Subject: REVIEW: War Wizard v1.03, shareware version
From: [email-masked] (Eyal Teler)
Date: 24 Oct 1994 23:06:45 GMT
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.reviews

PRODUCT NAME

	War Wizard v1.03, shareware version

BRIEF DESCRIPTION

	A role-playing game played from an overhead view.

AUTHOR/COMPANY INFORMATION

	The shareware version available on Aminet in the game/role directory.
This is in the form of three archives - two contain the game, and one
contains the necessary fonts.

	The full version is available from:

	Name:		Brad McQuaid, Microgenesis Inc.
	Address:	1268 Clarence Drive
			Vista, CA 92084
			USA

	Telephone:	(619) 729-2898 - Steve Clover's help line
			(800) 294-1302 - order line

		[MODERATOR'S NOTE:  The "800" number is the only order
		line.  I called and asked.  People outside North America
		will have to use some other method to place orders.  - Dan]

	E-mail:		[email-masked]

LIST PRICE

	Shareware: $20 (US).
	Registration using VISA, MasterCard or Discover is possible.

SPECIAL HARDWARE AND SOFTWARE REQUIREMENTS

	HARDWARE

		Minimum configuration is 68000 CPU, 512K Chip RAM, 512K Fast
		RAM.  This will work, but according to the README file, it
		will be intolerable.

		Recommended configuration includes a faster processor (not
		necessary, but could help in some of the more cumbersome
		parts of the game interface), more than 1MB RAM (the game
		uses about 800K RAM when running), and a hard drive (this
		is a "must" because the game has constant disk accesses).

		According to the game's README_FIRST file, the game has been
		tested on the following machines:

			A2000, 512K Chip RAM, 512K Fast RAM, AmigaDOS 1.3
			A3000, 2MB Chip RAM, 4MB Fast RAM, AmigaDOS 2.0
			A4000, AmigaDOS 3.0

	SOFTWARE
	
		Tested under AmigaDOS 1.3, 2.0, and 3.0.

COPY PROTECTION

	None.

MACHINE USED FOR TESTING

	Amiga 500, 1MB Chip RAM, 2MB Fast RAM
	Fujitsu 100MB SCSI drive in A590
	Commodore 1084 monitor
	Kickstart 1.2, Workbench 1.3, ARP, DMouse

INSTALLATION

	Initial installation is done by unpacking the two archives into the
directory of your choice.  The installation instructions are near the end of
the README_FIRST file.  The table of contents in the Manual file wrongly
claims that these instructions appear in the GETTING STARTED part of the
manual.

	One needs to install the game fonts (from the third archive) in the
'Fonts:' directory.  'iff.library' is also needed and is supplied with the
game.  The assigns mentioned in the installation instructions are
unnecessary, although they might be of use when playing from floppy disk.

	In general, I would rate the installation process as reasonable for
anyone who's computer literate.  The misleading manuals, however, prove to be
a hindrance.

REVIEW

	Note:  the product reviewed is the shareware version of the game.
This is similar to the full version (available upon registration), but its
map is limited, and therefore some quests (including the final one) are
missing.  Apart from this, the two versions are the same.

	War Wizard is a role-playing game involving exploration, magic,
fights and character development. You start with one character but can (and
should) recruit three more to aid you in your cause.  The story is something
along the lines of finding several artifacts in order to defeat the evil
lord.  I admit that I did not read the blurb - it's the same old story, and
it's not all that relevant to playing the game (or so it seems).  It may be
more relevant when playing the full game.

	Your party can engage in several activities.  You'll mainly travel
the land, going from city to city. These "cities" include towns, fortresses,
and also dungeons, amongst others.  In the dungeons you'll find the
artifacts you've been sent after; in other cities you'll be able to find
shops, inns, and other houses where you'll be able to find useful objects,
by searching chests, and also find some information by talking to people.

	Shops are the places where you can get weapons, armour pieces,
magical item, potions, lock picks, and more.  You can also sell things.
You'll usually get less than half the price you'd pay for a similar item, but
if you have a few useless short swords +3 you earned during combat, you can
make quite a lot of money by selling them.

	Inns are perhaps the most important place in any city, as there are
some things you can do only in an inn.  Most important is the ability to
memorize spells.  Since you can remember only 5 spells at any time, hanging
close to a place with an inn is a good thing to do if you plan on having a
lot of fights.  Inns also allow you to camp without being disturbed.  This
is important, as lack of sleep will cause your party members to fall asleep
at inopportune moments.  Sleeping party members are useless in combat, and
once all your party members fall asleep, you won't be able to move.

	During your travels, both inside and outside cities, you'll have
fights.  This can happen for several different reasons, the most common of
which is perhaps random encounters.  These depend on several factors, such as
the area you're in and the time of day.  You can run away from fights (if
your enemies are not quick enough to close in on you), which is a useful
thing to do in random encounters.  There are also preset encounters.  These
appear on the city map, in a similar way to other characters, but you'll be
attacked when you arrive at that map square.  Lastly, you can attack people
yourself - those which appear on the city map, as well as those you
encounter randomly on your way.  Note that attacking a person inside a city
will make you an outlaw in that city and subject to attacks from the city
guard.

	Combat is the only time you'll see your party characters
separately.  Each character has a set number of movement points that can be
used for movement, weapon attacks, and spell casting.  In each combat turn,
each of your characters will attack (or do some other activity) in turn, and
between your character's turns, your enemies will attack you.  When attacking
with a weapon, you are able to choose the body part you'll hit.  Hitting the
legs, for example, will eventually cause your enemy to be unable to move;
hitting the arms will make it unable to use a weapon.  Another reason to
choose a specific body part is that the armour, which is made of several
different parts, may protect some body parts better than others.

	After you have won a fight (otherwise the game is over), you'll be
able to search the bodies of your victims.  There you'll find money, food,
and some valuables in the form of weapons and armour pieces.  This is
perhaps the best way to acquire these valuables and can be an incentive to
enter fights deliberately with people that you know have high quality armour
and weapons (although they'll be difficult to beat, for this reason).

	In terms of what you carry, the game is quite complex. Each part of
your (character's) body can (and should) be covered by a different piece of
armour - from boots on your legs, through the armour on your torso and the
collar on your neck, and up to the helmet on your head. Each hand can hold a
different weapon, and you can put magical rings on your fingers to be used
during battle.  In addition, you have a backpack that can store up to ten
items.  There's also a limit to the weight you can carry.

	All of the above are available on the backup screen, accessible from
the status screen.  From there, you can also access the spell screen where
you can memorize spells from your spellbook and scribe scrolls which are in
your backpack.  Scrolls are found in magic shops and in some chests.

	There's more to say about this highly detailed game, but you'll just
have to get it and play it yourself.  I hope I've given you enough of a
taste of what you can expect.

DOCUMENTATION

	The game comes with two instruction files: README_FIRST and Manual.
README_FIRST contains installation and registration details, as well as the
list of keyboard shortcuts for the game.  It also contains some common
questions and answers. The Manual file contains the rest of the instructions
for the game.  It includes the background story, explanation of the game
screens, the various aspect of the game (locations, character attributes,
etc.), and lists of weapons, armours, and spells.

	In general, the documentation suffers from two main problems.  The
first is that it's not always correct, as mentioned before about the
installation instructions.  There are no earth-shattering mistakes, but it
can be annoying enough to find that things don't work as the instructions
claim, or that the instructions are incomplete.  The second problem is
clarity.  In most cases, this stems from describing picture gadgets by their
names, and in a different order than they appear in the screens.  Luckily the
game multitasks, which allows flipping between instructions and game screens.

	In general, the documentation is fairly complete, but finding
something in it is not easy.  A manual in AmigaGuide format would have been
much more practical, as finding things inside the 1830 lines of text can
take some time.  An AmigaGuide format is especially suitable as the text
often refers you to other sections of the manual.

	I imagine that people who have never seen this type of game before
could find the manual a bit difficult to understand, but the game is simple
enough to start playing after reading the tips given in the manual.  To play
the game fully, however, reading the manual is a must.  I keep discovering
small things I've overlooked.

LIKES

	The game multitasks. This is a definite plus that allows you to read
the instructions while playing and to copy the saved game to another
directory (the latter is recommended - I haven't done it enough), among other
things.

	This game is quite addictive. Its deadliness level is just about
right, and you can carry on playing for hours, just trying to improve your
character status - getting better weapons and armour, getting new spells,
and so on.  The fact that characters improve their skills with practice
means that you can have your character learn spells new and more powerful
spells, and so on.

	There are enough locations even in the demo to provide hours of
exploration.  There are enough secret doors and special treasure chests to
keep you searching for more of the same.  Combat is detailed, and so are
other features, giving more depth to the game.

	This is also a good game for all BLAZEMONGER "Customer Service"
wannabees.  It's very satisfying to be able to attack people and hit them in
different parts of their bodies, trying to find which part is easier to hit,
disabling their legs so they can't move, and so on.  It's most fun with the
nomad which attacks you, as he's always alone, and has no long range
weapons.  Not that I've tried this - it's all a purely theoretical
discussion. ;-)

	There's one particular thing I like about this game, but I'm not
sure how many people will find it appealing - it's the fact that such a game
is not too difficult technically to program, and on the other hand this game
isn't perfect (see below).  Therefore I can enjoy designing (and perhaps
programming one day) a similar, but better, game.  (Knowing me, it'll never
see the light of day.)

DISLIKES AND SUGGESTIONS

	The game forces you to play for hours, simply because some aspects
tend to slow you considerably.  This problem could be solved partly by
having a faster machine.

	The first problem is the character Status screens.  You often
want to go from the Backpack screen of one character to the backpack
screen of another; for example, because you just traded an item between
them.  Doing this takes you through another 3 screens.  The same goes
for the spellbook screen - you usually go there to relearn spells after
an encounter, and again you have to go through many screens as you make
all your spellcasting characters (usually 3) relearn the spells.  A method
for moving from a screen of one character to the same screen of another
character would have speeded things considerably.

	Another problem is the random encounters.  Sometime these can be
truly annoying.  One such case is when you flee an encounter. This will
return you to the previous location.  On your next move, you may again have
an encounter, and so on.  This is not all that common, but when it happens
it can be extremely annoying because it's so time consuming.

	Random encounters can also cause you too much damage, making you
decide to reload the game.  Unfortunately, you cannot quit a fight, and often
it's not easy to conclude a fight quickly (you can't kill yourself easily,
sadly).  Therefore you'll have to go through many turns of combat before you
can reload the game.  This is quite annoying.  A Quit button on the combat
screen could have helped.

	Another problem with combat is the targeting.  Targeting is done by
the Last and Next buttons.  "Last" targets the character you targeted the
previous round, and "Next" moves to the next character in the (not so
obvious) order kept by the computer.  While targeting the last target is
easy under this system, this system is very cumbersome under all other
circumstances.  These circumstances include selecting a new target, and the
occasion when a character engages in both combat and casting spells on party
members (selected using the same targeting system).

	I assume that this system was designed to save the player the need
to move a cursor over the combat screen to target the enemies, as was done
in old SSI games if I remember correctly (and maybe in new ones too -
haven't played one; not that there are any new Amiga ones anyway).  The
former indeed works when there are one or two enemies; but since there are
sometimes more than ten enemies, it can become a burden.  A natural solution
would have been to use the mouse for targeting.  This might be more
difficult for targets outside the screen, but these are not the most common
kind of target anyway.  For a game which claims to be easier to use than
other similar ones, this seems to me like a serious oversight.

	Even if mouse control is out of the question, adding a Prev button,
which moves to the previous enemy in the order, could be a great help.  I
often find that in pressing Next numerous times to get to my chosen target,
I've actually pressed Next one time too many.  I then have to move over the
whole bunch of targets again.  Another occasion when this would be helpful
is when healing the party.  If you look at all your party members in order
to find out who is most hurt, you often want to go back and heal the right
one, which is difficult under the current system.

	Another annoying problem is the saves.  While you are allowed to
save the game only at inns, the game will automatically be saved in many
different locations, some of which you can't even guess.  While the manual
mentions that the game will be saved when entering or leaving a city, and
when doing a search, it doesn't mention that it will be saved when you enter
shops or when you cross a certain imaginary line in the map (presumably when
the game has to load a new section).

	This practically means that you can't explore easily, because if
something happens to a member of your party (death, for example), it may be
saved should you continue to explore the map.  Since only one game can be
saved at any time (unless you copy the saved game directory by using the
shell, for example), the fact that you lose your saved game at unpredictable
places means that it's easy to get stuck in a situation when you may have
permanently damaged your chances of continuing the game.

	It would have been best if several positions could have been saved,
but even one saved position would be OK.  Saving the game when entering or
leaving the city is not that problematic, but there shouldn't be any other
automatic saves - especially those you can't predict.

	One last dislike - there's a PC version, and it includes sound and
an improved interface. Perhaps this has something to do with not enough
people paying for the full Amiga version (I haven't asked).

COMPARISON TO OTHER SIMILAR PRODUCTS

	I haven't played many games of this type, although I did see an old
SSI game being played (on a PC) - the combat system looked quite similar in
view, although the targeting system was different.  I can't really compare,
as I haven't played that game myself (I tried to order some old SSI games
through a local computer store, but wasn't successful).  By the way, these
old SSI games should cost $20 to $30 these days.

	The only game which has some similarity to this which I've played is
Legend of Lothian - a Public Domain game.  Lothian is a much simpler game.
Like War Wizard, you travel over a map, and can enter cities, talk to the
locals, and buy equipment.  It lacks a decent combat system, however, and
doesn't include any sort of complex character attributes, belongings or
magic.  War Wizard also has better graphics than Lothian.

	On the other hand, Lothian doesn't have the problems that War Wizard
suffers.  For example, it's possible to explore the land in Lothian more
easily.  If you escape encounters, you won't progress in levels, and the
random encounters will be with only a few low level monsters, meaning
that they'll be resolved quickly (either way).  The extremely simple
combat system helps in this respect.

	Lothian has another boon to the exploration in the form of a
coordinate system.  This means that you need to note only the location
of cities in order to know their direction.  Of course, the registered
version of War Wizard comes with full maps, so it shouldn't be that
much of a problem.

	War Wizard lacks one other aspect of Lothian - the missions.  In War
Wizard, you can talk to people and they'll sometimes give you hints on where
you can go.  They don't, however, ask you to do anything for them, which
means that all you do in WW is explore.  In Lothian, people ask you to do
missions for them, and you get rewards for doing them. This adds interest to
the game.

	On the other hand, War Wizard is much more complex and therefore
more involving.  The fights can be enjoyable (as long as there are not too
many of them), and character improvement is more of a goal - you tend to
search for ways to get better equipment, more powerful spells, and so on.

	There's one other PD game of Lothian's type, called UTG.  I haven't
played it, since it needs AmigaDOS 2.0 at least (which I still don't have).
According to the documentation of UTG, it seems to have the simplistic
Lothian system, so War Wizard probably still rules the PD scene in this
respect.

BUGS

	War Wizard is certainly not free of bugs.  Some of them are just a
little annoying.  One very annoying bug manifests when you try and put items
into a chest.  This can be very useful for storing currently unused items
that may be of use in the future.  Unfortunately, all too often the program
acts as if there's something in the empty chest slot and claims that it's
too heavy for the character to carry.  While it's possible to overcome this
problem, either by using another chest or another slot, or by removing other
items from the character first, it's still extremely annoying.

	Another annoying problem is in battles.  When the allocated movement
points reach 1 or 0, the turn goes to the next character.  This is true only
if you've been moving, however.  If you got to 1 by casting a spell, the
turn won't pass automatically.  Pressing Next or Last will move to the next
character, but pressing Done will actually skip the next character. This is
not all that problematic once you get used to it, but it can be quite
annoying initially.

	The program didn't GURU a lot, although it did on some occasions.
It's as if there are certain places on the map where the program GURUs once
you finish a fight.

VENDOR SUPPORT

	I haven't tried the phone numbers, for obvious reasons (i.e. the
cost of international calls), but I did contact the programmer by e-mail to
learn a bit more before I wrote the review.  The response was very quick.  I
haven't actually had any real problem with the game, so I can't comment on
the quality of the support.

CONCLUSIONS

	[ Scores are out of 10 ]

	Graphics	7
		Not bad for this kind of game (not that good either).
	Sound		0
		No sound (just like I like it).
	Playability	7
		Some parts of the game are too cumbersome, but generally OK.
	Addictiveness	9
		I love games of exploration and character enhancement.
		If you're like me, this could keep you up at night for
		a few days.
	Lastability	7
		The demo is limited, of course, and you'll probably grow
		tired of it within a week.  The full game will probably
		keep you playing much longer, unless you get too
		frustrated by the interface (which is all too possible).
	Value for money	7
		$20 is not too expensive, and this is a very large and
		sophisticated game.  You might want to save your money,
		however, for something with less bugs, more story, and a
		better interface.
	Conclusions	7
		Try the demo - it's not bad - then decide for yourself.
		In my opinion, there are too many faults in this game,
		with the auto-saves being perhaps the most annoying,
		although they shouldn't be too difficult to fix.
		This game is a real case of almost being there, but not
		quite.

COPYRIGHT NOTICE

	Copyright 1994 Eyal Teler.  All rights reserved.

---

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