Wizardry: Proving Grounds of the Mad Overlord

My comments ended up far to long and critical. Summation - This is not being put on a 16K computer. The honor and respect you are showing the original wizardy I recognize - but there is a reason why you dont play it in Blobber world that much - it was hamstrung by what it could do technologically from when it was made. Keep on developing. If you want to give us more options for us to pick and choose , try a quest board, shut off alignments? Better cartography options even more advanced than those provided. Later iterations of wizardry ( I am going to some of the ps releases with the Porklu etc) had maps you could find which would allow the auto map to be revealed - which you could color code for not explored etc. Doesnt have to be so basic. I am looking forward to see how much more gets spiced up with this. Hopefully its doesnt just end up a tribute game that the 50+ crowd will oogle.

There are few things i hate on this release and I know there will be people who will disagree with me but i have to go out of my hearth. First thing: Graphics or maybe better Aesthetics of the Game!!! Do you remember that time when Ubisoft bought Might and Magic frenchise and made it 3D. That is exactly how this game looks even the movement of the camera in the city or at the begining of the battle looks like HoMaM V+ . Did wizardry needed bland generic ugly 3D remake? Of course they didnt. But yet we are here. Portraits are kind of bland as well. Btw. here are just two portraits for each race other than human, sorry "lineage". Second thing control!!! Could a developer at least just pretend its also on PC, not just on consoles. The player can just literaly look on an old apple two version during the game. But no keyboard shortcut from original is posible. You have control the game with this left right alt, Q E arows Z Enter Space scheme. No mouse support whatsoever. Btw. when you are in Boltac shop and and you press left alt for next player the filter also changes as you were pressing ctrl. Changes to the Wizardry frenchise Core. Like no more random levelup stats increasment and decreasment

If you have even a little interest in historic games, this is the remaster for you. It's visually gorgeous, and the controller support is flawless after this latest patch (or at least it has been for me). this is a remaster, not a remake and it does nothing at all to the gameplay, which to me made it somehow easier to see and analyze the gameplay loop, which holds up surprisingly well after all these years. Just to make sure this wasn't nostalgia clouding my judgement, I wen ahead and introduced it to my daughter and her best friend- both of whom were immediately hooked. I honestly can't imagine what else they have left to do before it goes full release unless maybe it's squashing a few corner-case bugs, because in my playing it's been flawless for some time. personally, I can only hope the rest of the original trilogy gets this treatment - the only thing I want from this remake is more!

Let's be honest, this is one of the greatest remaster/remakes of all time. In it's current state, the game has so many options to relive the old school experience or shave off all of the pointy (razor sharp, rusty, poisoned, level draining) edges. In the end, what made this game truly shine stand out. It was great, it's still great. Wizardry 1, already inspirational, can now show off it's great ideas and immense fun without players needing to know all of its rules and idiosyncrasies first. That said, you need to engage in the game's systems, understand each monster's peril, carefully manage your resources. What this game takes out: -Needing to create your own game guide while you play (it can still be very useful to draw your own map, but now you can cast a spell to confirm if you are correct and reveal your mistakes) -Needing to grind up a recovery team when things go wrong in the dungeon -Rerolling characters to get decent stats If you liked those things, guess what, the options are still there! What the game puts in: Basically everything from the previous definitive version (the SNES "Nintendo Power" version) including: -Better in game map -colorful enemy sprites and animations -thieves and ninja can hide from the backrow (basically allows them to attack from the back row every other turn) Things that weren't in that version: -lots more QOL features (all optional!) -sweet mini view of what the original game looked like in the bottom right corner (best feature) -mouse controls! (but the keyboard ones are very good) -Your highest party level is noted to help you recruit a recovery team (all of the financial pain of a party wipe, the thrill of the recovery, but none of the grinding). -better DUMAPIC usability and bestiary

WOW! This is so great! Back in the 80's playing this on an Apple II+ with green screen because I didn't have a TV adapter yet, it was so amazing and now here I am again at long last. I used to carry my computer around in my car, because I wanted to play everywhere I went and i was also almost homeless. Just like the original, your save is when you make it back to town, then you backup your party and many times I was killed close to town and had to reload my save and everything during that run was lost. Sometimes I got lost, even with my smudgy hand drawn maps and I was panic running with several characters close to death and managed to make it to the stairs. Everyone I had ever played D&D boardgame with up to that point dropped their jaw when they saw this game. If you want to see what we were doing in the 80's, only this one has a much nicer paint job and some very nice additions, check out what started it all. I would say the same thing about the game Elite and the now Elite Dangerous.