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In their review of Wizardry 8, Game Over is a bit on the lower side of scores that we have seen so far: 76%. Their main critizism is the manual:
The manual has some bizarre omissions. There are no experience advancement tables and the like that previous ones had. Each character class has some special abilities. Some of these are self-explanatory (e.g., the mage has a bonus to his Wizardry skill that gives him +25%). Others are largely undocumented (e.g., a priest can pray for divine intervention which seems to be some form of random help -- damage to a foe, healing a party member). Still others are completely undocumented, such as the Valkyrie's "Cheat Death" ability. Beyond the name and the fact that she has it, the manual is silent. I can guess that maybe she is KO'd rather than killed, but with all my playing I still don't know what it does (I have a Valkyrie in my present party, but by the time she is near death, the rest of the party is dead and I've long since given up hope by reloading the game.) Is Wizardry 8 is better than 7? I think the answer is that it is more of a side step. The graphics are better (which isn't saying much). In fairness to #7 it is quite old now (4 years?) so the state of the art has changed a LOT. They seemed to have focused on playability (good) and combat mechanics (goofy). The puzzles are not tough, though some of them are driven off of asking specific people certain things – something that does not occur to me. It looks like they are going for the hack-n-slash crowd over the more traditional RPG crowd. BTW there are tons of in jokes if you remember the previous versions well enough. Overall, wish they'd focused more on world design (making it larger) than the jokes. |
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