Thanks to Digital Eclipse for the review code
Title: Wizardry: Proving Grounds of the Mad Overlord
System: Steam (PC)
Price: $34.99
Release Date: 05/23/2024
Story
In this full 3D remake of one of the founding RPGs, you take control of a party of adventurers as they set out to explore a devastating labyrinth, filled with traps, monsters, and illusions, to reach the wizard waiting on the bottom floor to take him out!
With that plot outline set, the rest of the game’s story is up to you to make up or go along with, since creating your own party and route through the dungeon is most of the fun here, and being such an early game (from around 1981!) this RPG pretty much set the foundation for so, so many more to come.
Presentation
So this remake covers a different age of retro game than I’m usually familiar with. The original Wizardry was a computer game from way back in 1981. Thus, it really didn’t have much of a presentation whatsoever, with visuals mostly being known for taking place through a first person text-focused interface with a cute little enemy drawing every now and again.
Console ports would mostly retain this while adding more detail to the otherwise monochrome dungeon, but even then this original Wizardry just stuck to the computer limitations and looked fine enough to be memorable. The original computer version didn’t even have music! Thus, we now have a 2024 version of this computer classic, taking aspects from both the console versions while mostly sticking to the code/structure of the computer original, and Digital Eclipse nails their retro magic here by allowing you to display your current view in the 1981 style by pressing the select button, which is really neat!
Still, the 3D visuals are what you primarily see during the remake, and I found them to look fine enough for the most part, being typical fantasy fare. The enemies are well detailed and distinct and compare nicely with their generic computer counterparts, so the added variety is appreciated. The dungeon is also far more distinguishable in 3D, though that shouldn’t come as any surprise since you aren’t dealing with lines on the floor and walls anymore. The town area where you go between different buildings via a menu is also snappy and to the point, and while there’s little visual cues once you’re inside these bulidings, (since again, this is all a menu) each of the facilities was easy to jump in and get what I wanted outta them due to an easy to use UI, even on a gamepad.
Last but not least is the sound, and odd confession here; I wanted to really try and capture the feeling of the computer version for my first run here, so I muted the soundtrack during that attempt. The new stuff that you hear is fine fantasy stuff and backs the actions well, but there’s a strange benefit to just muting it all and having only the sounds of the enemies and your movement be all that you hear within the dungeon. Thus, I accidentally made the game a lot more atmospheric by trying to mimic the computer version, and while I think the tunes are still fine, you might also seriously enjoy this game’s sound design if you mute the music. They really did a good job of making the audio experience flow well both ways!
Gameplay
Wizardry could be described as the grandfather of dungeon crawling games such as Etrian Odyssey, but quite frankly, that far understates just how influential this game is to RPGs as a whole, and the idea of fully remaking this one could easily have been done in a way that throws the original game in a high QOL wrapper, but in a way that could destroy or radically shift the game balance.
See, Wizardry was known for being hard, and I don’t just mean Mystery Dungeon hard, but like, almost worse than permadeath hard. Your main goal is to create a party of heroes, roll a class for them and an alignment, and then reach the bottom of the dungeon to take out the big bad on the final floor. However, doing so is a long, long journey that has many chances to brick your entire game and party and make grind sessions turn out to be for naught if one of your main heroes dies and is unable to be revived. In the original computer game, so many factors were randomized and digging around in the dungeon was incredibly challenging due to just how easy it was to get lost.
Luckily for us, Digital Eclipse built this remake off the code of the original computer version, with toggles to replicate all of those weird oddities such as an aging system that weakens your party the more you rest at inns, your level up stats being fully randomized to the point you may even gain a disadvantage when leveling up, your party being stuck in the dungeon upon a wipe to the point enemies may destroy their corpses so you can’t revive them, and many, many more.
As noted above you even have that mini window that shows you what your current view would be like in the original computer game, and while originally I lamented not being able to just fully hide the modern stuff and play strictly in the retro container, I quickly realized that it was honestly for the better to stick to the remake’s perspective, since even with all the configurations set to the Computer version, I still noticed some general benefits such as being able to figure out corners and identify hidden walls that you just wouldn’t be able to do with the OG visuals.
These visual improvements won’t take away from letting you play the game just as the computer original would be, and if you still hope for something a bit more forgiving, then Digital Eclipse did a great job covering you on that end too, since there are options from the Console versions of the game which make a few things less mean, and a bunch of modern options that allow newcomers such as myself to have a bit more control over the random nature of Wizardry while still making sure the game is very, very hard.
With modern toggles, aging is a bit less mean, you can manually pick your level up stats, try to revive dead level 1 characters for free, hire new pre-made characters at the tavern, and even have a mini map that draws itself in as you explore a floor, (though it resets upon changing floor or exiting the dungeon, but it still is a tremendous help so you don’t walk in circles!) among several other additions. You can even mix and match if you have certain preferences, but I ended up settling on the Modern defaults after a bad run with the original options. The minimap helps wonders!
With your toggles set you venture into the dungeon with a party and do your best to survive. More than anything else in this entire game, your survival is the biggest priority. Sure, you may feel confident enough to take on floor 2 and 3 enemies after leveling up a couple of times and having little issue with the floor 1 grunts, but one wrong move and a character could die or your party could get ambushed by nine enemies you can’t run away from, which may lead to all that grinding being for nothing if you all die and the revival attempt fails. Yes, reviving a dead party member is up to chance, and if you fail both checks after spending the money on them, they’re gone forever.
To modern RPG fans, that idea may sound insane, but honestly even considering the nature of the original game, I didn’t mind this risk factor after getting accustomed to the game, and if anything it reminded me a lot of the careful “every move counts” nature of the Mystery Dungeon series… A series that only exists because the game that the first entry was a spinoff of took inspiration from this very game. So it all comes back to this game here, and despite how brutal it is, there is a great satisfaction from going deeper and deeper within the dungeon, keeping a party living for as long as possible, and building out your bestiary, even if it can all vanish in an instant if you get paralyzed or destroyed by stronger enemies. It may be a very rough loop, but with enough time and patience you will gradually get further and hey, at least fill in more of your bestiary if you fail.
Conclusion
I feel like with the Tomb Raider games, Wizardry is an iconic game remade in all the right ways, but in the process of that still maintains a status of being incredibly tough to break into. I got the gist of the game during the time I spent with it though, and while I managed to keep a party safe enough for floors 1/2, I did not have a good time with floors 3 or 4. Still, I had a lot of fun, and when stuff works, Wizardry feels magical, and a delightful look back into RPG history, yet if you aren’t prepared, any random moment could end a multi-hour run, and whether or not that sits well with you depends on the player.
I had fun despite my failures with my runs here, but I definitely feel that considering the hardcore nature of the game, Wizardry is insanely brutal for good reason, even with these handy QOL updates. They don’t break things too much, and the QOL does what it needs to, but even if you’re hoping for this to be the easiest version of Wizardry to get into, you have a long, long road ahead. If you persist and enjoy the loop however, you’ll find one heck of a RPG to kick off quite an influential legacy.
I give Wizardry: Proving Grounds of the Mad Overlord a 7 out of 10,