Wizardry: Proving Grounds of the Mad Overlord

Have not played this game for 40 years, now I can't stop. A good facelift to a classic game. Wizadry was THE Dungeon Crawler in the day and this takes me back, but with better graphics. THIS IS NOT a modern game, this game was originally written to work on systems that had around 64k of RAM. If you are expecting Modern graphics, sound and ai, this is not for you. But if you want to experience a enchaned 1980's dungeon crawler, then this is it.

The animation and graphics in the remake are nothing short of amazing. There is still some crazy design choices left over from the original, but many of them have been effectively ameliorated by this remake. There is a auto-map and the map spell dumapic has been upgraded to show an entire map. Much of the silly navigation in the castle has been smoothed out, and the charm of the earliest of computer dungeon crawlers still shines through in this version. The only advice I would give is to "enhance" the save system by simply going into your users directory and copying the saved directory in "murphy" at various points, and when the crazy difficulty wipes your entire party simply replace the saved directory with your back up. Yes, this is "cheating", but the penalty for a single mistake is so high that is is warranted in this case. (The penalty for a wipe is starting over with brand new characters.)

I only played Wizardry 8 a bit, but this Remaster of the Original first Game is so addictive! Its Fun to level the Party and get into all the other Game Mechanics. I clearly recommend it if you like the Dungeon Crawler Experience.

Even in early access this is worth a purchase. Love the makeover and also the inclusion of the original graphics as an option. Really cool they built on top of the original code. For me there's a heavy nostalgia kick that goes with this franchise, one of the first dungeon crawlers I got into as a kid so I sort of compare everything else to that experience on an emotional level. Take that with a grain of salt as others may not be as big of a fan. Still, regardless of my rose colored glasses, this game will reward your patience at the old school pace with a good story, deep lore, and pretty much constant dungeon crawling with turn based fighting and perma-death. This is a worthy entry in the franchise.

I remember playing this type of game when they first came out. What I'm glad to see is that the basic game itself is still intact and still as enjoyable. It's got a good range of enemies to encounter and while some feel a bit redundant, it never ends up feeling overly repetitive. Compared to later games, the range of treasures feels limited, but it is still rewarding to get some of the niftier items that become available later on. The remastering is very well done, with the graphics and sound being enjoyable additions to the base game mechanics. Two things end up detracting from it for me. The first is the way that the required experience for leveling up jumps exponentially. It makes it to where it feels like quite a grind to get the last couple of levels to be able to face down the final encounter. The permadeath aspect is also aggravating. You can spend a lot of time developing a character only to have him (or her) killed and, when the ressurection fails, you get to start all over again. I'm guessing that was added to make the game feel more challenging and high stakes, but for me it just adds a substantial level of frustration. Overall, this is worth picking up and playing.