Neat.
I, for one, adored Wizardry 8. One of the best CRPG’s I’ve ever played. I guess games still come out in Japan, where Wizardry was always bigger, but I never expected to see more here.
I still have Wiz 7 on CD somewhere. 
I say it will suck, because whenever I try to be positive about a game it comes out really bad.
Did any of you play that PS2 Wizardy game? I hadn’t heard of it, but I guess it came out after Wizardy 8.
Wizardry: Tale of the Forsaken Land
Thoughts of it?
Shit, I still have the original Wizardry on a 5.25" floppy. Plus Akalabeth and the original Castle Wolfenstein.
Maybe there was something wrong with our computer, but I found Wizardry 8 to be unplayable, because of how long battles took. Was that not the normal experience? It was like, '56 killer bees attack you!
Bee 1 stings and inflicts 2 points of damage!
ANIMATION!
Bee 2 stings and misses!
ANIMATION!
Bee 3 stings and inflicts 3 points of damage!
ANIMATION!
…
Bee 56 stings and inflicts 1 point of damage!
ANIMATION!
What do you do?"
So I’d attack, killing 6 bees, and then I’d be attacked by 50 bees.
Honestly, left hand, having a Bard really made the early part of the game easier. The Bard instruments were highly effective on average monsters and made the game pretty quick and easy early on.
Maybe so. I just remember all the errands I ran during the enemy’s turns; maybe I was playing it wrong, or maybe my computer wasn’t fast enough to play it.
I loved Wizardry 8, though I never managed to get through the end. It was exhausting. By the time I got to where I could reliably defeat the bands of psychic Creatures from the Black Lagoon, I was burned out.
I have the collection of the earlier games, but these I also couldn’t get too far into. It was on the old-fashioned perma-death system and hard as hell to get anywhere even if you were still a kid who could sit around for days making your own maps on graph paper.
It wasn’t a game I set out to beat as much as explore and build up the characters. Exploring is fun and the battle system is good. It was also funny listening to the characters talk to each other in that game, since they added a personality creator.
Man, I loved that game.
I did not like Wiz 8, and don’t understand the love for it at all. My complaint was similar to Left Hand of Dorkness’, getting surrounded and chipped to death by dozens of enemies. It just got too tedious for me, plus the graphics pretty much sucked and the environments felt very empty. Wizardry 7, on the other hand, was pure awesome. Unfortunately I can’t get it to work on my computer. I have the Ultimate Wizardry Archives, and every game works fine except 7, which won’t run at all.
Anyhow, I will be following this with interest, and see what the buzz is like by release. Hopefully the game will be true to the roots of the series and not a shallow attempt to cash in on the name of a once proud franchise.
I remember I once had a “random” battle against crabs on some random beach that took 2 hours. Then I moved about 30 feet and ran into another 1-hour crab battle. Also some 30-minute random battles against deadly insects in the MIDDLE OF A TOWN! The local elves (or whatever they were) sure must have hated me, because they did not raise a finger to help.
They all know the higher level you are, the higher the encounter chart you roll on. Never interfere with a battle rolled for somebody higher level than you. A dragon will swoop past a hundred random nobodies to get to the people with the shiny equipment and the world-weary eyes.