WIZARDRY 8

                 Reviewed by Stefan Herber

This may be the last in the series - the developers have gone
bankrupt and there is no news of any other companies prepared to
rescue things. The question that always arises is whether that is
of any consequence - is this a series that has lived out its
useful life (a la Might and Magic and sadly Ultima) or are we
really going to miss it? I'm not sure I can answer that so easily.

First things first - the graphics are much improved - you don't
have to play in a window anymore. The plot is very strong - again
the world is being threatened by the Dark Savant and you've got to
stop him. Not that the world is such a wonderful place - it's full
of wimpish tribes who want to do nothing but moan all the time and
two very strange races - the Umpanis (who look like overgrown
Great Danes) and the T'rang (overgrown cockroaches) who are at war
for reasons not clearly explained. You can side with either or
both - I only ever played the scenario to try and unify the two
against the common enemy, so I don't know what happens if you side
with one or the other. Of course the world is also filled with
monsters out to kill you regardless of allegiance.. However at
least it never rains!

There are very few puzzles in the adventure sense and those that
there are tend to be quite easy. You create your own party
(maximum 4) and at times have to recruit other members - sometimes
voluntarily; sometimes to develop the plot. Here comes the first
crunch - your recruited members are never as strong as your
created party and at times are a severe liability as all they seem
to be good at are dying at the hands of weak monsters..

The usual RPG members are present but there are a few unusual ones
- notably a gadgeteer who in theory can use odd bits and pieces to
manufacture lethal weapons. This might work if you start off with
one but the only recruitable one never gets to any level to be
useful. You see some areas seem to be off limits for your non
created party so they have to be ditched and picked up again when
you've completed that area. As luck would have it these tend to be
the areas where most experience can be obtained.

I'm not sure how long this takes to play - I guess about 100
hours. BUT - and it's the reason I really can't recommend this to
anybody - about 90 of these will be spent in combat. There's no
reincarnation of villains as such but there is respawning. So
whenever you enter an already explored area be prepared to spend
at least an hour getting from exit A to B. It appears that the
longer you spend in an area the more respawning takes place - so
at the beginning of the game you spend all your time recovering
from a tough battle only to run into two more. This may be fine
for people who like nothing better than to kill, kill and kill
some more but it does become extremely frustrating if all you want
is to develop the plot.

One nice touch is the advancement system.  Yes: you advance levels
and get a choice how to spend your points - but by doing things
during the game you also advance. So your fighter or archer
automatically develops by using these skills and doesn't have to
wait until a random number of points have been accrued.

It's a very old fashioned game in its appearance and execution but
that doesn't bother me. Random monster respawning does.  If we
ever have any more in this series perhaps they can concentrate on
the elements of RPG playing that attracted me to the genre in the
first place.

Oh and by the way - magic is virtually useless until you reach
high levels and even then it's only useful against randomly
respawned weak creatures.









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