Thowe: Wizardry 8 Review

[nggalai]

Hi Thowe,

wollte nur sagen, dass mir dein W8-Review viel Spass machte (besonders die image captions, hehehe). Muss mir das Spiel wohl auch besorgen--wenn ich nur endlich mal wieder 3 Wochen am Stück frei hätte, so dass ich eine Woche davon vorm Computer spielend verbringen kann . . . :(

Hey. Gutes Review. Dank dir. :)

tata,
-sascha.rb

[Iceman346]

Bevor hier jeder in Euphorie ausbricht möchte ich jedem anraten diesen Forenbeitrag zu lesen. Ich hab mit Wiz8 auch gekauft und fand es klasse bis zu einem bestimmten Zeitpunkt wo das Spiel einfach zu schwer war. Lest mal dies:

"As the title suggest, I'm pretty surprised that among the folks that shun it for it's outdated graphics and the blindfolded fans that sing it's endless praise for being one of the best RPGs ever, no one yet has mentioned the most basic shortcoming of Wiz 8 at all: totally flawed and terribly designed game mechanics.

This is NO RPG and the virtual DM blatantly cheats all of the time. And while Pool of Radiance: Ruins of Myth Drannor got mercilessly clobbered for the same sin (blatantly cheating enemies), no one loses a single word about skewed rules and silly mechanics in Wiz 8.

A game with such a spectacularly thin story (The evil has stolen the powerful and attempts to rule over all of ...) should at least have a working combat system thats fun to play. Not so in Wiz 8, that uses the pitiful last resort of any incompetent and unimaginative Dungeon Master there is: endless random encounters and cheating monsters...

I'm 33 years old and have been playing RPGs (the oldfashioned pen & paper variant) for, well, probably longer than some of the younger posters on this board have been alive...
This game drives me nuts. And it's not because I don't *know* how to circumvent the utterly stupid difficulty level, it's because, frankly, I find absolutely NO fun in doing so.

The first golden question that any CRPG designer should ask him/ herself is: Would a *human* Dungeon Master get away with what we're doing? The answer for Wiz 8 is: definitely no.
A human DM that plays me for a total fool the way this game *constantly* does all of the time would get kicked off the table (or probably thrown into a lake with a rock around his neck ) within 10 minutes.

I REALLY have to commend all the fine folks on this board for the endless tips and tricks that shall help newcomers to overcome the sillyness. The sad thing only is: For me I can sum up all the golden strategies in Wiz 8 in one sentence:
Build the *cheesiest* possible MinMax party of onedimensional Ubercharacters and apply the cheapest possible AI exploits to overcome the blatant, silly cheating that you're constantly faced with.

The story in a nutshell: When you ATTACK the gadgeteer NPC in Trynton, he has 306 hitpoints. When you RECRUIT him, he drops to 57 all of a sudden. WTF?

Is THAT the reason That Wiz 8, unlike it's predecessors, has NO "secondary title" (like "Crusaders of the Dark Savant" or "Bane of the Cosmic Forge")?
Because it's true subtitle "Poor, Sickly Megalosers from Outer Space" would probably have hurt sales?
The disease our "heroes" suffer from definitely seems to be contagious though - as our poor Trynnie gadgeteer has to notice by losing about 250 hitpoints in a whiff...

One of the fundamental rules of RPGs is that the players want to play characters that are special. A band of heroes and unique personalities, not some cardboard paperdolls that need to follow a *strict* regime of leveling up and putting points *exactly* where needed for about 10 levels before being able to barely handle the common vermin...
How does it come, that *everyone* on Dominus seems to be tougher than a party of trained mercenaries? The barmaid has more hitpoints, the bankteller has more hitpoints, I bet the MILKMAID has more hitpoints... Heck, even the bloody WEEDS in the milkmaids garden have more hitpoints...
Why does the info window call a group of level 8 ratkin an "even match", when the lowest of THEM has 3 TIMES the hitpoints of my toughest level 8 character???
And why can't *I* play a ratkin or trynnie character, they seem to be WAY better than those sickly pathetic player races...

A word about something else a good RPG need: a credible *world* that people can relate to and inverse in. There's no credibility or inherent logic visible in Dominus. On a world, where about every 500 meters a group of critters wait that wipe the floor with a level 6 party, how does civilization exist? Can any food be produced? The average farmer will get eaten by random vermin or even the f*ing *weeds* on his fields about 5 times a day. Can goods be traded when there's enough opposion on the average road to require a mid-sized army to handle? Can messages be sent anywhere?
Oh, wait, the average farmer on Dominus has 300 hitpoints, 4 attacks (all hits) per round and a magical pitchfork that does about 30 damage a swing. Hmmm... why can't I rather play an average Dominus farmer, trader or postman instead of those weak, lame Samurai, Bishop or Lord losers I'm stuck with...? :P

Even worse: magic. Offensive magic: a JOKE in the hands of the party, an utter KILLER in the hands of enemies. Huh?
How can it happen that *any* random tree sprite that's 2 levels *below* my fairie wizard has *more* spells at *higher* power level and especially ones I could have no realistic access to at my level? Not to mention that THEY regularly do twice the damage *my* poor losers manage with the same spell (did I mention that THEY cast at 30-50 hitpoint "heroes" while *I* cast at 150+ hitpoint vermin? )
And why does the average *enemy* incapacitating spell affect 4-6 of *my* party members (even WITH magic shield on) while I can count myself lucky if one out of 3 enemies fails to resist (even *without* magic shield or the like)..???

Oh, and that mysterious disease also seems to imply a general -50 stat penalty on the party. How else can it be explained, that even big bad 300 hp badasses (level 8, btw ) with huge 30+ damage axes seem to have had enough stat points left to be also *faster* than *any* of my chars who already put more than sensible amounts of points into speed? Almost *everything* on the entire damn planet is faster than my ninja and my fairie mage? WTF again?
As if the fact that by the very design (1st person party RPG - doesn't work) the enemies ALWAYS have an unfair advantage (they can surround the party, never vice versa) isn't enough already.

Also, why can't I use those wasp stingers or bat teeth as weapons? they defnitely beat the to hit and damage ranges of enchanted swords and Katanas by at *least* a factor of 2... Some armor from their hides wouldn't be half bad either, definitely seem to protect leagues better than +1 chainmail...

To make the long rant short: the rules of this pitiful excuse for an RPG do NOT apply evenly. They aren't even in the same book. Once more, lazy designers could not come up with an AI or scenarios that provide a strategic challenge within an existing game system, and chose the cheap way out: buffing up the monsters with ungodly stats and letting them play by rules *entirely* different from those that apply to the player characters.

I can't find a tactical or strategic challenge in that. I just feel constantly betrayed, fooled and ridiculed by this silly game. I can't develop interesting characters and try various approaches, I need to mercilessly minmax the cardboard chars. And I can't dive into another world, I need to get laughed at and frustrated by a silly computer program...

Not to mention I wasted 60 Euros "

Lest es ganz durch, es lohnt sich.

[nggalai]

Hi Iceman346,

danke auch für dieses Review. Klingt GENAU wie was ich von W8 erwartete und auch wünschte. Cool!

ta,
.rb

P.S. Womit wir auch schon bei der Entgegnung an den ungenannten Reviewer aus deiner Post sind: das ist Wizardry. Kein "richtiges" Rollenspiel. ;)

[Iceman346]

Originally posted by nggalai
Hi Iceman346,

danke auch für dieses Review. Klingt GENAU wie was ich von W8 erwartete und auch wünschte. Cool!

ta,
.rb

P.S. Womit wir auch schon bei der Entgegnung an den ungenannten Reviewer aus deiner Post sind: das ist Wizardry. Kein "richtiges" Rollenspiel. ;)

*gg* Das ist genau das Gegenteil von dem was ich erreichen wollte ;)

Wie gesagt, ich fand das Spiel gut und motivierend, bis ich mit meiner Truppe die aus 8 lvl 9 Helden bestand an 4 Faeries vorbei musste. Diese haben zwar nur ca 30 hp aber haben Zaubersprüche die meine Kämpfer zur Hälfte killen und meine halbe Gruppe disablen. Das sieht dann so aus, daß 5 meiner Chars Blind rumlaufen und nichts treffen, einer bereits tot ist und der letzte todesmutig auf die Faeries einhackt während die gemütlich meine Truppe zerlegen. Da wars bei mir mit dem Spaß vorbei.