Wizards & Warriors

Pros • Ability to control how often random monsters spawn • Different Guilds your characters can join for a little extra kick • Simple, easy to learn interface	Cons • Vertical movement is needlessly challenging • Playing screen feels cluttered • The 3D engine and graphics feel and look dated • Unoriginal storyline offers nothing new
Bottom Line Take a trip down memory lane with Wizards & Warriors, an RPG that hearkens back to the golden era of sword and sorcery on the PC. It's a shame it’s all been done so many times before. Few are the serious role-players of today who do not look back to their early days of adventuring on the PC and find themselves smiling with nostalgia at the fond memories. I remember well the excitement of creating my band of aspiring adventurers and setting forth to save the worlds of Might & Magic, Dungeon Master, and the Bard’s Tale, among others. Continuing that excellent tradition is Wizards & Warriors, a game brought to us by D.W. Bradley, the creators of some of the latter titles in the famous Wizardry series. How then, can a game that falls into a genre with such a great track record, find its quick way out of your hard drive and onto a dusty shelf? The answer is quite simple folks: Times and expectations have changed.

The land trembles with fear as an ancient and long-forgotten evil awakens from slumber to once again wreak havoc and vengeance upon the innocent. Never fear however, for prophecy tells of the existence of a lost artifact of power, a fabled sword, which can defeat this horrible evil. From the most remote of places shall a band of unlikely heroes stride forth and recover this sword and win the day against all odds.

If after reading this you find yourself reliving countless past role-playing experiences, do not be alarmed. Yes, you’ve defeated this ancient evil many times before but, just like a bad habit, it keeps coming back. Enter Wizards & Warriors and get ready to it all over again.

The land this time around is Gael Serran, and the world-saving artifact you are seeking is the Mavin Sword, the only thing that can kill (insert difficult to pronounce bad guy’s name here.) You start off in the Village of Valeia and must first go into the Inn and create up to fifteen characters, although you can only adventure with a maximum of six at a time. The choices range from standard fantasy fare such as Humans, Elves, and Dwarves, to the more exotic Ratlings, Lizzords, Oomphaz (elephant people), Gourks (can you say Orc?), and Whiskahs (if you guessed cats, you win the money.) Throw in some Gnomes and Pixies and you’re ready to go. Character classes are initially limited to Warrior, Wizard, Priest, and Rogue, but later you get to branch off and specialize into subclasses of these, called Elite roles. These are acquired by joining a Guild once you have enough gold and your skills have improved enough. Only then can you can become a Paladin, Ranger, Warlock or a number of other assorted subclasses. You may also choose gender although this means little beyond a small change in a couple of stats.

Having had my fill of pointy-eared freaks, and short grumpy guys with beards, I created a group consisting of all the weird new races just to spice things up a little. Ok, so I added an Elf to even things out. Who hasn’t read Tolkien and thought that are elves are cool? Anyhow, afterwards it’s off to the shop to spend your meager 200 gold on some second rate equipment and then to the tavern to hear the local rumours. Not surprisingly, some bloke named Gareth accosts you on the street and tells you rather firmly that you’ve got a world to save and there’s some evil running around whose butt is in firm need of your boot. I hadn’t even left town and the feelings of déjà vu were already threatening to overwhelm me.

Wizards & Warriors uses a 3D engine that feels like it dates circa Might & Magic VI, and that already felt aged when it came out a couple of years ago. I realize this is an RPG and not Unreal or Quake III: Arena, but the terrain and objects just felt clunky and chunky, and the denizens of Gael Serran were a little rough around the edges. The window that you view the world through in first-person perspective could certainly have been a little bigger, but far too much screen space is devoted to cheesy character portraits and controls that could have been placed elsewhere. Movement is fairly fluid, although I have a problem picturing six people jumping precisely at the same time. The inclusion of running allows you to outrace the slow monsters and there’s even a horse you can ride (that’s right, a single horse for six people!!!) but even at full gallop it did’nt seem any faster than running. Not quite as fun as running is climbing, especially down a ladder, which proved so tricky and finicky a maneuver I invariable went for a nasty tumble every time I tried it. Not fun.

Combat is accomplished by simply clicking on the fight button and then repeatedly clicking on the monster in front of you. Not much for strategy there. There are a variety of missile weapons that you can use to soften up the baddies from a distance but beware for they know this trick and use it as well. Spells come from six different realms and your initial selection is rather puny but things will improve later. One thing I found rather neat was that the game would automatically switch from a bow to a sword if an enemy got too close, or likewise change to a weapon if your spellcaster’s mana got depleted. Particularly interesting was the ability to see your missile weapons stick into your enemies. I loved seeing my throwing dagger lodged in the ribcage of a skeleton, and then getting it back once you killed the bugger.

Alas, despite nice effects like the lighting on the torches in dungeons and the water effects that let you see the fishies swimming along, the whole game grows rather old rather fast. This happens because the game is indeed old. The names may change, and the world may look a tiny bit better, but the story is the same, the experience is the same, and you soon begin to feel that someone else should come along and save the world for you. You’ve done it enough times to care anymore. In the day and age of Baldur’s Gate I and II, Planescape: Torment, and Ultima Ascension, Wizards & Warriors is left feeling stale and looking bent with age. With such eagerly awaited titles as Neverwinter Nights and Pool of Radiance: Ruins of Myth Drannor on the horizon, the weary RPGer may very well pass up on this nostalgic sword and sorcery romp. I won’t deny and I certainly appreciate the warm feeling and soft spot that I have for what this game once represented, but the way has been paved for bigger, better, and newer games. Wizards & Warriors simply feels late by a few years.

Rafael Canoa

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