The Wizardry series is a much storied one. The first game was supposed to be just another dungeon crawl, but the developer SirTech had highlighted one of the deficits of this early proto-form of the RPG genre: lack of enticing graphics. Thus, the first Wizardry, which was visually more attractive than its peers, made a name for itself and SirTech.
SirTech later went on to build on its series, expanding the gameplay that the IP offers with every new entry. It was also marketed in other countries, such as Japan. Such was the soundness of the series' designs that it purportedly inspired the creators of later, also famous RPG IPs, such as Dragon Quest and Might & Magic.
Unfortunately, the series could not propagate forever. It would close with Wizardry 8, but certainly not with a whimper despite SirTech's running out of business.
Wizardry 8 would give the first impression that it is yet another entry in the series: the player characters are again a bunch of intrepid adventurers that seem to have the knack of getting into all kinds of trouble, usually with the pretext of saving someone, something or somewhere from the dark intents from evil villains or incoming destructive calamities.
To be specific, Wizardry 8 is the third and last part of the Dark Savant trilogy, where said party of adventurers have to prevent the intergalactic villain known as the Dark Savant from achieving his quest to rule all of existence.
Like in the (few) previous games, the introductory sequence is propagated by colourful and mostly still artwork.
However, this is where the similarities in presentation end. Unlike the previous games, SirTech tries to introduce a sense of continuity in Wizardry 8 by allowing players who have played Wizardry 7 to import their save-games.
Yet, this is not like the importing features in the Icewind Dale or Baldur's Gate series; to prevent severe game imbalances (and perhaps to preserve the sense of progression from nurturing a party), the player characters that the player has imported into Wizardry 8 is reduced to low levels, as well as the removal of most loot and gear. However, the most important data that would be imported is how the player completed the previous game.
There are many endings in the previous game, one of which will be the player's depending on his/her story-changing decisions that were made in the previous game. The consequences of these endings are carried forward into Wizardy 8, though if the player is expecting far-reaching consequences, he/she would be quite disappointed. Instead, these endings only determine the starting location of the player's party, and the details of the introductory sequence.
Otherwise, newly-made parties start at a ruined monastery that is not exactly a safe place to take refuge in. (Players who have sided with either the Umpani or T'Rang would start the game at the relatively safe camps of these two factions.)
Regardless of whether the player imported a saved game or not, the game will take place on the planet of Dominus, where the fabled path to godly power, the Ascension Peak, is located.
Following the tradition of the previous games, the player creates (or imports) a bunch of player characters to be included in a six-member party. The permutations of classes and races were tremendous in previous games, and they are just as pleasantly overwhelming (to the meticulous player) in Wizardry 8 (and perhaps a bit more, if a few new races that some recruitable player characters belong to are considered).
Like in the previous games, there are up to eleven races (including the tribute to Tolkien, the Hobbits) and fifteen classes, leading to a dizzying variety of combinations. However, certain races are more suited to be certain classes, such as the magical Faeries being naturally inclined towards the profession of the Mage. Statistically, this will show in the bonus statistic points that a player character will gain; highly compatible pairings will result in a lot more points to spend on attributes like Strength and Piety, while terrible pairings, like Lizardman Bishops, will result in penalties that take away attribute points instead.
Fortunately, the player will be informed of these pairings before-hand, via the descriptions of the races and their preferred (and disliked) professions.
However, there are no significant differences other than different starting attributes and different portraits from having player characters of different races. There are equipment restrictions and race-specific gear, but there are otherwise no more obstacles for the player to develop the aforementioned Lizardman Bishop to be just as good as an Elven one. Of course, the assumption here is that the player has the patience and perseverance to nurture such combinations that start out so bad.
The party composition will be defined more by the classes of the player characters than their races. A balanced party with as large a variety of skills and powers as possible will be the best bet for a wholesome experience with the game, but this is for an RPG veteran with a knack for managing details. However, the game has plenty other features to compensate for "themed" parties, like a party that consists of no one other than female Faerie Ninjas; these features will be elaborated on later.
Every class will have special skills that include those that will be useful when used at the right time, those that are useful during combat and even those that are useful all the time. The Special skills of the Fighter Class will be used as examples here: his ability to go Berserk allows him to do tremendous amounts of damage, in return for less accuracy in his attacks (e.g. he misses more often in Berserk mode); he has a chance to knock out any enemy that he attacks during combat; and his Stamina Regeneration bonus makes certain that he will always have the energy to perform attacks when other party members than are less specialized in combat will be too tired to fight.
Special Skills are very different from spells (which will be described later), and may be even more reliable as they are not as easily countered. Therefore, having a mix of skills is a good way to make certain that there is a solution for every situation. Unfortunately, the game does not emphasize this during the character creation screens, or any other segment of the game.
In addition to Special Skills, there are a tremendous set of regular skills, such as proficiencies with certain categories of weapons (e.g. Sword, Shield and Bow), spell-casting related knowledge (e.g. Psionics, Alchemy and Divinity) and miscellaneous trades (e.g. Realms, Engineering and Stealth), among so many other fields. Each skill has two kinds of benefits: unlocking the use of certain spells or other things like special gear, and a passive bonus of sorts. For example, some skill in Swords are needed to wield very powerful Swords, and this skill also gives a bonus to accuracy and damage rolls with Sword attacks.
In addition to spending points obtained through level-up occasions, skills can be improved via practising them - or more precisely, through repeating actions that are associated with these skills. For example, weapon proficiencies can be trained via attacking enemies with the appropriate weapons, while Shield (that is, the use of hand-held shields) can be improved by defending against enemy attacks (provided that the player character has a shield equipped).
A kind of action may not just improve only one skill; it may in fact affect one of other skills. For example, setting a player character that has Reflexion (which is an Expert Skill - more on this later) and a Shield to the status of Defend during combat will prevent him/her from doing anything, but grants bonuses to rolls against any skill that may help him/her evade incoming harm. If his/her Reflexion roll succeeds, he/she dodges the blow and gains a chance to increase his/her Reflexion skill. If the Reflexion roll fails but the Shield roll succeeds instead, he/she blocks with a Shield and gains a chance to increase his/her Shield skill.
This game mechanic of improving skills through repeated actions is also seen in certain RPG franchises, a famous example being the Elder Scrolls IP. However, unlike Elder Scrolls, improvement in skills is not exactly a certainty. Luck plays a role in point gains for skills too, so a player character can have performed a certain action so many times but only obtained a measly handful of points for all that effort.
On the other hand, this game mechanic can still be abused to raise certain skills to ratings that are so high relative to the player's level that they become imbalanced. For example, the aforementioned Shield skill can be improved to stupendous levels in several hours with the right kind of enemy and equipment, and by making use of the mode of "continuous combat" (more on this later), without any need for active participation by the player.
Not all skills are available to every class. For example, only the Fighter has access to all weapon proficiencies.
The huge numbers of skills may seem overwhelming, but there are in-game tooltips and descriptions that can be seen at any time by entering the necessary screens on character details. The exact calculations that make use of the ratings of these skills are not shown, however.
Each combination of class and race will have a set of attributes governing their performance. These include the aforementioned Strength (which determines damage that can be done using melee weapons and bows, among other things influenced by physical prowess) and Intelligence (which determines how well a spell-casting character can cast spells and handle anything intellectually challenging). Every level-up grants the player character some points to spend on attributes. Generally, having higher attributes is better.
Furthermore, there are bonus skills, which are called "Expert Skills", to be gained once the player character has obtained 100 points in attributes. These are very, very powerful skills that will usually help the player character be even more effective in doing what his or her class does. Watching the party gain these skills and becoming exponentially more powerful can be great glee.
If a player wishes to have player characters of multiple classes, he/she can switch classes once he/she has obtained the required minimum levels of attributes; for example, to switch class to a Mage, the player character will need to attain 60 points in Intelligence. This requirement is noted during character creation, and it will also be handily shown again in level-up screens. Therefore, planning the switching of classes is not an activity that is exclusive to those who are meticulous.
However, the player character will lose whatever special skills that his/her previous class provided, in return for those offered by the other. In addition, he/she loses the opportunity to train any skills that the Fighter class has access to, but the Lord does not. On the other hand, he/she gains the skills that the Lord class offers, and also retains any skills that he/she has learned during his/her tenure as a Fighter. Other statistics like attributes, mana and health are also retained, as well as any spells that have been learned.
Switching classes is a very handy way to create player characters that have a variety of solutions for many scenarios. However, this comes at the cost of the lack of specialization, which will provide very expedient benefits at the later parts of the game.
Moreover, there are special hybrid classes that have a mix of skills (and spells, if applicable) that are just as good as hybrid, multi-classed characters. They may even have Special Skills that are unique to themselves, such as the Monk's complete immunity to the effects of the Blindness status.
If the inexperienced player is already feeling overwhelmed with classes, races, attributes and skills, the Wizardry series' game mechanic of spells would be the tipping point. Spells are not just magical energy taken form and being flung off the fingers, wands or staffs of spell-casters, but they also include things that fantasy RPG veterans would not readily consider to be spells.
The fields of "spell-casting" in Wizardry also include Guns, Music, Locks and Psionics, in addition to the more recognizable fields of Alchemist, Mage and Priest spells.
Psionics is a highly utilitarian field of spells, making use telekinetic force to damage enemies or incapacitate them around to break up the mobs trying to overwhelm the party. It also offers spells that can protect the party from mental status effects and also inflict these on enemies.
Guns, Locks and Music are more like skills. They do not exactly allow the casting of spells, but require the use of actual items rather than already innately learned spells, and that they expend stamina instead of mana. Nonetheless, other than this requirement, they work a lot like spells and can even be resisted in similar manners to spells. Their effects are even packaged in the form of fixed versions of spells.
The need to use items will mean that until the party has obtained a special item with the desired effects when used, the classes that can use the above kind of skills are no substitute for actual spell-casters. (There are very powerful items in the game with tremendous versatility and power, but only experienced or well-informed players will know of them and can plan their progress for these, but they may have to make do with a party that would be weak until they get them.)
As for magic - that is, spells - there are four main schools, each named after one of the four specialized spell-casting classes: the Alchemist, Bishop, Psionic and Mage.
Between them, there are dozens of spells, some of which are shared among them, such as Heal Wounds which is available to the Alchemist, Priest and Psionic. They are categorized into seven levels, each subsequent level offering more potent spells that have to be cast with more mana or stamina.
However, the difference in levels does not mean that lower-leveled spells are not as useful as the higher-leveled ones. Many low-level spells happen to be very utilitarian spells, such as the aforementioned Heal Wounds and Bless, and they benefit from high-level spell-casters by having their effects amplified.
(It has to be noted here that such spell designs are apparent in other well-respected RPG franchises, such as Dungeons and Dragons.)
Yet, unlike the low-level spells in other RPG franchises, not all of them eventually become relatively useless compared to the higher-levelled ones. Of course, there are some spells that will eventually slip into obscurity as the party gains in power, such as the Frost and Energy Blast spells (which are one-shot spells that inflict damage but nothing else), but there are some whose properties continue to grow without limit, such as Bless, the duration of which will virtually increase without end. Therefore, a shrewd player can have low-level spell buffs affecting the party almost indefinitely, which is very handy if the player is expecting to get jumped on when he/she least expects it. However, there is a caveat to having enhanced versions of low-level spells.
Wizardy 8 does not exactly allow spells to be permanently upgraded as the spell-caster grows in power, unlike many other fantasy RPG franchises. Instead, the spell-caster only unlocks more powerful versions of said spells, and these will conversely gobble up more mana. This means that the player will have to think carefully on what power level of spells to use instead of spamming the most powerful version possible.
If the player is not willing to have a balanced party, he/she can still attempt to compensate by using items. There are many in the game, chief of which are potions, bombs, dusts and books. All of these essentially release spells of fixed levels; potions are items which impart their spells on the wearer when imbibed, bombs are thrown onto enemies to release their harmful area-effect properties and dusts can hit individual or clusters of targets. In contrast, books are not exhaustible, but consume mana instead when they are invoked.
Using such pieces of gear can be very, very expedient, when there is no alternative for the solution that the player wants. Luckily, getting them is simple and easy; they can be obtained as loot from enemies, chests and often among quest rewards as well. They can also be bought from stores, often in large amounts too.
However, with so much easy availability, it can be easy for the player to get carried away with using these items (assuming that the party can gain enough cash). Stores do restock regularly, but not enough for a player that depends heavily on items. This means that imbalanced parties can only get away with using items to make up for their strategic weaknesses for so long. While it may be to the player's interest to have balanced parties, not being able to play through the entire game with a team with ridiculously lopsided capabilities can be a bummer to those who want to play the game in such a manner.
Every RPG has gear for the player character(s) to obtain, usually through the usual purchases from stores, loot from slain enemies (and loot containers) and quest reward packages. Wizardry 8 is not fundamentally any different.
On the other hand, there is a LOT of loot to be had from this game, perhaps more than other RPGs at the time. The categories of items alone are mind-boggling.
Weapons include melee weapons (self-explanatory - fortunately), extended weapons (technically weapons that need two hands and have greater reach than "regular" melee weapons), ranged weapons (e.g. bows, crossbows, etc.), thrown weapons (weapons that are expended as soon as they are used), and ammunition (for ranged weapons and guns). The magical/technological ones are especially interesting, as they may not just have the usual "+1" boost to this-and-that statistic, they may even have spells bound into them that will trigger when they hit something, or other kinds of effects that an RPG veteran would not usually expect them to have.
Apparel items range from body armor, pants and cloaks, to shields, helmets, gloves and shoes. They offer the usual ever-present buffs to the durability of characters wearing them, though some special kinds of armor have bound spells that are triggered when the character is hit.
(It has to be mentioned here that getting armor-bound spells to trigger is harder, due to the probability-based game mechanics used in assigning hits from enemies to party members.)
Finally, there are food and drinks, which were a staple in old-school RPGs of which Wizardry 8 is one. Like typical virtual nutritional items found in its peers, food and drink restore health, stamina or, for some particularly sorcerous food, mana. There is even a special status effect that can only be obtained from drinks (as in alcoholic ones).
Some special items (especially those with unique names) can only be gained through certain methods (so the player has to do some research to know exactly how to gain them), while the rest, which are usually more mundane items, are obtained as randomly generated loot (and are thus more common).
Stores will undoubtedly be important in this game, considering the amount of gear and equipment to be had in this game. There are many stores and vendors, though most of them are situated in habitated/civilized areas. There are some hard-to-reach ones, and they reward the player by offering items that are not found in other stores - usually special gear.
The stores do re-stock regularly, as has been mentioned earlier, but they will not keep items that the player has sold to them indefinitely. Once the re-stock interval arrives, they disappear. Furthermore, despite having been around for more than a decade already, SirTech had not incorporated a buy-back feature to undo any sales to vendors. The player will have to resort to saving before dealing with them.
Vendors are not the only NPCs in the game, of course. They are just a subset of NPCs that the player's party will interact with, except that they tend to have item containers nearby which contain the items that they are selling.
Otherwise, all NPCs are approached in the same manner: the player's party walks up to them and press a button to talk (if they don't attack the player outright). The game will freeze everything else in the game except the NPC that the player is interacting with and call up the dialogue scripts.
While freezing everything else in the game was a staple design for conversations with NPCs for the RPG genre at the time, having the NPC concerned being the only object animated and talking was perhaps a bit awkward. Moreover, they are not really that pretty to look at: other than secondary animations like breathing and lip-synching, there is not much else.
(To give SirTech the benefit of the doubt though, RPGs at the time were not laden with graphical pizzazz. There will be more elaboration on this later.)
However, there is plenty of voice-acting for NPCs in this game, surprisingly. Just about every NPC line has voice-over, which is, fortunately, at least decent to listen to. Even the campy lines - such as those by the main villain himself - can be entertaining.
The best - or at least the most entertaining - voice-acting belongs to those of the player characters themselves. During character creation, the player can choose to select their personalities, which will also determine the set of voiced-over lines that they will have.
Although player characters will never have voice-overs for whatever statement that they make towards NPCs (in fact, these "statements" are brief textual representation of the player's choices), they still have voice-overs for pivotal moments in the game, such as (-minor spoiler alert!-) when a team-mate is afflicted with a hilarious curse that has to be cured before his maximum HP rating gets permanently reduced to zero.
In addition, there is also voice-acting for just about any of their actions, or any changes in their statistics or ratings.
Party members will yelp, holler, groan, grunt or gasp in pain whenever they are harmed, usually with a legible exclamation as well, with the utterances getting increasingly urgent (and perhaps even more amusing – or annoying) as their wounds grow more severe. They also clamour for healing if they are still injured post-combat, as well as mention words of thanks whenever they are healed (and these can be humorous too, depending on their chosen personalities).
Party members will also call out status de-buffs, like getting blinded or subjected to fear or terror, and periodically make another statement to remind the party (and the player) that they are still very much under de-buffs. (The funniest call-outs are perhaps those that they make for the "Booze" effect, which is none other than inebriation.)
There are plenty more voiced-over lines, such as those for the resolution of combat, but these are best left for the player to discover on himself/herself than spoiled here.
(Only the application and expiration of beneficial spell-buffs are not voiced over, but this is a very minor detractment.)
Yet, having a lot of voice-acting means that a sizable portion of the game content is actually made up of audio files, and this shows in the rather large directory for these (that is, large for RPGs at the time). Performing digital maintenance on the hard disk partition that contains the game's files can be a pain, as the number of files that this game has is astounding.
Combat is a pervasive activity in this game. More often than not, the player will have to resort to combat to progress in the story; there are enemies barring the path of the party to be removed, bosses and mini-bosses who carry certain things or hold certain important persons hostage to be defeated, critters who mill around maps waiting for unwitting adventurers to come closer, etc.
Yet, combat is not a straight-forward affair, if the plethora of skills, items, spells and game mechanics that have been mentioned above do not suggest so already. All enemies do not appear to have their capabilities limited by stamina or mana; they can continue to use special attacks or cast spells according to the whims of the AI scripts that govern their decisions. Battles of attrition will often end badly for the party, which despite numbering at up to eight party members, can be ground down to defeat if the player does not resort to tactics that prevent enemies from making use of their numerical superiority, which is an advantage that they usually will have.
Wizardry 8 is not a game for those looking for instant gratification, which is for certain.
Fortunately, Wizardry 8 has plenty of game designs that can be utilized (or more correctly, exploited) to help the player overcome enemies as his/her party romp through the game's many dungeons and wildernesses.
Outside of combat, the player can move the entire party around as if they are a single player character; this is a signature design of the Wizardry games (and many other old-school RPGs, in fact). This design can be a little weird at times: a good example being the exploration of treacherous locations, such as hopping down the rocks that break up a waterfall, which would pose serious difficulties for a party of several individuals of different sizes to keep close together tightly. However, disbelief aside, this is a very convenient game design.
Yet, it can be exploited too, especially in continuous-combat mode. Such exploits will be explained later.
Unlike the previous Wizardry games, enemies no longer appear randomly to menace the player. Instead, they now spawn into the map quite some distance away from the player's party, usually in mobs. Unless the enemy mob is designed to home in on the player's party, the player can see them coming either on-screen (if the graphical draw distance is set at long ranges), or spot their icons in the mini-map in the user interface.
The player is not able to exactly judge what kind of creatures that he/she will face; many creatures in this game are palette swaps of each other, unfortunately. However, their silhouettes would be enough to inform the player and help him/her decide the tactics to be used.
Combat itself can be played in two different variants of the classic turn-based mode or a pseudo-real-time mode. The player can toggle between these before every battle. In fact, the shrewd sort of players will be toggling between these - a lot.
Before going into the details of the combat modes, a factor that is present in both modes will have to be explained first. This is the party's "movement allowance."
The movement allowance mechanic somewhat stymies the exploitation of the aforementioned mechanic of having the entire party moving as a single in-game entity, by limiting the distance that can be covered in a short period of time. A bar representing the allowance will drain away as the player moves the entire party, and only by having turns revolve (in the turn-based modes) or staying put (in continuous combat mode) will replenish the bar.
Classic turn-based mode is generally the best way to approach a battle that the player will expect to be difficult, or the player is encountering enemies that he/she has yet to tackle. The slower pace in this mode allows the player to see any incoming attacks from enemies and have a good idea of what their capabilities are and what their AI scripts would have them do.
In the default turn-based mode, the player's party and enemies take turns to act. In the "phased" turn-based mode, participants get their turns to act according to their initiative ratings and other lesser factors. The latter mode is perhaps the most believable (as far as turn-based combat can be believable), but it is the least expedient of all combat modes.
The player can have party members performing different actions when their turn comes up, or have them repeat their action in the previous turn by making use of a handy command that remembers their last action. However, this also means that battles with huge mobs can be a very, very slow affair. The player can save in between turns, but unless the player gets an opportunity to take out many enemies in one move, there will be a lot of saving to do.
This is especially the case if the player could not be meticulous or experienced enough to devise the right order of actions to have the party performing most efficiently.
(For example, a player would be tempted to have a spell-caster cast a damage-inflicting spell at a certain enemy, though if he/she knew this enemy better, having said spell-caster cast a de-buff that makes it more vulnerable to physical attacks would have been better use of the party member's turn.)
Continuous combat mode combines real-time gameplay with actions that are governed by cool-down times and the party's overall movement allowance. In this mode, party members will repeat the actions that the player has assigned them to do, if the conditions for said actions are met (e.g. a spell-caster who was assigned to cast a spell has to have enough mana before he/she can cast it automatically) and their cool-down times are up (and these are governed by speed, initiative and other factors).
There does not appear to be any command to pause the game in this mode to switch commands, unfortunately. Having them switch actions while trying to move the party around is a very clumsy affair. Thus, this mode is only useful for battles with enemies that the player is very certain to bulldoze through. On the other hand, the player can exploit this mode to tackle certain enemy mobs in cheap manners, such as plinking away at a mob of melee-only enemies from a terrain irregularity that they cannot reach. The player can also make use of this mode to train certain skills to imbalanced levels, such as having party members continuously defend against the attacks of lousy enemies while having HP-regenerating items compensate for the attrition and thus building up skills that are associated with evading or blocking enemy attacks.
If there is a definite flaw with the combat in Wizardry 8, it is the set of conditions that governs the disengagement from combat. Generally, for an enemy, or the party, to be considered having disengaged from combat, the participant concerned has to have fled a certain distance away. However, the game sets a very long distance for this consideration, such that the player will never be able to flee from very fast enemies like flying insects, and ending combat by hunting down enemies that are fleeing (usually due to Fear status effects) can be a source of frustration.
Despite having party members moving as one entity, the player will have to worry about its formation. Someone has to be on the outside of the formation, taking any hits from melee-only enemies that had gotten close (though this doesn't mean that they can't reach the ones in the middle of the formation). Spell-casting or fire-support party members have to be at the rear, or otherwise out of the reach of enemies with close-combat specialization.
Attacks that land on the party will be apportioned to party members with the party formation as the greatest factor. Luck also plays a (fickle) role, as ranged attacks that are directed at a party member can still miss but end up landing on another who happens to be behind the intended target. On the other hand, area-effect attacks affect the entire party automatically.
Regardless of the type of enemy being faced, a common tactic they will resort to is to surround the party. When this happens, they get to attack the exposed party members. This is also when the player experiences one of the more complicated aspects of combat, which is figuring out the facing of each individual party member and the direction that the spearhead (or frontal side) of the formation is facing. There are displays in the user interface to help the player keep track of these, such as the direction that the party's front is facing in the minimap (which will rotate as the party rotates) and a smaller display of the party's formation and the arrows that denote the direction that party members are facing.
This is not a game for players with a rudimentary sense of bearing.
Turning the camera does not rotate the entire party, fortunately; rotating the party is done with its own set of controls. Each party member is free to engage whichever enemy that is within his/her arc of sight, with the ones in the center of the formation having the leeway of being able to "see" past the ones on the other ring of the formation to target any enemy beyond. (However, there is still a miniscule chance of said party members hitting their friends.)
Being a 3D game, backing into corners or other nooks and crannies to avoid being flanked is a good tactic, though the vagaries of luck won't have the supposedly more secure party members becoming unassailable to any non-area-effect attack that are directed at the party's front.
To somewhat maintain the level of challenge that the game will offer to the player, enemies that the player will fight often have their capabilities scaled according to the party's averaged level. More powerful parties will encounter different, often more troublesome sets of monsters than a lower level party within the same area.
However, to prevent starting areas from becoming more than just starting areas (or, in other words, allowing these areas to remain reliable locations for some old-fashioned grinding), the scaling mechanic is restricted in these areas. Other areas, especially places that lack the touch of civilization, will have widely varying scales.
Yet, even with the scaling mechanic, the player eventually finds that many enemies, including their more powerful variants, will simply become a hassle to battle for his/her increasingly stronger party. The statistics of party members are not the only things that increase as the party levels up; their versatility in combat does too, so that certain categories of enemies that had been giving the party a hard time earlier would be little more than riff-raff.
An example is the category of monsters that are the odd, yeti-like creatures known as Modais and Juggernauts. The Modais are difficult enough for a low-level party, while a mob of Juggernauts would annihilate one. When the party has grown strong enough to the point that the scaling mechanic has the Modais completely superseded by Juggernauts, chances are that the party has already gained some spells or items that allow them to incapacitate mobs of Juggernauts and remove them without much damage to the party. Yet, Juggernauts have so many hitpoints, removing them can take a long time even if it is significantly easier to do so for a high-level party.
The developers did include some measures to address this, such as vastly out-classed monster mobs practically going out of their way to avoid the player's party, but for the most part, enemies are still hostile enough to go after the player.
As mentioned earlier, combat is often the only way to progress through the story. The story has the usual tropes of RPG designs: quests, dialogue and decisions, etc. However, the player can expect these to inevitably lead to combat, despite the player's efforts to resolve situations peacefully. The quests that require the player to get to a specified location will emphasize this: more often than not, there will monster mobs patrolling the paths that the player will have to take, and to add to that hassle, there will be parties of enemies like bounty hunters and mercenaries that will be waiting at chokepoints in maps.
There are some overarching secondary storylines. For example, there is the galaxy-spanning feud between the T'Rang and Umpani (which the player can get to somewhat resolve in this last entry of the Wizardry series) and the problems affecting the lives of the locals, such as the peaceful Trynnies' battle against the encroaching Rattkin and the Rapax's plans for conquest. However, these also involve a lot of combat, and are not really tied that well into the main story and quest.
If a player is looking for an RPG that does not focus on combat so much as a solution to any in-game problem, Wizardry 8 is not really a good choice.
Fortunately, combat is not all there is to Wizardry 8. Exploration is a big part of this game, perhaps more so than combat.
This source of fun is made possible by the new fully 3D engine that SirTech has developed just for Wizardry 8. This engine powers two different kinds of environments: dungeons, which are a staple of old-school RPGs, and relatively vast and open maps that are interspersed with terrain irregularities. Furthermore, the Portal spell, which allows the party to zip between two points in the entire game (except for certain locations which will be rendered inaccessible as the story progresses), helps to make exploration enjoyable (and also makes re-supplying the party and offloading loot easier).
The dungeons in this game are a lot like the dungeons that have been seen in earlier Wizardy games and their contemporaries; the party romps down corridors and labyrinths, seeking out enemy patrols to be eliminated, loot containers to be emptied and doors to be unlocked and opened to reveal more of the dungeon being cleaned out. There are plenty of such dungeons in the game, and they are often designed to have unique but fixed rewards in the form of items that are difficult to obtain elsewhere. The dungeons will likely appeal to RPG traditionalists.
The other sort of environments allows clever players to make use of the physics that govern the party's movement. Wizardry 8 is definitely not a platformer game, of course. However, its maps have been designed to reward the curious and daring – some hidden treasures are located in dangerous places. For some maps with verticality, there are terrain features that can be navigated to reach hidden alcoves and chambers that hold goodies to be looted, such as the aforementioned waterfall that has items lying on the rocks that break the flow of water.
For exceptionally puritanical RPG traditionalists, SirTech has the optional "Iron Man Mode". In this hardcore mode, the player is not allowed to save the game, but has only one auto-save that is updated when the player quits the game. It does take away the expedience of saving/loading games to undo any mishap, though the auto-save can still be located in the game directory so that a back-up may be made.
As mentioned earlier, Wizardry 8 benefits from a 3D game engine that had been developed just for it. While this game engine does not provide graphical pizzazz that comes close to that provided by the games industry's leading game engines at the time, it was still a feat because RPGs were not all 3D games, especially for the old-school subgenre of RPGs.
Furthermore, SirTech compensated for the relatively lower graphical technology with extensive map designs (some maps can be huge with a lot of topographical features both artificial and natural), judicious inclusions of (virtual) pieces of artwork (a certain fountain with an alluring statue is a highlight) and plenty of monster/critter/NPC models (though SirTech also resorted to a lot of palette swaps and resized clones).
However, there are graphical oddities like stretched textures, pop-ins and very limited draw distance. On the other hand, the technical shortfalls of the game engine do not include the frame rate, which is surprisingly stable.
(It has to be noted here that SirTech also took quite lot of liberties in making use of the game engine to produce not-so-kid-friendly models and animations, which may detract from the themes of Wizardry. For example, fairies in Wizardry 8 are peculiarly female and very naked. Another example is that apparently busty female models also have great helpings of jiggle-bones animations in their upper torsos during combat.)
The Wizardry franchise is known for mixing high-fantasy and sci-fi elements into a surprisingly symbiotic blend. This not only shows in the artwork, but also in the sound designs as well.
A lot of creatures in this game sound as weird as they look. For example, the aforementioned Modais and Juggernauts gurgle whenever they attack or receive hits during combat, making their already creepy countenance even creepier. A lot of environments in this game have otherworldly ambient noises, with undead crypts being exceptional highlights.
The sound effects of spells, attacks and other noises that result from the actions of player characters (and enemies) would seem familiar to RPG veterans, if not for the sci-fi/fantasy hybrid themes. For example, a player would hear the typical whoosh of Fireballs being cast, followed by the shriek of a sonic weapon fired by a Gadgeteer and strange warbles from a Psionic spell. While a seasoned player would have heard such sounds before, the amusing mix of noises, coupled with the entertaining voice-overs that had been mentioned earlier, would raise an eye-brow or both.
In conclusion, Wizardry 8 is perhaps the best exemplar of an old-school RPG. It is not for those who prefer more immediate gratification from their games, but it certainly would satisfy those who love meticulous gameplay.