Wizardry 7: Crusader of the Dark Savant

More information.

Wizardry VII: Crusaders of the Dark Savant is a classic turn based rpg from Sir-Tech. It is the second part of the triology (Wizardry 6/7/8). A party can be imported from Wizardry 6 and exported to Wizardry 8. The story is a fantasy-science fiction-mix. Like in all Wizardry games a balanced party is essential to win the game. The key formula of the game is:

-> explore -> survive tactical fights -> gain experience / items -> build up party & skills -> explore deeper -> survive harder tactical fights -> …

All parts of this formula are fun (at least for hardcore rpg players) and very well designed.

You can choose from classes

base classes
Fighters; Thieves; Mages, Priests; Psionics; Alchemists

hybrid classes
Samurai; Lords; Valkyries; Bards; Rangers; Monks; Ninjas

and races
Humans; Elves; Dwarves; Gnomes; Hobbits; Lizardmen; Faeries; Dracons (half-Human; half-Dragons); Rawulf (humanoid dogs); Felpurr (humanoid cats); Mook (tall and hairy Sasquatch-like)

The trick is to find a good party mix to cover all skills and build up enough offensive and defensive power.
Wizardry 7 offers a lot of dialog, a big open world to explore, quests, choices & consequences, a lot of enemies, items to find, skills to develop, NPC factions to ally with and different endings. The game offers a very good replay value, too.

-> highly recommended!

I´d add the game is quite heavy on puzzle elements which substantially adds to its overall difficulty.
Also, playing the original in DosBox is recommended, Wizardry Gold has quite a few issues.

hmmm, I acctually played gold myself… what are the issues and things I might have missed out on ?

The Gold-version is slower and has more bugs than the original version.
The original version is more compatible to modern PCs and DosBox.

The character pics are better in the Gold-version.

Gold version includes a GUI and works better in Windows but additions such as the ingame map just get in the way
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Until Wiz8 this game was considered one of <i>the</i> games as far as depth of design I remember. In particular I think it was noteworthy for its replayable thanks to the different faction options. I did remember playing once and getting a random quest that I could never get again in subsequent replays. Today I just wish the gameplay wasn't so dated. I had a lot of fun playing this and would love to play it again.

I don't think the gameplay is dated at all? what makes you say that?

It does have tooooo much combat though, you can't walk many steps without combat combat and combat, I acctually think some wizardry titles would benefit from less combat. In wiz 8 it is much less of a problem since you can acctually see enemies and they don't randomly appear everywhere…

I love Wiz8 party building and character design. Unfortunately because of that, I find the first 30% of the game is a lot more fun than the last 70% because it does just become a combat slog. I'm embarrassed to say I've never actually finished Wiz8 despite many starts, every time I get to about the Rapax I start getting alternate party-itis and get bored with the endless combats.

It doesn't help I usually find myself trying to farm good weapons out of the Bayjin area, just knowing it's there makes me have to get it, so I replay that until I finally get what I'm looking for but by then I'm completely bored of the game. I think part of my compulsion in getting that equipment is the amount of combat, those overpowered weapons really speed up the combat for the rest of the game.

I also don't care for all the maintenance of keeping the party shield spells up and running, and then casting the combat only shields for the first 2 rounds of every combat.

Wiz 7 was MUCH more difficult then Wiz 8. I've finished Wiz 8 3 or so times with different parties…my favorite was solo fairy ninja. I never actually finished Wiz 7 during my multiples tries. I enjoyed both games and Wiz 8 is definately in my top 10 list of favorites, Wiz 7 is not due to its difficulty.

I tried to go back and play Wiz 7 after having finished Wiz 8, but it was just too dated for me to get into.

9 years between games in a series is way too long. I think that long gap between Wiz 7 and Wiz 8 is the primary reason Sir-Tech died, and the series along with them.

Why did sir tech die?

Wizardry 8 was successful. Jagged alliance too.

Nothing but great successful games.

I don't think Wizardry 8 was very successful regarding sales.

Originally Posted by JDR13
I don't think Wizardry 8 was very successful regarding sales.

I think Wiz 8 was out after they went bankrupt, in fact I think they had the game ready for like a year but couldn't afford selling it and/or couldn't find a publisher.

I refuse to believe!

REFUSE

That wizardry 8 hasnt sold a lot more copies than gothic 2? Or most rpgs really.

Arx fatalis? Divine divinity.

What sort of amount did it need to sell?
theres just nothing that makes sense about it.

Their publishing unit went out of business in 1998 and there weren`t any publishers willing to distribute the game in 2001. Eventually they sold rights to "Best Buy" chain of shops in US and a couple of minor publishers in Europe (Poland, Russia), later released as budget European version in dvd style case. So very limited distribution, practically no marketing and that means a very limited number of copies sold.
Remember there were two companies: Sir-Tech US the publisher and Sir-Tech Canada - the developer (went out of business in 2003).
Read this article for more info
http://pc.ign.com/articles/065/065299p1.html

Was it really only sold at Best Buy here? I thought I remembered buying my copy from Gamestop, or one of those chains that later became Gamestop, i.e. - EB Games, Babbages.

It was sold by various shops in US and Canada. I ordered my copy from Canadian store dragon.ca (seems it does not exist anymore). Could not wait for European release which was published in budget form (dvd case) a few months later.

I bought a rare collectors edition of wizardry that included all from wizardry 1 to wiz7 vanilla/gold from ebay few years back. Nice thick manual and everything. Wiz8 and Wiz playstation version I have too.

For the original games I managed to finish wiz1-3 and half of wiz4. Im going to skip wiz5.

Id like to start the final trilogy but still havent yet managed to decide whether I should play wiz7 vanilla or gold. Need to study the subject further.

Two problems with gold. One the sound during combat. It pauses after every hit. No way to get around that other than shutting off the sound. Second are those wandering NPCs (can't remember their names), but you can't talk to them. Something to do with diplomacy being bugged, IIRC.

Two pluses with gold are the graphics, of course, and the narrator. That guy was good.

Wiz 7 original doesn't have the bugged diplomacy and the combat is much faster. Still, I like Gold. It's just gets very annoying waiting after every pause during combat. If it gets to be really annoying I shut it off, but that also shuts off the narrator which is part of why I'm playing Gold in the first place

There is an easy way around that.. just replace two wav files with a another wav file…. problem solved without turning off the sound. Haven't heard about the bugged diplomacy bug……. any more info about that?