Wizardry .

[Lady Error]

Wizardry 7 by far, followed by Wizardry 6.

I have been replaying Wizardry 7 every 5 years or so and enjoying it every time. Tried to play Wizardry 8 again and just could not get into it. When it came out I also did not finish it.

Grimoire is the real Wizardry 8.

 

[KeighnMcDeath]

It is a wonder Wizards & Warriors isn't included.

 

[Lady Error]

It is a wonder Wizards & Warriors isn't included.

It's good actually, better than Sir-Tech's Wizardry 8 in my opinion.

 

[Jason Liang]

V and I are very close for me. I has some classic dungeon levels (level 3 and level 7 are classics, as well as the Monster Allocation Center boss room) but the elevator lets you skip half the game and if you ignore the nostalgia V's dungeons are better quality. I is not the ultimate dungeon crawl. V arguably is.

VII is audacious but the need to reload saves constantly even if you aren't savescumming is absurd. It's a great game and a magnum opus but the game balance is off the meds.

IV is a brilliant game but it's more fun to read Crooked Bee 's LP than actually play.

VI is a beta version of VII. It's the Rance 5D of Wizardry games.

VIII is a broken mess. It's the Arcanum of Wizardry games. Like Arcanum, I question if anyone that picks this has actually played a well-made game before.

 

[Ryzer]

From I've played:

- Wizardry 7 is incredibly ugly , it's an orgy of pixels and being old isn't an excuse. Might and magic 4 looks far better with more details. Sound quality sucks except the main theme. At the beginning, combat is trash because you have 0 capacity( and not enough mana ) so you just keep spamming basic attack until the enemies die ( before you die). There is no other tactics other than that and it takes time to gain levels before the gameplay gets interesting . Far too much respawning enemies and the game is long. However the multiclass system is phenomenal and adds a ton of replayability.
I dropped at 5% of the game

-Wizardry 8 is where it begins to get interesting. The gameplay has been improved drastically. Now you are able to move and place your team accordingly. Levels increase faster than previous Wizardry which is nice for gameplay reasons. Unfortunately, it's extremely BORING. Way too much combat and it takes forever even at max speed. Story is worth listening to, I guess.
I dropped out of boredom at 20% of the game.

Wizardry games are not my cup of tea but they are appealing and I can see why.

 

[Viata]

Wizardry 7 is incredibly ugly

By far, the most stupid shit I have read about Wizardry 7.

 

[Ryzer]

By far, the most stupid shit I have read about Wizardry 7.

I guess I did the mistake to play Might and Magic games before Wizardry 7.

 

[mondblut]

Did you even play any goldbox title?

Did you?

 

[Darth Canoli]

Did you?

Character creation is tedious, exploration is tedious.
They invented the concept of shops without signs, everything looks the same, great city exploration.

 

[KeighnMcDeath]

The question is Wiz 7 or Wiz Gold???

 

[Lady Error]

Wizardry 7: much better original portraits

Gold: automap

 

[Arthandas]

Gold: automap

and gamebreaking bugs...

 

[luj1]

Wizardry 6-9 are all excellent

Wizardry 6 is dearest to me
7 is objectively the best
8 is great
9 is Grimoire

I also have a soft spot for Llylgamyn Saga (Wiz 1 remaster)

 

[luj1]

I would rank them

1. Grimoire
2. Wiz 7
3. Wiz 6
4. Wiz 8
5. Llylgamyn Saga

Honorable mention: Wizards & Warriors

 

[Baron Dupek]

Gold: automap

and gamebreaking bugs...

Never heard of those.
Also you can have automap in the original with a mod.

 

[Desiderius]

You can easily fuck yourself if you class change too much in 6 and 7. You will be lacking in levels, meaning you repeatedly get wrecked by status effects, and you will end up with a huge excess of skill points (especially in 7 when skill points are category-locked).

Single-classing (or just doing one switch) is better than it looks but you’re hardly going to get wrecked unless you’re very stupid in your multi-classing. And you’re pretty much priced into having to figure it out on some characters to get skills on time.

 

[smaug]

Wiz1 is a neat game for how well balanced it is (all of its gameplay elements) and the only wizardry game I’ve finished. 8 is great but I haven’t played that much of it, but it’s definitely an example of proper innovation of an old series.

Anything before 8 is for masochists though.

 

[Grauken]

Anything before 8 is for masochists though.

Nope, you're just bad at playing them

 

[luj1]

Anything before 8 is for masochists though.

Nope, you're just bad at playing them

Smaug is just a zoomer kid

he doesnt get it, and will never get it

- Wizardry 7 is incredibly ugly , it's an orgy of pixels and being old isn't an excuse. ...
I dropped at 5% of the game

-Wizardry 8 is where it begins to get interesting. The gameplay has been improved drastically....
I dropped out of boredom at 20% of the game.

Wizardry games are not my cup of tea but they are appealing and I can see why.

This guy is much worse

for the record thim bum was caught defending Skyrim and TOW

and once your brain is ravaged by such trash, you lose the basic abiity to process reality. No longer can you recognise quality or differentiate good from bad

 

[Nikanuur]

Why, Wizardry 9 of course. However, we can likely play it only in heaven, after we've gone from this verse.

 

[Jasede]

Oh this is a very hard question.


I is really fun. It holds up well, is fun to play and if you take the time to map it yourself it feels really rewarding. The game has some design flaws but they make you feel smart for exploiting them so maybe they are intentional, to help you cope with the difficulty.

I don't have much of an opinion on 2, 3 or 5. 4 is really fun and very innovative - but also pretty short and limiting.

The new ones are a radical departure. But I enjoy them. I find 6 great fun to replay - just don't set the difficulty to Expert. Fighting double bosses breaks my immersion. The game is pretty and feels fun and varied.

7 is huge but I'm not convinced I could have beaten it without a walkthrough. It's just so insanely long and the combat feels slower than in 6 which I don't like. 8 is another radical departure.

I confess I like 8 the best. It was my first. I've replayed the demo endlessly as a little kid. The "personality" you can assign to each character is just such a good feature. But the level scaling feels bad at times; you never get any stronger. You just get more tools to deal with the harder and harder opposition.


I think I would have to decide between 1, 6 and 8. And I can't. They're all great!

 

[Nikanuur]

Wiz 8? Is that the first Wizardry I could not get engaged in ? All I can say is Wiz 8 was terrible. I never got much beyond the first 20 minutes and the graphics were utterly abhorrent.

I remember playing about 5 minutes of Bane of the Cosmic Forge and thinking it was so gripping I could not bring myself to stop playing.

Crusaders of the Dark Savant I knew it was awesome before I had even made it to the city. Just wandering in the woods so many interesting things happened I realized that no way did David Bradley just get lucky with Bane. He had improved substantially. I also knew it was super monacle stuff that was head and shoulders above the riff raff with the narrative alone. I had not felt so monacled playing a computer game since Darklands which was high art and distinctly striving for excellence.

When I got my first look at the dungeon graphics in Crusaders I really felt the win and spectacular goodness coming off it in a wave. I'm not making this up out of nostalgia. First time I booted it I knew it was special from the first few moments. Truly a classic RPG board game with all the good things from pencil and paper made 50 times better.

I would not feel that excellence again until the first couple minutes of LANDS OF LORE, which I still think is one of the best blobbers ever after the Wizardry series by Bradley. If LOL had been turn based it would have been perfect.

You warm my heart with that LoL statement. A fairy-tale done by artists

 

[Falksi]

Bard's Tale 4: Director's Cut

 

[luj1]

Why, Wizardry 9 of course. However, we can likely play it only in heaven

Grimoire

 

[Grauken]

Bard's Tale 4: Director's Cut

It's terrible as a Bard's Tale game, comparing it to Wizardry is a sacrilege