Wizardry 7: Crusaders of the Dark Savant

Game review

Wizardry VII (hereinafter W7) was a game that fascinated me for the longest time, mainly due to its size, but also the gameplay, thanks to which I stayed with it for a long time.
This is an RPG (dungeon) game - in the beginning you create six characters (you can do less, but it is not recommended) and then you walk through them with a vast world of planets called Guardia and look for a mysterious magical object "Astral Dominae" The creation of the character itself is no longer trivial - there are a large number of races (human, elf, dwarf, but also eg felpurr- "cat man" or dracon - a hybrid of man and dragon) and professions (except for classic warrior, magician, thief and ninja, monk, lord or psionic.) Characters have basic qualities (strength, intelligence, dexterity) and skills - these can be specific to the profession, and there are many (about a hundred) different spells available. they are divided into magical, priestly, alchemical and psionic and there are six types of magical energy (fiery, water, earth, air, mental and divine) - different monsters are otherwise sensitive to different types of energy, for example, an unintelligent creature will not be affected by mental magic , on a fiery creature fiery ...

During the game itself, there is time for moves. So you don't have to chase the monsters with the mouse and click for life as in an action game, but in a calm turn-based fight you determine what to do to each character and then just look at how successful they are, then another round comes and you carefully after careful consideration or spells ... cool.

There are many species of monsters, but each of them does not necessarily have a different graphic, appearance. The game was created in the early 90's, disk space was saved, so for example, there are several species of lizards that look the same graphically, but have a different name (it will be shown to you during a duel) and features. If the characters have a little developed skill Mythology, they will know only a general species of monster (that it is a giant lizard) but no longer a specific subspecies (iguanadon, rock lizard, godzilla ...).

Speaking of traits and skills - after each promotion you get points to increase skills, traits change so that the random number of random traits increases by 1. As different professions have different skills and the transition to higher levels becomes gradually slower, it pays off change professions and thus gradually create strong skills and a lot of spells. However, the transfer to another profession is conditioned by a certain value of qualities (eg if someone wants to be a magician, he must have at least 12 intelligence) and after the transfer of the qualities "fall" to minimum values ​​(this is quite illogical, but so be it). Due to random changes in qualities after raising the level, you may easily want to change professions, but this is not possible. Then, for example, a hex editor (eg Hacker's View) will help you edit the file with the position of the game - I know, it's a bit of a hoax, but it can be "morally" overcome ...

As for "multimedia" processing, it's OK for its time. The graphics are VGA (about 320x200), the music is heard only occasionally, the sounds are very good - each monster has a different sound, in the corridors it mysteriously rattles ...

Thanks to the great complexity and vastness of the game, I played with the instructions for the first time - but it still took me half a year to defeat the evil Dark Savant and finish the game ... now I "started" without instructions, but I interrupted the game because of school and other activities (creation of DanielSoft editor, creation of literary, ...). That's right. 

Reviewed by Anonym – 1. april 2014