As we’ve seen before, sequels can drop the ball in a lot of ways. Sometimes they stray too far from the gameplay that defined their predecessors; sometimes they take a beloved game world and manage to completely bungle it. Sometimes, though, sequels can be the victim of bad timing. In this installment, we’ll look at a game that slipped into the cracks of a transitional moment in gaming, and suffered for it. Had it come out a few years earlier, or a few years later, things could have been very different. It’s not a bad game, ultimately, but compared to its lofty predecessors, it falls flat.

But first, let’s look at the original(s)!

The Original: Wizardry VII: Crusaders of the Dark Savant

As you might have guessed from the number of times I referred to it when looking back on “games that got things right,” Wizardry VII: Crusaders of the Dark Savant is one of my favorite CRPGs of all-time. The Wizardry series as a whole is one of the most venerable in all of CRPGdom, stretching all the way back to the original Wizardry: Proving Ground of the Mad Overlord in 1980. That game is among one of the first RPGs to come out for home computers, and was the very first to use a party-based system.

Over the following decades, the fundamentals set forth in Wizardry were passed down to each of its descendants, creating games that – while not identical – were clearly of the same lineage. Wizardry VI: Bane of the Cosmic Forge was the starting point of the series’ second “story arc,” and updated many of the underlying systems from their previous versions. New races and classes were added, along with new skills and the division of magic into several schools. Yet, even with those changes, the fundamentals would still feel very familiar to anyone already involved with the series.

Wizardry VI also marked the first time in the series that players could not import a party from the previous game. That being said – as the start of a new arc – depending on the choices the player made in VI, they could import a winning party to VII and start the game in three very different situations (new players started in a fourth location). Most of your party’s abilities and items came with them, and it gave experienced players an option to jump right into the thick of things.

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The hillside is rough; bare rock protrudes through the ground between patches of scrubby grass.  Despite this, the trees grow thick here, their roots sunk deep into tilted earth, holding on with all their might.  From below, it looked like finding a safe path upward was impossible, but a thorough search revealed a narrow but well-worn animal trail winding a convoluted path towards the top.  The climb is slow, but the top grows ever closer.

With a final burst of energy, you reach the crown and are taken aback by what lay before you – a lake, as blue as the sky above, stretches from just below you towards the forest on the distant hills.  In the center of the lake stands a lone island, ringed with trees, and in the center of that island stands a shrine of whitest stone, its columns radiant in the noonday sun.  From the road below, you would have had no idea such a place existed, but now it beckons to you from across the calm water.

Looks like it’s time for a swim.

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