Review | Wizardry: Proving Grounds of the Mad Overlord Review - What's Old Is New
To understand why Wizardry matters you need to put it in context. Advanced Dungeons & Dragons was published in 1977. Rogue in 1980. A computer role-playing game featuring just one character was an achievement. A computer role-playing game that lets you control a whole party was something else entirely. Nobody had yet justice to a merry band of adventures crawling through dungeons.
The first Wizardry title, Proving Grounds of the Mad Overlord, let the player recruit a full six-member party in 1981. They could hire dwarves or elves to be fighters, mages and even prestige classes like ninjas. After buying equipment for them at the shop, the player could led their party into the dungeon, slaughter monsters for loot and return to sell their ill-gotten gains back in town. This was cutting-edge tabletop roleplaying at the time.
If that was all there was to Wizardry it would still be a landmark in the history of computer games. What elevated it further were the small details. Monsters dropped booby-trapped treasure chests that require thieves to disarm. Mages could blind enemies or put them to sleep in addition to damaging them with magic. Hell, the player could hire a bishop to identify items for free rather than paying an exorbitant sum at the shop for the same service.
Then there was the dungeon itself. The very first floor of Wizardry included a teleport trap, a dark corridor and many hidden doors. Without a pad of graph paper and a mage to cast “DUMAPIC,” the player was doomed to wander in circles as their party was whittled down. Wizardry at its best demanded that the player master the space. Failure brought death, and recovery from death came with a tall price tag.
There would be no teleport chest in Elden Ring if not for Wizardry. No class-changing system in Dragon Quest III if not for Wizardry. Even the relatively recent manga like Delicious in Dungeon borrow jokes from Wizardry and reference the game. Aside from the birth of the Ultima series in 1981, there is no game more foundational to digital role-playing.
That doesn’t mean Wizardry was perfect. Thieves were nearly useless save for their ability to detect and disarm traps. The game’s rudimentary alignment system only limited the party’s character-building options rather than providing interesting choices. Later floors were far less detailed in the original release, perhaps because there was only so much room for data on contemporary floppy discs. The story was also as thin as a paper napkin; but you play Wizardry for the story you make, not the one that is told to you.
Digital Eclipse’s remake of the game fixes a few of these problems and highlights what made it so impressive at the time. Taking a page from Wizardry V, thieves may “hide” and then “ambush” enemies in battle. This lets them attack from the back row and makes them just useful enough to keep in your party. The player is also given a choice of selecting the complex later map layouts of the console version rather than the incomplete original layouts. The story is rearranged so that the party is given a goal at the start of the dungeon rather than several hours in.
Digital Eclipse also made changes to reduce tedium as much as possible. The player may develop their party members via a point buy system rather than the time-consuming rolling process. Level-up stats may also be assigned manually; in earlier versions of the game, stats could decrease as well as increase. Characters are given a full set of equipment on recruitment, may rest at the inn for free, and may possess “Vim” rather than the classic “age” mechanic. Secret doors in the dungeon are marked with visual cues. There is a minimap in the corner that reveals immediate surroundings, but can still be inaccurate unless you supplement it with“DUMAPIC.” These features can be adjusted in the settings at any time.
Wizardry is still tough even with those improvements and modernisations. When I started the game I rolled a party called the “Dungeon Eaters” starring the cast of Delicious in Dungeon. The dungeon ate them up in their very first battle. Back in town, I recruited a new party at the tavern to try again. They stepped into a teleport trap and died looking for the exit. In the end, I only found success by running a level 1 party through the opening corridor in search of encounters. Only at level 2 or 3 did I start to feel safe. You can also make use of the game’s premade party of level 2 characters, but where’s the fun in that? It’s far more entertaining to make characters based on your friends and subject them to terrible danger.
Despite the new coat of paint and totally redone graphics, Wizardry shows its age in other respects. Treasure chests are found after encounters rather than being spread throughout the dungeon. Most useful pieces of equipment are random drops rather than hand-placed items, and as a result, there aren’t many reasons to thoroughly explore a dungeon floor outside of fighting monsters for experience or thoroughly mapping every tile. Later games in the Wizardry vein would add necessary variety.
Since Wizardry is inspired by Dungeons & Dragons, it also borrows armour class as a mechanic. Equipment lowers the chance of getting hit rather than flatly affecting defence. This means two things. The first is that at early levels, party members die exceptionally quickly. Just two or three lucky hits are enough to kill a fighter. The second is that party members and the enemy miss each other constantly. The player is left waiting turn after turn for the numbers to save or damn them.
This brings us to the remake’s aesthetics, which are serviceable. The soundtrack by Winifred Phillips riffs on Kentaro Haneda’s excellent soundtrack for the NES version, by way of Howard Shore. The creature designs and backgrounds are in line with the 70s tabletop aesthetic. Digital Eclipse even lets the player choose face sets for their characters, an option that did not exist in the original game. Unfortunately, the pace of battles in the remake can be quite slow. What was instantaneous in earlier console releases for the NES, SNES and Playstation now takes one or two seconds to load in the Switch version.
Despite its difficulty, Wizardry can feel simplistic, frustrating and slow. One might ask why anybody might play it when they could pick up Baldur’s Gate 3 or even Final Fantasy Rebirth. The answer is that these Proving Grounds retain a distinct flavour. The tricky early maps, swingy combat and lack of save states demand cautious play. The relative mechanical simplicity also lets the player think carefully through what options they do have. There’s no need to balance skill synergies or subclasses like in recent dungeon crawlers.
This, in addition to its quality of life improvements, makes Digital Eclipse’s Wizardry remake a great game for the right kind of person. But who would that be? Most Wizardry sickos have likely already played their fill of the earlier releases. The SNES and Playstation editions even include Wizardrys II and III, which Digital Eclipse’s remake currently does not. Perhaps they’ll be made available as DLC down the line.
I would never recommend that a new player start their dungeon crawler journey with the first Wizardry, either. Switch players would be better served by Potato Flowers in Full Bloom, or perhaps even by Undernauts: Labyrinth of Yomi when it’s on sale. (The latter is a favorite of Wizardry fan Dia Lacina.) As for PC players: Path of the Abyss, Etrian Odyssey III HD and Labyrinth of Touhou are all worthwhile picks. There’s even Wizardry: The Five Ordeals for those that want an experience that’s as similar as possible to the early titles.
If you’re a Wizardry fan sick to death of rolling character stats, the Wizardry remake’s point buy feature is worth the price tag on its own. If you’re a new player who wants a crash course in video game history, Wizardry will take you there. In any other case, you can find Wizardry elsewhere. This game is in the air we breathe.
