I agree that GOG should get this if possible. It's also legendarily difficult - Wizardry-4-hard one could say.

Probably because they're misreading it as the Dark Heart of Urkel.

Ah yes, my favourite Rakoth track:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HUWQ_CQaumM

Never played the game, but I'm always in favour of more old RPGs on GOG.

Is it difficult in the same way as Wizardry 4? In other words, does the game have extremely obscure puzzles that have to be solved to progress, along with difficult mapping?

Or is it more of a straightforward game, albeit with extremely challenging combat and unforgiving mechnics?

(Also, is it the sort of game I would need save states for? In Wizardry 1-5 (excluding 4), I always use them because I dislike how the game constantly auto-saves, particularly saving bad things that happen; in Wizardry 4, I don't need save states because the game only saves when you tell it to.)

Looks interesting. Voted.

This guy http://crpgaddict.blogspot.com/

It's a really cool blog, active for almost 10 years now. One of the best sources for seriously in-depth classic CRPG reviews on the internet.

Except that, from what I remember, this site only reviews those released on computers (not consoles) in the West, and therefore misses out on the entire JRPG branch of the CRPG genre.

I'd like to see something similar, but with the reviewer reviewing (and comparing) all types of CRPGs of each era, including comparisons of both JRPGs and WRPGs of the same vintage. I think it would be interesting to see how the two branches diverged, and how much cross-polination occurred between them. (Plus, there are some games which straddle the line in interesting ways, like the Megaten series (first person dungeon crawling is not the norm for JRPGs) and many of the SaGa games (non-liner quest based gaming as is common in a WRPG, but still JRPG battle mechanics, but of course the growth mechanics are different).)

Yeah, that would be cool. He has reviewed a few Japanese PC games, so you get some perspective on that side of things at least.

Wizardry was the RPG that ignited Japan's love for the genre (or at least that's what I've read), so actually first person dungeon crawling is not that uncommon among JRPGs in the 80s. There is an series on HG101 called Dark Ages of JRPGs which goes in-depth on the topic: http://www.hardcoregaming101.net/category/feature/dark-age-of-jrpgs/

Thanks for the link; that's actually *very* interesting.

It's interesting to see the diversity in RPGs (and RPG-adjacent games) that was prevalent before the genre established its conventions. It seems that, by the time Dragon Quest and Final Fantasy came around, developers started to stick to standard conventions, like having levels ans XP, maximum HP, and other things that are now considered standard features of all RPGs these days. (One interesting exception to this convention is Final Fantasy 2 and most of the SaGa series, which doesn't have levels and XP; I wish more games would take that sort of approach.)

(By the way, I note that the original Phantasy Star also had first-person dungeons, despite playing more like a conventional JRPG of its time in other respects.)

Yeah, there was first-person crawling before that but the Wizardry series got really popular. Subsequently, there were a lot of crawlers around and there still are, they are still getting produced (PC included).

The first Phantasy Star for me is super reminiscent of the early Ultima games, which had the same type of perspective change (top-down overworld and towns, first-person dungeons). It's a shame they dropped that in the sequels.

While I've heard of this game and seen it at various places and times on the Internet, I've never played it. VOTED! (there seems to be a couple duplicates of this game on the community wishlist)

Here is a video review of the game: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OzFhk6-hURE

Apparently, they planned on having first-person dungeons in Phantasy Star 4; there's even a screenshot in a magazine, but it didn't make it into the final version of the game.