I am dating myself, but I played the original Wizardry on PC and NES. One of the most INFURIATING things was having your level 50 party run into a group of 8 Arch Demons that surprised you, and watching the party die without any chance to do a damn thing about it. Why was this so infuriating? Well one, because the original Wizardry was sooo freaking random. Walk into the door before Werdna, and you could encounter 1 relatively wimpy monster and have surprise, or you could be ambushed by 8 arch demons, and 6 lesser demons. Even massively OP characters could be killed by random whim. But add to that, the OG Wizardry would write the results of combat to disk as it happened, and if you party wiped, you didn't just reload from the last time you saved in town. Oh no. You had to make another party and try and recover the bodies, and whatever might be left of their gear. I can see some people liking that style of play. But the "modernization" needs to include an option to allow save and load of game states so that if your party gets wiped by a group of arch demons, or drained 10 levels by a pack of wights that you can just reload back to the last time you were in town. I checked the options, and this does not seem to exist at the moment. Hopefully it is on the developer's radar.
So lets start with the good. I really enjoyed this visual novel. It's more e-book with pictures than interactive story, but it is a good read and the story kept me interested, while the art was well done, and pleasing. I'd recommend it. I even gave it 5 stars. But that doesn't mean it's perfect. Some constructive feedback (spoiler alert, don't read on if you don't want spoilers): 1) I applaud the author for being inclusive. But it felt forced at times. And to be clear, I am not offended by LGBTQ content. I thought Rose was a great character for example. I thought Jackie being bi-curious was well done. It's just -- you'd have thought this game was set on Castro Street in San Francisco based on Jackie's social circle. Jackie having LBGTQ friends was awesome. Jackie's social circle being 80% LBGTQ felt forced and contrived. I also found the character that used "they" as a personal pronoun grating, but that is a grammar peeve, not an identity peeve. ("they" is a plural pronoun. It reads very awkward when forced into singular context.) 2) there were a few unexplored story arcs that were introduced but not really developed. I kind of hope these show up in a follow-up title or DLC. A couple of examples: - Jackie suggests taking other clients and talks about it with Kate. This is never further explored, even when her arrangement with Roman was strained. - Slightly related, but different, the story flirts with the idea of Kate and Jackie teaming up "professionally" at times but never really follows up on it except in Roman's orbit. - Jackie's inadvertent foray into amateur porn was also somewhat under developed (less so than the other two). But Jackie was almost comically just like, "ooops, I just made an unintended appearance in a porno film. Oh well, even though I have anxiety attacks over everything else in my life, I won't give this a second thought." Again, thought, I still enjoyed and would recommend.
