Wizardry: Proving Grounds of the Mad Overlord

Game constantly crashes. Doesn't even load 80% of the time.

Back in 1982 my brother killed my 9th lvl party when he was surprised by a group of gas dragons. I was playing basketball with my neighbor when he told me. I winged the basketball at his head and scored a critical hit! I'm now 55 and he is 58. I still haven't forgiven the BUM. 5 star game and the crpg that started it all for me.

I am having so much fun with this game, I am getting lost a lot and I have been playing 4 hours on the first floor and still getting lost. I really need to get some graph paper, lol. Hatlock's review really says it best, give his upvote "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

It's great. I just can't find the courage to go to level 10, so i just keep leveling-up.

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.