Nemesis: The Wizardry Adventure

A witch’s brew of role-playing and adventure.

Nemesis: The Wizardry Adventure is the first Sir-tech point and click graphic adventure to bear the Wizardry name. Based on the famous role-playing Wizardry series from the same company, Nemesis combines elements from both RPGs and traditional adventures in an attempt to yield a different sort of experience. Unfortunately, RPG fans may find the linear plot and lack of character generation too adventure-like, and adventure fans might find the combat sequences too RPG-ish.

You’ve just arrived at your new home, the peaceful town of Galican. On your first trip out to explore your surroundings, you are suddenly attacked by a strange, winged creature. Fortunately, the town’s sage, Rian, is nearby and is able to fend off the dark beast with his powerful magic. You find out that the creature that attacked you is called a “shadow,” and that you have to find the Nitherin talismans to ward off their evil. Therefore, you must embark on an epic quest during which you will fight evil creatures, learn powerful magic and solve some crafty puzzles.

The game will take you to all parts of a varied gameworld, including dungeons, tunnels, castles and forests. The lands are pre-rendered, and each area has a distinct look with impressive attention to detail. Unlike the scenery in Interplay’s Stonekeep, Nemesis’s areas are all different, not just the same dungeon with different colors. Plus, there are outside environments as well.

The interface offers standard adventure-type navigation and interaction. By moving the mouse to the edges of the view screen, you can turn left, turn right and move forward or backward. You also use the mouse to interact with the environment by opening doors, gathering objects and using inventory to solve puzzles. It is a simple point-and-click interface – clean and easy to figure out.

It won’t take long until the RPG parts creep in. Your alter ego in Nemesis is “pre-rolled,” and there are no things such as class or race to worry about. You are given several attributes, such as strength, intelligence, dexterity and hit points, which all increase over time as you progress through the adventure. You are also given proficiency ratings (shown in percentages) with various weapons such as swords and crossbows. To increase the ratings, you must use the weapons with repeated success in combat like in Stonekeep.

Despite Sirtech’s best efforts, the real-time combat is a mere exercise of continuous clicking. It is possible to perform different attacks, such as swinging or thrusting a sword; however, the enemy attacks so quickly that trying to coordinate a multi-faceted attack usually leaves you open to damage. There is a large variety of monsters, such as walking pig-like things, spiders, blobs, eels and the shadow creatures, plus you will find many weapons that you can use. You also have a choice of using up to 16 spells, both offensive and defensive.

It almost sounds too good to be true, and it would be if the game didn’t crash so often, seemingly in a random fashion and often in the worst of times. Perhaps it just doesn’t like my system, but playing through this Wizardry adventure might prove more trouble than it’s worth.