Wizardry 6: Bane of the Cosmic Forge Reviews

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.

I never played this game before. But I'm no stranger to punishing old-school games. I thoroughly enjoy them. I discovered the Wizardry series by playing the old dungeon crawlers. I knew this game and 7 and 8 would be different, but I started this trilogy regardless, expecting a different but equally rewarding experience. I came away severely disappointed and couldn't bear playing any further. I don't recommend the game to anyone who has never played this game before. It's got some of the hallmarks of earlier Wizardry games. Interesting dungeon encounters, locked doors, fun treasure and obtuse gameplay mechanics. There's potentially a lot to like here. Except for the fact that all these punishing encounters are entirely meaningless because even the manual tells you to just hit the reload save button whenever something bad happens. Wizardry 6 is a game of endless save reloading, and that's what killed it for me. Contrary to older and other Wizardy games, character death in this game is permanent. You can resurrect fallen party members, which confers a penalty, but they can never be replaced. Which means that the party you start out with is the party with which you need to finish the game. Coupled with a save file, this means that whenever something bad happens, you reload and attempt the fight or challenge again. The death of a character you don't want to or cannot resurrect is essentially a game over. Something bad happens? Reload and try again. There is no gameplay loop of risk and reward, you simply cannot deal with character death like in other Wizardry games at all other than going back to a previous save. In the end it just led me to consulting a walkthrough and going through the motions. It bored me out of my mind, and I abandoned the game. When I try to place the game design in its time, I can understand it would maybe have gripped me as a child. That was a time when I would not worry about engaging gameplay and would just want to explore the game and the world. But these days, I just cannot stand a game that is so utterly devoid of player agency and meaningful consequences. If you're not playing with the rose-tinted glasses of nostalgia, it's better to not play this game at all and just look to other, more engaging Wizardry games and Wizardry clones.

Big Wizardry fan. Played all of them when they originally came out, but Dosbox versions on Win 11 are just unplayable in their modern versions. This needs the TLC that Digital Eclipse gave Wizardy 1 or InXile gave to Bard's tale. All these titles, the original Heroes of Might and Magic series, the Ultima series, and etc, deserve to be preserved for the next generation of gamers and be playable on today's machines. I can't recommend it in its current state.

I actually can't recommend this game to everyone but i really liked it so i can't give it a thumbs down. This is a 35 years old archaic, RPG game made for DOS. It's specific genre is Dungeon Crawler. It is a game which really evolved the Wizardry series in almost every aspect but this is not a game which everyone can tolerate. It's clunky, it's old. There's no QoL stuff which the young gamers take for granted in today's games. It's pure nostalgia and a spectacular RPG/Dungeon Crawler experience for me. A true classic. I wish more games of the Wizardry series would be added to Steam