I finally have gotten off my ass and written my long review/discussion of Wizardry 8, so here it is. Feel free to throw slings and arrows at me:

http://peterb.telerama.com/weblog/C4...090/index.html

Nifty [img]smile.gif[/img] The bishop ain't a hybrid tho

Oh, almost forgot.. *shoots an arrow* [img]tongue.gif[/img]

[ 01-18-2004, 02:00 PM: Message edited by: Ragash ]

I think of the Bishop as a hybrid simply because he takes that much more experience to level up, and is less good at whatever skills he has than the equivelent single-class spellcaster at the same level.

but point taken.

Wizfast does speed up battle. The farther the mobs have to move, the more it speeds them up. But if they aren't moving much, it doesn't help. What i think would help most would be a way to turn off the spell animations.

Well, that's pretty subjective really, since it all amounts to how much training you put the poor thing through [img]smile.gif[/img] And the xp penalty he gets is because he'd get incredibly powerful faster otherwise, I suppose. Balancing and all that. But I see what you mean now too [img]smile.gif[/img]

Yes, I agree. Spell animations take tons of time.. another thing you can do to slow down battle is to cast slow at a group of Juggernauts and watch the bullet time begin. Stupid feature really. Monsters recoiling slower just because they're slowed. That could be changed too [img]tongue.gif[/img] And the slime shooting from a legion of millipedes.. thank god for spells of mass destruction.

It's also annoying that larger monsters take so long to recoil even when not slowed ;)

One thing I'm missing in the description of combat is the possibility to switch between weapons. Quote:

if my fighters initiative comes up first, before the enemies close, they will forfeit their attack.

/Quote

This is obviously only true when you choose to switch between short and extended weapons, or use cursed weapons for meelee. Since the game engine _should_ bestow some disadvantages on you for using cursed weapons it's not all bad. You won't be able to switch weapons in a single round (meelee kill on first swing, shoot on second swing) but that seems sensible as well. Not that everything makes sense there, but that paragraph doesn't do the system justice, imho.

Most sufficiently advanced tactical turn-based combat actions explicitly provide a "delay" action to handle this exact situation. Logically, if I see the enemy coming towards me, and I think he'll reach me, AND it's my initiative round, I should be able to delay until he arrives before taking my swing. If I'm wielding a +5 Sword of Viagra and carrying a plain ordinary Sling of Limpness, then it's a perfectly reasonable choice to want the engine to allow me to not have to use the ranged weapon -- but not require me to lose my swing (if the enemy comes in range) either.

Page doesn't load for me...

Sorry, I moved it. Try here:

http://peterb.telerama.com/weblog

The Wizardry 8 item is the second on the page, currently.