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[atomicminds]

Just got the files and made a virtual drive for the iso and then installed it inside dosbox. Worked flawlessly though I got confused initially because it installs in my root which is c:\dosgames\games and not c:\ and also because there're only two files in the installation directory. Other than that, getting into the game and setting the configuration settings so I can hear the sound was a snap.

Btw, all you do is just add this to the dosbox options file:
"mount d f:\"

I set my root this way:
"mount c c:\dosgames\games -freesize 1000"

This a assumes that the iso file is already mounted on a virtual drive that's f:\.

Let me share a bit about me..

I've played jagged alliance 2 quite a bit over the years. I recommend to every gamer I meet. This was made by Sir-Tech, the same company that makes the Wizardry series of games. Loved it, great game. Awesome character personalities. Extremely detailed. It hooked me. When I saw screenshots of Wizardry 8, it was immediately recognizable as a sir-tech product.

That's what drew me to want to buy wizardry 8. But since wizardry 7 is offered here and this can give me a taste of sir-tech and its wizardry series... I checked to see whether Wizardry 7 or Wizardry Gold is being sold and I couldn't find anything online. So wouldn't that classify this as abandonware? And I noticed that the games here that're being sold are listed as "Buy it!" So I assume it's safe to download this one.

I consider myself a bit of an old timer since I'm 34. I also think of myself as hardcore in a distant sense. I love a lot of the oldies. I think as the computer software industry added to its customer base over the years it tended to spread out and become more mainstream in the process. Computers aren't just owned anymore by nerds or geeks. The money is increasingly in console games and software that runs on portables and laptops. Desktops seems to be losing ground in all of this change.

So I just spent several hours trying out this game. The story felt stretched itself thin I think. What I got from it was that a robo-man landed on a planet to recover the Cosmic Forge. In its absence, the Cosmic Lords were unable to protect the safety of the Astral Dominae. This threatens the future of the universe. So my group of adventurers just happened to be in the temple when they stumbled on this robo-man. The robo-man informs us that we're to come with him to protect the Astral Dominae on Guardia while he leaves to deliver the Cosmic Forge to the Cosmic Lords. We're to remain on Guardia in search of the Astral Dominae until he returns....

But I got confused. First of all, why us? We're just some lowly medieval adventurers on a random planet. Is the robo-man pulling a Gandalf? Gandalf, for example, put all of his hopes and the fate of middle earth on some lowly clueless hobbits and a small band of cohorts. Granted, Gandalf couldn't trust anyone with the ring except for maybe Frodo, but I always felt Gandalf had too much faith in his own judgment. Anyway, what this robo-man did reminds me of that. Second, the story didn't allow me to pause it to fully digest everything before going further. Third, the robo-man left us there on Guardia without any real parting message that would wrap up a lot of these questions. I half expected to bump into him or some note he left behind. But nothing.

I killed a few things then I stumbled on a pack of ratkin things. Lost everyone and restarted since I don't like to save & load. Then I bumped into that babe on that rocket car. It was so random. She says she's proud that the crusaders are here and I forget the rest. I kept looking at her hooters. Why doesn't she join our group so I can look at them full-time. Then she sped off and I had to shake myself because it was surreal. Yes, I did actually see that, I told myself. But, again, the game left me puzzled.

So I adventured some more. Fell asleep at those flowers a few times trying to figure out of there was a way past it. Couldn't find a way. Then I decided to go into that underground dungeon thing. Found a secret door. Then I got poisoned when I opened a chest. Lost 2 of my guys. I didn't anticipate that the purple potion was a cure poison potion. I simply drank it in the last few moments and managed to save someone. It never crossed my mind that I could have run back to that fountain and cured everyone. So anyway, I had 4 guys left. I played it safe and then I found another secret door. I opened the chest and managed to save 3 guys. The other one didn't make it to the fountain in time. So then I went down that ladder and was ambushed by 3 bug things. Lost my ranger. I had my fighter and mage left after that. I ran around a bit on the first level of the dungeon and on the surface before finally losing my mage. Realizing the game was over, I ventured over to the scary forest area where it warned me not to go. Sine I had nothing to lose I went anyway. Got killed by some glowing wasp things.

I don't like save & load gameplay. Jagged Alliance 2 really bites with respect to this, as well. For example, I managed to play on expert difficulty for a while before my 6 mercs were slaughtered by a gigantic pack of cats. There was no way for me to know about it unless I got a walkthrough. So either I loaded a old save or quit. I chose to quit. I had had many close calls in that particular game where I lost members or had almost lost them. So JA2 practically (for sane folks) forces even a longtime player to save & load. I suppose I could try the game on easy or normal but maybe that's for another time. That aside, so here I am and I noticed that the difficulty setting for Wizardry VII is ALREADY EASY! Damn, I tell myself. So how am I going to play the way I like to play then? I guess I can't. It's save & load or don't play at all.

Keep in mind that at that time save & load gameplay was normal. I think it was only the last 10 years with online gaming where people got used to dying and respawning somewhere. So trying to play a single player game that forces you (unless you're already a master of the game and know what's ahead) to save and load feels unnatural. I admit that when I was younger I ate these games up and did a lot of saving and loading. But this is 10 to 15 years later now. This is probably the biggest thing that bothers me about old games even though I love a lot of the other things - not including the frequently poor interfaces back then.

I'll probably continue to play so I can see that babe again. I think that's the only reason I'll bear with it. I like to look at boobies. Yes, I am a shallow man. It's true.

Another thing I don't like is that I have to apparently click fight or other actions every turn. Why can't it just load the previous turn and give me the option to change hte orders each time or accept the previous ones and go to the next turn? It seems to me that conbat could get very tedious this way. It's also fairly uneventful so far. Just hack/slash. I did use sleep with my mage, which made things a bit interesting. But overall the combat so far is feeling kind of stale even though it's not irritating me yet. I haven't used the automap yet. I'll have to try that.

Old games still impress me with their quality. I'm a hobbyist programmer so I always notice these things. Even these old games are a vast collection of artwork and development. It's humbling to be sure that. I think there's something to be said for games that focus less on graphics and more on content and detail elsewhere. Not all games have to be shiny or polygonal in nature. In some sense, developers get it. They sometimes deviate. Not all games have to look great. But gamers too often will focus more on the eye candy than on what's underneath all that.

[Scatty]

Originally Posted by atomicminds

Another thing I don't like is that I have to apparently click fight or other actions every turn. Why can't it just load the previous turn and give me the option to change hte orders each time or accept the previous ones and go to the next turn? It seems to me that conbat could get very tedious this way.

You might want to try Wizardry VIII (full CD ISO downloadable in the ISO Cellar here) for that. A bit more user friendliness in combat there. Though I generally liked it less than Wizardry VII, because of almost no possibility to avoid random encounters and a very limited choice of summoned creatures through spells, unlike in Dark Savant.

[atomicminds]

Originally Posted by Scatty

You might want to try Wizardry VIII (full CD ISO downloadable in the ISO Cellar here) for that. A bit more user friendliness in combat there. Though I generally liked it less than Wizardry VII, because of almost no possibility to avoid random encounters and a very limited choice of summoned creatures through spells, unlike in Dark Savant.

No if I try VIII, I'll buy it. I'd never do anything else. I respect sir-tech too much. Besides the release date was november 2001. That's after 9/11. Too new. I'd buy it for $5.99. Like on gog.com or steam or something. Old(er) games still have value, especially the better ones.

For example, Jagged Alliance 2, made by Sir-Tech, was released in July 1999. I'd never dream of not buying that if I was somebody who didn't have it. It's a great game, really. Something like that shouldn't be abandoneware. Put it up on steam or something for ~$5.00. It runs fine on win XP, but not sure about windows 7. Those issues could be worked out by the retailer.

Still, digital downloads are never as good as a fresh CD/DVD with a clearly written manual that you can hold in the palm of your hands and read at your leisure. I miss that. You can print things, sure. But it's not as good or durable as a professionally made manual that comes prepackaged.

VII isn't that bad it's just way over the top in terms of its save & load style.

I tried my hand at it again today. Played through two games total. Of course, I never redid anything so that means whatever mishaps I suffer I deal with...

Went bad again. No luck.

The first time through things seemed to be going good. I think I even had a lvl 4 fighter. Most of my guys were about lvl 3. I was wandering in that forest and found a shoreline. There were some trees to my left and were blocking the view. It looked like there was some room between me and the water so I thought I'd move forward to get a better look. The next thing I know my group starts dying. It says they drowned. I'm hitting the back key but nothing is happening. Then my whole group is dead. I never got much of any warning. It was brutal. I decide to try another group. This time around, I think that my knowledge of the game will help me get past this stage. So for a couple hours I'm beating things again to recover. I finally get down to the lower lvl of the dungeon and feel safe because my guys are lvl 3 and 2 and that has served me well in the past down there. But then I stumbled on about 10 cachre bug things. I didn't know hard they'd be so I decided to fight them. Besides, I've never had much luck running away from anything since I usually get blocked. Well, I quickly found out I wasn't any match for them as my group starts falling one by one. I finally decide to run. Lost 1 of the 3 guys. So 2 survive but they're beaten down. I try to rest them but their health goes up too slow. I'm kind of lost at this point too. I get attacked by 2 more bugs and I limp away from it ok. But at this point I'm feeling that the game is over. And sure enough, I get attacked again when I turned left. This time I don't survive. Get hit for 17 by one of em.

This game is hard. To be honest, coming into this, I thought the complaining I saw in this thread was just whining. I've seen lots of whining about various games in my time. I hate whiners. I'm usually fairly hardcore about things. I'm not a casual gamer. So I figured that I'd just prove em wrong. But I am humbled now as I realize that I was wrong. This game is firmly entrenched in the old-style save & load (and redo) way of gameplay. I suppose I could start doing that, but I never really liked that way of playing even when it was considered normal. Sure, I did it, but as I've said, it didn't feel right. So I'm not going to do that. I like to work through the problems I suffer in a game. But so far this game has handed me my butt and killed all of my attempts.

I never thought I'd ever come close to whining. But I'm close. I'm reaching back 20 years and asking this game to not push me over the edge. But I might be asking too much.

[atomicminds]

I tried another game yesterday and here's what happened.

Maybe to dull the pain I wrote a review of my characters...

I remade them because of the things I had learned. Gave them more speed in hopes that they could run from there opponents better and tried to more appropriately allocate academic and physical skills. I also read the manual a bit and see that if one character runs then they all do so maybe I could improve my tactics by using guard or something.

Deroy, the ranger, started with high stats and high karma. Garet, the alchemist, received only 1 stat point. Piffin, the thief, comes to us with a low karma. Andoo, the priest, remarkably, will begin with just 1 karma. Tharg and Hutch are our fighters and they're average.

So Deroy is a talented man and brought up by a few of the best hunters. He doesn't hold grudges, yet he can lie and pass a smile without flinching. Garet suffered a disease in childhood and almost died, but survived to later enter into apprenticeship with the alchemists. Piffin killed a man while in a drunken argument, but it was a while ago, in a deep crypt, and the guy was a nobody. Nonetheless, Piffin still feels guilty to this day and anything that makes him think of it makes his hands slippery and his mouth thirsty for some liquor. Andoo was caught in a bitter rivalry during his time as a student with the priests. He sabotaged his rival and cheated in an examination to earn the approval of his teachers. He's not proud of it, but fiercely defends his priesthood. Deep inside, he's shamed. Hutch and Tharg were watchmen in a little known city and come as friends.

Only minutes after I started I am attacked by slow of those glowing moths. I think I can do em. In the first few moves we're confident and do some damage. But a chance attack by one of the moths kills my alchemist. What's so disagreeable about it was that the alchemist was the 6th person. What's worse than bad luck is no luck at all. I am not sure if I had any of my guys set to guard or not. Garet can't take even a punch. We win the fight and come out with 500 experience.

I ran around and whacked things for a few levels. Tried (and failed) to disarm the two chests in the top level of the dungeon. Then I went back to the forest to find the chest that's near the water. To my fortune, Piffin, the thief, disarms the chest. This is the first time I've disarmed a trap with a thief. I find there there's a map kit and give that to Deroy. I use it and he draws us a sketch of the area, so for the first time I use the map feature. I wish there was a hotkey for "Use Previous".

By this time, most of us are lvl 4. I decide to go to that gate on the lower floor of the dungeon to explore what or who this ra pet sa ku mah is (sorry I think I mispelled its name). I push the lever and the gate opens. I walk inside and am assailed by two black birds and a named ghoul or skeleton creature. We take care of them but with some wounds. We're feeling good. We see a chest at the far end of the room. We somberly walk over to the place, wary of danger. Don't ask me why, but I couldn't seem to find a position where we could disarm or open the trap. It looked like we had to go in the puddle of water to access it. That's how it appeared to us at that time. So I moved us forward into that strip of water and, again, I see my group drowning. I click on the back button, unsure of whether it will work because last time I hit my back key several times with no effect. This time it works but only 1 guy is remaining: Hutch. He's a fighter. He also just happens to have 10 swimming, the highest in the group. That's probably why he survived.

Feeling defeated but not done, I leave the room and try to get up to the upper floor of the dungoen to get him healed. It's a long ways to get there so I am nervous. We get attacked, of course. He survives, barely. So I'm down there quite a ways from the ladder and not feeling good about our chances. We got attacked a couple more times but he was quick enough to run away from the fight. Finally, we found the ladder and got him healed at the shrine thing. After that we adventured all over that entrance area. I took him down to the lower level of the dungeon a few times too. I got him to lvl 5 with about 5000 experience needed for lvl 6. I was growing anxious and bored with it. So we proudly marched back down to the room where the party killed the ghoul and this time with the intent of getting a better look. Seeing nothing out of order, I, in a last ditch effort to keep myself interested, have Hutch open the chest. He's not a thief so I know he's going to get hurt. It says he's hit by a Guardian trap. Never seen that one. A demon manifests but we're unable to see it. It smashes him for 19 and then its final blow was something bigger and it crushed the life out of Hutch. He fell to the floor in a bloody mess. The apparition or invisible force set off by the trap smiled at his corpse. Hutch's dream of saving his friends faded with him as death took him.

I finished the game just now.

So I failed again. I don't want anybody to tell me what I'm doing wrong. This is probably one of the more difficult games I've ever played. I did Albion and it wasn't this bad. But back then I may have used save & load, so maybe my judgment of its difficulty is off. I refuse to let this game win, but I am severely disappointed in its extreme dependency on save & load gameplay.

[atomicminds]

Originally Posted by kmonster

I've finally finished the game.

It's unbalanced, unfair, illogical and tedious but it doesn't require much skill. It's rather for beginners with much patience than for experts.

For combat you only have to accept that the game is unfair and will throw enemies at your party which you can't survive so you're supposed to use save/reload to manipulate the random number generator consistently until you've gained enough levels since almost everything in combat depends on levels relative to each other. Expert is easier than normal on the long run because of the extra XP you get.

For the adventuring part skill won't help you much. Some riddles just don't make sense so you'll have to use a walkthrough anyway and some require work instead of thinking, only a few are fun.

The game is quite small, World of Xeen is about four times that big, but since Wizardry 7 is so slow you'll need much longer to finish it.
The Wizardry7 developer's didn't care about giving a quality time, besides what's important for marketing they wanted to keep the player occupied as long as possible.
Therefore you have to spend a lot of time rolling your party and have to do lots of useless stuff before you're allowed to reroll after a bad roll.
The automap is slow to use, buggy and doesn't show much.
At higher levels a single spell can take up to 140 mana, regenerating the mana used for a single spell cast can take up to 280 hours average or 35 times 8 hour resting or 35 minutes real time, even walking to a mana regenerating well at the other side of the world is faster. It's not surprising that you only regenerate 4 hitpoints average during an 8 hour rest.
Skills are also made to make you waste time. You'll have to spend many hours doing stupid repetitive work in order to learn skills like swimming or mind control properly.

The story and the world are implausible and the ending (there's only one real one) disappointing. What's written about character creation in the manual is incomplete and misleading, thinking about the optimal party is fun but once you realize how overpowered class switching is you'll only think about the best party with self imposed restrictions.
The magic system with 6 different mana pools like in W6 is a great idea, only the slow regeneration hurts. The monster animations are great.

The Wizardry7 publishers were really great at marketing. They only offered little content artificially lengthened, sold "illogical and unbalanced" as "for experts" and "tedious, repetitive and slow" as "big" and got away with it.

I've only played in the beginner area so far, but I have to mostly agree with you, unfortunately. When I first read your posts, I hadn't played yet. I assumed you were a whiner that shouldn't be playing old(er) games. In hindsight, I am ashamed that I was so prejudice. However, I haven't given up on the game yet. I still want to see more of the content. I can forgive slow and even some repetitive gameplay, but it's the unbalanced and illogical part that gets me. The unbalanced enemy encounters and the unfriendly progression is not the way to win over a gamer like me. I hate handouts. I hate easy games. But this game is too messy to be categorized as a hard game.

What do I mean by messy? Well look at how the game handles the random encounters. It will throw stuff at you that you can't do. And there're times when even running won't save you. This is not difficult, this is unbalanced. Difficulty is what happens when you have to juggle all of the skills and abilities of your party with the various weaknesses and strengths of your enemy. Doing it well requires skill and knowledge of how the game works. Difficulty rewards people who're smart and resourceful. But if you cannot win an encounter and even running is futile then smartness and skill are worthless. If they're worthless then it's not difficult anymore. It's something else!

Something similar is when a game won't warn you when you're going to do something that will kill you. Like walking onto an invisible floor and falling two floors to be met by creatures that outmatch you. That's unnecessary. If the game has a method to handle death even when all of your group members die it might be considered ok. But overdoing these kinds of things only makes a player feel like they're battling the game, not the things inside. When the game becomes your enemy it's no longer fun. Ideally, you slowly grow a player in such a way that they will be met by overwhelming odds only in the smallest of circumstances and with warning. You add just enough challenge to keep them interested and learning. This balance was not met in Wizardry VII. This game kills you too much and exploits your ignorance too. It makes itself the enemy.

This does not mean powerful foes that can crush you with one blow should be abolished from games. It just means that mechanics have to be in place to make the player feel in control of his or her destiny. If the powerful becomes the controller of destiny then the player is no longer playing. The powerful foe is the player then and this just will cause endless grief for the real player.

In other words, sending the player to the floor can help them to grow in small doses. It gives them something to shoot for. Winning is so much sweet if you've lost a few. You have to feel like your enemy is worth killing and is worthy of the fight. But if you're doing it flagrantly then you're only just destroying their spirit. You take them out of the game and lose their trust.

It reminds me of that buzzer the joker had hidden in his palm when he shook hands with his victims. He laughed as they were burnt by the jolts. That's what happens when you mislead a player and kill them when they're not looking. They're not immersed in your game anymore.

The "joy" buzzer:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joy_buzzer

I imagine the joker laughing as a player stumbles through an invisible wall and falls to their death. Then he says, "Now you know not to do that! Fun to learn, ain't it! Hahaahhahhaa!"

Learning ain't fun when the lesson randomly ZAPS! you. In fact, research I've seen was done on mice that showed this to be true. They actually zapped them randomly via a small device attached to their feet. Later study showed that they became addicted to repetitive behavior and were less responsive to stimuli. Examinations of their brain also showed shrinkage. It was specifically in the area of the brain related to goal-directed behavior. One area of the brain did grow and this area is tied to habitual behaviors. In human studies, it has been shown that long-term exposure to cortisol (stress hormone) leads to shrinkage of the hippocampus - learning and memory.

[Scatty]

Well, some very long posts, and only one question - why do you keep bashing your head against the wall? The wall is much sturdier than your head. Might be just the wiser one and go around it instead.

First level characters are beginners. Absolutely laymen. Can't expect them moving mountains without any experience. Skills at levels of around 2-4 are a loong way less efficient from skill level 100. You also instantly drown with a swimming skill below 10. Just like in real life. Only takes a bit longer in the latter, and a bit more painful.
By saving the game before the "firmly set" encounters on specific spots in the game, you have a chance of getting 1-2 opponents instead of 1-6 groups with 1-8 opponents. The battles are much easier to master at that position.
Oh, right, you don't want to save and load games as a matter of principle. But then you prefer to bash your head against the wall. And are missing on lots of fun. Maybe you like to be a martyr.

[DarthHelmet86]

Some, if not most, of these older RPGs used instant death and death traps as a way to extend game play. Save scumming was a fair tactic to get past traps meant to catch the unaware or the new, or even for people not in the mood for being smacked over the head for playing the game.

If they didn't want you to use the tactic they could have easily made save quit the game, like some older RPGs did, so don't feel bad about doing it. Otherwise as Scatty said you are just going to be bashing your head against a wall designed to break peoples heads.

[atomicminds]

Thanks for replying DarthHelmet86 and Scatty.

I tried another game yesterday.

Same group of guys, same classes.

I started with the same guys. Went over to the brickroad. I didn't intend to win. I was kind of frustrated from my previous losses. So I went there at lvl 1 to see if the ratkins would swarm me. However, this time only 4 ambushed me. I lost the fight, but I gained some useful knowledge.

So I made a new game and re-rolled my characters.

I think one of them got 0 stats, the alchemist. Anyway.

I felt excited somewhat now that I knew the brick-road was something I might be able to cross. But I chose to take things easy and level up in the entrance areas first to ensure I can survive the brick-road ambush.

Only a few minutes after starting I got attacked by 4 ratkin bandit things. I lost 4 of my group members. But the important thing is I kept my ranger and priest. I worked the dungeon and the forest with them until I was lvl 5. I opened the chests too. I did not try that ghoul.

This is the point where I went back to the brickroad. 6 rat bandits approached from the trees and attacked. I used the cherry bomb potion on the priest to hit them all in one go. Since the ranger was out of arrows he had been using his sword for a while. He could hit twice by that time. The cherry bomb killed 3 or 4 of them. I won the fight and finally had a smile on my face.

I went to the end of the road and saw the New City sign. This didn't surprise me because I had a parchment referring to it. The imperial guard asked me what my business was. The first time I said I needed rest and provisions. That failed. The second time I told him I was going to Paluke's Armory. It was just a random idea. The guard said that the destination was confirmed and allowed me to pass. The whole thing felt strange to me. But aside from that I went into the city and saw some homes or shops. Wasn't sure if they were homes or shops. I saw one building and tried to enter. The door opened and I innocently went inside, not sure yet whether it was a business or not.

At this point 4 guards attacked me. I am not sure exactly how this happened. Maybe htey attack you when you enter a random home? But the door wasn't locked. Maybe I entered a guard house? Why didn't they at least allow me to explain myself and/or leave? All that aside, I did manage to kill them, but I did run several times. It was close. A few minutes after healing up I exited the crime scene and found Paluke's Armory just next door. Talked with him. Didn't buy anything.

I wandered a bit until I was in a grass filled place with a outhouse or something. I walked next to it to see it more clearly. It looked harmless to me. Just then 4 munks attacked me. I told my 2 guys to run, but it was no good. The munks outmatched me by a good margin. I died and wondered why they were so aggressive. What're they hiding? And wth did I do wrong?

So that's the end of that group.

You guys are right that this game requires you to save & load to play it unless you're a master of the game or have a walk-through. But even so, I don't remember Albion being this bad.

There was a time I played save & load games routinely. But I must have grown out of it. Too many online games. I just can't play that way anymore. It doesn't feel right to me.

I really feel that a evolution in single player RPGs is going to happen as a result of these online games. Save & Load (Save & Redo) as a mechanic is going to change to a more fluid gameplay where death is not necessarily the end of the game and a world wherein encounters are more flexible and anticipated. I don't think surprise will be eliminated from games, but I do think that mortal surprises (that result in death) will become much less frequent. IMHO.

I thank the advice. This is a learning experience for me and I value it a lot.

I may yet try another save game or even grab a walk-through for VII. Despite how I feel about this game and other old(er) games, I still think that the content in there shouldn't be forgotten. I'm humbled by the sum of stories and images and sounds in these games. It almost makes me cry it's so beautiful and at the same time tragic (that they slowly fade from popular use and memory).

PS: My constant references to Save & Load is better rephrased as Save & Redo.

[atomicminds]

Tried another game and got my group to lvl 5 and to another forest adjacent to New City. But my luck ended there. My priest got poisoned and just before I was going to move a cure poison potion we got an encounter. We ran from it and ran into another one with 5 jelly's that killed us.

I never rerolled any of the stats for my characters or used a walk-through or redid a saved game or used any character editors. However, after dying repeatedly and seeing how this game operates, I'd warn anybody who isn't a save & redo junkie to at least re-roll stats until you get +15 or greater and also to consider a walk-through or a character editor if they're available. Otherwise, as others say, you're bashing your head against a wall that's made to crack skulls.

The primary concern I have of walking into the game with overpowered characters is that since 90% of the encounters are doable without any cheating or re-rolling or re-doing, the game would simply become a grind wherein 90% of the time you're clicking and clicking and clicking with no challenge present. The outdated interface makes it much worse. But it's the balance which produces the challenge that matters most to me. I like challenge. I like it when hit-points are low and I have to figure out a strategy. But to have that level of challenge and not to overkill is what makes great games great. It's a balancing act that not everyone achieves. Wizardry VII falls short (if not far) of this goal. But it has an excuse because it's 20 years old. But it still must be said.

[Scatty]

Well it's age is not a much weighting excuse for game, if you ask me. There're for example Ultima Underworld - Stygian Abyss and it's successor, Ultima Underworld - Labyrinth of Worlds. Made more or less just 1 year later, if not at the same time, as Wizardry VII, those two games have IMO much more dense game story, better graphics, great music, better everything, seeing as they're in the same "3D" view perspective.
There're also others, like Betrayal at Krondor, Eye of the Beholder, Might & Magic III, Moonstone - A Hard Days Knight... you can count on and on. They're not always better graphics-wise (Betrayal at Krondor), but each one of them is more than a worthy competitor to Crusaders of the Dark Savant while being also from 20 to 18 years old. Of course relying on saving & loading too, almost all games did back then anyway, though not to such extreme extent as this one.

As was said in some post earlier in this thread, Wizardry VII simply didn't receive that much content into it as some other RPGs did, but the people behind it were good at marketing.