Game of Whenever - Wizardry: Proving Grounds of the Mad Overlord (various platforms)
(Currently I only have screenshots for the MS-DOS version, but I intend for this topic to cover all versions, so please don't move it to PC Gaming!)
And now, for the first ever installment of TALES FROM WIZARDRY
It had been nothing more than a stroke of bad luck that had taken Mewo from them. One minute they were exploring the second level of the mysterious dungeon which the mad lord claimed to be his Training Grounds, the next they were confronting a wizard and his band of axe-carrying highwaymen, one of whom had gotten lucky and separated Mewo's head from his body.
The loss had hurt them all. Shreev the Mage was most affected, for he and the Priest had been very close, almost romantically so. Yet even Lornar, the good dwarf who nevertheless hadn't known the young priest all that long, lamented the fact that the party had just lost its source of free healing (though he was careful not to say this within earshot of Shreev, who no doubt would perceive this as insensitive and cram a Mahalito right up his dwarven ass).
The party scrambled to the surface, and from there scrambled to pool their funds into the hands of their leader, Curtis, so that he might pay the extortion--that is, the "tithe"--for the Temple of Cant to raise their friend. In the end they wound up having to sell a healing potion that they had found during an expedition just to barely have enough to pay the price.
They all sat anxiously as the priests did their thing, murmering, chanting, praying, invoking...
... and then Mewo's body turned to ash, and much moaning and facepalming was heard. Shreev ran off by himself, relieving his frustration in the first level of the maze by toasting any kobold or orc unfortunate enough to get in his way (of course Curtis ran to check on him, for even with the ability to shove six Mahalitos right up a monster's anus, mages should never be alone), but the rest soon got their heads together and asked the obvious question, "Well what now?"
The priests of the Temple of Cant (who so far were living up to their God's name) said they might still be able to raise Mewo from the ashes... only now it would cost 3000 golds, twice what the initial attempt had cost. Oh, and no refunds!
At Gilgamesh's tavern, this party's table was unusually somber. The other tavern goers could almost feel it, but they all understood and let the party be.
At length, Kimbal, the OTHER mage of the group, said "There's nothing for it, we'll just have to clobber 3000 golds worth of monsters."
Zapis Zuli the Thief said, "I seem to remember these walking coin critters, who had a lot of money when we finished them off. Actually, I think some of that money was the monsters. They were really easy to beat too."
Excitement stirred ever-so-subtly as they remembered the creeping coins which resided on the second level. They had been numerous, but easily disposed of despite that. The party was only five people now, but between two fighters, a thief, and two mages who could both cram Mahalitos up a monster's nose, Zapis Zuli's suggestion seemed a surefire bet.
Curtis looked around. Next to Zapis, Lornar nodded, then Shreev with a smile, and finally Kimbal, looking a little more psychotic than she usually did. So Curtis stood. "Let's do it, then!"
Would that it had been so easy. While still generally able to navigate the maze (thanks to that their Player, a Mr. Moe Dantes, seemed to have an unerring head for mental-mapping which had more than once gotten these people effortlessly out of a zone of darkness) the five still found themselves missing the advantanges granted by their late friend. They no longer had his Lomilwa lighting spell to see down long hallways and reveal secret doors, or his Latumapic to instantly reveal the true names of all they fought, meaning they never knew if those people in kimonos were just trainee nobodies or the far more dangerous ninjas who practiced the art of decapitation--the very art which had taken Mewo from them (though not delivered by a ninja).
As they fought, they also all gradually faced another somber truth: It was entirely possible that the Temple of Cant would fail a second time and thus, Mewo would be gone for good. It was said this happened because his soul had reincarnated on another world (possibly out facing Exodus in the land of Sosaria) but more than likely happened because the priests liked to screw with people.
The truth is, whether they liked it or not, they wanted a replacement priest.
Shreev had been the most upset by this realization, and for a long time isolated himself in the character roster, determined to sulk, while the other four met regularly in Gilgamesh's Tavern and gladly downed the drinks served by Gilgamesh's beautiful wife Enkidu. On the other hand, Zapis Zuli and Lornar--themselves replacements for fallen player characters whose corpses were still in the roster--were the first to openly advocate the recruiting of fresh young meat, errr, warriors.
Then a soft young voice asked, "Excuse me, sirs."
They turned, and saw a young boy wearing a cross, behind him an older man wearing both a cross and a funny hat.
"My name is Luminos, and this is Balthasar, and we happened to notice there were only four of you, so we thought we'd ask... You see, I'm a priest in training, and he's a Bishop, and we're both first level. I've heard most first level characters don't last long, and... see... dying before you reach level two is against my religion."
The four chuckled, deciding they liked this kid already.
Over the next few weeks (which were only minutes in game time, which you'll understand as soon as you see how resting at the Inn works) the two new religious people in their party came into their own. Unwilling to risk the newbies against ninjas, the party stayed on the first level where they wound up finding a pair of magical altars: one had a key, the other was haunted by ghosts who refused to die (though perhaps being already dead was part of the problem) yet were worth plenty of experience points when they did. Then they had to make their way home through an area of false walls and darkness. Thank Cant for the Player's excellent mental-mapping or that could've taken forever! By the end of just one expedition, Luminos and Balthasar had both gained levels. Balthasar's funny hat would also go on to gain levels and have adventures of its own.
Then finally, one late week, Kimbal said "Hey, we've got 3000 golds now!"
Luminos asked, "What does that mean?"
"It means we can finally... resurrect... our..." Kimbal's initial elation gave way to confusion, one she soon shared with the rest of the table.
For you see, the fact was that as much as they had loved Mewo, now Luminos was just as good, if not better, than the person he was created to replace. Plus there was still the chance that the Temple would fail and destroy Mewo's ashes, and even knowing that the Player had made backups of his character disk was cold comfort, since going that route would mean erasing all that had taken place--all the levels, all the adventures, all the loot... plus, what if Mewo's soul really had moved on? Did he even WANT to come back? Then there was Shreev, who felt like he had become redundant and thus stayed in the roster reading books about tax collectors. He would come back if Mewo's resurrection was successful, but Bishops could cast all the same spells Mages could, plus identify items.
So what would they do? Put the old band back together, or carry on with the new band which seemed to be working just fine?
What would YOU do?
Hope you enjoyed the story. Now...
Let's talk about THE GAME
The reason for this post's unusual start is to demonstrate a somewhat unique advantage Wizardry: Proving Grounds of the Mad Overlord has in the crowded RPG field: It really makes me feel like every trip to the dungeon is an adventure, a story all my own playing out, borne of the consequences both of my own decisions and the roll of the dice. This is apparently very close to how its inspiration, Dungeons & Dragons, was originally played meaning Wizardry might well be the closest adaptation of the original pen n' paper RPG into a computer game we're ever gonna get (yes, even compared to the actual licensed D&D games).
The reason for this is because of an unusual game feature: Wizardry actually doesn't have a traditional save-game system. Instead, its basically what you'd call a persistent world. Just for example, if your party of six adventurers dies in the dungeon, its actually possible to send a new team down there in order to find their corpses. I feel like this "persistence" makes my decisions feel more weighty--I could explore more, but do I really want to lose this nifty +2 Long Sword that the last random encounter happened to give me? Alternatively, getting teleporter'd into an unexplored area of the maze holds more dread since I know I can't just reload my last save (Well... you can if you back up the save file, which in the MS-DOS version is save1.dsk, but even then, you do it knowing that it resets your progress, so if you happened to find a nifty magic item before that teleporter was triggered, it still feels worth your while to try and fight your way back to the surface).
That's just one feature, but its the most stand-out one, the thing that makes Wizardry still worth playing in this day and age.
However, I'm not done talking. I'm not sure how to organize my thoughts any better than putting the other things I want to talk about into bullet points, so here we go:
* Is this game hard? Wizardry is apparently known for its legendary brutal difficulty. Okay, to be fair, you probably will lose a few of your first characters and wind up with no choice but to replace them, at least for a time (as per the situation in the prose fiction above), but even given that I still feel like most people who describe this game as a meat grinder are overstating it. Other games like The Bard's Tale for MS-DOS are far more unforgiving, and really if you don't forget to equip the swag you bought at Boltac's, you should survive quite a few encounters.
There's another school of thought that says Wizardry is all about grinding up your characters until they're level four at least, which I think has some validity, but I need to emphasize that it actually doesn't take as long as it might initially seem to gain a level. Speaking of which...
* Quirks with the levelling system. One of the more infamous things about Wizardry is that it's one of the few RPGs where stats can go down as well as up each time you gain a level--except for HP, which only ever goes up. One thing that helps balance this is that for all stats except HP, you only ever gain or lose one point each level. I imagine this happened to demonstrate your characters changing as they mature, and also having to do with that Wizardry uses the D&D standard where 18 is the highest any stat can go.
One thing worth noting is that some people claim there's a bug in the MS-DOS version which affects stat gains and losses. I'm not exactly clear on this, as this has become a case of "the telephone game" where the facts got mangled in endless retellings. One person said that the only "glitch" is that its possible for vitality to drop below 3 (which will kill the afflicted character), while others claim that the distribution of gains and losses is itself messed up, that apparently the trend is supposed to be towards gaining more than you lose. To be honest, I'm not enough of a Wizardry expert to verify any of these claims, but its something worth keeping in mind. For the curious, here is where I first heard these claims.
The people who make these claims, by the way, say that the series is best experienced on the Apple IIe where it was born. The NES version apparently has its own glitch where Armor Class doesn't do what its supposed to (again, not sure if this is true)--though the NES and SNES versions also replace some of the maps with all new ones, so they're worth playing even if you're an expert.
EDIT: Something Else Regarding the "Levelling Bug" - Some people claim to have noticed getting better level-ups when they play the game on slow computers, or with computers slowed down by artificial means (programs such as Bret Johnson's Slowdown in pure DOS, or low cycles counts in Dosbox). I habitually play the game slowed down and the first time I beat it over a decade ago, I was playing on a monochrome 286 laptop. These may be why I've never noticed a levelling glitch.
I recommend you save and backup your characters before levelling, then test this out for yourself--go in with the cycles set really low (like around 100) and see if it results in more consistently upward stat gains. It's worth a try.
* So, about mapping.... Lots of people claim they can't navigate Wizardry without a map, and even the manual says that mapping the maze is essential to victory.
... I've never drawn a map, ever, for this or any other first-person RPG (save one). For some reason, I don't get lost in these mazes. I always have a grasp on where I am and can find my way back to the entrance. Actually, games with an automap, like Dragon Wars or Resident Evil (the latter isn't an RPG but still) actually annoy me because I feel like I become dependent on them, but with Wizardry I've never needed maps.
The one RPG that forced me to map, by the way, was the MS-DOS version of The Bard's Tale. Something about its scrolling or perspective throws me off and causes me to think I'm a step further back than I actually am. Most RPGs don't have this problem.
I mention this for two reasons: One is I'm tempted to open myself up to challenges by having people send me a save state with their party left in some random part of the maze to see if I can make it back to the surface. Two is because I've seen people be put off of Wizardry because they hate the idea of keeping notes on actual pen and paper (something I personally have no problem with, by the by) and I just want to mention that you might not necessarily have to do this.
* Should you try to make super-characters? When you roll up a character you get a random amount of "bonus points" to put into their stats. I've seen some guides suggest only keeping characters who roll like 17 bonus points or so, or to keep rolling until you get enough to make a Samurai or things like that. Personally... while I'm all for keeping such characters if you happen to get one, I think its a waste of time to intentionally hold out and discard any character who doesn't meet your lofty standards. That guy with six bonus points has just as much chance to survive and thrive as the seventeen-point guy, and either one could be killed in one hit by a damn ninja and then accidentally eradicated by those dimwits at the Temple of Cant. Just roll up a party and have some fun.
* By the way, you should totally read the manual. Not because you need it (though it is necessary to learn what each of the spells does, as Wizardry's copy protection system was to give all the spells gibberish names) but because its freakin' hilarious. You can find scans of the Apple IIe version's manuals (basically all the same info applies to other platforms) at this site. No, that site does not offer roms. Just documentation.
* About the storyline though... There is one quirk I've noticed with the manuals: The one for the first print of the game apparently contained no storyline info whatsoever. Of course, later versions explain everything about the situation going on (basically a mad lord and a wizard had a dick war) but I always found one thing strange about that: See, its possible to find this secret elevator and end up seeing story sequences which explain the true purpose of the maze, as if its a big revelation... but if you've read the later versions of the manual, it's just telling you what you already know. This makes me think the storyline was originally meant to be a surprise, so I guess originally players were just exploring the dungeon for the sake of exploring? This being 1980 when kids were more adventurous and didn't need to be given directions, I could see that.
* How can undead kobolds be friendly, exactly? This is the last thing I wanna talk about before submitting this post. As you saw in one of the screenshots, I encountered a "friendly" group. Apparently the fifth game gives you a wider range of interaction, but in the first game this only plays into the game's morality system--essentially, if good characters choose to fight friendly monsters then there's a random chance they'll become evil. This can be a problem if the character is a class like the Samurai (which MUST be good) because then they can't gain levels until they become good again (which is done by NOT fighting friendlies), but other than that the only effect I've ever heard of is that some pieces of equipment can only be used by either good or evil people. By the way, Neutrals never change their alignment, but there's a lot of classes that can't be neutral (pretty sure Priests are such a one, and believe me, you'll want a priest).
But that's not why I'm bringing this up. I'm bringing this up because I sometimes can't help but laugh at the "friendlies" I run into. Just a quick list, I've run into friendly groups of undead kobolds, orcs, level 1 ninjas, gas clouds, vorpal bunnies, attack dogs, zombies (friendly zombies?) and, cutest of all... dragon puppies. Apparently its even possible for the final boss to be friendly!
I hope you enjoyed this post. I might have more to say later, and maybe even more installments of TALES FROM WIZARDRY if you enjoyed that. In the meantime, I encourage you all to post your own thoughts and experiences. And remember: This is for ANY VERSION of Wizardry--not just the PC one! So get crackin'!
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Originally Posted by SparTonberry
