The last time I made a post like this, I wrote about Pool of Radiance, and it's emphasis on non-combat sources of experience, but also engaging tactical combat.
Today I want to talk about the very first Wizardry. This came out in 1981, and I strongly recommend this amazing series of articles about the history and making of Wizardry. It starts at a castle on the border with Nazi Germany. And if that doesn't hook you, I don't know what will.
There were honestly not many RPGs of note before Wizardry even came out. A few experimental mainframe games, and the first Ultima or two, if you count Akalabeth. But even the first Ultima games treated the RPG aspect so bizarrely. Their mechanics more closely resembled Gauntlet where you just walk into enemies until they are dead, and purchase an uncapped amount of health or stats to "level up". Wizardry more closely pulled from Dungeons & Dragons, using it's basic classes, it's dual classing concept, even using their notion of armor class starting at 10 and working downwards. But the biggest thing Wizardry brought to CRPGs was party based combat, a static dungeon design, and rudimentary puzzles. Also you had to draw maps, on paper. I love it.
And despite being called a "Sad game for sad people" by this guy Wizardry holds up remarkably well today. It's really fast, gives you a good sense progression, and the dungeon feels genuinely threatening, but with ample secrets to discover. The first 4 levels are especially good, but it begins to feel like more of a grind after that. Once again, it uses a very similar magic system to D&D where your spells are bracketed into levels, and you can only cast so many spells of each level per trip into the dungeon. Spells are your primary resource to manage, and in many ways your only resource. Money becomes rather inconsequential before long. But you will always be sweating how many spells you still have available, and whether you've been pushed to the point where you need to bail yet.
However, not all is roses and rainbows. Wizardry is not just hard, but frequently bullshit. It has permadeath. You characters can die of old age, although this is unlikely. What is likely to happen is for a revive spell to fail, turning your poor dead party member to ash. Then you need to cast a rebirth spell, which also has a chance to fail. If that fails, then the character is just as gone as if he died of old age. What severely aggrevates the permadeath is that many enemies have a decapitation ability. Vorpal Bunnies are the first you'll run into, followed by Ninjas. Ninjas especially will ambush you on the 3rd level, and might decapitate a character before you even get a chance to act! The emphasize how ruinous this can be, I need to point out one last fact. The game is constantly saving. Ironman mode is the only mode. No take backs.
But that is not to say that Wizardry is not rewarding, and that there is nothing you can do. Playing the Apple II or Commodore 64 versions, you are best off making backups of your scenario disk. I'm under the impression this was a common practice even back in the day when these games came out. But Wizardry was one of the first games I know of to have a cheat program sold by a 3rd party! It was such a problem that Sirtech began packing a warning in with the game that use of a 3rd party cheat program would void your warrantee. Because back then the disc would wear out with repeated play. Today you can just use a hex editor if your party of adventures gets ambushed by ninjas and every single member gets decapitated 30 seconds into your play session. The character format is very well understood.
I would strongly caution people away from the DOS version. Rumors are abound that the random number generator is just borked in that version, or that for whatever perverse reason they've just made the game harder. The known statistics involved in Wizardry are best summarized here, and speaking from my own personal experience, the DOS version does not reflect this at all. Most blatantly, there is a supposed to be a 50% chance to revive a dead character, plus 3 times their vitality. I never successfully revived anyone across a dozen attempts in the DOS version. Other oddities include there supposedly being a 85% chance for a character's statistics to improve when they level. However my experience in the DOS version is that may barely break even, and mostly go down. I also have serious suspicions about the RNG where it relates to how often status effects like decapitation, poison and paralysis kick in.
So what version should you play? The Apple II Disc 1 Disc 2 and Commodore 64 versions are freely available and the emulators A2 C64 for these systems are well developed. However, the UIs for these games is a significant step backwards from the DOS version which featured many graphical and UI upgrades. The version most people seem to swear by is the Japanese SNES version, which has vastly improved graphics, a good UI, and some gameplay enhancements for the Theif class. It also has some rudimentary English options. But there is also a full English romhack available quite easily. Regardless of which version you choose, my experience in all of them has felt much more balanced and fair compared with the DOS version. My characters have actually improved with each level, I've successfully revived dead characters, and I think the Ninjas decapitate people at a more reasonable rate than nearly 100%.
Regardless of which version of Wizardry you play, or how far you make it before you ragequit, it's definitely interesting to see how many of it's influence persist today.
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[–] greycloud ago
i overplayed the sequel "knight of diamonds" and was lost in the deepest dungeon areas doing circles and using the teleport spell with a map and a throw away wizard that i would level up just for that purpose. my real party (which had two open spaces for more disposable members) consisted of 2 paladins a wizard and a thief. the thief leveled up fast compared to everyone else, and was the most necessary character cuz of chests and loot man, you gotta have someone who can pick locks. well i got him up to lev106 over time and i found this coin that changed character classes. i had a new thief leveled and was willing to take the risk on the thief and it turned him into a ninja.
with nothing equipped he had a -27 AC, he attacked 10 times with each hit having a chance of inflicting instant death, which was overkill for most things anyway. generally when he attacked a group of enemies, they died. i ended up kicking out a fighter that was catching up to the paladins, but that ninja was insane, 1111hp he had to be in the first 3 though to attack without ranged weapon.