Wizardry 8: An Around the World Tour of Dominus

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Mento

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For the past six weeks, among other pursuits, I've been playing Sir-Tech's Wizardry 8: The very last game in a venerable series of dungeon crawlers that more or less begat the entire Japanese RPG industry, as well as much of western RPG development. Wiz 8 is fairly unrecognizable compared to its ancient forebear, however; though many of the series' trademark mechanics survived, the game had evolved quite a bit both mechanically and conceptually in its many years of existence. That's partly due to the imagination of the series' director for the past few iterations, David W. Bradley, who reinvented the franchise to pertain to a planet-hopping sci-fi quest for galactic domination, rather than chasing some evil wizard who lived in a hole somewhere. Bradley had actually departed Sir-Tech prior to this game to pursue other projects, and Sir-Tech had gone under in the interim between the previous game and this one (a massive nine year gap, which saw a couple of unsuccessful Wizardry spin-offs); Wizardry 8, which no-one thought would see the light of day, was completed by Sir-Tech's Canadian subsidiary and only saw a limited release initially. Though I realize I'm starting to sound like a broken record here, I'd implore anyone to read more about the series and Wizardry 8 in particular by checking out the very detailed articles over on Hardcore Gaming 101. It's been a long road (sup Rorie) from that 1981 pioneer to this 2001 swansong.

I'm going to make it a habit to screencap any time a game says
I'm going to make it a habit to screencap any time a game says "giant bomb".

Personally, Wizardry 8 was a game I wanted to try because it came very highly recommended by fellow CRPG nut @arbitrarywater who, in his peregrinations into the backwoods of CRPGs from the misty past of DOS and CD-ROMs, had emerged with a handful of unequivocal classics. Many of these classics I had already played (and even recommended to him, like Descent to Undermountain (that's a joke (the game and the recommendation))), but Wizardry 8 was one I had not, partially due to it flying in under everyone's collective radars. Though the game is slow as molasses and not particularly transparent about a lot of its deeper mechanics (I think Sir-Tech Canada assumed that only fans of the series would be interested in the game, given how long it had been after its previous entry), I enjoyed my time with it immensely. The combat's thoughtful, in that the game prioritizes taking one's time to strategize, taking into account one's location, the party's skills and stock of consumable items. The story's sufficiently out there to not seem like another generic fantasy slog: the planet merges medieval with spacefaring technology, with the advanced human-like Higardi living alongside primitive races like the Trynnies and Rapax, and the goal of the game is to work alongside other spacefaring races to be the first to procure a trio of McGuffins that would allow the party to become the new omnipotent Cosmic Lords, and in the process stopping the evil Dark Savant and his legion of android servants from achieving the same goal.

Anyway, I'm getting a little ahead of myself. In order to explain what this game is, some of its cleverer mechanics and features and my time with it in particular, I'm framing the game as a guided tour of the world of Dominus (the setting of the game). This will be somewhat akin to my similarly geographically-minded blog on Tales of the Abyss, and probably just as long, so consider thyselves warned, dear readers.

Monastery of the Brotherhood

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Something remarkable about Wizardry 8 is that it still supports importing characters from previous games, a Wizardry staple. The previous game, 1992's Wizardry VII: Crusaders of the Dark Savant, is a comparatively ancient dungeon crawler that sat among contemporaries such as Eye of the Beholder II and Might and Magic IV: Clouds of Xeen. Though hardly a technical marvel to read the code of a 250kb save file to generate the player's party just as they remembered them, it's such a minor but appreciated attention to detail for long time series fans. The player's status in the last game determines their starting position in this one, putting the player in the headquarters of either of the two alien factions they might have aligned with, or setting them in a remote abandoned monastery that acts as the game's tutorial dungeon. New players, like myself, are brought to the planet via an NPC who immediately dies once the player's ship is shot down by the game's villain, the Dark Savant. It's an inauspicious start, but does a fine job of presenting a mystery and an antagonist in one fell swoop (as it were).

As for the Monastery of the Brotherhood itself, it's a tutorial dungeon in the same sense as those found in The Elder Scrolls II: Daggerfall or Baldur's Gate II, in that its purpose is twofold: it's an expansive introduction that acclimatizes the player to the game's many quirks and features, and it also acts as a trial by fire to ensure that the party the player has constructed is a sound one that is likely to survive the first few rough hours. The ground floor has lots of little rooms to check out, squads of weak enemies roaming around and enough items, ammunition and consumables to prevent any catastrophe. There's a large bug named Gregor that sits between the exit to the upper levels and the rest of the dungeon, and the player is expected (and required) to level up several times while exploring the rest of the dungeon before they can hope to beat him.

The monastery's actually one of the more interesting regions of the game, an example of a game starting on the right foot. As well as the usual key/lock puzzles and a few powerful items stashed away for smarter players to find, there's one instance where the player will keep passing items locked behind various glass barriers: a strong (for a low-level party) set of Samurai armor in a display case, for instance, or a glass wall separating the player's party from an enclosed panic room. Towards the end, the player finds a key to the monastery's belfry and can set the power of the belfry's bells, increasing it to the point that it shatters every piece of glass in the entire building. Those various items are now rife for the taking, if the player remembers where they all were. There's also an anti-magic library (it's cleverly demonstrating how the silence status effect works, magically rendering the studious environment sound-free), a vendor NPC that is secretly there to rob the place but will happily give you directions to nearby locations and trade with you if you're running out of inventory space, and there's plenty of books left behind by the monks that provide as much exposition as you're willing to read. It's a well thought out introduction to the rest of the game, and it's a minor shame that the rest of the game's dungeons aren't quite as clever.

Arnika Road

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Though I stated that the monastery is sort of the testing grounds for new players, it's Arnika Road -- the path through the wilderness that links the monastery to the Higardi town of Arnika -- that really throws them for a loop. You see, the game has an interesting mechanic when it comes to scaling monster encounters. Monsters level up as the party does, and whenever the party enters a new area the game generates a number of enemy encounters relative to the level of the party. It does this even with areas the party has already passed through (though if the player took the time to empty out a region, it'll be a while before it's completely filled with enemies again). These monsters roam the countryside, so a particularly stealthy player might be able to hide or outrun any encounter they don't want to meet, but generally speaking it's necessary to fight monsters when they're on narrow paths like Arnika Road.

The problem here is that Arnika Road is a commonly revisited location, as it links several areas together: Mt. Gigas to the north, the monastery to the east and Arnika to the south. It's likely the player will pass through a number of times, and at different experience point levels. As such, Arnika Road has a variety of encounters likely to contain some very strong enemies for a group just emerging from the monastery, and as such it is highly recommended to put off leveling up the party until they have safely made it to Arnika. It's very counter-intuitive -- the whole point of levelling up is to make enemies less challenging and the game easier -- but due to a quirk of how the game generates encounters, it's imperative to stay around level 5 until safely at the next location. Any higher, and the enemy encounter levels all jump up a notch and become quite insurmountable.

As for the region itself, Arnika is sadly one of many cases in Wizardry 8 of an oversized outdoors region with very little going on. There's a few items hidden here and there, but for the most part you're simply marching to the next location of interest fighting monsters. The Elder Scrolls games (including Morrowind, which was released the following year) is a similar case; usually players are just hunting for the nearest dungeon/landmark on the radar. Still, many of the "wilderness" regions that separate the various towns and dungeons of Dominus usually have something noteworthy. Arnika Road only presents one mystery: a building locked with a metal door that sits on the crossroads between the three exits.

Aravella Ynni the Elven Bishop

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I'll break up the tour with some profiles on the six characters I used to beat the game. They perhaps aren't ideal race/class combinations, but it took a restart of the game to come to grips with how characters in this game work and how certain classes start strong and end up relatively weak and vice versa. Obviously, you want a somewhat even mix of those so your party can stay a formidable team throughout the early, mid and late game. Aravella was my physically weak magical powerhouse.

Aravella's class is Bishop, which isn't so much a healer type as a versatile mage. Think Final Fantasy's Red Mage. The Bishop can specialize in all four schools of magic casting: Wizardry, which focuses on destructive magic; Psionics, which focuses on debuffs and divination; Alchemy, which also focuses on debuffs, potion creation and some destructive magic; and Divinity, which is mostly healing, buffs and anti-undead spells. In addition, there are six realms that govern spells in the four schools: Fire, Water, Air, Earth, Mental and Divine. The player has to raise their aptitude (either by spending building points when leveling or through practicing the spell over and over) in both a school of magic and one or more of the six realms in order to learn stronger spells. For instance, a Wizardry-focused character will learn Energy Blast in the Fire realm initially, and can eventually learn the AoE Fireball spell, the damage-over-time Firestorm and the group spell Lightning. A Psionic-inclined character will learn useful buff spells like Haste from the Fire realm instead.

However, as the player only has so many magic points to allot to each character per level, it's possible to end up with a Bishop that's stretched quite thin over her many magic proficiencies. The player's options are to focus on two schools and neglect the rest, or expand to three and four by spending most of the player's treasury on acquiring new spellbooks for the Bishop: each spellbook not only teaches a new spell, but increases total mana and expertise for that element, which ensures that a late-game Bishop isn't too underlevelled in too many disciplines. Aravella became very powerful in Wizardry and Psionics spells, and I made sure to practice casting spells in all six realms to ensure I had a wide suite of options to choose from, depending on the elemental resistances of the foes I was facing. It never got to the point where I was casting utility spells in a safe area over and over to boost them up, fortunately.

As an aside, it's remarkable how many great fantasy names you can get from the Bomb Squad just by removing the first letter of their surnames. Aravella's a perfect elf name. Erstmann recalls a sturdy dwarven fighter. Lepek sounds like a lizardman name if I ever heard one. Yckert could be a bard (alas, poor Yckert?). Canlon would be good for a wizard or cleric. Hoemaker... well, maybe that one has some problems. Whatever occupation "Hoemaker" follows probably wouldn't fit a wholesome RPG too well.

Arnika

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Arnika itself isn't quite the safe haven you might have been expecting after the rigors of the monastery and Arnika Road. For one, it's crawling with the footsoldiers of the Dark Savant, who has set up shop with a particularly ominous tower just adjacent to the city walls. There's also roving bands of rogues as well, as much of the population has fled with the arrival of the Dark Savant, leaving most of the empty houses targets for looting. Unfortunately, despite the occasional useful item, most of these buildings have been ransacked well before you arrived. There's plenty to do here in Arnika though, and the usual CRPG trick of getting some easy early XP by completing non-combat errands in town still applies here too. Importantly, there are four vendors here from which to buy useful gear: He'Li is the local bar owner and the place to go for general goods (she also ties in with a lot of early sidequests); Lord Braffit is the leader of the remaining Brotherhood, whose monastery you just trashed, and is also a locus for sidequests and the guy to go to for healing items and spellbooks; Anna is the salty harbormaster who has an absurd amount of ammunition and ranged weaponry for sale; and Antone the Rapax blacksmith is an imposing figure who sells the best armor and weapons for the early- to mid-game.

What's more is that the player is free to go into the backrooms of these establishments to steal various goods belonging to the vendors, including safety deposit slips which then allows them to ransack the local bank. If the player's survived this far, they can give themselves a major boost by exploring the town thoroughly, selling everything they find and equipping themselves with some powerful gear from the offset. It's at this point that the game's difficulty relaxes a bit, at least until you accidentally wander into an area that's far too high level for you: despite the scaling, there's plenty of monsters that are too powerful for an entry level party even at their weakest incarnation. For instance, even the weakest of the enormous quadruped Hogar enemies still hit very hard and will likely wipe out a low-level party, which is why many of them are not hostile unless the party gets too close.

Arnika also gives you your first look at what the Dark Savant is capable of, beyond the dick move of shooting down your spacecraft at the start of the game. The tower's creepy enough, but the soulless automatons prowling the streets for people to beat up are downright menacing. This is also where you find the plot-significant Vi Domina, however; one of the game's many "RPCs", or Recruitable PCs, that can join the party in one of two slots left specially vacant for guest characters. Unlike how many guest characters work in other games, the player can change an RPC's equipment and direct them in battle as if they were one of their own. Each RPC will also talk about a region once you've entered it for the first time, giving you their impressions and tips and helping to keep the player on track. The other RPC in this area, Myles, is a worthy rogue if you neglected to bring someone who can open locks and deactivate chest traps. He also talks like Terry-Thomas, which can be amusing.

Arnika-Trynton Road

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At this point the player can either head back north to Mt. Gigas or continue down Arnika road to Trynton, the home of the rodent Trynnie folk. However, the game hints several times that the Trynnies need your help and that there's a lot of useful magical back-up they can provide us. They can also enlighten us with the location of Marten: an apostate from the Brotherhood who once, a hundred years prior to the game, stole one of the three major artifacts the player needs to complete the game. Chasing down Marten becomes one of the longest running quest chains in the game, and takes the player through half of the world's locations in that pursuit. Given that the player has no reason to visit Mt. Gigas yet, unless they want to meet the rhinoceros-like Umpani Federation, it's off to Trynton they go.

The Arnika-Trynton Road is essentially the same as the Arnika Road, just longer. It's a little more open too, which means the player can more easily avoid trickier encounters if need be. It's never a good plan to wander around under-leveled, so fighting everything is generally recommended, but it's still possible to bump into an enemy encounter you aren't prepared for, especially if you have the misfortune of bumping into one or more roaming monster groups simultaneously and have to fight them all together. Also in this area is another mysterious metal door building, and the Trynton graveyard. Unless the player can remove the malevolent force that is raising ghosts from their graves, the player may meet roving bands of phantoms in addition to everything else. Having a Bishop in the party makes it a little easier to take on spectral foes, but their immunity to many status effects makes ghost-fighting something of a challenge.

Pookie the Mook Fighter

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My tank. Fighters are one of those classes that starts strong and remains strong throughout, though eventually gets outclassed by other warrior classes. That's because the Fighter is an uncomplicated class that does the job of standing at the front and hitting things hard very adroitly. They have the most HP, can wear the best armor and wield many of the strongest and heaviest weapons. They also have a berserk command, which makes them hit even harder with the downside of not being able to direct their ire if there are multiple targets within reach. It also uses up more stamina, which slowly drains whenever a character uses their skills or takes damage, and running out of stamina puts the character in the rather strategically disadvantageous state of being unconscious until they catch their breath a bit.

Pookie has gone all in with the mace and double wielding skills, as I read somewhere that an off-hand mace is far easier to come across than an off-hand sword. Most off-hand weapons are daggers, which require an entirely separate skill, so with the mace/dual-wield build you have one less skill to focus on building up. Her lack of a shield doesn't hinder her too much, as Mooks tend to be particularly sturdy.

Mooks are Wizardry's Wookiee equivalent: a spacefaring race of explorers and scholars who all the same resemble giant furry beasts. They make good fighters due to their burly constitutions, but are also very intelligent and can make equally excellent mages. The downside to the race is their lack of speed and piety, the latter of which governs the strength of Divine magic and the total number of spell points they receive. A slow Fighter isn't exactly the end of the world though, especially as it gives enemies enough time to wander into melee range before Pookie strikes them down.

Trynton

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Trynton's one of the more interesting locations in the game: it begins as a relatively small area of wilderness around the base of a giant tree. Once the player finds the entrance to the tree, they can climb up its insides to the various Ewok treehouse village boughs above. It's a surprisingly large area all told, and filled with rooms to ransack and wandering wasps and other buglike enemies. The player is ostensibly here to help the Trynnies with their rat infestation: though the Trynnies themselves resemble rodents, the Rattkin are a different manner of being all together.

The Rattkin are actually from the previous game, which was set on the planet of Guardia. They're stereotypical Mafiosi, who use violence, extortion and underhanded means to get what they want. Fortunately for the player, their leader has a bone to pick with the Dark Savant, and actually offers to steal back the second of the three magical McGuffins the player needs, which the Dark Savant took from the party at the end of Wizardry VII. It'll cost the player a pretty penny, but the nature of the three McGuffin quests means the player can return far later in the game when they have the resources to throw around and buy it off the Rattkin. This arrangement also doesn't interfere with the player's current quest to eradicate the Rattkin "breeders", which turn out to be much larger Rattkin women who are built like ogres and swing around gigantic axes. While here, the player can also meet with the enigmatic shaman of the Trynnie people and learn more about Marten and where he might've gone. There's a questline here that takes the player through the next couple regions and back to collect the Helm of Serenity, which was bequeathed to the Trynnie by Marten with instructions to pass it down through the generations of Trynnie shamans so they can one day give it to the player's party. (The game explains Marten's accurate prognostications eventually, don't worry.)

After clearing out the Rattkin, the Trynnie are in your debt and send you on your way to the Swamp, which lies between Trynton and Marten's Bluff; thought to be the final resting place of Marten.

Swamp

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The swamp is a huge open area which leads off to five discrete locations and is a pretty inhospitable place to hang out. Also, like Arnika Road, its status as a hub of sorts that links low- and high-level areas means that it can be filled with a lot of dangerous creatures, ranging from weak swamp frogs to powerful alligators and enormous amorphous blobs. There's a few interesting locations to check out in the swamp, but generally speaking you only ever want to be quickly passing through this region to one of its many exits. The player also meets Crock here, an ornery merchant who talks in a thick Louisianan accent and has a lot of powerful gear and spellbooks to sell to the party. His advanced age makes him a good source of regional information too, though he really doesn't care for the nearby T'Rang who have set up shop in Marten's Bluff. The T'Rang, like the Umpani and Mook, are one of the aliens races who have come to Dominus for the same reason the player and the Dark Savant have: to collect the three treasures that would allow them to ascend to the Cosmic Circle. Of the three races, the T'Rang are perhaps the most intimidating: an expansionist empire of insectoid psionic-users. Kind of a mix between the Klendathu bugs of Starship Troopers and Cthulhu-esque Elder Beings from the deepest regions of the cosmos.

The Swamp also leads off to Bayjin, an aquatic region filled with powerful though primitive sentient fish people named the Rynjin. Bayjin has such a fearful reputation on Dominus that most of the game's RPCs, Vi Domina and Myles included, refuse to step foot in there. It's certainly far too high level for a party this early on in the game, and the game makes sure to let you know by putting a powerful group of Rynjin at the entrance to Bayjin to guard it. They're around 5-10 levels higher than anything else in the swamp right now, so it's best to leave them be. The other options are the Old Mines, which is a small sub-area that leads to Marten's Bluff in a circuitous manner, and the Southeast Wilderness, which leads nowhere the player needs to go just yet. Another quirk of how this game's randomization algorithms operate is that it fills every random chest in a new area using a similar process for populating areas with monsters: any given chest's contents are always of moderate value to whatever level the party happens to be at. It's generally recommended therefore (though the game never states this anywhere) to avoid entering new areas for a quick look around, as it means that when a much higher level party eventually comes back that way for the next story mission, the chests remain filled with low-level junk generated after the first visit.

Ladywolfe the Rawulf Bard

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Ladywolfe is a rawulf, which are the game's canine-like race. Both rawulf and their feline equivalent the felpurr exhibit a certain boost in some stats over humans, though usually taking a hit to intelligence in the process. Rawulf aren't actually all that quick, strangely enough, and boast high vitality and some resistances instead. They also have high piety (presumably because dogs are faithful?) and can make for good priests.

Instead, Ladyhawke is the party's bard, and her high vitality makes it easier for her to use her musical instruments every turn. Instruments operate like free spells: they don't use up mana, and instead take a chunk of stamina instead, which is far easier and faster to replenish and is boosted by the character's vitality stat. Because the Bard needs to find instruments before she can use them, Bards start off somewhat underpowered. Fortunately, her high vitality also means a large HP pool, so she makes do as a secondary fighter before finding enough instruments to be relocated to the rearguard of the group.

Late-game bards, conversely, are some of the most insanely powerful party members you can find. Each new instrument brings with it a useful spell that can be cast an infinite number of times with little cost. Initially, the bard just has instruments that can sometimes send groups of enemies to sleep or hit them with a moderately strong wave of sonic energy. Eventually, she can make groups of enemies insane (stops them attacking, makes them occasionally attack each other), paralyse them (freezes them in place, preventing them from attacking and amplifying any damage done to them), hex them (reduces all their stats, making them sitting ducks), haste the whole party, heal the whole party, greatly increase the whole party's resistance to magic or set off local nuclear blasts which hit every enemy in sight. Towards the end-game, Lady was throwing around high level buffs and devastation spells with abandon, and it didn't cost a thing. Of course, I had to painstakingly find every single one of those instruments by exploring each new dungeon, so it's more that you're getting rewarded for all your thorough exploration with an OP harbinger of doom, singing the song that will end the world. Seems fair to me.

Marten's Bluff

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Marten's Bluff has two sides. The facade, which looks like a moderately sturdy fort surrounded by a moat, takes a little effort to break into. Once inside, there's a lot of traps lying around, and an elevator that very clearly looks like it shouldn't belong to a medieval keep. Underneath Marten's Bluff is an entirely different story: it more closely resembles a subterranean laboratory or the USCSS Nostromo at this point, with eerie metallic corridors filled with cobwebs, moisture and weird bug aliens. The T'Rang are here too, of course, and many of them stalk the corridors. It is here that you can converse with their leader, Z'Ant, and receive quests that are tied to currying favor with the T'Rang faction. Many of these quests involve the T'Rang's rivals the Umpani in some way, such as the party's first mission to bring back proof that the Umpani have set up shop on Mt. Gigas (thus finally giving you a reason to head there). Of course, if the party were to visit Mt. Gigas first and ally with the Umpani, they'd eventually get a quest to find proof of the T'Rang's settlement here.

The T'Rang are actually quite friendly, despite appearances. They have a vendor here too, and a little out of the way is a T'Rang RPC you can recruit. The vendor sells "stun rods", which many of the T'Rang appear to be wielding, and these are spears that have a huge chance to stun or paralyse an opponent, making them very useful weapons. Status effects are greatly overpowered in this game, far outclassing spells that deal direct damage, and paralysis is one of the more devastating status effects due to how any attack made against a paralysed opponent is automatically maximized. It's very possible to bring down a far more powerful enemy if you manage to paralyse them first.

Marten's Bluff also contains a secret area filled with powerful ghosts and Marten's bunker. As well as supplies to help him live out his days in seclusion, there's also a journal that gives you the hint that Marten moved onto the Sea Caves as soon as the Brotherhood stopped looking for him. The player's best guess at this point is that the Sea Caves is where Marten eventually ended up. Unfortunately this leads to a minor issue: the Sea Caves are on the other side of Bayjin, and the player must pass through that deadly region to get to Marten. Fortunately, the game has already thought of this, and most of the mid-game is spent walking to and from the T'Rang and Umpani camps achieving faction quests and earning huge amounts of easy XP. The player can also take this time moving back and forth to recover the artifact that they need to trade to collect the Helm of Serenity from the Trynnie shaman, which is apparently essential if they intend to pick up the Destiny Dominae: the McGuffin that Marten holds. However, grabbing the artifact leads to a booby trap during which a player's party member goes missing. The culprit is revealed to be Crock, who originally set the trap to catch T'Rang, and demands you kill a giant frog in the swamp before handing your party member back. That jerk.

Northern Wilderness

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The Northern Wilderness separates Arnika Road from Mt. Gigas, and is another unremarkable expanse of wilderness. Instead, I'll take this opportunity to talk more about how monster encounters and combat works.

Monsters are divided into species and ranks. The species corresponds to the type of creature it is: a crocodile, a slime, a Higardi rogue, a ghost, etc. etc. As the player gets stronger, they fight higher ranked versions of those same monsters; these higher ranks usually don't look too different, but maybe they'll get a palette swap or some more elaborate frills or armor. Instead, they are simply more powerful versions with more HP and sometimes additional attacks and status effects. They might also be immune to more status effects than their weaker brethren, possibly forcing the player to change tactics. Each species has a number of different ranks and, as I explained earlier, even the weakest rank of one species can still be a powerful foe. Even bats, the weakest enemies from the monastery, have enough ranks to remain threats right up until the late-game, moving from regular bats to dusk bats, twilight bats, shrieker bats, giant bats, vampire bats and bat vampires (who, unlike vampire bats, are regular bats turned vampiric).

Combat is your standard turn-based affair, which should come as no surprise given that Wizardry is the precursor to Dragon Quest and Final Fantasy and every JRPG that followed those trailblazers, though the player can switch to a continuous mode which simply keeps the player characters in a holding pattern without asking the player to input new commands (unless they switch back to the standard phased combat setting) until combat ends, similar to how Baldur's Gate handles its combat. The phased setting sticks to the usual Wizardry format of setting everyone on the default attack setting unless the player gives them something else to do, like use a spell or an item. They also default to the nearest target within range, or in the case of multiple melee targets, whichever one moved into melee range first. As such, it's a combat system that is as slow and cautious as the player wishes it to be, with the option to simply automate a full round of regular attacks if the player bumped into a weak group of creatures that require no elaborate strategy to defeat. As characters grow stronger, they acquire both additional attack rounds and additional swings. Additional swings occur more rapidly with faster warriors, such as the unarmed monks or the lightning fast ninjas and samurais. Additional attacks, however, tend to only appear once the character has levelled up a lot. In the case of my RPC monk, he was able to attack eight or nine times per combat round. This is the often the key to having stronger end-game characters, as they start to really pile the damage on with their multiple attacks.

"The Bride" the Human Samurai

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My samurai perhaps best exemplifies what a fast if under-powered melee character can become in the end game. Samurais are crippled several times over initially: their armor choices are limited, they have very low HP totals for a fighter class and while they can eventually learn Wizardry spells, it requires them to reach level 5 first and having to hybridize between spell casting and melee combat means they'll never truly be the master of either. Additionally, my Samurai started as a dual-wielder, wearing both a katana and a smaller wakizashi, which meant even less defense with which to keep her alive. However, as well as combat magic, the samurai has two other talents going for them in comparison to the standard fighter: the first is the Lightning Speed skill, which occasionally boosts the Samurai's attack to four, five or even six or seven swings per round. The other is the Critical Strike skill, shared by monks and ninjas, which very occasionally produces an instant kill affect.

I'll let all that sink in for a moment. Imagine what a samurai can do with two weapons, each of which can occasionally be swung five or six times, and each of which has a small chance of causing an instant kill. I know, right? It takes a little while for a samurai to proc any of those abilities at a reliable rate however, so it's a case of a fixer-upper. It's also unusual to come across samurai-specific weapons and armor (all of which has Japanese-sounding names), though samurais tend to be fine with most (but not all) the weapons and armor that a Fighter, Lord or Valkyrie can use.

Given that the portrait I used for my female human samurai was a blonde, I figured this name was more fitting than any other. I also gave my samurai a Southern Belle accent for reasons I'm not entirely sure about. She was a constant delight throughout, whether she was calling some NPC "Darlin'" or making late-game enemies explode with alarming regularity. Needless to say that, once the game was over, she had the highest body count of any PC.

Mt. Gigas

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Mt. Gigas is the temporary home of the militaristic Umpani, a bunch of rhinoceros aliens that all talk like drill sergeants. Their quest chain is remarkably similar to the T'Rang's, in that they first put you through the ropes with a few softballs and then start finding ways to undermine their rivals using the player's party for their dirty work. What's perhaps more telling, and this ties into some late-game missions, is that neither the T'Rang or the Umpani actually hate each other all that much. The quests they give you regarding the other faction largely involve reconnaissance and shoring up defenses from a theoretical attack. While the player can choose to ally with one and oppose the other, there's actually nothing stopping the players from joining both sides and getting double the XP. In fact, I dare say it's required to reach a necessary experience level to make that first trip to Bayjin. Additionally, if one were to follow the Umpani and T'Rang quest chains far enough, they each have a quest that forces you to head to Bayjin regardless. It's an ideal opportunity to go there, since you need to anyway.

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As for Mt. Gigas itself, it begins with the Umpani Camp just outside the mountain before the player goes into the labyrinthine tunnels of the mountain itself. At all points inside Mt. Gigas, with the exception of a network of abandoned tunnels, there are Umpani patrols wandering back and forth. The player can actually draw enemies within range of the Umpani patrols to give themselves a helping hand, which is something that can be done with some areas of Marten's Bluff and the T'Rang as well: there's no harm in doing this, as getting allies into combat doesn't diminish your reputation with them (unless you accidentally kill one), and sometimes the monsters will kill them which leaves their spoils for you to collect after the battle is over.

Mt. Gigas and Marten's Bluff also have another thing in common: a teleporter. The Umpani teleporter actually takes you to that mysterious house with the metal door I mentioned earlier when describing Arnika Road, which cuts out a few areas between Mt. Gigas and Arnika if the player needs to head back in that direction. The T'Rang teleporter in Marten's Bluff is harder to reach, but also provides more options: It can take the player's party to the exterior of Marten's Bluff; to the metal gate house on the Arnika-Trynton road; to the entrance to Mt. Gigas; and to the entrance to the Rapax Rift. The Rift is a little too extreme for the party at this juncture and, like Bayjin, many RPCs simply refuse to follow you in there and risk tangling with the Rapax. I'll be describing those bad boys in due time.

Bayjin

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Eventually, inevitably, the player must make their way to Bayjin. The best course is to take the underwater Mt. Gigas route, unlocked after agreeing to the Umpani's rescue mission, which actually takes you to Bayjin Shallows (below) first. Bayjin is the island itself, a tropical paradise were it not for all the extremely dangerous psychic Rynjin and enormous crabs prowling the beach. The player needs to come here for two reasons (or just one, if they have decided to only ally with either the T'Rang or Umpani): the black box from another crashed ship, shot down the same manner that you were, which the T'Rang needs to track the Dark Savant's starship; and the Umpani prisoners of war taken by the Rynjin after the Umpani tried investigating the area. It's possible to avoid a lot of the enemies in this area and try to get in and out after accomplishing the quest objectives (the quest givers recommend as much, knowing full well how problematic the Rynjin can be). Of course, a slightly tougher party can find some very nice gear in Bayjin and the surrounding locations. It all depends on how foolhardy you intend to be (or how overpowered you became by playing both sides against the middle).

Gerty "Talli" Talliweather the Hobbit Gadgeteer

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My gadgeteer, Talli (I know, shut up), takes a similar role as the bard and is equally disadvantaged early on. A new class invented for this game, the gadgeteer is a modern weapons expert (it has its own skill to upgrade, alongside other ranged weapons like "bow" and "thrown/sling") that comes with her own "Omnigun". The gadgeteer makes incremental upgrades to the Omnigun as they level up, ensuring that it remains the only weapon they ever need. Unfortunately, early on, all it can fire is musket balls (which are understandably rare early on) and pebbles usually reserved for the sling. Pebbles can be damaging, but they're also heavy and lack any sort of accuracy that arrows and quarrels enjoy. In addition, the gadgeteer must assemble the gadgets she can use, which work similarly to the bard's instruments in that they're essentially infinite-use magical spells that only require a small stamina drain, and assembling gadgets means finding two components that may well be on the opposite sides of Dominus. In addition to all that, the gadgeteer lacks the HP and melee prowess that a bard can always fall back on.

The gadgeteer is a hard sell for the early game, then, but she's not entirely useless: her weapon becomes fairly effective in short order, eventually allowing the player to use throwing knives and darts as ammunition as well, and providing status effects like a chance to blind and poison. It'll only become more devastating too, as it becomes tweaked further to provide an instant kill proc and can be fired several times per round at higher levels. The gadgets, too, are as overpowered as the bard's instruments, including: an early one that can instill fear into a group of enemies causing them to run away; give the entire party Armorplate, which greatly boosts physical defense; one that reveals the location of every monster on the map/radar making avoidance that much easier; the ignoble Port-a-Potty, which replicates the Noxious Fumes spell that remains a very serviceable AoE spell that can sometimes nauseate an opponent, which makes them lose turns as they start gagging uncontrollably. Late game gadgets include a heal-all, a powerful water cannon (very useful against the fire-based creatures in the Rapax Rift and nearby locations) and an earth-shattering jackhammer that devastates every enemy on screen. The gadgeteer is not lacking for firepower come the late game, though once again you need a lot of prep work to get there.

As for Talli herself, she's a hobbit. Hobbits are suitable for almost any role besides Priests/Valkyries, as they take a hit to piety. Their good dexterity and senses make them excellent with ranged classes, like the gadgeteer with their Omnigun, and they don't suffer from a lack of vitality, which means their stamina is easy to keep up. The game lets you input a character's full name and their shorthand nickname for some reason, possibly immersion; the nickname is how the game refers to them at all times anyway, so the full name might as well be dressing. Talli has a typical Hobbity name which just so happens to abbreviate to resemble that of a certain masked alien engineer from an entirely different sci-fi RPG franchise...

Bayjin Shallows

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The Bayjin Shallows are remarkable due to the fact that they're entirely underwater. An unprepared party will quickly drown, but the game provides a boon in the case of scuba gear. Unlike the scuba gear in Might and Magic VII, which requires that each character remove all armor and weapons, the scuba gear of Wizardry 8 only demands a single accessory slot. It does put you at a small disadvantage, but fortunately the Shallows is a very small area relatively speaking (though if you're heading there through Mt. Gigas, that's another bunch of underwater caves to get through first). The Shallows is what links Bayjin to the Sea Caves (and Mt. Gigas), so it's necessary to take a dip if you want to head to Marten's resting place.

There is one small snafu when passing through this location. The crossroads that connects between the three locations is a large pool occupied by one Nessie. Nessie is a level 26 plesiosaur with around 800 HP and enough group spells to make attacking at a distance very unpleasant. Even less pleasant is trying to face her in melee range, as she has a not-inconsiderable chance to swallow a character whole, removing them from the fight. It's generally an encounter you want to avoid this early on, though given Nessie's size it's not always easy to do so. There's quite a bit a bit of sunken pirate treasure in the area too, so the designers definitely went all-in with the Caribbean theme.

Sea Caves

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The Sea Caves are a welcome return to the type of puzzle dungeon that began the whole game back with the monastery. Though a relatively compact series of tunnels and beaches, the Sea Caves requires a lot of investigation and backtracking as players keep finding items that unlock new areas of the cave elsewhere. It's a bit confusing, and the crab/ghost enemies are relentless, but there's some nuance to this dungeon that I appreciated. Given it was conceived by an omniscient madman with a lot of time on his hands, it seems fairly explicable that it's a bit of a brainteaser.

Talking of whom, the party finally meets Marten here (or rather, his spirit) and acquires the Destiny Dominae, the first (or possibly third) relic they sought to acquire. However, the player needs to have found the Helm of Serenity and equipped it, or else all the universe's knowledge contained within the Dominae will drive the entire party mad for as long as they carry it. A permanently insane party will not get far, especially as the insanity effect frequently turns allies against each other. I've already explained the case with the Astral Dominae, which is the relic that you can pay the Rattkin to steal from the Dark Savant, and if you haven't done so yet, you're probably rocking enough small change that such a purchase is now feasible. The Chaos Moliri, which is the third and final relic, is carried by the Mook. The player can visit the Mook as soon as they have progressed the T'Rang or Umpani quest chains far enough that they've been given the task of delivering a message of truce to the Mook compound in Arnika, which had until this point been inaccessible. The player can then either kill the Mook and steal the Chaos Moliri or swap it, Indiana Jones style, with the fake Astral Dominae that the Dark Savant angrily throws at you once the Rattkin have stolen the real one from him. Given the amount of trouble it takes to recover the Destiny Dominae, the ease with which you take the other two almost feels like cheating.

Hrist the Human Valkyrie

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Valkyries were introduced as far back as Wizardry VI: Bane of the Cosmic Forge, and are a female-exclusive fighter/priest hybrid class. They also begin with a heavy skill bonus in polearms, making that their preferred weapon. If the player doesn't have a Valkyrie, they can easily hire one by finding Vi Domina in Arnika. In addition to the polearm proficiency and Divinity spells, the Valkyries have a surprisingly common chance at surviving death, coming back from the brink with a random number of hit points. This power can even activate several times in a row, making Valkyries almost unkillable. The long reach on polearms make them ideal for protecting flanks too, as larger groups of enemies love to surround the player's party. While their damage output eventually gets outclassed by Fighters and the other hybrids, they're a very dependable class and a good choice if you want a healer for your group.

Hrist is probably the one valkyrie in Tri-Ace's Valkyrie Profile series who won't be seeing her own game any time soon (she's usually a minor antagonist in any VP she appears in), so I gave her a chance to stretch her wings in this one instead. The voice actor I selected for her speaks in very portentous intonations about destiny and the fate of the world, which seems fitting enough for a Wagnerian refugee. Throughout the whole game, while other characters slowly came into their own and started being the big power players in the group, she was near the back, quietly kicking ass and keeping everyone alive as needed.

Southeast Wilderness

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Another wilderness area, though with an ominous cathedral right in the center. This cathedral contains one of the toughest fights in the game for a mid-level party (and is downright impossible if you wandered here from the Swamp without completing all the T'Rang/Umpani/Bayjin missions first). The fight is against six cultists, a Sorceress Queen and two Dread Lords. Dread Lords are eight feet tall skeleton knights who hit the party constantly with status effects, while the other seven are all powerful magic-users. The trick is to find a way to get them in melee range, and can be done by hiding around corners. Even so, it's one hell of a tussle, and something of a shock to any under-leveled party passing through the region. It's also entirely optional, which makes it a fair enough party-killer if they're foolish enough to go where they don't need to. Of course, the many rewards from beating this battle makes the painful affair worth it.

The Southeast Wilderness doesn't have much else going on. It links three locations: the swamp, the Mountain Wilderness and a small wilderness clearing to the east. After a certain point in the game's story, this wilderness clearing becomes something completely different...

Rapax Away Camp

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I stumbled into the Rapax Away Camp quite by mistake, though I discovered later on that this is where I wanted to be to complete a very important objective pertaining to the T'Rang and Umpani faction quests. After finding two of the three relics, the Dark Savant suddenly decides to get his ass in gear and allies with the Rapax: the Rapax are the fourth indigenous sentient species on Dominus, after the Higardi, Trynnie and Rynjin. They're both fiercely intelligent and fiercely, well, fierce. A warlike race of reptilians with demonic horns, they were exiled to a volcanic region of Dominus after a war with the advanced Higardi went poorly for them, and have found themselves a sponsor of sorts with the demoness Al-Sedexus, who has granted many of them demonic powers in addition to their extant martial prowess. Understandably, the Rapax are the last creatures you want to fight. As such, the Rift and Castle regions they reside in comprise the final areas of the game the player must visit before heading up Ascension Peak to complete the game.

The Rapax Away Camp is situated some distance away from the Rapax homeland, and is the staging ground for a full invasion (and genocide) of every other species on Dominus. The nature of their alliance with the Dark Savant is that they prohibit anyone else from reaching Ascension Peak, giving the Dark Savant exclusive access, and after he ascends the fate of the planet is left in the Rapax's malevolent claws. It's a match made in Hell, which is why its important for the player party to throw a spanner into the works. It's also important to note that the Rapax have fully invested in the "stop anyone ascending" idea by closing off Ascension Peak with a landslide, which forces the players to find the only other entrance to the peak in the Rapax Castle.

Anyway, the camp is where a lot of high level Rapax are milling around, and it was here that I fought over 20 very powerful Rapax Templars and Archers to a standstill, using a tent to keep my sides from being flanked as I funneled each Rapax through the entrance. Even though I was greatly outmanned and overpowered, using the Rapax's AI against them I was able to empty the camp entirely and free the two prisoners that the Rapax had abducted: A T'Rang and an Umpani, both scouts for their respective factions. The two had become friends despite their races' history, and thus begins an entirely optional quest chain to unite the Umpani and T'Rang against their common enemy: The Dark Savant. The chain actually ends with blowing up the Dark Savant's spaceship in an act of payback, so it's a very rewarding (in more ways than one) arc to follow.

RPCs: Vi Domina, Myles, RFS-81, Rodan, Drazic, Glumph

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I've run out of player generated characters, so here's a few of the RPCs I found in the game. RPCs, as stated, are recruitable story PCs that join the party and can be controlled in battle like any of the regular player characters. The few detriments to taking RPCs with you is that they generally refuse to go anywhere near Bayjin or Rapax territory, as the entire planet is terrified of the Rynjin and Rapax (with good reason). Myles is the first you meet, as he stands outside of Arnika as a welcoming party. His real goal is to get the player's party invested in a few lucrative missions he's heard about that he can't handle alone, one of which is to rescue Vi Domina from her predicament.

Vi is actually close to another crashed starship in the center of town. She's currently trapped in a wrecked building by some of the Dark Savant's androids, and the player can rescue her for a few rewards from He'Li and Braffit. (Of course, if you bump into He'Li with Myles in tow, you're forced to pay for his meager bar tab too.) Vi's a very dependable RPC for a lot of the game, due to being of the tough Valkyrie class, and is a font of wisdom about Dominus as well. She also has plot significance, being a character introduced in Wizardry VII who has ties with the Dark Savant, so its worth keeping her around for narrative reasons too.

RFS-81 is my favorite RPC, however. A savant drone that was in disrepair and abandoned near Marten's Bluff, he requires a certain chemical found near the Dark Savant's tower in Arnika to become functional again. Once repaired, he confuses the player's party with the Dark Savant and joins them. He's a capable monk, though he's prohibited from using the Psionic spells of the monk class due to his soulless nature, but best of all he is completely willing to go anywhere with you, lacking the fear that prohibits other RPCs from entering extremely dangerous areas. The only place he won't go is the Rapax Away Camp, and that's for mechanical reasons: the player ideally emerges from the Rapax Away Camp with both the Umpani and T'Rang scouts, and they won't go anywhere without the other, so for that reason you cannot take any RPCs with you into the camp.

As for those two scouts, who are actually Rodan the Umpani Lord and Drazic the T'Rang Ninja, they're also very capable RPCs who, for whatever reason, don't suffer any ill effects if you take them to regions they don't want to go. I actually went and did the Rapax Away Camp before going into Bayjin for the second time, because they're the only two RPCs besides RFS-81 and Glumph willing to go in there. Lords are essentially like Valkyries in that they're a fighter/healer hybrid (not unlike Paladins, really) while ninjas are a physically weaker version of samurai that excel at range and can cast Alchemy spells. The ninja's Critical Strike skill, the one that occasionally instantly kills an opponent, will activate even with ranged weapons, making them deadly at any distance. Unfortunately, once the player has completed the T'Rang-Umpani alliance quest chain and destroyed the Dark Savant's ship, they both permanently leave the party and cannot be recruited again. Glumph, who I just mentioned, is the impetuous Umpani warrior who you are required to rescue from the Rynjin to complete that particular quest. He's a solid enough fighter that can help make the Bayjin sections easier but, like Rodan and Drazic, permanently leaves the party for good once his quest is over.

Mountain Wilderness

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The third and final of the "wilderness areas", the large expanses of land with very little in them that sit between locations of more importance (and fun), the Mountain Wilderness links the Northern Wilderness, the Southeast Wilderness, the Rapax Rift and Ascension Peak together. The area is somewhat volcanic in nature, so most of the enemies are lava-, fire- or rock-based, like the nightmarish scorchers that breathe fire on the party or the enormous golems that clomp around the region in an intimidating manner. The party can also find the lost group of Brotherhood monks who set out to stop the Dark Savant from the beginning monastery. They give you information about the Rapax after you save them from a Rapax patrol, but don't really lend much help otherwise. You also meet Bela here, a bipedal dragon from the prior Wizardry game who has been pursuing the Dark Savant for decades. Though he looks like a winged demon, he's actually quite friendly and asks that you assist him to stop the Dark Savant once you reach Ascension Peak.

I'll use this space to talk about the game's status effects instead, since they're far more dependable for spellcasters than direct damage spells like the fireball. There's Irritation, which drops a character's attack and defense skills, and Hex, which is a much more powerful version of the same effect that also lowers every other stat. Nausea will occasionally prohibit a character from moving, while stuff like Blind, Fear, Paralyse, Stun, Poison and Sleep are fairly self-explanatory. What's interesting is how enemies will react to these status effects: Fear and Blind will always make an enemy run away, while Stun, Paralyse and Sleep will completely halt their idle animations which is a handy visual cue (along with the various symbols above their heads which denote which status effects they have) for running up and beating the crap out of their prone forms. Given how easy it is to inflict fear and blindness (there are consumable items that hit enemies with those effects), it's worth keeping them in mind when you're surrounded and need to make several enemies back off for a while.

Rapax Rift

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The Rapax Rift is a foreboding place, filled with lava, evil sculptures and Rapax banners everywhere. One of the first things you witness when entering the area is a giant Lava Lord elemental march across the screen to kill a Rapax prisoner. The pact that the Rapax have signed with Al-Sedexus, the local demoness, isn't quite so beneficial to everyone. Anyone who disagrees with Al-Sedexus or the ruling class of Templars that serve her are summarily dispatched with. You can save one prisoner by recovering a Staff of Ash elsewhere in the level, but it's kind of a nuisance to reach (and requires you killing that aforementioned Lava Lord).

The Rapax Rift requires a bit of guesswork too, with a few interesting puzzles to solve before you can make further progress and reach the path to the Rapax Castle beyond. What complicates things are all the Rapax patrols, and they don't make it easy for you even with a high level party. Oddly, however, none of the Rapax here are anything like as strong as those found in the Rapax Away Camp. If you went there first, as I did, you might be a little underwhelmed by the Rapax who resist you here.

The Rapax Rift is also home to Al-Sedexus, though you can't fight her yet for story reasons. She points you in the direction of the Rapax Castle and a certain quest chain you can complete there.

Rapax Castle

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The Rapax Castle is a very large multi-layered structure that comprises the technical final dungeon of the game. There's many more Rapax prowling the corridors here, though there's also a friendly one in the form of Ferro. Ferro, like his brother Antone in Arnika, is a blacksmith who is willing to sell you some of the most powerful gear in the game. Like Antone, he will also create custom pieces for you if you fetch him certain items, which are usually (but not always) found after defeating enemies. These ingredient side-quests can be worth your time if you want some specialized equipment, though fetching the giant amount of silver ore he requests can be hell on your encumbrance limits.

The Rapax Castle contains a zoo filled with tough creatures, many secret areas, the Rapax Prince (who you also meet at the Away Camp and, like he does there, will run away and abandon his concubines to fight you alone) and two portals: one that takes you back to Arnika, one-way, and one that will take you to Ascension Peak and is necessary to continue the game. Unfortunately, that particular teleporter is behind the altar of Al-Sedexus, and you're required to complete the Templar quest chain in order to have access to it.

The Templar quest chain is a suitably disquieting ritual where you fight elementals and pledge your heart, mind and body to Al-Sedexus. After this process, one of your party is "Chosen" by her (it involves a lot of Succubus antics, if you catch my drift) and then whenever you leave the Rapax Rift, that party member becomes permanently hexed. The only way to remove it is to kill Al-Sedexus, which isn't too easy a battle and involves making all the Rapax your enemy again. Still, you could always ascend Ascension Peak while hexed but, uh... I wouldn't recommend it.

Ascension Peak

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The end game is somewhat anti-climactic, though maybe that's just due to where I was at mentally some hundred hours into this game and eager for it to conclude already. The player must place the three relics they have recovered into the three temples, solving riddles from the Cosmic Lords' pet android Aletheides to prove your worth. Each of these temples requires walking down a long road filled with tough enemies, and then fighting a particularly high level encounter just outside the temple's doors. These fights are, explicably, the toughest in the entire game, and involve demons (the "Chaos" that the Chaos Moliri represents), dryads (the "Life" that the Astral Dominae represents) and some transparent crystalline unicorns (I have no idea what part of the knowledge-based Destiny Dominae they represent, besides maybe the home decor of a spinster librarian). There's also the small matter of a Rapax army, led by the cowardly Rapax Prince and, horrifically, the demonic child of Al-Sedexus and the player character who slept with her to seal the Templar pact. It's a tough fight, but at this point in the game the player characters are such a high level that you mostly cleave through the Rapax horde. The Rapax Prince in particular took two arrows before getting gibbed by the gadgeteer's Omnigun's instant kill chance.

After that, the path to the Cosmic Circle opens up, though not before you witness the Dark Savant jumping in ahead of you. If you haven't disarmed the bomb in his tower in Arnika (the way to get in there is through another teleporter in the Rapax Castle), he'll set it off, destroying the entire planet and you along with it. It's worth noting that the only RPCs willing to follow you to Ascension Peak are Vi Domina (who requires some clever portal placement magic to get her past all the Rapax she refuses to mess with), RFS-81 and those quest RPCs you should've dropped off back home by this point.

Cosmic Circle

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And this metaphysical realm is where the game concludes. The Dark Savant and the player's party meet face to face at the home of the Cosmic Lords and at the altar of the Cosmic Forge: a book and pen that comprise the most powerful tool of creation and are able to bring into being anything that is written within, and a major plot obstacle in the prior two games (Wizardry VI is even named after it). There's multiple choices available to the player, each leading to a decidedly different conclusion. But any more than that would be saying too much.

What it does do is entirely conclude the Wizardry saga that began in Wizardry VI, and perhaps that's the game's crowning achievement in the end: that it bothered to tie up a three part story arc that had been left dangling for almost a decade, for the benefit of the many fans who never thought they would see a denouement to the Dark Savant/Cosmic Force trilogy.

That concludes our tour of Dominus, and this blog. Thanks for putting up with yet another incredibly verbose trip through a particularly dense RPG. I hope I've given you enough of an impression of my admiration and appreciation for this game, but if you haven't you can always pick it up on Steam or GOG and try it for yourselves. It's a very long game, and by no means should you head into it without that in mind, but quite worth the time all the same. Roll up a party, find out that party sucks a few hours in, roll up another one and have your own adventures through Dominus. Just don't be stingy with those paralyse spells and make sure to turn up the speed settings for combat; both those things will make the whole affair far less painful.

You're supposed to fear this guy, but he doesn't half come off like Cobra Commander sometimes. Dark Savant more like Idiot Savant, am I right? G'night folks.
You're supposed to fear this guy, but he doesn't half come off like Cobra Commander sometimes. Dark Savant more like Idiot Savant, am I right? G'night folks.

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bobafettjm

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Wizardry is one of those series that I always thought looked interesting, but for whatever reason I have just never played. I even have 6, 7, and 8 sitting in my Steam library.

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ArbitraryWater

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#2  Edited By ArbitraryWater

It's good to see this blog was as long and verbose as Wizardry 8 itself! (Because boy is that game both lengthy and slow paced, which likely explains why I've only finished it once). Other than that, I think you've covered juuuuust about everything with the exception of the hidden old-school dungeons that I'd lightly describe as "Hella difficult".

I know it gets poo-poo'd on by some of the hardcore fans of Wiz 6 and 7, but unlike those games Wiz 8 is actually playable and not the most brutal, punishing nightmare of obscurity imaginable.

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Justin258

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I'd love to play this game some more but people saying it's super slow makes me wary of it. I'm not really in a good position to play a slow game these days.

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Karkarov

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Hmmm rough team composition. But Bard and Gadgeteer do get real buff end game, this is true! Nice to read this and get a trip down memory lane from my time playing it, was one of those weird games that sticks with you quite a bit.

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fisk0

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#5  Edited By fisk0  Moderator

A few of the Japanese spinoff games are pretty great too, especially Wizardry: Tale of the Forsaken Land on PS2. They all stick extremely close to the formula of the first two Wizardry games though, with the more generic fantasy setting, tile based dungeons with random encounters and teleporter traps and stuff like that.

The most recent one to make it to the West (apart from the now discontinued Wizardry Online, which wasn't good at all), Wizardry: Labyrinth of Lost Souls on PS3 isn't exactly the high point of the series, even among the Japanese made games, but I still had some hours of fun with that.

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Bocam

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Did one of the Wizardry games have space travel or am I just crazy?

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fisk0

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#7  Edited By fisk0  Moderator

@bocam said:

Did one of the Wizardry games have space travel or am I just crazy?

Wizardry 7 had that. Wizardry 6 and 8 refer to space travel a lot (you start off in your crashed ship in 8), but you stick to one planet in those.

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deactivated-5bf47a52ab2a3

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@mento Very fun read, thanks for sharing!

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This is making me itch to finally play one of the however many copies of this I have. Too bad I'm only just knee-deep in Wasteland 2 because I still need to take Wiz8 off of my CRPG checklist. I took 7 off a year or two ago and it's only expected that I experience the hellish abyss of Arnika Road for myself.

Very fun writeup, too, if I forgot to mention.