Dark Wizard

[Gabriel]

Since it was asked about in another thread and I love raving about it, some comments about Dark Wizard.

 

 

You get to choose exactly what character classes to fill out your army with. I think the limit is somewhere around 30 troops you can have at once. And you can name all of them except the fixed storyline characters.

 

Because of the freedom in choosing characters, there's a tremendous variety in how you can approach the battles. The number of characters also allows battle strategies which simply aren't possible in games which only allow you 5 or fewer units at a time.

 

The game has a couple of simple quirks which really go a long way toward providing some nice strategies. The first is that moving into a hex next to an enemy unit ends your unit's movement, this promotes zones of control and positioning you normally don't see in these games. The second is that units only get a single counterattack, so battle strategies involve making the enemy's counterattack ineffective and then unloading on it.

 

There are four leaders to choose from, and the game plays different enough with each to make it fun to play again and again.

 

It was really underrated when it was new. I think most publications gave it a really non-committal review leaning towards the bad side. And there are some less than perfect things about the game. The first thing you'll want to do is turn the battle animations off, leading to the game having an EXTREMELY bland 8-bit appearance. Much of the non-whomping bits of the quest are very tedious. The AI is often pretty dumb and random. But the game has long legs, and just oozes playability.

 

The only thing missing is a genuine multiplayer option (beyond passing the controller back and forth with a buddy).

[PressureCooker2600]

Another game to look for now.