Wizardry: Proving Grounds of the Mad Overlord

This release blindsided me I hadn't heard of anyone talking about it but it was a great surprise. This is as old school as it gets for first person dungeon crawlers since it was the first ever blobber. Optional quality of life features exist so you can play old school mode if you prefer. As of the time of this review this game is early access and I would only recommend a purchase if you just can't wait for the full release or like me you would like to contribute your money to the developers hoping that this project becomes a success and they decide to give the same treatment to the rest of the Wizardry series. I played it for a bit over a hour and was having a blast but decided to stop playing since I read that future updates may break game save files. The modern auto mapping currently resets every time you leave the dungeon and I had the game freeze up on me once but I was happy to find that upon reloading the game my party was at the exact spot where the game froze and in the same condition. The five star rating of course is not based on the current games state but on the potential I see for it upon final release.

I've been a fan of most of the Wizardry games throughout the decades. This is a good remaster of the graphics on and old and dated game. It still leaves a lot to be desired--mouse support, manual saves. The automap is good, but doesn't persist when you leave the maze and return. I hope to see many improvements to come.

Version 0.3.1 resolved the most frequently criticisms of v0.1. They introduced mouse support which is working pretty well right now. Some hated the lack of saves slots, forcing you to play rogue-like. The devs introduced Save slots in version 0.2, then included the ability to copy and rename your saves in version 0.3. So now you can reload an earlier game before disaster struck and even reroll your level ups. V0.1 required you to enter the maze then exit to access the pooled gold. Now parties come pre-equipped with basic gear plus a little extra pooled gold without leaving town. Some including me disliked that you could not trade and equip items until you entered the maze. The original game let you to do this in Gilgamesh’s Tavern. The developers added this into the Adventurer’s Inn. But they also watched some early streams and noticed that players were not wasting gold at the inn, but instead were just using the inn to restore Priest spell points for free in the Stables, then going into the maze to heal. So they added free healing at the Inn. Some who were not paying attention complained that non-humans had only 1 portrait each for males and females. Digital Eclipse kept their promise and added more portraits, but also listened to players and added the ability to upload your own custom portraits. They even buffed up the Temple of Cant to restore levels drained by monsters. Yeah, I know, it makes the game a little easier. But I'm in favor of moderate improvements that make the game a little more accessible to newer players. Version 0.3 added a Bestiary and a 3-step ability to identify monster traits, a welcome new addition to the Wizardry series. Mouse support, save slots, pre-equipped gear, free healing in town, custom portraits, drain restoration, and the Bestiary are features that the original game did not have. Clearly, the team at Digital Eclipse is listening to comments and improving the game.

Every level looks the same and has the same music. This gets old real quick. The price is also laughable - consider that divinity original sin 2 is the same price!

Having played all of the NES, Ultimate Wizardry Achieves, and SFC versions of Wizardry, I am happy to experience this re-release, which uses the console music and combines the feel of the SFC version in the dungeon with Wizardry: Tales of the Forsaken Land in combat--both good to great games aesthetically. I question many of the design choices, some good (customizes away many "old school" traditions), but which overall make the game close to unplayable. The game is the game--you get invested in your characters, they die/permadie easily, you overestimate your chances, you encounter strange and challenging enemies and traps, and you gradually become a master player. It's good, but pretty high up there in unforgiving entry-level and endgame experiences in a party-based RPG. Having a player friendly interface is important to make such an experience enjoyable. The interface is not player-friendly. Unlike every prior release, this game has no way to circumvent Wizardry's aggressive autosaving of everything bad that happens to you: no multiple saves, no reset/force quit in the middle of a bad combat (the game saves character status round by round), no easily accessible save/character files to make manual backups. It is impossible to overstate how profoundly this changes the gameplay. The game weirdly makes it impossible to access newly created (and naked) characters' gold until they enter and then leave the dungeon. It's hard to figure out what's going on in combat. The action's going on in front of you, but most of the information is off to the side, so you're constantly having to move your eyes for things like what spells are going off, which monsters were affected, and how many hits connected. Tales of the Forsaken Land had no trouble giving you this information. This game may be great when it's fully finished. In its current state it needs more polish and different design choices.