Some say that a quill is more powerful than the sword. In most cases they can be proved wrong by a any hot-tempered, half-naked barbarian wielding a crude two-handed blade. In this case, however, we’re talking about a quill that is the most powerful artifact in the whole universe. It’s called The Cosmic Forge, for it has the ability to rewrite reality itself, making its wielder omnipotent. This is what’s at stake, at this is what you’ll be after. But as if laying your hands on this treasure wasn’t difficult enough, there’s an ominous force hiding in the shadows, trying to reach the goal before you do and turning the whole of the world against you. All this is but the main thread in the epic campaign bringing together fantasy and Sci-Fi in a world that could have only be spawned to existence in the early 1990s. Behold the first two games in the Dark Savant trilogy!

The transition from 2D sprite-based graphics into the realm of 3D marked a distinctive line after which role-play gaming was changed for ever, and in many cases not in the way fans hoped for. Wizardry 8 was one of the very few games, that achieved a great feat–it adopted to the new era of gaming without losing its original spirit and old-school charm. When released 9 years after the previous game in the series, It was praised for staying true to what made its predecessors great and memorable. This allowed all the fans of classic Wizardry games to experience the conclusion to the Dark Savant saga in the only way they would accept as true, while keeping up with the contemporary standards.

All three games are worth playing; I count Wizardry 7: Crusaders of the Dark Savant as one of my all-time favourite games, and cannot praise it enough for the way it made you feel that yes, there were other players at work in the world, working and moving against you as you raced to find the Astral Dominae.

If you need a dose of an old-school, hard-core RPG experience, grab Wizardry 6 and 7, and then be sure to polish off the trilogy with its surprisingly decent sequel that took forever to arrive. Up to 700 hours of gameplay for $16 is a hard deal to beat, no?