Buggy and janky, but excellent platforming and puzzles make up for it. Had a lot of fun playing it in 2025!
One of the best turn-based tactical rpgs I've ever played. Some people complain about the balance, but I had no issues with it whatsoever, in the final battle my Bounty Hunter/Warmage was able to one shot all the monsters except the Maw (on veteran difficulty). If you take your time and plan your team, you shouldn't have problems with difficulty.
Clunky controls, occasional bugs in the enemy AI, poor art direction (not graphics as such), UI could be better, narrative and writing could be so much better... There's a lot to complain about but at the same time I'd lie if I said I didn't have real fun playing these 5 hours on veteran difficulty. Recommended mostly to stealth fans who have played everything worth playing - I think it's worth giving a try. I'll probably get back to it someday. It's a competent, solid title.
Mind-blowing graphcs, mind-numbing gameplay, average to good writing. The graphics lose their appeal sooner or later, and what you're left with is mediocre gameplay, essentially running from one marker to another using your Witcher senses, fighting, and watching cutscenes – all with excessive handholding and no need for thinking. Combat is a joke, character building is a joke, and any fun you could have from exploration is undermined by markers and the minimap. If you like figuring things on your own and freedom of approach, forget about this game; however, if you like being told what to do and following commands, you'll going to like it. It's a casual action-adventure game with some shallow rpg elements and focus on storytelling. I'd rather play a game with proper combat and exploration (like Dark Souls) or some good visual novel (like Roadwarden). It was a massive relief to finally finish and uninstall it.
With the Long War Rebalanced mod this game is infinitely replayable and holds up very well today, 11 years after its release.
I was thirsty for games like Wizardry 8 and somehow stumbled upon this one. I risked buying it and... To start with, it runs flawlessly on Windows 11. I haven't experienced a single technical issue in my over 50 hours of playtime. As for the game itself... it's one of the worst rpgs I've ever played. Messy, janky, and ugly. Unfinished, inconsistent, and full of conflicting design ideas. A total waste of time. The only redeeming qualities are the dungeon design and character progression. Everything else is bad. Story and writing are unbearably cliche, cringy, and simply retarded. Combat is a mix of turn-based and real-time which is actually neither. It's clearly unfinished and probably even the devs wouldn't be able to fully explain how it works. And it's mind-numbingly boring and repetitive. The graphics are ugly and dull. It's also the jankiest game I've ever played - even the horizon line wobbles! While the dungeons are quite good, the overworld is just a vast empty area marked out by walls of forest. UI is clunky and inconsistent; using an item from inventory or choosing a spell to is a pain in the neck every single time. I spent 55h struggling with this game, and only got 3 final dungeons left. However, the final straw came when a group of overpowered Jungle Vines showed up out of nowhere. I was too tired of stupid hit-and-run 'combat' to endure it for another half an hour or so (the game is also terribly unbalanced). So, I quit. There are so many better games out there. I had to write this review just to get it off my chest. I understand that the development of this game was troubled, and transitioning from Wizardry 7 to a fully 3D game was a difficult task... but it doesn't justify releasing something like this in 2001. Even Wizardry 6 holds up much better in 2024. People who praise Wizards & Warriors as a hidden gem are most likely old-schoolers with their judgment clouded by nostalgia. They don't make games like this anymore, and that's a good thing.
Intelligent, addictive, unpredictable, with infinite replayability and customizable difficulty settings...
Excellent level design, engrossing storytelling, british humour and fantastic minigames (drying the dishes is my favourite). A game made with heart and it shows, no AAA title will ever come close to that... It's so good I'll definitely be playing through it again to try to collect 1 million junk !!! An absolute must-play for anyone who likes intelligent 2D platformers.
