Wizardry VII: Crusaders of The Dark Savant - Gameplay

Gameplay

Crusaders of the Dark Savant is played from a first person perspective, with the party's character portraits visible alongside what they see in the game world, and movement is tile-based. Individual character personality is non-existent. Instead, the party thinks and acts as a cohesive unit (reflecting the player who controls them). The race and class of each character is, however, customizable, allowing for many different types of parties to explore the world of Lost Guardia.

Each race has a certain statistic value attached to them, before bonuses:

• Strength determines carrying capacity and melee damage.
• Intelligence affects the number of skills learned, and the strength of spells.
• Piety affects the amount of spell points a character has to use.
• Vitality determines HP, and resistance to disease.
• Dexterity determines number of attacks per round and thieving skills.
• Speed determines number of total attack rounds available and initiative.
• Personality determines how likely a character is to make friends with neutral or hostile NPCs.
• Karma does much the same as Personality, except that low values in Karma impress similarly low Karma NPCs (thieves like the company of thieves, and so on).

As with the first five Wizardry games, the races include Tolkien-esque Humans, Elves, Dwarves, Gnomes and Hobbits. However, continuing with the expansion of this concept in Bane of the Cosmic Forge, Lizardmen, Faeries, Dracons (half-Human, half-Dragons), Rawulf (humanoid dogs), Felpurr (humanoid cats) and the alien Mook (tall and hairy Sasquatch-like people, who make an appearance in Wizardry 8) are all playable. Each race carries its own unique set of benefits and detriments to statistics, unique resistances, and can make use of race specific equipment. The game even includes a weapon that is relegated only to Faeries who become Ninja: the incredible Cane of Corpus.

There are also several classes to choose:

• Fighters are the frontline troops.
• Thieves disarm traps, steal and fight.
• Samurai, Lords, the female-only Valkyries, Bards, Rangers, Monk and Ninja are all hybrid classes that can fight, in addition to casting spells and/or thieving.
• Psionics, Priests, Mages and Alchemists all cast spells from one of the game world's four spellbooks.
• Bishops cast both Priest and Mage spells, but learn them half as quickly as a pure Priest or Mage.

Each class requires a basic statistic score to follow its path. For example, a character would need 12 Strength to be a Fighter, while a potential Priest needs 12 Piety and 8 Personality. Class requirements can make it difficult for "mismatched" race/class combinations, such as Lizardman Bishops or Faerie Monks, even to the point of impossibility at character creation. Crusaders of the Dark Savant allows a way around this, by allowing any character to change to any class at any time, provided they meet the statistic and gender requirements.

Class change lets a character switch to a level 1 character in a class of their choosing, while at the same time keeping the skills of their former class. These level 1 characters gain experience and grow quickly, allowing for quick gains in that class' skills, and the opportunity to quickly class switch again. While skills in weapons and magic go up quickly through class change, HP and MP gains are left at 1 per level until the character surpasses their previous class' level. For example, if a level 8 Fighter changes to a Mage, they will become a level 1 Mage. Every level until level 8, they will only gain 1 HP, whereupon normal HP growth will resume.

Formation of the party, up to six, is set up to allow the first three characters to be on the front line, where stronger short ranged weapons can be used, but where more damage is taken. The final three can only hit with ranged weapons, spells or while hidden, but are less likely to be hit and take damage.

NPC interaction, on the DOS and Windows versions of Crusaders of the Dark Savant, is carried out by the mouse and keyboard. The mouse selects general actions, such as "Fight," "Spell," or "Trade." The keyboard comes into play when talking, where the player must manually type in certain questions or keywords for the NPC. Simply typing "Ukpyr" will bring up the NPC's information about Ukpyr, while "Where is Ukpyr?" will give directions. The Japanese PSX version allows the player to choose from a list of keywords, much like the Ultima series. NPCs, like the characters, also travel the world, make alliances, kill other NPCs and discover treasure that the player may eventually have to barter, steal or kill for.

Battle is carried out through a system called "phased combat." When battle begins, the enemy party is shown graphically on the worldview screen. Relevant mythology skills are then rolled to determine if the party knows what kind of enemies they are. At this point, an enemy flock of black birds could become "Fire Crows," "Vampire Vultures," or simply, "Black Birds." The player then selects an action for every character, whether it be attacking, dodging, running, casting a spell, or otherwise. When all the actions are selected, every character and monster involved in the battle compares initiative, and each participant acts depending on that roll. The fastest characters or monsters act first, complete their turn, then allow the next fastest person to take theirs.

Magic is divided into four schools of magic, and six elements. The four schools are Psionics, mind-based spells, Alchemy, potion-based spells, Theology, religiously-based spells, and Thaumaturgy, element-based spells. The six elements are fire, water, air, earth, mental and divine. Spell points are depicted as current/max numbers, but are divided among the six spell realms. For example, a healing Priest has few spells available in the fire realm, and might have only 50 points to spend casting fire spells. On the other hand, she might have up to 400 to spend on divine spells. In this way, MP is divided up into six element sections, with each section corresponding to unique spells carrying the theme of the element it represents.

Leveling is similar to other RPGs. When enough experience is earned through defeating enemies, a character advances in their current class, earning new statistics, skills, spells and ranks in that class. Statistical growth can result in one statistic going up, several going up, or even (rarely) having one decrease. Skill gains are divided among weapon skills, physical skills like swimming and climbing, academic skills like spells, critical strikes and mythology, and "personal" skills. These mostly superhuman skills, like super speed and super strength, are unlocked through finding unique items in the world and invoking them on a single character. It is also possible to load the game after a "bad level," fight another battle, and re-do the level's bonuses if the level is not to the player's liking.