wiz 7 and 8 are such utter disappointments. they're passable as RPGs but they were stripped of all strategic layers and made bereft of that which makes the true Wizardry formula endlessly engaging.
- itemization went completely downhill as the emphasis on huge, open areas (wiz 7 mostly, tbh), by necessity had to do away with the tried and true system of tying loot to dungeon floors and not to enemies or "pockets" of areas. the different tiers of item rarity in regards to the actual "drop" were also gutted since everything had to be spread out.
Not sure I understand this complaint, in both Wiz7 and 8 better items and loot are available further on in the more difficult areas. The best gear is either guarded by bosses or in areas with difficult encounters. The only change I can think of is the better gear is usually placed in chests; in older wizardrys all good loot was monster drops (Blade Cuisinart) and all you had to do was go to the desired floor and grind encounters for drops in front of the stairs.
- classes became meaningless when they were made available to anyone at any time without requirements. this also closely dovetails with the lack of good itemization and progression curve of 7 and 8 (wiz 6 is still recognizably a Wiz game and actually even features dungeons, imagine that); with the itemization design / loot system / fixed encounters removed from the gameplay biomap, coupled with the newfound lack of depth to any of the character classes*, it all makes for a lackluster experience.
*as evidenced by this very thread where everybody has consistently said, regarding wiz 6/7/8, that "there's no real need for multi-classing anymore". Gee, I wonder why.
I can't speak for everyone else but when I read beginner advice that says "don't worry about multiclassing" I saw it as telling people not worry about those mechanics
in the beginning of the game or during character creation. I think that advice is to not fret over class changes in the early game, when they are indeed not important.
However it's wrong to say the classes don't have requirements, each class requires specific stats, and since stat increases are random it can be considerably difficult to achieve a string of desired class changes but highly beneficial and rewarding to do so. In fact, compared to the original games, class changing in Wiz 6 and 7 is vastly overpowered due to the skill system since it allows you to get max level spells and critical strike before you're even halfway through the game, if you get the stat boosts you need. If you get RNG screwed you may make the game harder while you are stuck in an undesired class. The older games tied spells to class level and didn't have things like Skullduggery or Critical strike; there actually wasn't a huge benefit to multiclassing since you couldn't stack class skills on top of each other. You could easily beat the game with a party of fighters, mage, cleric, thief; whereas in Wiz6 and 7 a party that never multiclasses is at a large disadvantage.
Wiz 8 changes the class changing system so it's not so abusable but lets you abuse the training system instead, so it's kind of a wash. They did go to some effort to try to rebalance all the classes so they were all equally viable, with mixed results, but I think it's a pretty impressive effort considering all the older systems they were building off of.
- lack of focused gameplay instances (such as for example, dungeons) and emphasis on incredibly boring and tedious over-world "exploration" (i.e. a dungeon without any design or thought gone into it) makes for a boring meld of game play systems. Without even the sure knowledge that the deeper into the dungeon you go the better the loot gets to give a sense of progression what happened is that (again, mostly about Wiz 7 here, as 6 and 8 are much better) you are playing a Wizardry game without any meaningful party management, resource management, loot progression or meaningful exploration, i.e. "beating" a dungeon floor.
Again not sure I understand this complaint since Wizardry 7 has tons of dungeons and they are by far where you spend the majority of your time. The overworld is little more than a few paths through the forests connecting the dungeons; I agree it's empty and boring but it's not where you spend most of your time. The towns serve as intros to the dungeons proper in some cases (Munkharama, Nyctalinth), in others there there are no towns and it's just a big dungeon (Orkogre castle, Dane tower). Dane tower alone has more traps and puzzles than Wiz 6's dungeons, which were mostly mazes (Dwarf mines, Amazulu Pyramid)
Wiz8's dungeons on the other hand are more simplistic, they suit the game okay but are a shadow of former Wizardry games. But they at least made the overworld areas more interesting with more points of interest and items to find.
) and a valk who multi'd from fighter around level 4 and is now level 9 too. I have a feeling I'm doing something wrong
