Wizardry 6+7

As I played the first part of Bards Tale Remaster, I found the fights and RPG system a little too simple somehow. Then I thought about similar games with similar combat systems. And automatically the wizardry series came to my mind - favorite games of my youth. So I started to watch some let's plays about it and - boom - there was the urge to play these great games again! The character development of wizardry is much deeper compared to bards tale. The spell system with the different elements, schools and levels. Attributes that really matter and where some are learned by practice while you must study others. You have many different races and professions with the possibility to switch professions during the game and build an Über-Character if you like and are not afraid to grind. And the strength of the enemies is nearly always challenging but feels never unfair. And you also "feel" your progress when meeting weaker Monsters from the beginning of the game. I must admit, I play them with walkthroughs, guides and hints for everything. These games are unforgivable and sometimes it is pure luck not to oversee something important. I doubt I would have the patience to play theses games without walkthroughs today! They were programmed at a time, when you had to try and think about everything, without any hints! So the difficulty if you try to play them without any help is extreme and unforgiving. Wizardry 6 user interface and graphic is very outdated. But the atmosphere is very gloomy and has a very unique style to it. No Music. A different uniqueness has Wiz 7 atmosphere and it's planet Lost Guardia - whereas the technical side was much improved! And for some reason I love the DOS sondblaster music, although there are only 3 or 4 melodies they never get annoying to me. So I Love Wizardry and recommend these games to anyone who likes tactical, round based grid RPGs like Bard's Tale or Might & Magic. Wizardry is as good as it gets!

I always wanted to buy Bane of the Cosmic Forge since I heard about it in Addam Shay's "Questbusters Magazine" back in 1990, the only thing stopping me is it wasn't ported to Apple II and that was the only PC I had then. When I got my first MSDOS machine I bought Dark Savant and was blown away by the detail and indepth character creation, though the game itself is much like most dungeon delving games with some encounters and dialogue here and there. I wish the Windows version of Wizardry 7 Dark Savant were able to take up the full screen of modern systems as the graphics are much better than the DOS version. Since it is only in a smaller window(even set to 800x600) I am only rating this 4 stars, otherwise great games and mentally challenging as well as difficult combat you must create a proper party that is of paramount importance. As a side note if you wish to import a Bane party to Dark Savant, I've found it is possible on both the Win and DOS versions just drop your Savegame.sgm file into your ...Savant directory and rename it .BCF for the DOS version, for the windows version simply load it as a savegame like you would any save game you can "import" to watch intro but it will simply take you back to the main menu. If you want a good fantasy with sci-fi peppered in here and there this is your game!

boy I could play these games for hours, and not even get past the first level! that much content! also, these were the good old days, back when rpg's were turn based. you don't see that any more and its a crying shame. the sound is good, there is a lack of music in wizardry 7 that I think adds to the atmosphere rather then takes away, havn't played much of 6 but I think there isn't much music in that one either. I used to play the rpg archives version of wizardry 7, it was the gold edition it came with maps and spoilers of the entire game. very cool, not sure if this is the gold version or not. probably not, because it has a hard time running on newer os's. great stuff, I heartily recommend you dig in immediately!

Wizardry 6 and 7 saw the biggest jump in graphical improvements in the WIZARDRY series, and I feel like created the next step in how RPG games of this nature would look. SIR-TECH was way ahead of the game from their first WIZARDRY game and continued to stay ahead; until they closed their doors (just as WIZARDRY 8 was being made). I would highly recommend these games if you enjoy a good dungeon crawl (with Wizardry 7 taking place outside of a dungeon, ironically enough).

Wizardry 7 was one of my favorite games from the DOS age. I can honestly say that it was one of the catalysts for me getting into RPGs. Simply phenomenal.