The most fascinating thing about W8 was that it was made at all. It's a bastard child of an age confused and bewildered by technology. As a result, any normalfag will tell you that the game's visual aesthetic is crude - and, though it stings, they're certainly far from wrong. The primeval feel of W8's graphical engine is akin to the sensation of gazing at the unskillful cave wall renderings of our ancestors - with the sense of wonder replaced by a hint of disgust. And aesthetic quality is certainly not the only attribute held by back by the game engine.
But let's first denote what W8 got right.
The class system. I could stop here because it would be enough. This game has the most appealing, well-designed, satisfying class system of any in the genre - even surpassing its immortal predecessor, Wizardry VII. Epic poems in the style of the classics could be written about its merits, but I'll let others gush - only mentioning the overlooked. How many RPGs have we played with flawed character creation? With worthless skills and useless attributes? With false choices on levelups? None of that is here. Every time we tick up a skill or attribute in W8 it means something, goddamnit! We are truly shaping and forming, in the most uncynical sense, our characters into an imagined end goal.
The voice acting. Yes, what an odd thing to compliment in our current age. There is a particular puzzlement I share with felipepepe. Why are critics in this field almost universally ignorant of its past? The civilization of video games is one that apparently forgets what it did the day before - and thus learns nothing. For 10 years, we all watched as the word "immersion" was butchered, as blind seekers desperately grasped for some hint of tangible atmosphere. None of them had ever even heard of System Shock 2. Similarly, W8 is the bar with which the quality and utility of voice acting should be measured. I truly cannot think of a game that did so much with so little in terms of VA. The most organic VA we get today involves annoying sidekicks acting as vocal quest arrows, the decline nearly infinitely steep. Oh well, maybe games media will finally grasp their holy grail with the next banal gravelly-voiced protagonist.
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The ultimate manifestation of love-hate is W8's combat. It is here that I feel pangs of longing for the perfection that is combat in Wizardry VII. Firstly, though, I must say (and I think most would agree) that W8's combat, given its unique engine constraints, is brilliantly designed. Spell areas, range, line of sight - these mechanisms work well in the system. I can't imagine a way they could have improved the workings of combat given the unconstrained 3D nature of the game. The combat systems are just remarkable as well. Many different and useful targeting types provide spells with differing kinds of utility, often situationally dependent. There is often (though not always) a good deal of strategy and meaty decision-making to be had in combat.
But combat ultimately does not function well in the field. Even fixing the issue of slowness, other problems exist. Ground-targeted spells are an exercise in pixel-hunting. The unconstrained 3D movement generally leads to fighting up against terrain intersections. Some very few parties can make interesting use of the tactical party layout, but even those are better off fighting a small cone of enemies. Movement, reach, and line of sight often interact poorly and come at a significant cost whenever they mix. Summoning anything is either trivial or a nightmarish chore and rarely anything in between.
Combat in Wizardry VII is quite gamey, by comparison. Your party vs. an enemy party. Front, back, and middle ranks. Spells that hit individuals, ranks, or everyone. But this system is lightning fast and highly strategic. Reach is a consistent and quantifiable advantage. Shifting ranks is a common tactic with clear advantages and disadvantages. Summoning and similar concepts always work as expected. It's a smaller consideration as well, but the abstract, gamey nature of the combat lends itself well to things like backstabbing out of stealth.
It's telling that there is far more combat in Wizardry VII than W8 and yet people consistently complain about the amount of combat in W8. Ultimately, Wizardry VII and W8 are combatfag games so any failings in this arena are magnified. I absolutely love and adore W8, but playing it I find myself constantly under painful emotional assault at the lost opportunities resulting from the engine constraints.
The biggest underlying problem is this: Wizardry VII has so much more content and combat than W8. The first time someone plays Wizardry VII, it will take them an unseemly number of hours to complete or even to progress very far. But Wizardry VII can be mastered and thereafter completed in a small fraction of the time. W8 will always be a slog, no matter how knowledgeable or expert the player. The decisions that can be made in combat and the execution of those decisions just take longer - picking targets, dropping spells, moving, considering positioning. The gamey Wizardry VII combat is very deep. But making informed decisions is very quick because of the constrained combat setup in which all the rules interact.
What could have been...
I don't agree with your summary of Wizardry 8 graphics but good post otherwise.
