Work has been busy since the end of 2020, but I've been plugging away at...
Stranger of Sword City
I had played this for something like 10-15 hours a year or two ago, and then stopped for some reason. During this initial attempt, I had created multiple parties to fill up the roster, so that I could swap character in and out as they were recovering.
Years (?) later, I decided to start over and this time went with a different approach. I created a single party, and decided I would just create a new character each time I needed to let a character who had been "killed" recover. This is a lot more comfortable for me. The game does let you save at the "town" so you can always just reload the game no matter what, but that can also get a bit annoying (enemies capable of critical hits are quite prevalent in certain areas). After 5-6 hours, I've finally reached and exceeded the point I reached during my previous attempt.
The game is clearly and heavily influenced by the classic Wizardry games. Having said that, it's got some good and bad points in comparison to that classic series. Because it does not have permadeath (unless you choose to roll with the punches), it's also quite a bit more unfair than even the somewhat brutal Wizardry I. Your party starts out quite strong in terms of HPs, but has no resistance to critical hits or magic. Individual deaths and party wipes can be quite common early on, unless you play VERY conservatively.
However, your spellcasters soon begin learning spells and abilities that make a huge difference, such as magic walls (that protect against magic for a single turn) and multi-target buff/debuff spells. So the difficulty curve is like a cliff, where once you reach level 8 or so things start to become much more manageable. At that point, you can begin exploring without having to worry so much about debilitating character/party deaths. Perhaps more importantly, once you complete the first dungeon the game provides you access to multiple dungeons. That means you can explore any given dungeon to the point where it becomes frustrating, and then head back to base and start exploring another.
Fun game! It's not anywhere near the level of the best of the classic Wizardry games (I and V), but it's maybe as good as if not better than the lesser entries (II and III).
