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Sir-tech Canada Releases Wizardry 8
NichG writes "Sir-tech Canada has finally released
Wizardry 8. This has been long awaited by fans of Wizardry 7 (1992) and the series of games which precluded it. It should be available at Electronic Boutique. For those not familiar with the Wizardry series, they are first person, turn-based (more precisely, phased) RPGs, which grew from pure dungeon crawl to RPGs with plot and characters with whom to interact." This, the Bard's Tale series, and the first four Ultimas together were where most of the late 1980s went for me.
i alwayst felt that 6 and beyond were dreadfull. there are lots of fans of wiz gold, etc but post maelstrom + werdna, etc, they totally lost the plot.
4+5 imo are the best of the trilogy and i especially liked playing Werdna and starting at the bottom of the tower.
the wiz series was also the first to my knowledge to award your characters for winning the game, and taking that into the next game, so when you won you got a chevron. quite cool.
the best bit was that from 1 to 3 required you to have played and passed characters along, so you could only play wiz3 by playing wiz2 and wiz1!! (although it limited market share i guess)..
nice to see an old school title come back. pity it has no old school charm.
no sig for you
Don't hammer the server too much, though. There're limited login spaces, so it shouldn't be too much of an issue.
Gameplay movies:
MPEG file
Zipped File
The demo is available from here..
3dgamers [download link]
or here
FilePlanet [download link]
No accusations re: Karma, please. I'm at the cap. And Wizardry 6 and 7 were the best RPGs I've ever played.
Alex T-B
St Andrews
Here you can download the original Apple II disk images and an emulator for windows/dos. There are also links to the SNES ports.
In wizardry I, don't forget the really good Bishop cheat. Create a Bishop (need right mix of stats), and then identify item 9 until you succeed.
*Excelsior!*
it's not going to stop until you wise up, no it's not going to stop. so just give up.
As long as you're not wanting GameCube-like graphics (the 3D world compares to EQ), this is a good game. The sophisticated plot and character development is a welcome change from the likes of Diablo.
But don't take my word for it, there's a free demo available from the official site. I also run one of the larger Wizardry fan sites - check it out for more information on the series (maps, walkthroughs, etc.).
Wizardry 8 isn't widely distributed (part of the game's delay in release was finding a distributor), but it's available at your local mall's Electronics Boutique (full retail is 50 bucks) and there's also a few cheaper prices online.
Someone better mod this post based on my user name alone.