Wizardry 6: Bane of the Cosmic Forge

Despite being a Wizardry fan, and having played 1, 2, 7 and 8, the 6th installment is just brutal in difficulty. It needs mods, guides, and a lot of patience to play. I only recommend playing it if you are the following: 1) Die hard Wizardry fan that just has to play it. 2) Wizardry fan that also has 7 and 8 and you want to progress from 6 with some nice gear. 3) A gamer that loves to torture themselves with brutal difficulty. A remake of this game, to bring it up to current graphics standards and ease the difficulty, would be amazing. But I have only seen a remake of Wizardry 1 as of this review so it seems unlikely to get to 6.

I keep getting my ass kicked, but I keep coming back. So, I guess I recommend it if you also like getting your ass kicked over and over and over and over and... But seriously, this is old school Wizardry, so get in there and try not to die.

Nice, but requires serious commitment

Look at it

I would recommend this game to any fan of turn-based combat. This is among the finest examples of the early, [i]early[/i] CRPGs, and Bane of the Cosmic Forge is the start of a trilogy said to get better with each sequel. I can't confirm that's true, as I've only just started Wizardry 7 with the characters imported from Wizardry 6 (really neat feature by the way). Be warned that this game has puzzles that can be pretty moon logic-y. I used [url=https://www.crimsontear.com/gaming/wizardry-6/]CrimsonTear's Guide[/url] for most of the game. Even if you don't use the walkthrough, the item compendium is very handy. I strongly recommend checking out the [url=https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=528034096]automap mod guide[/url]. Follow those instructions exactly, and you'll be set up with a great automap that doesn't spoil anything. It simulates having an extremely attentive, quick little sibling mapping out the dungeon for you on graph paper. There are also a handful of patches worth checking out. They're almost all bundled with Cosmic Forge Editor, so check that out as well. The sound in this game is absolutely atrocious. It's a handful of screeches that would come out of a PC speaker. I recommend turning it off completely in Game Configuration and instead putting on your favorite podcast or Dungeon Synth playlist. I also switched to Keyboard input, disabling the mouse. This entire game can be played with the direction keys and the enter button, with the exception of the occasional dialogue or number entry. This is a game where you rapidly queue your attacks, hit enter, and watch or don't watch while the turn plays out. Finally, this worked for me on Linux pretty well. I used Proton 7 to stick with the Windows binary of DOSBox. This was for automap mod purposes, which appears to be Windows-only.

ダンジョンRPGをやりたくて購入したら意外とおもしろかった。 アトラス系列の和製ダンジョンクロウラーが好きなら一般的なWizのイメージである5までより面白いと感じた。 +ボリューム的に当時のJRPGと同等ぐらいなのでちょうどいい +難易度は高い（特にラストダンジョン）が戦闘難易度は低くするための抜け道がたくさんある +ADV的な謎解きは難解ではなくヒントは用意されているため適切（一部エリア除く） +転職のデメリットが軽くなり、スキルも保持されるため、序盤はいろいろとスキルの効果を試しながら育てるのが楽しい +新クラス新種族に優秀なものが多いため旧Wizよりキャラメイクは幅がある +サイオニック以外の3つの魔法系統はどれも強力で有用な魔法が従来より多く、役に立たないものでも消費コスト分MPを上げる効果はあるので有用 +攻略の解法の自由度が若干高い +先に進めるとロケーションも変わるので冒険している感がある +3パターンのマルチエンディングでそれぞれの選択によって7の展開が変わる +おまけでSFC版移植のアレンジサウンドトラックがついてくる、ほぼ無音のゲームなので裏で流せば雰囲気は出るかもしれない -ダンジョン内でターンを消費して各消費リソースを回復するメイン回復手段のRESTの回復量が渋すぎる -おまけにエンディング見るまで以前の場所に戻れない最終エリアに回復の泉がなくて面倒なだけ（ポーション屋はある） -その最終エリアから最終ダンジョンに入るのに以前のエリア（しかも序盤）に置いてある重要アイテムを取り忘れると詰みセーブが発生する -解法の自由度が高いのはいいが、捨てられない重要アイテムが別の手段で突破した場合デッドストックになる -1回転職したクラスのスキルが保持されるのは親切だが、自制しないと全キャラ即死魔法即死攻撃連発するだけの役割もクソもないクソゲーになる -最終的に値を上げられるスキルがなくなるとレベルアップ完了できなくて詰む -ファイター、シーフ、レンジャー、サイオニックはこのクラスでないと出来ないということがほぼないデメリットだらけのクラス -鑑定の概念がほぼないのでビショップの存在意義が完全に消えた -種族ではREST時のMP回復量にマイナス補正がかかり、ステータスの偏りが酷いリザードマンは面倒なだけの完全な地雷 -総積載量がキャラメイク時のSTRとVITを参照して決められてしまうので注意 -死亡時VIT-1のペナルティが痛すぎて蘇生手段確保するよりリセットしたほうがマシという本末転倒な調整 -ロケーションは目まぐるしく変わるがマップチップは最初の城のものしかない、FCの女神転生ですら複数用意されてたのにどういうこっちゃ -90年のゲームとして見てもショボいグラフィック、酷いレスポンス -トリロジーの1作目ということもあってかぶつ切りで終わる、気になるようなストーリーでもないが

just get past level 1 and its all good

I purchased this game for sentimental reasons. Games were simple then but Wiz 6 was a huge leap from Wiz 5 at that time. I picked up this game on the last sale and I can say it is worth the price just to go back to an enjoyable grinding rpg.

27hrs in and roughly around 10th level with my party. I normally start to get bored after 20hrs if a game isn't able to give me something new after that or it repeats itself over and over and over. In this case, I'm not bored at all and I come back every day to play and have fun. There is a true feeling of progression, both in the story and as characters. And enemies too are always new and engaging. Probably, the only "flaw" is that graphically the exteriors are quite similar to interiors.

As a fan who completed Wizardry I, I really wanted to like this game, so I could play through whole series from I to VIII. But even taking into account it was released in 1990, this clearly a worse game than the original. First, the menu driven UI often lacks critical information and is slow, tedious, and frustrating to navigate. Most egregious is that I can't press letter keys corresponding to commands anymore, despite that being a trivial programming task. I have to press my arrow keys 6 times to use the lute in my bard's inventory, which is fine the first time but not something I want to do every round for every fight. By the 100th fight I've pressed the arrow keys around 3,600 times for my bard alone, and both my brain and the skin on my finger are worn out. Second, the first game had a clear route of progression: stairway down, get new and harder fights. There were only 4 keys in the whole game, and the keys were always on the same level you were currently on anyway, and there was always an indication there was something there, for the specific tile you were standing on. You didn't just search every tile, which you unfortunately DO have to do with this game. There are a lot of keys, and while rare there is still sometimes with no indication to the player there is something there. Because of the need to systematically search, death comes easily and unfairly until you outlevel that region. Then fights become a boring grind because as you still didn't find that key you needed. This is made worse by the jammed door concept, where locked doors may become jammed on a failed open roll. Why didn't the developer make sure campaign critical items were not behind locked doors? As it is you can unknowingly become unable to progress in the game, unless you are lucky enough to find a Knock Knock scroll, which only works for one door anyway. The last major issue I'll bring up is there is no longer a starting town or character roster. Leveling up different classes and trying different party compositions was a big part of the fun of the first game, and would have been even more so here with more options to choose from. Now, if I make a bad party, the only option is to start over. It's like the the developer didn't understand what made the original so successful and just started throwing S* at the wall to see what sticks. I understand now why the series eventually failed and am extremely disappointed.