't increase by more than 1 point each time, then reload the saved game until they do increase by more than 1 point. However In the interests of fairness, I prefer to accept the first set of results that are obtained.

I view the death of a character (or group of characters) in a game to be a serious event that should have serious consequences (i.e. game over!), yet many of the walkthroughs say dying should simply be ignored and got around by just keep reloading a saved game over and over until the character (or group) doesn't die! To me, that just seems like cheating.

So the emphasis on the walkthroughs seems to be to complete the game successfully it is necessary to keep having to reload saved games however many times it takes until the game is successfully completed. That isn't how I prefer to play, though I can understand how other players are ok with it. However the consequence of my own style of fair play when faced with the natural difficulty of this game is that I was not able to make much progress with it!

Because of the natural difficulty of the game, I think it would have hugely benefited from an in-game map generator (without needing to resort to the online ones).

I found some of the 'lets play' videos on youtube quite interesting to watch and helpful, though rather lengthy.

You didn't need to resort to an online one. You were expected to map these games yourself. A fellow GOGer, HiddenAsbestos, created a mapping program shortly after Wizardry was released. There is a free version, but I don't know how usable it is.

perhaps as much as the 'wizard eye' spell, which seemed to do nothing at all to help me find my way around the maze!

Wizard Eye is useful to find hidden things in dark areas where the Search skill won't work, like in the Dwarven Mines.

The W6 and W7 are both easily played on Hard level without changing classes, ever.
I did it myself.
For some puzzles you refer to the internet, of course, especially playing W7.
Also I've been using *Cosmic Forge* editor to find my way around (on the map), rather than drawing the maze on paper.

Here is the advice I got when I talked about changing classes with the intention of breaking the game:

Class changing means higher skills which is good. But it also means lower stats and level. Especially character level is very important for calculating just about every thing that happens in combat. High level means you can shrug off spells that will kill a lower level character with much higher skills.
So class changing does have its drawbacks, so it's hardly cheating to do it. Anyway, does it really matter how people play their single player games? In the end the only thing that matter is that you enjoy the game, even if that means "breaking" the game.
I guess it's a strength of Wiz 6 that it can be played more than just one way.