Customer Reviews

Wizards & Warriors

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

This game takes me back to when First person RPG's were king ala Wizardry and the Bard's Tale series of game's. D.W. Bradley, who designed the Wizardry series of games, is back with a vengenace with Wizards and Warriors. At the start of the game you must make your characters from a choice 10 playable races, which include elves,dwarves,and more exotic races such as whiskas(Tigerpeople) and Pixies. Once outside, the world is in 3d and IMO the graphics are well done, actually making you feel very apart of the world. Combat is done either real-time or turned-based, leaving it up to the player how they want to fight there battles. There are tons of quests for the player to do, there is always a cool place to explore or somebody to talk too that needs a quest done. One of my favorite things about this game is it does feel like you are in this land, it draws you in and once you start playing it you realize you cannot stop playing, which is what happened to me! This game is not for everybody, gamers who don't like First person games should prob not get it, but any body who loved Ultima Underworld and Wizardry go directly and pick this game up, it is one of the best RPG experiences I have ever had.

Like the other reviewers, I found the gameplay itself to be quite interesting. However, the game has a number of technical problems that render it unplayable in its current form. Namely:

CRASHES FREQUENTLY: Not only does it crash often, but it crashes reliably whenever you encounter certain events. One singularly annoying example is that it crashes every time you kill a particular monster. Since you have to kill this monster to proceed with the main story line, this effectively ends the game.

VERY SLOW: My computer is actually a bit faster than the requirements on the box, and I find the game ponderously slow. Restoring a saved game takes a whopping 5 MINUTES! Also, the game has to stop at various points to load new adventuring areas, with similarly long pauses. Let's just say that you'll need to have a book handy to read while playing this game. One mysterious delay lies in the fact that that quitting the game WITHOUT A SAVE can sometimes take five minutes or more. In the same amount of time, one can manually terminate the game using the escape key and restart it, so I have no idea what the computer is doing during all this time.

There is also a modest problem with game balance. Virtually all of the monsters in the game are push overs. They're so easy, that you won't even bother to cast your enhancing spells-- they're just not worth the trouble. Then you finally encounter one of the big monsters, and it's completely overpowering. Someone really should have paid some more attention game balance back in the design phase.

That said, it's an interesting enough game, and I might take another shot at it once they get around to putting a patch out. Until they release a patch, however, I would strongly discourage anyone from buying this game.

Revising my previous review: having tinkered with this game some more, the problems are even worse than I thought. If I could give this game zero stars, I would, because it is absolutely unplayable in it's current form. In spite of some interesting design elements, there are EXTREME problems with both programming and game balance. I honestly don't see how this game could have made it through alpha testing without someone catching these problems. It is clear that nobody at the company ever played it all the way through.

About half way through the game, you hit a pair of monsters called "Amazoni man traps". I don't use the term "unkillable" lightly, but these things deserve it. They have an ENORMOUS, rapid fire, area effect attack that paralyzes and poisons, and always whipes out the entire party in the first volley! I had to replay the battle five times just to last long enough in order to be able to turn around and see what was attacking me! Their attack is so disproportionate to anything else in the game that it has to be a programming glitch. I really can't believe that any playtester on the game made it past these things without using some sort of cheat code-- if they even tested this section of the game at all. The Man Traps can't be bypassed, and even a party which has completed every quest possible by this point will be woefully inadequate to deal with them. Basically, the game comes crashing to a halt at this point.

Anyway, like I said, the game is unplayable in its current form. I'm annoyed that Activision released it in this state, and I feel cheated at having spent money on it.

I'm about half-way through it, but so far, it's worth the money and the wait. The patch seems to have fixed almost all the bugs (but characters still "loose" things they pick up...where do those items go???). It looks and feels like the Wizardry series (no surprise) so if you liked those games, especially the last two or three, you'll like this one, too. Some complaints: the way the game handles the passing of time is strange - I seem to do most of my travelling and fighting at night! There's no way to rest and let time go by, as in M&M. I don't like the way the outside world is arranged, in long winding "paths" rather than just one wide open space. And I definitely don't like the game's tendency to give one hit point when a character levels up. Other than that, a pretty good first person RPG. I hope Bradley gives us more of the same!

As noted in other reviews, there are a few bugs, and the discussions surrounding Activision/Heuristic Park have been the most confusing thing I've ever seen in game playing. Who ever heard of a publisher reluctant to release a patch?? The gameplay, however, is fantastic. I've restarted the game on three different occassions and explored different character advancement strategies. The whole skill/magic advancement is very enjoyable -- there's a real sense of progress in this game. The dungeon crawls are fun; the puzzles tend to be pretty self-explanatory (not a whole lot of "find the right pixel"). The journal/quest tracking mechanism could be better, and there are quite a few bugs, but overall this is the best game I've played in the last few years.

Simply put this game has everything you'd expect, story line, graphics etc with an old school feel to it. It reminds you of playing wizardry, might and magic all the games you grew up with yet delivers much more. When I first started playing I couldn't stop for two solid days, I love the class system and the guilds for advancement something you don't see enough of. If you enjoyed all those classics you use to play go get this one right away.

This game was very addicting and fun. Some of the voices are done really well! The graphics are pretty good for an older game and you can go up to 1024 x 768 resolution with it. The monster animations are done rather well and there are lots of quests to do. You can join guilds and change your charater class whenever you want. The spell effects are good too. My favorite is the Firestorm and Tornado. The sound and music are done well too. It even has positional sound with a four or more speaker setup. I enjoyed the ending movie, becuase it was totaly unsuspected. For a three year old game, this game still holds its own!

This game was very addicting and fun. Some of the voices are done really well! The graphics are pretty good for an older game and you can go up to 1024 x 768 resolution with it. The monster animations are done rather well and there are lots of quests to do. You can join guilds and change your charater class whenever you want. The spell effects are good too. My favorite is the Firestorm and Tornado. The sound and music are done well too. It even has positional sound with a four or more speaker setup. I enjoyed the ending movie, becuase it was totaly unsuspected. For a three year old game, this game still holds its own!

Simply the best on the market right now. Level 1 (of 3) is cake. However, Level 2 is pretty intense w/ some extremely nasty monsters (learn to save game ASAP as soon as you sense ANY mantraps because you will be killed almost every time you meet one until you master blanketing them w/ top level spells - which always works - unless you're standing too close or the software lets them beat up on you first, in which case you're still dead). Level 3 rocks. A word to the wise: this software is NOT compatible w/ Windows 2000, even w/ patches, so beware & have fun killing everything that crosses your path.

This RPG is a lot like Dungeon Master, Dagerfall and Lands Of Lore, but the graphics for the monsters and locations look better, as does the changing sky as night approaches. You move up to six characters around a huge world by foot, horse, and boat meeting quest helping NPC's and fighting for your life. The interface is a bit clunky at first, the normal move with arrows and look with mouse combo is missing, also, you can only restore your position by quiting the game back to the town menu, where to save you must leave the town. Still, after you get used to the mechanics of the game I found myself having a lot of fun!