Wizards & Warriors Preview
Greg Kasavin plays a near-complete build of D.W. Bradley's upcoming RPG and lives to tell the tale.
It may be just as well that a role-playing game that's as expansive as Wizards & Warriors takes so long to produce: When the game's designer, D.W. Bradley, first started the project in the summer of 1996, he had a vision of the game he wanted to make. But he didn't know that achieving it would take him as long as it would. The game is a first-person fantasy epic whose story is even richer than that of its long development. Originally designed as a turn-based multiplayer RPG, Wizards & Warriors now apparently bears little likeness to its original form - however, Bradley insists that the game, in essence, is very similar to his 4-year-old vision of it, and that a lot of the original infrastructure, in fact, has remained. This latter point is fairly evident once you take a look at the game: Wizards & Warriors looks like a replica of an antique - it's a spitting image of classic first-person role-playing series such as Dungeon Master, Wizardry, and Might and Magic. But at the same time, Wizards & Warriors looks too good to be one of those games, even though its 3D graphics bear likeness to the game's spiritual predecessors. When Wizards & Warriors is released this fall, it will have to compete in a market that's already filled with several high-quality, top-selling role-playing games - but its unusual style may set it apart. This preview will tell you, specifically, what's so different about it.
Wizards & Warriors takes place in an original high-fantasy world called Gael Serran, where a long-dead pharaoh has suddenly returned to life - and he is preparing to twist the land into his own, corrupt design. Your band of six inexperienced adventurers happens to be fated to rid the land of the all-powerful threat. Of course, conventional methods are no match for the evil pharaoh Cet Ude D'ua Khan - only a magic weapon, the Mavin Sword, can defeat him. The Mavin Sword was forged of two enchanted metals, two diametrically opposing elements of good and evil - and this delicately balanced spell can rupture the Pharaoh's own magic bindings. Not surprisingly, the Mavin Sword is nowhere to be found. Your adventurers will have to travel far and wide to find it, and once they do, they will have to face the additional challenge of fighting the Pharaoh himself. Fortunately, your stalwart band will likely gain a great deal of valuable combat experience in actually finding the weapon, which may in turn let the heroes survive their encounter with the pharaoh. At any rate, it will be a very long journey to victory: D.W. Bradley claims Wizards & Warriors will offer over 200 hours of gameplay, which seems like ample time indeed for your six neophytes to train themselves to be master swordsmen and magic users.
Of course, there's much more to Wizards & Warriors than just spells and swords. Actually, the game's title should be interpreted broadly, as your six characters can master over a dozen different professions. In addition, each character comes from one of ten different clans - effectively, races - and most of them are drastically different from one another.
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- GameSpot Score7.2good
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Wizards & Warriors Review
Wizards & Warriors suffers from a handful of problems that compromise an otherwise solid role-playing game.
- Oct 3, 2000
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- Activision
- Heuristic Park
- Role-Playing
- Release: Sep 27, 2000
- ESRB: Mature
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