mediocre at best. The controls, UI, etc. could NOT be much more awkward or unpleasant to deal with. The game touted itself as being multiplayer Elder Scrolls, but kinda fell flat on both regards. The game itself, if you can get accustomed to the very awkward control set and awkward character movement/UI, isn't *bad*, but it's just far too clunky for its time to be any real good. It is indeed multiplayer, just beware it's not easy to get used to by any stretch, and they really should not have tried to reinvent the wheel for UI/controls, as they did very poorly. The story isn't terribly remarkable, but not worse than many similar titles at least.
The DLC is a bit buggy for now - may want to wait for a few updates. I've experienced a few crashes and some infinite-healing type bugs after just one evening. Also, this game game suffers from a very steep luck-curve. Armor is extremely rare, and weapons are very rare. If you don't mind running levels 1-10 a dozen times in hopes of getting enough ammo/ranged weaponry to survive the endless droves of foes that shoot you long before you could hope to melee, then this game may be for you. There's difficult/challenging, and there's too-random-to-be-fun, and it's up to you where that line is drawn. I'm a BIG fan of DCSS, ToME4 and others, but this game personally just rubs me the wrong way. Maybe I just ran too many runs and got zero weapons, or only one for which I had no ammo, only to be gunned down by bots from far away time and time again. :( The look is pretty solid, though, if you can enjoy the gameplay. FAIR WARNING: Psion and Ranger, the new classes, are NOT playable on Easy, though it isn't mentioned anywhere before you purchase.
I'm not normally a huge fan of the 'tower defense' genre in some forms, but I found this game pretty darn fun all in all. The biggest problem, ultimately, is that some units are just plain lackluster. I never found much of ANYTHING that came remotely close to some beefed up archers, for example, which means some of the 'cooler' units later in, such as dragons and whatnot, kinda fall flat at times. The art is pretty stylized, so if you don't like the style, it won't appeal to you. The writing danced between good and mediocre, mostly due to some relatively childish or cliche humor. With that said, it's a fairly challenging game with some heavy ramping-up of difficulty on some levels, and some extra New Game+ style challenge, with some incentive to perform well on various levels. The magic system helps keep you active during a fight even while you have things perfectly setup by means of casting spells, and you can always micromanage your 'towers'/units a little during the game. All in all I thought it was a pretty good title, especially given humble origins!
Runs great as configured, sound all are snappy. Had to use a little third party stuff to get the controls and all super snappy, but all in all the game is great. Definitely right up there with Hexen, Heretic, Doom, etc. I experienced very few issues when playing through and enjoyed it immensely. A few weapons were mediocre and I did bump into a bug or two, but nothing that ruins the experience by a long shot.
No way at all to tell when the game last saved and not obvious way to actually do a save, so it's up in the air when you're safe to quit. The humor is, as another post said, pretty bad. Sorry dev, but it's just plain stupid. : Even the grammar and spelling are hit or miss at a few points, but it's really just a bunch of lame, eye-rolling references and dumb jokes. Too many small games spend time butt-kissing old greats, rather than try to make new ones. In any case, the controls by default are kinda awkward, and can't be customized without quitting from your game in progress. Those few design gripes aside, it seems pretty decent altogether.
I personally can't say enough good stuff about this game. I played it years and years ago when younger and a lot of it was interesting, but I got distracted by the tidal wave of the MMO success of EQ back then. I replayed it some years back and couldn't believe I had put it down to start with. An interesting variety of races and classes, lots of magic items, tons of skills and options for advancement and so forth. The character's speech was well done and fit the setting, the story was, although lightly eclectic, altogether good and what should be expected of a Wizardry game. The only downside is that some fights can be very difficult, especially earlier on in the game, but a lot of status ailments, such as paralyze and whatnot, work surprisingly well, even on bosses. The game has a very before-its-time style of approaching combat, with front/side/back relationships for enemies and which party members can hit/be hit (reach weapons, like staves and polearms, can hit from middle and back rows, for example.) It's altogether a very good game that I couldn't recommend enough. It has its flaws here or there, but in my opinion the greatest downside is that there's no Wizardry 9. :(
