Ohhhh! Wizardry! I haven’t touched a single one of those games in years…
“I feel your pain, but all I gotta say is if you want a hard Wizardry game, you play Wizardry IV: Return of Werdna.”
Yea, I heard it was hard, but I’d LOVE to play it. 
I just bought this game for the PC a few weeks ago (newly built and very 133t machine :D, needed a high-end game to check her out). There is a good deal of trial and error, but the graphics, gameplay, control, plot, sound, bloody-well everything else more than make up for it. I even enjoy some of the trial-and-error, and do some segments over just to see if I can be a better “super-secret-stealth-agent-all-around-badass” than the first time around. But then, tactical espionage action type games are my bread and butter. Metal Gear Solid (and MGS 2) are all time favorites.
The game that burned my ass and turned into “work” was Warcraft III. If I wanted to micromanage, I would buck for a promotion for Og’s sake. I was really disappointed, because I loved Starcraft. 
To not completely but kind of hijack this thread:
It’s not Wizardy , it’s not even an RPG, it’s just the most frustrating, rage inducing game ever made:
Stuntman for the PS2. If you’ve played it, you know what I am talking about.
We now resume our regular programming…
Does he Chuck Swords? 
You have got to love 8-bit theater …
~SkY~
Games with damn “catch up” features- often sports games with shitty AI programming. You start womping the AI, and have him under control. Once the 4th quarter comes, all of a sudden, you are the Bad News Bears, and they are the 1985 Chicago Bears. Stuff, stuff, interception. 25 yard runs, 35 yard passes (with 8 broken tackles). Grrrrrrr!
Double Pox on the games where you cannot diable this “feature”.
I am looking a you NFL Blitz!
Darkspace is really fun. Expect to spend a week flailing around trying to figure out the bare basics – orbiting, jumping, navigation, manual jumps, engineering and scouting. Then give yourself a month or so after you subscribe to start getting fairly good.
The game is an interesting mix between leadership, (trying to get other players to help achieve goals that benifit all of you) flying (you can take down a dread in a destroyer, but you must be swift and nimble) and tactics (your jump drive takes longer to cycle the larger your ship is… you need to pick the time and place you’re going to jump to…)
Anyhoo, the game itself is quite small 27 or 37 megs… it’s a free download from www.darkspace.net with unlimited demo play on the red (demo) servers. Subscriptions are 10$ a month, less if you pay for longer block of time.
Hopefully by friday or early next week the long awaited 1.481 patch will be out, which is a TOTAL rewrite of the entire game. To be followed up with a massive advertising campaign and a slew of new features. The community moral is a little low atm 
If you need help, ask the people in the chat room with the green player icons – they are staff members.
Email me if you have any questions, I’m typically logged into DS for a while each day.
Miller
The thing is, I learned in the earlier Wizardry games about exactly how important having a full blown theif is. Remember the 1 attempt at lockpicking you got in the earlier games?
The reason why I have a ninja and a thief is that my ninja is front line combat. Sure she has less hp than a lord or a fighter and does less damage, but she has access to some REALLY nasty high % critical weapons. Pumping up critical, stealth and martial arts is way more important than getting disarm traps.
The engineer has gagdets and access to firearms. The gagdets turn the engineer into a low powered bishop (with access to everything from engery blast to ressurect) and gives a flexable, reliable ranged attack.
The first time I played Wizardry 8 I didn’t have a dedicated thief.
I got chewed apart by the traps in the starting dungeon.
Oh, and I’m not using any NPCs. I’ll probably pick up the android but that is about it.
And I’m looking at Madden 2003. You know, my hand-created team, with all the best players from the draft, nearly lost depiste having a 75 POINT LEAD because of the “catch up” “FEATURE”. God, I hate that shit.
HSWWSH !!!
How about racing games with cars that stay right behind you, no matter how well you drive. I’m looking at you, Apex, all EA racing games, SSX, FZero and all the arcade racers. Sometimes I like to be rewarded for perfect driving. You know, rewarded by being a little further ahead of the competition.
As for evil RPGs, have you tried Arcanum? I really want to play it and enjoy it, but it’s just not possible. Common example of gameplay: a bear shows up, tries to attack me. I draw my gun, shoot, blow my own arm off, loosing half my HP. Bear promtly mauls me to death.
Another example: you walk into a train station, you watch someone randomlly run directly up to your character and then run and sit down again. Look in your inventory and you’re missing just about everything. There’s nothing you can do about that theif, since your character didn’t “notice.” I can understand having a quest item stolen and having to get it back. I can’t understand just having someone rob you with NO recourse.
As for jumping puzzles, they are not for bad level designers. Play Mario 64 again; it’s an example of good level designers making jumping puzzles. The problem is 99% of the level designers out there are bad, and 99% of games of this type use jumping puzzles, so there are LOTS of bad jumping puzzles.
At least Freelancer is good. Very good. Much too good…must play it soon.
American Magee’s Alice had TERRIBLE jumping puzzles.
When you’re fighting the final boss… all you do is jump around in a circle collecting weapon ammunition on little tiny platforms and hope the boss doesn’t hit you and send you flying.
Wow, and I thought I had it bad, what with all the boring sailing I have to do in the new Zelda…
The Qotile must go down! I shall have my revenge!
I freakin LOVED Yar’s revenge!..when I was still young enough to have reflexes.
I found Heavy Metal FAKK virtually unplayable. Bad interface, everything…
CRorex: American McGee’s Alice :smack: What kinda moron looks at Through the Looking Glass and thinks, “Hey! This’d make a great first person shooter!” Oh, wait, I know what kinda moron: he put his name right on the top of the box. I wonder if there’s anyone on the planet whose first thought on seeing that game was “Who the fuck is American McGee?” I thought it was the software company, at first. Still, I got some wicked cool action figures out of that game, so I’m not really complaining. (Coming soon: American McGee’s Oz. I kid you not.)
Anyway, you completely correct about needing a good thief for locks and traps. I leveled my thief up to about twenty before I multiclassed him, and even then I multiclassed to Engineer so I could keep up my Traps skill. As for the Ninja, my fighter and lord usually kill their foes on the first or second hit, and they do it with overwhelming damage. That way, I don’t have to see if I hit and then see if I get a death blow as two seperate rolls and they’re just as useful against enemies immune to instant death attacks, such as most of the bosses in the game.
And you should check out the NPCs. IIRC, there’s no drawback to having them in your party: they even give back all the equipment you’ve given them when they leave the party. Plus, later in the game when all those quest items are piling up, you’re going to want an extra pair of pack mules. The only downside is most of them won’t accompany you into the really dangerous dungeons, like the sea dragon’s cave.
And one more vote for the wonderfulness of Yar’s Revenge. Anyone remember the audio cassette that came with it and set up the game’s story?
You can’t really call yourself a gamer until you’ve been reduced to tears by a monkey in a plastic ball. They are the spawn of Satan.
And yet, there are people out there who can get through the entire suite of Expert stages without losing a single freaking life.
Those people are evil. They are probably in league with Satan himself.
Agreed. I have finished it twice now. Just picked up my Sabre last night, with a level 10 shield, and 2 sets of level 10 weapons looted off of wrecks. Time to go pick a fight with some unsuspecting Xeno’s (and they thought I was scary with the Anubis!).
Wait, isn’t Arcanum one of those “kill anybody you want” RPGs? (Wouldn’t know, personally - tried a friend’s copy of Arcanum, played for two days, got bored, quit. I swear same friend killed shopkeeper just for the loot, tho.)
Audiocassette with Yar’s Revenge? Not with mine-all I got was a comic book. Mine was on (drumroll) an Atari 2600-what platform was yours on?
2600 here, too. Maybe I got the deluxe version of the game.