Wizardry 8 is a first person RPG that was released for the PC back in 2001 by Sir-Tech. With little to no advertisement, this game went completely under the radar of almost all gamers, including myself. While not quite up to today’s standard, it is still one of the most amusing games I have played in recent time.
Story:
This game is the third part of a trilogy, and sadly I have been unable to find the first two. The story that is presented in this game is fairly straightforward, but it does its part. The party starts out in a broken monastery on the planet Dominus, after their ship was shot down. Finding their contractor dead and themselves stranded with little resources, the party begins to set out through the monastery.
As they get through, they are told that they have been appointed to take place in a ritual that will effectively make your group the Gods of Dominus.
The only downside is that there are several other factions attempting the same goal. The rest of the game is spent in the pursuit of defeating the other factions. All in all, the story is there for the sake of being there, and it gives you a reason to go on. It is presented well and does not have any massive flaws, but it will not be one of those that have you sitting and debating on its meaning. 3.5/5
Sound:
The sounds in this game are what you would expect from any game of its type: metal clashing on metal, swords thunking into limbs, mages chanting and fireballs exploding. While all the sounds are there, they can tend to be a slight bit bland. On the other hand, the music track for this game is done quite well, with somber tunes playing while in deep forests and war drums in the background as you explore castles. However, what really makes this game shine is the voice acting. Dialogue is completely spoken in this game, with a few minor exceptions. While this does not seem like much now, when this game was first on the market, RPGs only had speech during full FMVs. What’s more, your characters also have a large variety of things that they can say in response to the events happening. Considering that all of your charters are made by you in the beginning, this is not something often seen. And it’s always nice to hear your loud mouth of a fighter talking trash as he hacks down foes. 4/5
Graphics:
Now for one of this game’s not so great points, the visuals. Graphics are rendered in complete 3D, and look quite similar to a launch title Playstation 2 game. While nowhere near hideous, they will not be taking your breath away anytime soon. That said, the landscape itself is nicely done, though it too can be a bit repetitive. Enemy attack animations are only a small step up from old school RPGs, meaning if they twitch in your direction you take damage. Spell effects look nice and have a wide variety, so that does manage to keep it interesting. One saving grace in this department is the menus. These are primarily hand drawn, and have a great emphasis on detail when it comes to items, armor, and weapons. 3/5
Gameplay:
Now for the root of the matter, how it plays. The game takes places completely in first person view. Movement is directed through the arrow keys, with look direction being done on the numeric pad. Foes are present on screen at all times, and will engage your party upon entering a certain range. Combat is turn-based with higher speed characters going first. Party creation is handled extremely well, with a larger variety of races and classes given to you.
Two drawbacks to this game, however, are the menu and the enemy movement. My gripe with the menu is that it is quite difficult to grasp in the very beginning. However, once the layout is understood, it becomes much less of a problem. The enemy movement issue only happens when in a large battle. Imagine you are fighting ten plus foes. The game has to figure out where to move them all, then move them, then decide to attack or not, and then pass the turn. This means that on the first turn, you could be waiting for several minutes, possibly for enemies off screen, thereby making you think the game has frozen. However, shortly after the game’s launch, a patch was put out on the Internet that greatly increases enemy speed. This can make it look like the enemies are simply teleporting around, but it will cut down battle time by quite a bit. 4/5
Overall:
Overall I would recommend this game to anyone who is a fan of very old school RPGs, or who recently played Oblivion and wanted something similar to it. This is a game that takes time to play and understand and is above all else hard. It shows no mercy to new players and will take time to master. It is, however, something that will keep you occupied for some time, and should be relatively cheap online. All in all I give it a 4 out of 5.