Wizard & Warriors is better than Wizardry 8

[GiantEnemyCrab]

Yes, I said it.

It mainly comes down to the abysmal (as in too frequent) spawning rates (Anika road...) in Wiz8 and the ultra slow combat (yeah I know about the mods). I've played through W&W but I could never make it through Wiz8 even with multiple attempts. I compare them because they seem to be from around the same time and are similar western first person party-based RPGs.

Wizards & Warriors was on my mind because it is finally available und fully playable on gog (admittedly since last year maybe, but I didn't notice). Before it was kind of a pain to get it to run on a modern machine.

What do you think?

Edit: Just for clarification because there was some confusion, with "Wizards & Warriors" I mean this game: https://www.gog.com/game/wizards_warriors

 

[platypotamus]

Wizards and Warriors... I didn't know there was a game with this name aside from the old NES platformer. I tried to replay wizardry 8 recently and didn't have the patience to stick through the whole thing, though I have finished it and loved it back in the day. I got a lot of other games on my plate right now (honk honk!) but maybe I will check this out during a duldrum

 

[jimboton]

Can't say I agree at all. I played them both when they came out but got very bored with Wizards & Warriors about halfway through. I don't remember there being anything particularly wrong with the combat or mechanics but it was all so uneventful... there was just not enough going on in terms of encounters, interactions, puzzles, secrets or plot compared to Wizardry 8 (or 6, or 7).

 

[ReyVGM]

Burgers are better than Pizza? That's what I'm hearing.

 

[The Last Laugh]

Wizards and Warriors is my go to example of a game having kick ass box art and name and then you play the game and are like "wait...what?"
The Wizardy series is legend tier in every way.
(Part of me also thinks that OP is thinking of another game and not the same Wizards and Warriors from NES)

 

[PepsimanVsJoe]

Ohhh.
OP must mean this game: https://www.gog.com/game/wizards_warriors
Now the thread makes a bit more sense.

While I'm not a fan of direct comparisons, I will say that (IMO) Wizardry 8 benefits from mods that increase battle speed and lighten the difficulty/rate/scaling of enemy encounters. In some areas, you get jumped by a small army, and it's just agonizing to get through. Everything outside of combat is really good.

 

[ArbitraryWater]

(Part of me also thinks that OP is thinking of another game and not the same Wizards and Warriors from NES)

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He's definitely referring to the fairly-obscure CRPG from 2000 and not the NES platformer of the same name. It was actually made by the lead designer of Wizardry 6 and 7 after he left Sir Tech, so it has a lot of the same ideas (especially class progression stuff) as those games. It was also notoriously difficult to get running on any OS newer than Windows 2000, which is partially why it's so unknown.

To respond to the OP, I did finally play W&W last year when it came out on GOG and had a lot of fun with it in spite of how profoundly janky and occasionally confusing it was. (I got stuck in the serpent temple before I got distracted by something else.) As someone who has played most of the big RPGs from that era, it was like discovering a hidden piece of candy in a musty corner of the cupboard that was still good, and I do intend to get back to it at some point. That said, Wizardry 8 is probably still one of my favorite CRPGs, so I'm not sure if I can fully back your assertion. I do understand the complaints about enemy spawning frequency and combat speed, however. I'm genuinely baffled I played through that entire game without the speed hack when I was younger, because there's a lot of combat in that game and a lot of that combat is slow. The aggressive level scaling really doesn't help the feeling of grind either.

 

[Sinatar]

Wizards & Warriors is much better yes.

1. Combat is literally 1000x faster, Wizardry 8 wastes so much time with monsters shambling around (even speedmodded) that combat takes eons. W&W doesn't have this issue.
2. There is no level scaling. Level scaling is the literal dirt worst thing you can do in an RPG, Wiz 8 is level scaled, W&W isn't.
3. You can have a kung fu elephant in your party in W&W.

 

[Ruby-Eyed Witch]

I have this game on CD, but I can't get the damn thing to work at all, so I have yet to play it. :( I know GOG has it now, but I'm not getting it there.

Wizardry 8 was a great game with a few major flaws that held it back from being excellent. And, yeah, the combat being agonizingly slow (or just painfully slow with mods) was one of them. Another, for me, was its strict limitations on skill point assignment, which made leveling up your magic in particular a real drag. Maybe there's a mod for that as well.

Weirdly, there seems to be several different combat speed mods floating around, some more effective than others. It's confusing. The one I have worked pretty well, although it still took me an hour to cut through the mob of 40+ Rapax that I stupidly blundered into in the castle.

 

[Sinatar]

Oh and the dungeons. Wizards & Warriors has some truly fantastic dungeon design. Complex, challenging, full of traps and puzzles, each dungeon provides a unique and interesting challenge. Compared to the giant empty hallways full of random sloggy trash mobs in Wizardry 8 it's like night and day.

 

[7thFloor]

I had forgotten about this game, I found it ages ago while looking for something in that Might & Magic/Wizardry territory, and this happened to look the most appealing. How does it hold up?

 

[Aramon]

Great game but buggy. I like it much more than Wiz 8.

I have physical copy and few years ago with lot's of time and patience I managed to get it to playable state.

I played it quite a lot before I got stuck some game breaking bug.

 

[ArbitraryWater]

I had forgotten about this game, I found it ages ago while looking for something in that Might & Magic/Wizardry territory, and this happened to look the most appealing. How does it hold up?

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If you want something in the Might and Magic/Wizardry vibe, it definitely feels like a strange hybrid of both franchises. I had fun with the dozen-ish hours I played of it, just be warned that it's pretty janky and not much of a looker. It's also currently less than $5, so I definitely think it's at least worth messing around with if you want a game in that style.

 

[GiantEnemyCrab]

Oh sorry, yeah of course I mean the PC Wizardry-like game Wizards & Warriors, NOT the NES platforming action game.

 

[GiantEnemyCrab]

Wizards & Warriors is much better yes.

1. Combat is literally 1000x faster, Wizardry 8 wastes so much time with monsters shambling around (even speedmodded) that combat takes eons. W&W doesn't have this issue.
2. There is no level scaling. Level scaling is the literal dirt worst thing you can do in an RPG, Wiz 8 is level scaled, W&W isn't.
3. You can have a kung fu elephant in your party in W&W.

Click to shrink...

Man I even forgot the level scaling, yeah. That made it so bad with places like Anika Road because you had to travel it again and again to get from place to place and you had to fight so many monsters every time.

Oh and the dungeons. Wizards & Warriors has some truly fantastic dungeon design. Complex, challenging, full of traps and puzzles, each dungeon provides a unique and interesting challenge. Compared to the giant empty hallways full of random sloggy trash mobs in Wizardry 8 it's like night and day.

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That's another thing that WW did way better than Wiz8, I agree. Even little stuff like a narrator voice in the dungeons goes a long way to give it that Sword & Sorcery feeling.

 

[Bricktop]

Couldn't disagree more. Wizardry 8 is one of the best RPGs ever made. W&W is simply decent.

 

[j^aws]

With Wizardry 8, overcoming slow combat and level scaling is part of the challenge; when your party gels and builds mature, you can slice through mobs and level-scalled enemies like butter, and run through maps like it was an FPS. Complaining about this sounds like the battle system isn't utilised efficiently.

W&W is a nice alternative RPG, although rather janky in comparison.

 

[Ruby-Eyed Witch]

With Wizardry 8, overcoming slow combat and level scaling is part of the challenge; when your party gels and builds mature, you can slice through mobs and level-scalled enemies like butter, and run through maps like it was an FPS. Complaining about this sounds like the battle system isn't utilised efficiently.

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The general complaint is not that it takes too many rounds to kill enemies, but rather that enemy movements and certain animations take forever to resolve, meaning a lot of time spent sitting and watching things play out. Animation is pure fluff; if every turn resolved instantaneously, it would affect nothing in terms of game mechanics. The core game has multiple options related to combat speed, they just don't go very high. These are distinct from the difficulty settings.

 

[j^aws]

The general complaint is not that it takes too many rounds to kill enemies, but rather that enemy movements and certain animations take forever to resolve, meaning a lot of time spent sitting and watching things play out. Animation is pure fluff; if every turn resolved instantaneously, it would affect nothing in terms of game mechanics. The core game has multiple options related to combat speed, they just don't go very high. These are distinct from the difficulty settings.

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"Forever" is a complete exaggeration. This isn't Dragon Quest or the earlier Wizardry games where 1st-person combat means starring at a flat plane in front of you (albeit having a front and back plane) for judging distances. The battle system has been 3D movements for both enemies and yourself, meaning jostling for positions takes place for strategy and line-of-sight. Expecting enemies to insta-teleport to different positions so that movement time is minimised would look rather silly.

 

[Ruby-Eyed Witch]

"Forever" is a complete exaggeration. This isn't Dragon Quest or the earlier Wizardry games where 1st-person combat means starring at a flat plane in front of you (albeit having a front and back plane) for judging distances. The battle system has been 3D movements for both enemies and yourself, meaning jostling for positions takes place for strategy and line-of-sight. Expecting enemies to insta-teleport to different positions so that movement time is minimised would look rather silly.

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Of course it looks silly, and balancing presentation with playability is one of the challenges of bringing that abstract combat system into a fully three-dimensional field while retaining turn-based gameplay. I didn't say that it necessarily should be resolved as fast as computationally possible out of the box; I said that if it was, it wouldn't change the way a battle plays out.

But you didn't say it mustn't look silly, you said it provided challenge. I don't agree, because we're literally talking about time spent waiting for non-interactive segments to end. Speeding that up is no different than skipping a cutscene, and cutscenes don't provide challenge.

 

[j^aws]

But you didn't say it mustn't look silly, you said it provided challenge. I don't agree, because we're literally talking about time spent waiting for non-interactive segments to end. Speeding that up is no different than skipping a cutscene, and cutscenes don't provide challenge.

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Regarding challenge, I'm not referring to what you clarified as movement and animations being slow. I was referring to large mobs and level-scalled enemies being hard to clear. Appropriate builds and parties can destroy them very quickly, which makes overcoming the early hardship satisfying.

 

[Ruby-Eyed Witch]

Regarding challenge, I'm not referring to what you clarified as movement and animations being slow. I was referring to large mobs and level-scalled enemies being hard to clear. Appropriate builds and parties can destroy them very quickly, which makes overcoming the early hardship satisfying.

Click to shrink...

That's fair enough. I still wasn't sure which of the two you really meant. Personally I find the tuning in Wiz 8's level scaling to be a bit off, and I'm not the biggest fan of level scaling in RPGs in the first place, but it has its pros and cons. I don't have a serious gripe with it in this case, though I have heard of players getting stuck on the road to Arnika because of it.

And of course, large mobs are part and parcel of Wizardry. I mentioned having to fight off 40+ mobs in the Rapax castle upthread. That fight was completely avoidable, had I paid more attention, but it was the most memorable and satisfying (not to mention lucrative) fight of the game for me.