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The samurai has been satisfactory for me, though he took a while to develop--samurais are only as good as their weapons, and he didn't begin to shine till I gave him Fang. My entire first party (well, the first party I've finished the game with) in fact, was rather slow-developing (samurai, monk, ninja, ranger, gadgeteer, bishop).
To echo someone else's comment, the monk rocks. She maintains a substantial lead in kills, fighting barehanded. My faerie ninja, on the other hand, was a disappointment until I gained the cane of corpus.
The ranger worked out well: the raw power of the other physical classes isn't there, but her scouting is *such* a convenience that I can live with her simply being a ranged weapons expert and swinging a polearm from the flank (just to keep in practice, and save ammo).
The gadgeteer--I had to have one, it being the one new class, and he's fun (and has a lot of character) but he's definitely the weakest in my party, combatwise. You don't find the components for the most powerful gadgets until late enough in the game that the opponents' magical defenses will render the gadgets mostly useless, the water cannon being the major exception.
Finally the bishop, my sole "primary" caster. He took a long time to develop (and being a dwarf, even longer than most bishops), having split his training points three ways among wizardry, divinity, and psionics and trusted to practice to build his casting skills. I suffered through a lot of fizzles and backfires before he finally began to shine, but I'm well satisfied with him now. His direct damage capacity kept the party alive during the middle levels (later, with opponents mostly shielded and resistant to magic, his direct damage spells find a lot less use but he still earns his pay. I imagine one could build a bishop faster by starting 'em off as a mage or priest, but I've already built up an aversion to changing classes in Wizardry 8 (didn't like it that much in 6 or 7, either, but it was so powerful a tool in those that I did it often anyhow). However, I'd think that any two-caster party could do as well or better, if rather than starting off with the "standard" priest/mage combo, they took 2 bishops, the first specializing in wizardry/alchemy, the second in psionics/divinity.
If I were trying to make a variant of this party to go through again, I'd replace the ninja and gadgeteer with fighter and bard. There are a *lot* of nice instruments out there for bards and the NPC bard I had stayed with the party only a short time.
Enjoy the game!
--TT
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