Wizardry 6+7

I appreciate the Wizardry series and have beaten 1, 5 and 8 as well as the PS2 one. This title is considered to be the best Wizardry by many RPG gamers, some say the best RPG ever. Despite several previously failed attempts, I finally gave it another shot. This time I got off to a great start, had a plan for my party, and built them to kill everything except for crazy superbosses, I made it to the final dungeon. But that's where my patience came to an end. The battles aren't the problem. That dungeon is designed to be annoying with its hidden buttons and large amount of warps. Problem is, the rest of the game is more of the same. New players... without guides and walkthroughs, you WILL get stuck. Many times. For instance... just getting into the final dungeon requires answering an obscure riddle. This riddle came from a sphinx that gives you an item... but only after the player somehow figures out that the item received way back when at New City has to be placed in a very specific place. The game got to a point where I had to refer to the walkthrough constantly to proceed because I was missing some obscure important item hidden behind that well-hidden secret wall. This isn't clever. It's not fun. It's not even rewarding. Competing NPCs was an interesting idea. NPCs often go into cities and dungeons and raid the final chest, somehow going through secret walls and locked gates. They'll run into you fairly often, which can be annoying, but will sell you map pieces. Most of these merely provide vague hints. Eventually, I bought the maps from them and ended up letting the NPCs do whatever afterward. The combat is odd. My Lv. 22 characters inexplicably fell victim to sleep and paralysis spells/attacks far too frequently. Spells could be bothersome. Even with spell descriptions, I still don't know what some of them do. It's not explained or known exactly what multiple casts of Enchanted Blade accomplishes, for instance. I've seen enough.

My personal preference, the original Dos version is the superior version. Better avatars in my opinion, and no annoying voice acting. (Still great music and sounds though.) Try Wizardry 8 if you're looking for a more new player friendly experience, try Wizardry 7 if you're looking for the unforgivable old-school experience that will require a cluebook and notes. :-)

Wizardry VI is a good RPG of its time. It's "good" in that, for its time, it had a detailed and interesting story, a variety of locations and enemies, and maps that actually felt like they were set out like real locations, not just your computer 18 x 18 grid. The variety of spells, items, classes (and class-swapping mechanic) and monsters also gave it surprising depth to its gameplay. It's "of its time" in that it expects you to grind. And I don't just mean grind through monsters - I mean through EVERYTHING, even character creation (The cluebook seriously recommends that you spend hours just re-rolling stats. Whee). You will be saving and reloading SO MUCH in this game it is not a joke. There is a free utility ("Cosmic Forge") that at least cuts out the character creation grind, but still. I recommend it anyway because its depth of play and variety really make it stand out as a quality early 90s RPG. And grinding can be fun - that's how poker machines work!

Those games, especially the Cosmic Forge, are simply unforgettable. They have challenging puzzles and combats, engaging storylines, and uniquely interesting characters. Playing one of these games from beginning to end will be a deeply rewarding experience... Which, I fear, might be beyond the tenacity or patience of today's videogamers.

I never played this in the old days, but I love old games and have a lot of patience for them. So after reading all the positive reviews here, I was surprised to find myself hating Wizardry 6. It's just tedious and dreary. You have to map out every step you take on graph paper or you'll be hopelessly lost, which gets old really fast. If you want your characters not to be pitifully hamstrung, you have to save-reload over and over again in order to get good bonuses on level-up, which also becomes very tedious. Also, the fact that they use the same grey castle wall graphics for *all* environments (forests, caves, etc.) is ridiculous, and it means every location looks the same. Text descriptions of the locations would be far preferable to graphics like that! Oh, and the game world is a nonsensical mishmash of random things, and the plot is neither funny nor deep or emotionally engaging. So there's really no pay-off for putting up with all the game's flaws. Wizardry 7 is fun though! It still requires repeated save-reloads (*sigh*), but it maps the game world for you as you go, which eliminates the worst of the tedium. The game world feels like a real, coherent universe that I'm excited to explore and figure out, and the NPCs are interesting, if poorly voice-acted. The puzzles are generally interesting rather than tedious, and the graphics are colorful and pleasantly old-fashioned. If I were to do it again, I'd just skip Wizardry 6 and start with Wizardry 7, even though that would mean missing out on the high-powered items you get to import from 6 into 7.