First my impressions:
(As Grandpa Simpson): "Why I remember back when we had role playing games, we only had two colors and the only sound was of the external disk drive whirring and ..." J

For those that know me or don't that gives you an idea of who I am, where I am coming from (and how long I've been an RPG addict). I love Computers, RPGs, and sarcasm, not necessarily in that order.  And like many of you, I have been weathering this dark age of lacking and pseudo-RPGs (like Diablo – a fine game in it’s own right, just not what I would call and RPG) the best I can, waiting for Wizards & Warriors® and Wizardry® 8 to come out.

As you all probably know, Wizards & Warriors® hit the shelves at the end of last month. I didn’t rush right out and buy it, I was going to wait to see how soon and how far the priced dropped … an indicator I look at as to the quality and overall reception the game receives from the public. But curiosity and the yearning for a true RPG got the better of me and I bought a copy. After playing it for as much time as I could spare over the past 3 days, here is what I think.

First off I have to say, right or wrong, I am prone to having first impressions. I have followed this game for a while and when I saw the actual artwork for the box cover, I was disappointed.

Not with the art itself, Keith Parkinson does great work, but I thought that a game that had been in development for around 4 years could have had (or more so deserved) an original piece. For those not familiar with the original "Mummies in the Crypt" piece, take a look and you will see what I mean (from this page: large image - 414KB or small image - 21K images). It seems that piece and few of his other works (girl looks straight out of EverQuest®, knight looks like Sparhawk, shadowy figure reminds me of Allanon) were patched together for this box cover.

Once the box was opened, neither pulling out the small paper foldout of the map nor leafing through the manual which seemed a bit light, gave me any more satisfaction. The intro movie was very pixilated, which again left me a bit flat.

Once the game is running, it gets much better. The atmosphere created by the graphics and music is alluring, the game draws you in … things we have all been waiting for. But once the initial magic and sparkle wears off, there are issues.

That said, here is what I found good, bad and (no, not ugly) indifferent about the game. Most comparisons if any, will be drawn to Wizardry® 7, which D.W. Bradley designed and is (in my opinion) the greatest RPG (if not game) of all time. Whether that is fair or not, who is to say? But, any game touted as "the best RPG ever!" (quote by D.W. Bradley) should be expecting some comparisons to be drawn.

The good:

Graphics:

Let’s get this out of the way, since it should really be the least of our concerns – we are supposed to be role-playing, not getting wrapped up in "eye candy". Though, the gaming market being what it is, you have to keep up … and I say they do. The 2D renditions of the towns are really nice. The 3D animations/rendering of the characters and monsters you meet are very detailed and not too "blocky" as many polygon-rendered characters tend to be. The trees and forest look impressive as background. And the monsters (of which there is a good variety) are very well done. I was really impressed by the giant tree spider and the rendering (and size) of the female NPCs …, uhm, well, uh, let’s not go there J . Let’s just say, in all three cases, I could have been thinking: "Are those real?"

Music/Sound:

The background music is fine. It’s there, it sets a mood or feeling, adds to the environment as a whole and is not obtrusive – that is exactly what I want. The voices are also well done. Many people thought the voice acting in Wizardry 7 was poor or too comical, but I doubt those same people would say the same for this game. You may have issues with the "broken English" or just how the Toad men sound, but come on … they are toad men … how should they sound? To me, they were fine.

The monsters, fighting (arrows whizzing and thunking into targets), actions (like breaking barrels, falling down ladders or spells being cast) were all quite realistic and a real plus to the game and again, the atmosphere it creates.

Characters:

One big plus this game has is the ability to add and delete members from your party – something missing in most RPGs for a long time. And from the start, it seems you are almost overwhelmed with the amount of variations you can have for your party and individual characters. From all the races and clans with their various traits and skills, both inherent and acquirable, it seems like a few weeks could be spent just testing the waters and seeing what the "best" party configuration is for your taste.

This is very reminiscent of Wizardry 7, in that practically any party you chose to start out with, seems like it could be tailored into the "right" party. That being the one you take through the game and enjoy all (or at least most of) the way. It also seems the door is left open to all those that loved to have a party of superheroes that knew every skill and spell in the game.

I did not really get very far into character advancement, as I was trying to really "feel around" more to see what I could and could not do, more than how well I may one day be able to do it. I did spend quite a bit of time looking of the traits and skills.

Traits are basically abilities, that you either have or you don’t. And if you don’t, you most likely will want to get many or most of them (through various means). Skills are abilites that once you have them, you can work on improving them and many are closely related to traits or granted by having certain traits.

For instance, once you acquire the Musician trait, you can start training on your Music skill. The trait gives you the ability and the skill rates just how able you are.

The other main thing to take note of is many of the traits and skills give similar or sometimes opposite abilities. So again, you have a lot of exploring ahead of you when trying to map out just which traits you do and don’t want your various characters to acquire or start out with.

Game play:

Well, what do we want here? This is probably where there will be the most diversity of opinions, mostly based on what you are used to, what you want, what you expect, what you will put up with and what you can overcome.

For those familiar with Wizardry 7, you know that the way to advance though the game is to level up – basically by killing every monster you can and picking up a few points here and there for special deeds and solving certain puzzles.

Wizards & Warriors seems to balance those out, at least little more to my liking. Again, I haven’t played the whole game, just a few days, but it seems that (unless you adjust the monster frequency or respawn rate, which I did not) there are much fewer monsters and much more quests.

The quests are much more important, since they are the keys to role ascension (the Wizards & Warriors term for class changing), picking up skills, gaining experience and much sought after and needed … gold J

The quests, at least for role ascension, come with a fairly detailed narrative explaining what you need to do and why the quest is important to your ascension into the role. This I really liked, since it gives you more of a sense of purpose, rather than making you feel like somebody’s hired gun or errand boy (or gal).

And as I eluded to, there is always …

Combat:

I’ve heard the terms "Adaptive Time-Phasing" (ATP - the name given Wizards & Warriors combat system) and "phased combat" (the description of Wizardry 8’s combat system) and I have heard them both described many times in different ways. But, I think until you experience first person combat in a "real time" 3D world, you just won’t get it.

Once you do, as far as ATP goes, it is a very workable system. I only played in turn based mode. Who wants to try and control 6 chracters in real time, anyway? An octopus missing two arms, is the only answer that comes to mind.

You may find it frustrating at first as I did, but I soon caught on and was firing arrows, swinging swords, maces, axes and casting (and dodging) spells fairly easily, for the most part. I still had the tendency to continually click on my targets (a la some real time click-fest game). But I really think there is hope for me yet, and I can be retrained to truly once again enjoy turn-based combat (and give my mouse and finger a bit of a rest).

I think the best part about combat was being able to have close and ranged weapons, both at the ready (i.e. equipped). And when combat was joined, depending on your range, the appropriate weapon (ranged or close) was automatically selected … very intuitive and a welcome advance in weapons technology (or at least their use).

Other points:

I am often amazed at just how little sleep a person really needs when they are really "into" something. I remember playing Wizardry 7 until 1:00, 2:00 even 3:00 a.m. (and I think beyond that sometimes), night after night and still going to work at 7:00 the next (or technically later that same) morning. Then, while at work, most of my thoughts were about the game, where I was, what would be next, should I have …. Well you probably understand what I am getting at and have experienced the same thing at times.

I got the same initial feeling from this game. I was up playing until 1:30 a.m. the first night (probably didn’t get to sleep until after about 2:30 – just could not shut down my brain J ). Then up until about 1:00 a.m. the next night. There is a real feeling of depth, replayability (a term I think popularized or defined by Wizardry 7) and true, old-style Rolepaying.

The third night I gave up around 11:00 p.m. So, now for …
 

The bad:

I thought this was an interesting tidbit or occurrence. Back around the end of last year, a former employee of Heuristic Park posted an unofficial question on their board, asking people to rate what they felt were the most important features to the game, from his list of features. What I found interesting was I had to add the my own item to the list for my #1 choice, as it was missing from his list and it shows up here as well …

The interface:

I think I went to bed early the first night because my hand hurt – literally. This may not be fair, since I didn’t take the time to re-map the movement keys to something more ergonomic for me. That way I wouldn’t had have to continually hold down the mouse button(s) for such extended periods, but I was more interested in the game and figured I could worry about that later.

I’ve played other 1st person/3D games before, like Thief, and never found it painful to maneuver. Granted, in this game you are doing a lot more than in Thief (more actions, choices, modes), but that is all the more reason to provide a better interface.

Another major drawback to me was the inability to do simple things. They have given you the ability to retrieve many of you spent arrows along with the loot you obtain from dispatching your enemies – that is great. But again, the interface fails … arrows and some other object are so thin, that you find yourself clicking on them 2, 3, 4 or more times, just to pick them up, while the mouse cursor seems to be toggling between its current mode and the "pick up the item" mode.

Items that seem within or just inches beyond your reach, sometimes are not. And clicking on them will cause you to do one of two things: walk around and pick it up (which is great, that is what it should do) or just continually walk around … and around … until you press a navigation key or do some other canceling action. I found that really annoying and spent a fair amount of time trying to pick up many arrows that way, before finally just giving up on them and moving on.

Alt+Tab:
This is a Windows® program and Alt+Tab-ing in and out of the game is not supported? Come on.

Ladders:
Ladders are a real problem, in both directions. Climbing a ladder should be a basic function in any game of this sort. It should not require anything more than a simple mouse click or two or a button press: ‘C’ for ‘Climb’ comes to mind, from Wizardry 7. I again spent a fair amount of time, even after reading about others woes in navigating ladders and the hints and tips they gave, to little or no avail. It seemed (like the arrow retrieval) that there was a narrow "window of opportunity", that you had to click on just the right spot and then up you go. I would find myself clicking, moving the mouse around all over the ladder, readjusting my approach all in vain, then suddenly ZIP! Up I would go, all the way to the top.

I was only able to climb down one time – the rest of the attempts, I just ended up falling. This should just not be that hard.

Load/Save games:
I really couldn’t believe that the game (apparently*) limited me in the number of saved games I could have. I am way outside the norm (in various ways and for a multitude of reason, which we don’t need to get into here) when it comes to saved games – over 1,000 for Wizardry 7. But, to limit it and not just allow us to manage them seems too confining and a restriction that would have been better left off.

*I say apparently, because I didn’t bother using them all up, to see if a scroll bar would appear … I doubt that it would.

They do add the nice feature of a preview screen showing what you last saw before saving the game. But when it comes down to it, I am going to choose flexibility and control over bells and whistles almost every time.

Also, the inability to save and load games anywhere I want seems another restrictive choice – you can only load from a saved game while in town and only save games while out exploring. So, if I am about to do something stupid – strike that – test the Darwinism threshold for a certain dubious action, I would really like to:

1. Save the game
2. Poke the sleeping monster
3. Reload after most of my party just died

In Town:
I was a little disappointed that the towns are not really "interactive". Sure you go there and can enter the standard buildings, get quests, find information, train in skills, do your role ascension, buy and sell all kinds of items ... but I was looking for more. More buildings, more people, a more interactive environment, like in other games, such as Wizardry 7 and Realms of Arkania. I am pretty sure things will get better as I adventure farther (into the castles, temples, dungeons, crypts and such), so again, this was just first impression.

Message window history:
If you have six characters in your party, chances are there are times they will all be hit with spells and other things simultaneously. There just aren’t enough lines in the display to really keep track of what is happening, even when you expand the window. Just the addition of a scroll bar, with maybe twice or three times the number of displayed lines, would have been a great improvement.

(Addendum)
Elrond was kind enough to point out there actually is a scroll bar there, I just did not know it. The skull you click on, to expand the text window I am talking about, also doubles as the slider control for a scroll bar. Not real intuitive, since there is nothing that looks like a scroll bar there and pressing the up/down arrow keys did not cause the text to scroll, as one might expect.

The other interface-related "issues" I had, you will find under the ‘Indifferent’ heading.

Graphics:

Aside from the opening movie being very pixilated, no complaints here.

Music/Sound:

I only had one issue here and maybe it was just "pilot error" and this might be considered more an "important safety tip" than anything else. I was playing the first night with headphones and it seemed that "hearing" in the game was affected drastically by both direction and distance.

On one reload, I was right outside the town gate (facing away) and heard the bells starting to ‘bong’. As I turned to my left, OUCH! My ears! Turn it down, quick! It became way too loud.

I had the same kind of experience the first time I was attacked by bats. They came screeching up to me at acceptable volume levels, but when one got right in my face, again ouch! So, I turned down a couple of the volume controls and since then no problems (I also quit using the headphones – which are not of the highest quality. I’d say they are about a headphone –2, maybe even cursed J ).

NPCs:

There are only three things I would like changed about the NPCs. After the first long intro, that starts you off adventuring for the legendary sword, I was ready for a "turn off the waving arms" button.

Some of the NPCs in town do not ‘talk’ (basically all of the ones in buildings, so far), which at first I thought was a bug. It seems on a game of this magnitude and quality, you would want to go the extra mile and finish off things like this. These are the people giving you your quest, to go become a Paladin, Samurai or Ninja. Let them tell you about it!

But maybe there are just too many quests to pack all those bloated .wav files onto 2 CDs. If so, and they are quality quests, then forget I mentioned the lack of speech. I’ll always take more robust and meaningful game play over bells and whistles (like hearing every bit of speech).

And lastly, after taking on two quests and completing one, when I returned to claim my rewards, the NPC seemed to be a bit too multi-task happy. He would say one line about quest ‘A’, then the one line about quest ‘B’ and kept alternating back and forth. It was quite confusing trying to follow just what he was saying, until I caught on to what was happening.

Game play:

I don’t think I could really comment on this until I play the game more. The first three days is not enough to make any judgements ‘for’ and especially ‘against’ game play. And so far as I have seen, aside from one thing (load times) it all seems fine.

The load time is just too long – over two minutes every time I load a saved game or enter/exit town just seems way to long. At first I was going to put this under ‘indifferent’, because I thought it was probably due to my machine being nearly the minimum required: Pentium II/266mhz/64MB RAM. But after talking to a guy with a P3/ 650/192MB RAM who had the same complaint, I figured I should move it into the ‘bad’.

Combat:

As I said above, once I used the system a bit, I got the hang of it and I think it works really well, for the most part.

About the first thing that happened to me, as I left town for the first time was I met my first NPC and was simultaneously attacked by some trolls. Now, I am new at this, so I was not sure if they were "together" or not. So, in ignoring the NPC, by attacking the trolls, I kind of ticked him off and he left. A similar thing happened on a few other occasions: interacting with an NPC and up come some monsters. It would be nice if they "noticed" that I would like to stay and chat, but am getting my butt kicked. Maybe, I could say "Yes, that is interesting. Say, could you excuse us for just one minute while we kill this annoying band of trolls?" … mayhem ensues … "Ah, yes, now you were saying …"

It just seems that monster spawning should be turned off while talking with NPCs, so you don’t potentially miss a key word or phrase and have them walk off all huffy, because you were too busy to chat.

One combat glitch I had was with one of the Lake Nymphs, who seemed to get stuck on my raft. I could only see a corner of her leg, and as I turned every way I could think of, to try and get her in my sights, her partially displayed leg would just stay floating out of my range.

I turned left, the raft and leg went left. I turned right, the raft and leg went right. I felt like a dog chasing his own tail. I think after finally looking all the way up or down, I finally shook the leg J

Another annoying thing was the Toad Man "cheerleader" I ran into. I was pretty much on a killing spree, so this may have just been intended as a penalty for my actions. Once I attacked my first toad man, I was continuously assaulted by his apparent alarm call: "Warm-skin dangerous!". I don’t mind his cry for help, but after about 50 times, I felt the need to turn the sound down a bit, at least until he lie dead at my feet.

Targeting, whether in ranged or close combat, is another issue. And this may well be the design or intent of the system, but I found it irritating that I could not easily click on flying bats (even inches in front of my face) to target them. As they hover, they often move just enough to toggle the mouse pointer out of targeting mode, right before or as you click. It’s fine to implement some system that takes into account these monster should be harder to hit than one significantly larger and/or standing solidly on the ground, but it should not be so difficult for me to indicate what my target is.

Another aspect of combat that seems like it could have been better, is close combat when you are out of range. I really love the fact that your correct weapon is selected for the appropriate range (see Good combat remarks above). But, when you only have a close combat weapon and you are out of range, it seems rather than just let you "whiff", the interface could stop you from swinging or at least warn you that you are out of range. This additional step seems very similar to the way spells already work, in that once you are out of mana for the selected spell (or perhaps spell book), clicking on a target to attack does basically nothing and you have to choose another action. This is not such an issue when you know you are at "ranged" distance, but when in close combat it is not readily apparent that you are not close enough, until you have wasted your turn and see some message like "Dufus whiffs".
 

The indifferent:

The Interface:

Some people may categorize these issues as bad, but for me they were just disappointing things that seemed overlooked or not quite done. When you create a character, there are forward and back buttons that allow you to "tinker" with your adjustments to skills and such until you feel you have them right – that is great. During "level up", you get pretty much the same interface and text telling you that you can hit continue or back, but there is no back arrow. So, you live with your mistakes or restart and level up again.
 

Also in leveling up, as you scroll over skills it updates your bottom status bar-like display with a description of the skill, which is good. But it seems to immediately refresh with the text that was there, telling you to distribute your points, so you can’t really read the description of the skill.

As I mentioned earlier, I have a "low-end" machine, by the requirements for this game, so it may be hardly worth mentioning, but there were times in the game that it seemed to be exercising my hard drive much more than my imagination. By that I mean I would come around the corner to see a windmill and … then ... things … would come to a standstill, while my hard drive churned away, presumably swapping out memory or loading new information. If it were just animations, that would be one thing, but it happened a few times just strolling through the forests, with no NPCs, monsters or animations around. And when it happens while you have the mouse clicked for movement, it seems all that movement is recorded and when the hard drive catches up to the game (or vice versa), you leap ahead to account for that movement.

The last piece of indifference I have to offer is in regards to Hardware vs. Software mode (for display). Again, graphics are on the bottom of my list of priorities, so to me this is hardly worth mentioning.

Because of problems I have previously had with hardware mode games and my card (Voodoo 3 3000 AGP) I expected to have problems in hardware mode … and did. What I did not expect, was that aside from the standard problems, there seemed to be no difference in the playable screen size (on any setting) and the text in the windows were blurred or fuzzy in hardware mode. But as I said, I expected hardware mode problems and since software mode looked and worked better for me, I didn’t feel it was an issue worth pursuing.
 

The Hearsay:

Though I have not experienced any of these following problems, I have conversed with people who have and there is quite a bit of discussion about them on the Heuristic Park board.

Quests:

Many people are finding that if they meet an NPC involved in a quest and perform the desired actions, then later take up the quest that involves that NPC, getting credit for the quest is problematic. They either have to go find the NPC again and run through the desired action again or they are simply unable to trigger anything that gives them the credit for the quest.

Also in regards to quests, though it seems acceptable to me that each member of your party must join a guild to accept one of that guild’s quests, it seems redundant to require each member report individually, that they have completed the quest, when one or more have completed it. Again, I have not experienced this yet and think I would find a trivial complaint, if only there were a way to bypass the NPCs long-winded response, that you have already heard once. Otherwise you are forced to cycle through it 6 times, if everyone has completed the same quest.

The 100 in all skills bug revisited?:

For those that know the history of Wizardry VII, there was an unintentional limitation introduced at some point that made the game unplayable if you had maxed out all of your skills. Similarly, many people are noticing that their characters can acquire more skills than can be displayed. And if they are not displayed, the logical question arises: how do you add points to them when leveling up?

Most other issues seem to be more system specific and I feel this is hardly to the place to address or rehash them.

No Import:

As much of a following as I assume D.W. Bradley has, from his Wizardry series fame, I really expected to be able to import Wizardry VII characters, into Wizards and Warriors, but there is no such option.
 

The Recap:

This is all just my opinion (aside from the hearsay) so take it for what it is worth. Initially I was disappointed, then enthused, and finally ended up somewhere in between. My experience so far really reminds me of when I got Realms of Arkania II (Star Trails).

I had just finished Wizardry VII and wanted more of the same. Seeing that RofA came from the same publisher (Sir-Tech Software, Inc.) and was another award winning RPG, I got it, with high expectations. My system, which was again slightly above the minimum requirements, really made the game completely unplayable. Years later, I installed the game on a much faster system and (this time not expecting it to be another Wizardry VII) and found I really enjoyed the game. Even though it was a much different system, I found there were things I liked better and others I disliked. But what a difference it made coming in with more realistic expectations. I played it all the way through, enjoying it quite a bit.

This was probably a great experience, since it reminds me that I should be judging software on what it is, not what I hope it will be. Even so, while I would not call Wizards and Warriors unplayable, the interface is very difficult at times and really hampers my ability to enjoy the game, as I feel I could or should.

It truly seems, from my experience so far, that the game was designed more as a multi-player online game with single player support and when the multi-player portion was "shelved", it left some serious issues for the single player game.

But the game does have promise and I am looking forward to continuing on, as well as hopefully a patch to address the interface and other issues.

And I guess it would be remiss to not give some quantitative rating of my feeling for the game (especially after poking fun at Daily Radar from just labeling it "Hit").

Without going into a detailed [some number] out of 10 stars for each area of the game, I think just an overall dollar rating should suffice.

As it stands, is it worth the $49.99 list price I paid: no, more like $30.00.

Would it be worth full price without all the "bad" stuff: yes, even much more.

What would it take for it to be worth full price: Fix the following (in no particular order of preference):

1. Combat loot retrieval
2. Combat targeting
3. Prevent monster spawning when interacting with non-hostile NPCs
4. Ladder Navigation
5. Movement and looking around
6. Allow Alt+Tab
7. NPC Arm waving (the could wave as I greet them, after that only the lips "need" to move)
8. Fix the quest credit problems

Thisreviewwastoolong at softwarespecialties.com

Thisreviewwasjustright at softwarespecialties.com

Youareadangertoyourselfandothers at softwarespecialties.com
 

The End:
 

Added 10/8/2000 - my (approx. 3 year old system) system specs:

• Pentium II 266 Mhz
• 64 MB RAM
• Voodoo 3 3000 AGP
• Western Digital 6 Gig HD