Couldn't resist to add my 2¢ to this W&W opinion...When I ordered W&W I was exalted; finally another RPG from
Master Bradley (although I'd only played Wiz7 so far). When the
game arrived I installed it, which took a long, long time since
it installed hundreds of BMPs, hundreds of WAVs and so on, about
over 1000 files in all (the uninstall takes forever as well).
When I started to play in the city where I'd create my gang, the
game would crash with a malloc (memory allocation) error. It took
me quite some time to figure out that my CD was slightly faulty,
and I had to inbstall it from my CD writer to get it to run,
which had a better error control (needless to say, I took this
opportunity to throw out my CD-ROM in favor for a DVD)
After finally being able to play, I noticed some design flaws
that gave the game a highly unprofessional look.
-Graphics-
All NPCs, when talking to you, gesticulate as if they'd like
to hurt the air around them. It just looks silly. They
often talk lengthily, always one sentence at a time, and it
takes forever to display, which is stupid since most NPCs aren't
voice-overed anyway.
The interface is filled up with junk; the viewing window is
smaller than in Wiz8 on the smallest setting.
-Sound-
Nothing spectacular, very few voices. The music can and will be
turned off. Your Chars (as posted above) don't talk. A shame.
-Game Design-
The classes are pretty standard. The races have some interesting
choices: pig-like creatures, rat-like creatures (can you say
Rattkin?), Pixies (faerie equivalent), tigers, elephants (!),
lizards, and your standard human, elf, gnome and dwarf. Three
classes can only be chosen by solving a special quest during
the game. That idea is nice, but two of these can only be
reached in the last dungeon. 
You can use horses on land and boats on water. The horses
don't give you more speed though.
-Story-
Confusing, to say the least.
-Play Balancing-
99% of the monsters were OK for your level. You had your hard
and your easy fights. But there were the lilies... Imagine a
Wiz8 iron weed that only appears in numbers of 3-4, and each one
sprouts a nauseating vapor that hits you every round for about
40 HP, while you have about 100. These appear first in the
wilderness, where there are tricks to kill them at range
without them being able to reach you. When you meet them in the
boogre cave though, all hope is lost. With a hex editor, I
hacked my party's HP up to 5000 and I still lost half of this
insane amount killing these buggers. Playtesting? What for?
-Combat-
In Wiz8, (round-based or not) combat starts as soon as the
monsters see you. In W&W round-based combat starts when you
reach melee. Until then, it's real time. Consequence: casting
spells at distance is very hard as you have to click quite a lot
to use your spell, and the game is not halted while you use the
menu. Therefore: in W&W, if you see a powerful spellcaster
or breather (lilies) from quite a distance, you're toast.
-Spells-
Divided in 6 realms, like Wiz. You can't cast anything in town,
the towns are just sort of an interface menu to reach the shops.
If you want to cast a spell on your party, you have to leave the
town.
-Items-
You can specialize in different weapon types, but the only
useful weapons you find are swords... (However, Wiz8 has also
a slight problem with that, or did anyone find a good axe
lately? My ranger kicks ass with the giant sword at Sword skill
of 2, while he couldn't hurt a fly with Hand axe and Axe skill
of 60)
These are quite a lot of rants, so you might wonder, if it's
worth it. To answer your question, I played it to the end, which
I wouldn't have done if it's a total loser. But be warned that
if you compare W&W to Wiz8 (which you'll probably do) W&W loses
10 to 1. I won't play it again (little replayability). And
concerning the technics, hundreds of uncompressed files don't
especially speak for good programming (didn't Bradley hold back
Wiz7 for months so he could put it on only 2 diskettes?).
Hope this helps
-- The Duke
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