Now, those of you who think the only good games are the ones where you have to see blood flying and need to be pulling triggers in HD graphics on your 360, you can ignore this post as you'll just think I'm some sort of pansy most likely. Or at least, that's the response I'll normally get after talking about this kind of game.
Anyways, for those of you who don't know what Wizardry is, it's a series of games which has a rather odd past. It was originally developed in 1981 by Robert J. Woodhead and Sir-tech Software (or at least, that's what the copyright says). This means the graphics aren't that good. Which they honestly aren't.
Well, the graphics got better over time, and eventually moved to 16 colors in the 6th game, Bane of the Cosmic Forge.
See the improvement? Of course, that's because it was made in 1990. Now, this is the game I am currently playing, and I want to say this: It is awesome. The game has you enter some random castle called Bane of the Cosmic Forge and run around killing stuff and... well, I really don't know why. That's probably my only gripe with the game, but apparently it's supposed to be satirical so I guess that makes some sort of sense. Seeing as how some of the skills your rogue has are "skulldugary" or something silly like that.
Erhm, right. So back to what I was saying. So I found the disk and installed it. Then I started up DosBox. It is important to know that DosBox should run at the default 3000 cycles, as anything higher will cause the game to look like it's on speed. You should've seen it when I tried VDMSound. The mouse actually jumped because my computer was too fast.
One interesting thing about the series is that it is necessary to have the manual, and you should probably make a map as well, so you don't get lost. I of course, cannot find my manual, so I must simply guess at what different items do.
Anyway! It's fun. Now, after Wizardry 6, the next game is Wizardy 7: Crusaders of the Dark Savant. I have played it before, though never beaten it, and I know it was hard. After that comes Wizardry 8. Yeah, no subtitle.
One thing I always liked about the series was that it reminded me of a cross between Dungeons and Dragons, The Elder Scrolls, Myst's node-style gameplay, and Zork. If you understand what that means, [lack of modesty]than you've got as awesome an imagination as me. [/lack of modesty] The last 3 games are actually direct sequels, which is interesting, because Wizardry 6 has no discernable plot in-game, and yet Wizardry 7 has tons. Of course, the Ultimate Wizardry Archives were released before Wizardry 8, so I haven't tried it yet. Oh well.
So I looked it up on wikipedia because I was wondering if there was going to be a ninth game, and I found out that the Japanese got ahold of the series and somehow really liked it. Apparently they thought it was serious because there was bad translation and they didn't get the satirical element. This is all Wikipedia's words, not mine. But they have like 30 games over there! As well as a movie and stuff. Why don't WE get that over here in North America!? Please excuse me as I mope for a bit while Charlie Brown music plays.
...
Okay I'm done.
Oh yeah! I forgot to post some screenshots from 7 and 8! Note that none of these shown so far are mine, I just got them through Google search.
So here's one from 7. Oh yeah, the ratkin bandits. I hated fighting those...
And here's one from 8, showing... holy shoot, that looks awesome. I need to go hunt some bargain bins or something. Like, NOW.
Anyways, yeah. You should go try it 