Old school turn-based RPG action with an engaging story, interesting NPCs, a surprising degree of non-linearity. Add in deep character customization and actions that actually have long-term (and sometimes surprising, unintended consequences) and you've got a gem with some true replay value.

Oh wow, a blast from the past that requires some love.

20 years ago, I thought I was good at RPGs. Then I played Crusaders of the Dark Savant and realized I was good at following the bread crumbs that easy to moderate RPGs lay out for us.

This game was incredibly difficult in the era when there was no gamefaqs.com to download walkthroughs on. When FAQs became a common theme, I re-installed and found it was still pretty tough. That being said, it has a unique world setting, a greatly diverse character class and race structure, and an extensive story-line that is unique and engaging.

Wizardry is not a world for the feint of heart, but for those who embrace a challenge, love RPGs and have an affection for Old School gaming, Crusaders of the Dark Savant is a challenge you must embrace. A stellar game that received far too little fanfare in it's day and is deserving of re-incarnation.

Alright Wizardry 7. I hope you have played Wizardry 6 before thinking playing this Game. ;-)
This may have the better graphics and the sound is pretty amazing here, but rust me, play Wizardry 6 before or don't play this series at all.

You ask why?
Well it's pretty simple while Wizardry 6 is hard as hell, I feel it's still waaaaay easier than this one. Additionally if you finish Wizardry 6 you can import your Party winto W7 and continue in this adventure.
Generally the Wizardry Series tend to be much harder than other dungeon crawler games, even the older ones, so if you're new to the genre, I really suggest you try Lands of Lore 1 and then Eye of the Beholder first.

Alright, let's talk about W7.
The game is highly complex with a ton of spells, most of them useful in at least some scenarios. There are plenty of riddles in this game, a lot of them also requires to carefully read and note basically everything. A lot of information may just appear dead, but at some point, you need it.
The battles are sometimes tough and sometimes really easy. You can adjust the difficulty in some kind, that if the game gets too difficult you can change the classes of your party, which makes a lot of encounters trivial. But it may require some grinding at some point, altough I think you can make it through without senseless grinding. There are plenty of random encounters anyway.
The much harder thing in this game are the riddles and "quests". Did I mention that you don't have a quest book? Well you don't have one. The good thing is: You have a minimap. Well kind of. You have to raise the card drawing skill first and even then, it's not a full minimap.
The riddles and dungeon mechanics are so hard that I think if you play this game the first time without consultating a walkthrough you probably end up with 750 - 1000h of gameplay.
The game content is about 3 times as big as in Wizardry 6 and the map is huge. Additionally there are plenty of dungeons and they have some of the most annoying mechanics I've ever seen, which requires some map drawings even if you have the minimap.

I really suggest this game to anyone who likes dungeon crawling games and is looking for a real challenge. This is as hard as it can get.

In all fairness, you'd be better off buying the GoG.com version of this one. You get more stuff with GoG.

Play the DOSBOX version if you can because Gold is very crippled by age and does not perform right on Modern machines. For example, the game screen is stuck at a 640x400 size... you can't change it sadly, unless you put the games shortcut in Compatibility mode, and force windows to temporarily resize your desktop resolution down to 640x480. Not a pleasant solution in my opinion.

Other than those gripes, if you're not familar with old school CRPG games, you're going to ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ hate this game, because it is hard. Long. And unforgiving to noobs. It ain't Final Fantasy. And it ain't Skyrim, scrub.

Here's what not to look forward to:
No automapping- Nope not in this game kid. Back in my day we had to do this ♥♥♥♥ with grid paper and draw the maps ourselves. Good luck figuring out where the hell you are in the game. *Psst Gamefaqs got yo back G*

♥♥♥♥ Stat Rolling system for created Characters- Believe me, you will be doing this alot the first few times or so because the way the game is set up. You get 1 shot for stats per character creation. At the end of character creation, you either accept what you've rolled, or delete it... thus bringing you back to the character review screen where you'll have to go through the entire character creation process. It's an exhausting process,

Thousands of ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ words! - Hope you enjoy reading sport! Because that's what you'll be doing in this game. No voice acting here. The Gold edition does provide voice narration, but I honestly couldn't deal listening to the guy talk.

The plus to this game is the challenge it presents you. It's a very long dive.. if you do it right it could last you a month or so of game time.

The story is awesome! A mix of sci-fi and low fantasy. It's one of the few CRPGs that tied your party to the previous games. So if you beat Wizardry 6, and imported them into 7, whatever ending you got in 6 carries over into 7. It's pretty cool!

I give this game 7/10 Donut Farts

This might sound pretentious, but it needs to be said so I can properly demonstrate the level of hardcore that this game is; I've been playing role playing games for over 2 decades and have beaten some of the most challenging ones around, namely the niche dungeon crawlers or even the super bosses from more modern titles. That being said, all of those, and I do mean all, are completely dwarfed by this game in terms of being unforgiving, punishing, and testing your patience every step of the way; this is one of the most extreme titles out there, bottom line.

Let's all take a moment and appreciate the guy (probably in his upper 40s by now considering this game came out in 1992) who detailed the maps and walkthrough that are available online. I'm utterly speechless that anyone could figure some of the stuff out in this game on their own, and this was at a time with no gamefaqs. The puzzles in this game are beyond cryptic and you are basically forced to bust out a notepad and take notes if you want to get anywhere at all with as little stress as possible. There is no automap. All of the environs look exactly the same (there is the forest, city, dungeon, and cave wall texture and that's it basically). You have to call up a map that gets more detailed and larger depending on how many points you put into your mapping skill. I got lost in the very first town for about 2 hours just trying to navigate it because every house literally looks the same. Now earlier I said this game was hardcore, so let me give you a quick list of some items to prove that point:

- you are never truly safe outside of a few tiles in the game like that 1 tile room in the inn; you can, and will, get attacked in towns, sometimes by hordes of enemies-- for example a 6 versus 30+ enemies

- camping to restore mp is absurdly slow and usually used only to recover a little bit at a time. You can also get ambushed while camping and sleeping characters will get butchered if attacked most of the time

- enemies can cast extremely powerful spells even at seemingly early areas in the game. One boss cast a spell on me and I had to do a double and then triple take at the damage; it did 1100 some damage to my bishop whose max hp was around 90. It killed her like 12 times over. It could have killed her 11 times and still kill her again with the remaining damage. In fact, it did so much damage I'm surprised it didn't outright delete the f'ing character from the game entirely

- you get key items in certain places in the game that are required way later in the game and you have no way of knowing how to use some of them, save trial and error or (what you should be doing) faqing it

- opening treasure chests, even with a maxed out 100 in the skulduggery skill (that's traps skill to you) can still end up blowing up in your face. The effects? depends on the trap. Sometimes a genie will come out and will beat one of your characters straight into the ground (killing them) or maybe you prefer the basilisk eye petrifying them (basically killing them), or the anti-magic trap that destroys almost all of their mp (you're not gonna camp for 15 real time minutes to restore it all). If a character dies or gets petrified, they lose a point of vitality permanently. This translates to the world's easiest decision and reason to reload your game.

- finding out what to do is nuts. Get a load of this puzzle: I had to buy a featherweight potion from some shopkeeper in a nearby town, pick up a black pyramid outside the dungeon that weighs 200 pounds and completely tanks the armor class of the character who's holding it, okay 1st floor there's a locked gate with a hole in the ground on the other side...hmm interesting, okay so you have to find the spool handle, go down to level 2, step on a plank on the right side that lowers a chain from the ceiling on the left, attach that pyramid to the chain, find the spool and wind it up using that handle that you found somewhere, find a rubber band, go back to floor 1 and attach it to get a fan started, now finally go down to that plank, drink that featherweight potion from before and step on the right side of the plank. That pyramid will drop onto the plank and you will launch into the air because you drank the aforementioned potion. As you are flying upwards, normally you would fall straight back down, but luckily you turned the fan on and it blows you one tile away from the chute so you can continue the rest of the dungeon

Absolutely hilarious and ridiculous-- and I didn't even mention the waterslide puzzle

This game has level scaling by the way. A game from 1992. It also has one of the best npc interaction systems I've ever seen. You actually type out questions and they will respond to a wide variety of things (even insults!). I accidentally pissed off one of those NPCs and he promptly slaughtered my entire party in a matter of 3 turns. Insane.



so is this game just a masochist's wet dream?

well yeah.. but there is something admirable about a game like this. That rare game that puts hair on your chest, turns you into a real man. This is the God Hand of classic rpgs. This game is your grandparents walking 15 miles through the snow barefoot or however that saying goes. There is absolutely no hand holding. The menus are clunky. There is not even a hint of quality of life accommodations. You will get lost. You will die from monsters and traps alike. You will get frustrated.

but then you'll overcome the obstacles and get a sense of achievement that is hard to find in most games. Wizardry 7 is an incredible game and I can only recommend it to hardest of hardcore gamers.


ps. wiki Wizardry 4: The Return of Werdna for a good laugh. Apparently that game is so hard, people couldn't even figure out how to get out of the first room in the game

Truly a gem of old school rpg, runs smoothly, i have found no glitches or lag. The variety of classes and ability to change classes makes it great to create characters to suit yourself and your style. Its well worth the small price for the game. The world is huge and it has great replayablility. i GIVE IT A 10 OUT OF 10!

This is it, the apex of dungeon crawling. It doesn't get any better than this, folks.

So... you call yourself a RPG veteran and old-school lover? then it is your duty to buy this and spend 300 hours of min-maxing, optimizing builds and exploring the world of Lost Guardia. After so many years everything else has already been said, so I'll just add this: the writing is sublime, each description a gem.

So you think that Wizardry 6 is hard? Yes it is. And you think that Wizardry 6 is complex? Yes it is, too. But compared to Wizardry 7 it is not so much anymore. Even the most annoying levels (like mines) in Wizardry 6 would be a joke in Wizardry 7. The complexity of dungeons, mazes, teleports, stairs, puzzles and mostly the plot is just mind-boggling.

I would not recommend this game to anyone except people who played it in the past, serious retrogamers and all kind of masochists. By this, I do not say that this is a bad game. It is just that hard. Even at launch time Wizardry (as series) was considered very hard. So you have to be a special flower to beat it.

It's - or maybe rather was - a great game. Now it's a beacon into past - to very hard rpgs from last century.

Short version: An awsome old school RPG whichis insanely hard of course so it's only reccomended for people who won't give up after a few hours of dying.

Long version: Probably one of the best (if not the best) Party Based RPGs it's just simply awsome in any meaning.
Before you start the game you creat 6 characters which will mostly likely die in a few hours if you don't know what are you doing. There are quite some races and character classes to chose from (ofc the classes depends on what stats do you "role") from the standart Warriors to the sneaky ninjas you can find classes for any role (altough you have to be lucky to be abble to make a ninja or anything more complicated from the start othervise you will have to get certain statistics and then you can change the character's class). I have to admit I wasn't abble to finnish the game because it's hard (like Dark Souls level hard) and I don't have time for that sadly, but what i experienced from this game so far it's pure gold. Every character class is some what different and it's simply impossible to make a totaly same character twice. It is full of content, challange, exploration (geting lost in the forest because you can't see anything...). Also it had an awsome combat system (which is sometime unfair, but still awsome) that every gamer who ever played a game like this will completly understand and enjoy.

In conclusion this game would be a solid 8.4/10 for me.
HIGHLY RECOMMENDED

Much like the previous game in this series it is very old but if you can get past the crunchy retro graphics there is a very long and satisfying dungeon crawl here.