Wizardry: Proving Grounds of the Mad Overlord

Ein altes Spiel in neuen Kleidern. Wirklich gut ! Gute Grafik und es macht Spass !

For full disclosure, I returned the GOG version and re-purchased it for the Nintendo Switch since that's more portable. I suppsoe if you've got a Steam Deck or whatnot that's not as much of an issue. I never played the original game - I was negative 7 back then - but the old-school charm is lovely if you're willing to put in the time and learn to play the game on its own terms. I do wish the Apple }{ overlay was able to be customized some (it's so small! and it can vanish behind the torch!) but aside from that minor quibble, it's as pure of an old-school dungeon crawler as you can hope for.

I'm surprised by how much I liked this. There is delightful attention to detail for those that loved the original(s) and I think the design is pretty fantastic, particularly the monster models. I sometimes stopped just to watch the gleam of my torch move back and forth on the metal on the doors as I waved it back and forth or to enjoy the secret door animations. Things are very smooth although sometimes. Only slightly clunky thing is a few design choices. You may not like this if you are looking for gameplay quality control improvements like saves and such although it does have a robust menu to choose implementations from the various early versions. It felt like playing Wizardry 1 again with a much better interface and graphics amd I very much enjoyed the trip down memory lane. Strong recommend to Wizardry 1 fans or people who like old school brutal RNG games. There are a few bugs that pop up, though, so be prepared.

I played the Wizardry series a lot when they were released, and completed all of the games multiple times. I'm also currently playing Wizardry I in an Apple II emulator. The main problem I have with this remake is that it's WAY more difficult than the original game. My entire party has been wiped out during the first encounter, on the first level, in the first room entered, multiple times. There's no difficulty setting, but somehow the developers made the monsters WAY tougher. My other observation is that while the graphics and audio are nice, the UI is weirdly clunky and inconsistent. The original game is literally easier to use. I'll stick with it, but so far it's been frustrating.

This was a pleasant surprise remake and I’m enjoying it so far. There are many good things to say about this version but I’ll just mention the following. Multiple reviews indicated that the auto-mapper resets every time you re-enter the dungeon level. While this is true, the exploration progress for each dungeon level is actually saved and can be recalled/saved by casting the level 1 Mage spell “DUMAPIC.” The game could have been more clear on this point. There are two things I think could benefit from “modernization”: 1. Healing spells tend to roll on the lower end for some reason for me. It’s frustrating to cast high circle spells to heal for 4 points. If anything, there should be some scaling to caster level and or Piety. 2. The surprise mechanic is too random and punishing. I rather have it disabled and let the initiative system with some randomness to handle it. Lastly, I’m not a fan of the default keyboard mapping for UI menu navigation. It is clunky and unintuitive to use left/right alt, etc for navigation.