Wizardry 8 - A Samurai, a Valkyrie, and a Bishop walk into a bar…
 

Rampant Coyote on Wizardry 8:
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One of my games with the most re-plays.

Wizardry 8 and M&M 6-8. Good times:)

I have finished it only once.
Whenever i get an urge to replay it,i remind myself the number of enemies in Rapax Castle and the constant enemy rrespawning even in friendly areas and the urge is gone.
It's a real diamond in the rough for me,it probably has the best class system-balance i've seen in a crpg.

One of my favorite all time games. It neatly blends the what made Wizardry 6 fun as a dungeon crawler with the wide open world and factions of Wizardry 7 and adds to it a lot in terms of story, interesting Npcs and interactive factions. Too bad it was the last real Wizardry.

Love this game and it doesn't have killer bears - but it does have respawns and killer rats :)

Just played it for the nth time a couple of weeks ago while waiting for them to fix witcher 3 which is broken on my machine.

Great game, but I can't imagine replaying it multiple times. It's just too long even with the mod that speeds up the combat.

It's the only Wizardry game I've played through to the end.

Rapax Castle is my own personal nightmare.

I loved the game, don't get me wrong. But when I finally started timing the combats to just see how long they were really lasting and that it wasn't my imagination, I found that I was actually grossly underestimating their length. I was assuming they were lasting 20 minutes, when they were closer to an hour. For a single, random-patrol fight. Yeah, once in a while a grueling slug-fest is okay, but constantly?

Too bad such an otherwise excellent game is marred by that. I still highly recommend the game to play through once, but even with the speed hack it's tough to go through that multiple times. But at least once through, I'd say - grab the speed hack, and try it. It's worth it.

This is one of my favorite games of all time. It's an absolute classic. Enjoy.

I was late to the party, but so glad to discover it … and also glad for GoG doing the Mac port so I can have it everywhere :)

Wait, didn't Wizardry 8 use blob combat? About the only movement you could do was change position in the rank. Not exactly sophisticated.

Wrongo, bub. You could move the party as a group. There is no individual character movement, though.

Yep - and in your party - you have an inner and an outer circle - to defend the weaker characters -> link

The article is spot on - it's hard to find a game nowadays that will have tactical depth and that Turn Based Combat can be fun, challenging and rewarding. I used to rethink my combat encounters all the time, even closer to the end you were still encountering challenging monsters and the game had three endings and even the graphics 10 years ago were still good - I was very impressed when I was fighting some rogues and their faces wee getting more and more bloody the more damage my party dealt. It's a real shame that SirTech is gone….

I think it might be time for me to finally play this game. Is this best Wizardry game?

I bought the boxed edition back at the time! I played it nearly to half… and then the infinite respawns just become boring. I searched for reducing-respawn mods but I found nothing useful!

Apart from the respawn thing, the game is great, even exceptional! And the chit-chat among the characters… I made a lizardman warrior for my party, every time we encounter an enemy he says "We got a customer!"

A good game indeed, from which I have fond memories. I even have my save game in some folder right here but without a mod that effectively reduces respawn, I think I won't try it again in near future :bigcry:

#6 Totally hawt breast physics! http://youtu.be/z5NjmBgnLhE ;)

Wiz8 was one of my favorite games at the time. I replayed it about 8 years ago and enjoyed it quite a bit. I still enjoy Wiz7 better, although for a first time experience nowadays Wiz8 is probably better for a first time player since it is more modern.

For a stat-loving rpg geek, you don't get much better than Wizardry 8. I'd rank it among the top 5 rpgs of all time, along with Ultima 7, Ultima Underworld, Planescape Torment, and Fallout. During the next great rpg drought, and after I've caught up on my backlog, I hope to replay Wiz8 and some other old favorites.

It's sad that we'll never see another Wizardry, but at least the series went out on a high note; If Wizardry 9 was made today, your system requirements would be reduced by 20 IQ points.

Yeah I liked this gametoo…I just never ever beat the damn thing. I have played so many rpg's and that has always been an issue….

What a bunch of rookies… ;)

Just because you have played it more times than a politician lies in a week is no reason to hurt the feelings of all these poor newbs!! :)

I am on mu fourth replay now,

Great game!

Played it to the end only two times :)

Rapax castle really killed it for me… that was just too much.

I played it for the first only a couple of years ago, and seriously adored it. Maybe it's time for a second playthrough soon, it remains the best First Person RPG I've ever played. Not that the competition has been that impressive the last ten years…

Its the first person turn based RPG I have ever played and made me fall in love that first person turn based combat RPGs!

I always want to reply this game but it takes lot of time to complete it and time is in very short supply these days.

Brilliant game; took me over two months to complete. There's a tremendous amount of replay value simply in the party/npc configuration options. Great character building and challenging, strategic combat. I'll definitely revisit it one day. :)

I also was late to the party on this game, only played it last year, and loved every moment!!! I wouldn't be surprised if I get the urge to replay it again very soon, possibly later this summer.

Played it for awhile and enjoyed making the parties, but this is a combat game and I really don't favor those. My favorite Wizardry was Bane of the Cosmic Forge.

Honestly, that section of the game is quite a slog. I've broken the game into 3 divisions because of that. You've got parties that are slapped together that never develop an identity or just serve the purpose of trying crazy things--those games usually "die" at Arnika. You've got parties that end up just not being fun to play for whatever reason--those games "die" at the Rapax Rift because there's just no point in enduring the Rapax Castle if the party isn't fun. Then you've got parties that go the distance. When the game first came out, a lot of people seemed to put in an extra division just for the monastery, but I never did think you got a good feel for a party's development until they passed thru the fire of that first scamper down Arnika Road.

So, the appropriate way to report your "scorecard" with Wiz8 is "This many Arnikas, this many Rifts, this many wins." ;)

Wizardy 8 has the best first person party based combat system I've seen so far. I've waited many years for a sequel. But since the rights are in the hands of a Japanese company it seems more than unlikely. Therefore I have high hopes for Bard's Tale.

Can anyone tell me how chasing enemies works? It seems you cannot move and use weapons at same time and when you do run into melee range enemy can just run away before your guys get to act.

Generally speaking, don't chase them. If the critters are retreating, you'll never catch them. Wait for them. Sometimes they will stop retreating and start running back to you. Most times, they'll continue running until they spend 2 turns out of range (range is not always line of sight for that determination). Combat will end and then you can track down the stragglers in real time mode to initiate combat again. If you damaged them, they will still carry the scars so there's no penalty to "letting them go".

Occasionally, it actually makes sense to run the other direction, not to retreat, but to get out of combat range so you can close up and start over again.

There is also an "end combat" button that pops up, but it rarely works any quicker than just getting out of range.

So far I am enjoying the game but I don't like that you start in a dungeon with very limited supplies (mostly talking about ammo). I kind of prefer M&M system where it is more open world with early access to shops and towns.

That's actually not true. The Japanese company had a license to produce a few console games using the Wizardry world and trademarks, but the cRPG portion of the franchise (the IP) wasn't part of that deal. I don't know where the RPG trademarks ended up coming out of the bankruptcy proceedings, but presumably one of the bankers got it. With Sir-Tech being an empty shell (my understanding is that the corporation is still registered in Canada, but doesn't actually exist), you're still right that we won't be seeing a Wiz9 any time soon, if ever.

Did you explore the entire beach area before going inside? You should net about 100 sling stones and a small stack of arrows if you have a ranger or do some diligent searching. Exploring the monastery will stock you up pretty quickly, actually.

There is a merchant in the monastery, so you should be ok

He's got a lot of exploring to do before he finds his first Trynnie.

Man, you know you've really played an RPG a lot if you can make statistically significant distinctions like that. *tips imaginary hat*

I still have my unfinished LMK run lying around, before Rapax Castle. But I really want to add a fourth character (priest). Is that possible at all? Is there a character editor so I could level her up a bit so she gets in range of the others?