Im attempting to give Wiz Gold another go. I hated it back in the day compared to Wiz7 DOS, but thought maybe a decade has dulled my ire at the poorly designed and implemented monster, my biggest issue atm is that I cant get the game window to fullscreen. Instead I've got the game running in a small window in the middle of the fullscreen application window.

Any siggestions?

Yeah, I had the same idea but quickly remembered why I hated it so much back in the day. The window size can be fixed by lowering the resolution dramatically (apparently, haven't tried it). But the music is terrible, the UI is a complete mismatch and laggy as hell and overall the whole thing just stinks.

Going back to the original :)

I haven't played this since it came out. Didn't realise the graphics won't scale. It looks horrible in such a small screen.

I may have to give the dos version a go, but I prefer the music and voice acting (even though it is really really bad voice acting).

Bit of a shame.

I was going to ask if Wizardry Gold was still a janky mess or if it was patched & polished. Looks like it is just as bad as ever. If I pick this up, I'll play the dos version and maybe screw around with Gold.

It's too damn bad the GREAT Japanese PlayStation version of Wizardry VII wasn't bought over to the US, as it fixes the game's bugs, all of the visuals were completely redone as beautiful (well, for 1995) full screen, smooth-scrolling 2D/3D and they actually kept all the cinemas menu design and artwork from Wiz Gold intact (no anime characters at all, in case you were wondering).

Sony had at least two incredibly funny TV ads for the game in Japan as well - both were about a guy playing the game at home (or about to play) when there's a knock on his door. In one ad, he gets up, opens the door and his party walks in to take him away. I think in the other one, he gets up to go to the bathroom and when comes back, there's a surprise waiting for him and off he goes...

Wizardry Gold has really bad portraits and a LOT of bizarre lag, mostly related to loading sound files.

Wait does this only have Wizardry Gold? I found it deeply unplayable compared to the original.

No, the DOS version is included. No worries.

I've found a gameplay video on YouTube, unfortunately without sound:

Wizardry VII: Gadeia No Houshu (PlayStation) (1995) (Soliton)

Looks very interesting indeed.

It's funny that the guy who posted it called it "rare" as it was pretty common to see this popping up on eBay and not selling at all because it was entirely in Japanese for a long time.

And the fog of memory hits me - they DID change the character portraits, but it wasn't a bad thing. Anyway, I'm just amazed that neither this nor the five other original Wizardry games that came out in Japan got localized back into English (the PS One never got Bane of the Cosmic Forge, but the Saturn did... in a double pack with VII from a different publisher).

I think that the Japanese version is loathed by most fans of the Wizardry series because of the whole 'consolve RPG vs. "Western"/tabletop RPG style thing. I can't stand Japanese styled CRPGs so I just don't play them for the most part (every once in a while I will try to play Final Fantasy or Phantasy Star hoping to see what console fans see but every time I quit in disgust.). I think I am fairly typical of traditionalist CRPG fans but that may be way wrong for all I know. I just know the Japanese versions are not exactly praised at the typical Wizardry forums I used to visit.

That's because no one in those forums seems to have PLAYED the Japanese versions of Wizardry I - VII and are using some of their bias against JRPGs as an automatic starting point when the subject of Japanese Wizardry games comes up..

Go check out that video link above - see anything JRPG about the game other than the text? That's Wizardry up there to me. Also, here's another vid:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RlprISspzXM

Nothing to hate there, right?

As you can see, in terms of the first seven games, nothing was changed from a core gameplay aspect.

As far as the original games created by a bunch of developers and publishers (too many to go through here), most of them I've seen and own follow the same format of straightforward presentation, party creation, dungeon diving, et cetera. - the problem some fans seem to have is with the art styles used or fact that yes, some elements in a few game have been simplified compared to the originals. This doesn't make them "bad" at all - just different.

That said, here's a bit of StarFish's Wizardry Empire from 2000:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iW0lxZfb6Ek

not too shabby at all... just never localized (boo).

Here's Soliton's WIzardry Dimguil, also from 2000:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ztXQxX5Kn80

again, not bad and in fact, quite respectable.

Also, there have been a number of very good Wizardry-inspired JRPGs released from The Dark Spire (Nintendo DS- probably the best "WIzardry" style game I can recommend on that system) to the Etrian Odyssey series (which is also great, but some fans of western CRPGs just can't stand the art style), to Class of Heroes on the PSP (ditto about the art style to some folks) and some really fine never-localized games like Solid Link: Tower Side and Solid Link: Dungeon Side, Sleeping Cocoon, and a bunch of others, as this style of RPG was and is quite popular in Japan (more so than some of the folks on those boards seem to realize)...

g.

Full disclosure here but I too hate JRPGs. This version of Wizardry may not be as bad as many JRPGs but it is still pretty bad. The interface is just a Final Fantasy type simplistic interface they tried to apply to Wizardry's more elaborate game mechanics and the result looks like crap. I barely saw anything in that video that did not seem heavily Console styled JRPG. Just my opinion and I would bet I would be in a small minority if we polled people the world over.

Hmmmm. Amusingly enough, I lent Llygamyn Saga and Empire to a friend a few years back (he mostly only plays Final Fantasy and JRPGs) and he didn't like them because he thought they were TOO western. Oh well, to each his or her own, I suppose.

I'd suggest looking at stuff like Demon's Souls, Dark Souls, the King's Field games or even Dragon's Dogma (all of which prove "JRPG" doesn't mean "Japan Ruins Perfect Games", but I'll just wave the white flag here and move on, lol...