I think the adoption of the mouse was one of the worst things that could've happened to CRPGs in the late 80s and early 90s. It led to Ultima 7 abandoning the text-insert keyword dialogue system of its predecessors, and everyone knows about Ultima 6's clunky interface which can also be blamed on the mouse. But I don't think even those games got hit as hard as Wizardry. When an EGA DOS game from 1990 is clunkier than a wireframe Apple II game from 1980, you know something terrible happened.
Currently playing thru the Greyhawk Adventurers via the FRUA module manager, using keyboard only is pretty smooth.
Yes, it's funny that even control wise Secret of the Silver Blades is by far the worst of the quadrliogy, with many more key presses needed to do the same things. With Pools of Darkness the full keyboard control is fine again, it's different from POR and Curse but you need the same amount of presses.
Choices&Consequences, baby?
Or can I just exterminate the Rapax in holy righteousness and still secure the alliance?
Which walkthrough are you using?
huh, Wiz6 interface is superior to earlier Wizardries
I disagree. In Wiz1 you just press "S" and type in a spell name. In Wiz6 you have to scroll through a sub-menu. Things that could easily have been improved, like how awkward it is to trade items between characters, or equipping characters, were not improved in Wiz6, despite releasing 10 years later.
It does make it a hell of a lot easier though. If you're a templar you can plant a teleport point right next to the portal to Arnika inside the castle, walk up to the prisoners inside the camp, free em both and teleport to safety and ultimately into Arnika, from which you can very easily reach the Umpani and Trang teleport shacks. You don't need to kill the king btw., that part is cut content and in fact optional.
They probably second-guessed themselves due to the number of options. In Wiz1 combat for example you had what, just Fight, Parry, Spell, Run, and sometimes Dispell? In Wiz6 you also have Use, Equip, Move, sometimes Hide and/or Breathe, and in general most of the options have sub-menus afterwards. They probably figured assigning a hotkey to every single one of these would be a nightmare and confuse the hell out of people. In reality it would probably have made for a steeper learning curve, but a much smoother experience once you get past it.
Did you also get this very funny bug where your party is lifted up in the air and then slams back down again during the ending narration?Finally!
Not joining the Rapax Templars right away was a big mistake. First you have to do it anyway, secondly I got so bloody tired of this game when exploring Castle Rapax and my party was overleveled in the end, and the last part became a bit of a chore.
Despite being far from an optimized party (no Fighter or Rogue) I only had to rest twice and reload thrice. The last reload was against Stealer of Souls (or whatever) who managed to turncoat half my party despite Soul Shield and was accompanied by both Imps and Demons. When I reloaded and faced him alone he was of course paralyzed by one of the first hits I landed on him.
I'd say Wiz8 is in many way (combat, exploration, itemization) the best of the Wizardry games, but it's also the most annoying one (in the end I couldn't use ear phones due to the increasingly annoying swishing sound every time the mouse cursor swept over something clickable) and the peculiarities of distance and timing in combat. And the railroading in the last part.
A really good game leaves you craving for more. Oh well, maybe if I had joined the Templars...
Despite the endless respawning my characters had much fewer kills in Wiz8 than in Wiz7. I compared the numbers and the totals kills are:
Wiz 6: 2193
Wiz 7: 7267
Wiz 8: 2713
Total: 12173
The numbers kind of confirm my prejudice against Wiz 7.
Incidentally my character with most kill was Pu-Zen who started as a Psionic (I think) and spent most of his career as a Monk, except for the first 2/3 of Wiz 8.
