
It's a little cruel releasing three Wizardry games and selling them as a package. One game is enough for weeks of play if you get hooked. Three is just insane.
So with due disclaimer - though this is the second time I've played each game (yeah, I'm a Wizardry tragic from way back and we can blame this series for more than a few broken high school romances, OK), I haven't completed any of them this time around. So I apologise if after 25 hours one of the three games crashes and blows your PC up, I didn't know. Head over to an Internet Cafe and let me know though, please, because I'll be getting there very soon.
For the purposes of this review I split my time fairly evenly between each game. So I spent an hour or two with Wizardry 6, then moved to 7, and then 8. In a like-for-like comparison there is something that people need to know up-front; if you in any way, shape or form have difficulty with retro-style visuals, the only game here that you could possibly stand is Wizardry 8. Both 6 and 7 are truly ugly, even by DOS game standards, and even as a fan of these games it was hard to look at them again. On a nice modern computer screen the two DOS emulations are grainy messes of pixels that barely look like anything and suffer from a few hundred few animations.

And while the environments of two of the three games might not look like much, what they represent is some amazing environments in some truly spectacular worlds. As with a good fantasy novel or text-based adventure this is a game that demands players use their imaginations, but the rewards for doing so are substantial. If anything, the more detailed environments of Wizardry 8 means that there's less room for the player's own imagination, and so the game's world is a little less vivid.

The balance in each game is solid. Challenging in the extreme, but solid. Making some good choices with the character combinations and their skills, and taking meticulous maps will help greatly in getting through the adventure. Being lazy or careless will earn defeat. By modern standards that's going to sound harsh, but in reality it provides players with a special, rare kind of agency; genuine success is in their hands.
With that said, it's going to be hard for people who haven't played these games before (or, at least, other retro RPGs) to step into any of the Wizardry games in this package thanks to the absence of tutorials or... well, explanation in general, really. One of the good things that modern game design has given us is crystal clear interfaces, articulate tutorials and, at the least, an introduction that doesn't potentially throw them into a lethal conflict. Less old school RPG fans are going to really struggle to retain interest for long enough to feel comfortable with everything that's going on in these surprisingly rich gameplay systems and mechanics.
But then this is three incredibly long and engaging RPGs for a tiny price. It's hard to imagine a better value package on Steam, and, frankly, short of the old SSI Dungeons & Dragons games being released on Steam as well, I can't think of games I could be happier to have on my hard drive again. This, here, is my childhood returned to me in one almighty nostalgic rush.
- Matt S
Editor-in-Chief
Find me on Twitter: @digitallydownld