Wizardry: Proving Grounds of the Mad Overlord

I would play the original Wizardry if I could get it running on any modern computer, but this version has some nice quality of life improvements and decent enough visuals. Brings back many memories. It also has the unforgiving random encounters. After spending all that time to create my entire party, I lost half of them on the first trip down, third encounter. Once you level up and have a priest who can deal with most scenarios, things get much better though.

Awesome work on bringing this classic up to date. First played this game in the year waybackwhen on my snazzy Apple IIe and green screen monitor. It was great back then (cutting edge and all that) and this new version more than does it justice, it magnifies everything that was great about the game and then adds a ton of upgrades that lifts it up from merely 'great' to truly 'heavenly'. Thank you Digital Eclipse. My faith in humanity has now been restored!

The game focuses you more on resource management and having a good sense in direction. HP, spell slots for example you have to tip it through the inn with care as well as how much gold you spend. A character dying is a massive loss but can be recovered if you can survive in the dungeons long enough (unless you're using an easier difficulty that is). I played on the classic rules with only the ability to make new characters. Creating new characters to go and save the ones that were lost in there sounded like a very nice feature and gameplay value. I did find a few bugs though. However I feel like I was just using my own imagination to have fun really. I had to find ways to make it more fun for me by increasing the difficulty. The game is pretty much, don't get lost, chests, fighting random encounters, and finding hidden walls. I think the hidden walls are randomly placed every time you go back in. 1. There are freezes in combat. I think this happens when you lower the number of the enemies and they shift to rebalance the lines. There are freezes in the town menus too when you are trying to put a dead member in the tavern for instance. 2. The DIOS potion can be used infinitely out of combat. Only consumed in combat but you can abuse it outside of combat.

I really love how they did this. I think it retains the older bones of the game while implementing some nice quality of life improvements. Leaving the older options for those who would rather play that way is a definite plus. You end up with a tailored experience with some nice graphical choices that bring the game to life more in my opinion. Its the way i've always wanted to play wizardry.

My previous Wizardry experience involves mainly 6,7,8. I have been a little aware of the history of the series. I'm about 15 hours in and really liking this. There are a number of bugs, but they are annoying rather than game breaking. I'm sure more aware reviewers can point out some other improvements that could be made too. But for me this is a fairly accessible and time/feature friendly way to experience this game. I think it looks fantastic. And I can advise Digital Eclipse that if they keep doing these games, I will keep buying them.