"Wizards and Warriors - A great RPG in the tradition of Eye of the Beholder"

Playing Wizards and Warriors is to return to the simpler days of classic RPGs like Eye of the Beholder and the Might and Magic series.

In Wizards and Warriors, you create and control 6 adventurers in the land of the Gael Serran. An ancient evil has awoken in the land, and only the legendary Mavin Sword can destroy it. Problem is, it's been stolen from it's resting place. In fact, the more you hear about the sword, the more it seems it may not be all it's cracked up to be. It's of both divine and demonic descent, and is rumored to have killed the last few unfortunates who tried to wield it.

The gamut of fantasy races is employed to good effect in Wizards and Warriors. You've got the standard Humans, Dwarves, amd Elves, as well as the more exotic Oomphaz (Elephantine humanoids), Ratlings and Lizardmen, not to mention a few more.

The game is built around an excellent class system, in which each character starts with a base career (Warrior, Priest, Rogue, or Wizard), and can later elect to train in an Elite Class (Barbarian, Ranger, Ninja, Monk, Warlock, Paladin, Bard, Samurai). With advancement to an Elite Class comes powerful secondary abilities, new lines of spells, and access to powerful guild perks. Characters have the option to change classes multiple times. You could take a Warrior and train him as a Ninja, then decide to train him as a Samurai several levels later. Creating multiclass characters is half the fun of Wizards and Warriors, and creating and maintaining a well-balanced party is critical to succeeding in the land of the Gael Serran. It's a rare game where every character class is worthwhile, with abilties and power that can really contribute to a party- Wizards and Warriors has this in spades.

Gameplay consists of lots of open exploration and dungeon crawling, but both the above ground geography, and the dungeon design are clearly hand crafted, and are a joy to play through. The land feels large without feeling randomly generated, and the dungeons and quests sprinkled throughout keep it interesting. The quests are probably the low point in the game, being comprised of too much ''fetch the foozle'' type quests, although there are a few gems.

The combat in Wizards and Warriors uses the now familiar 'adaptive time phasing' method. Combat is realtime except when you're planning strategy, looking in your spellbook, etc. This system works well, without making battles a snooze fest. Combat spells are real tide turners, and ranged weapon attacks are effective and varied- everything from shurikens to triple dose poison dipped darts can be hurled at distant targets to soften them up.

Wizards and Warriors is a solid RPG, with a beautiful world to explore, evil monsters to destroy, and enough stats, magic and melee mayhem to satisfy the most jaded RPG nut.

Reviewer's Score: 9/10, Originally Posted: 12/15/02, Updated 12/15/02