A look back at: Wizardry: Proving Grounds of the Mad Overlord

 

The history of just about every JRPG franchise I've played to date can date back to an RPG series that is in fact not made in Japan, the Wizardry series. Think about how Final Fantasy 1 starts out with having you pick your characters and classes. Think about how the first few SaGa (Final Fantasy Legend) games have you selecting a race. Think about how Dragon Quest 3 was the first of its franchise to have you selecting personality and stat increases. All of those have its origins in Wizardry's character creation system. Select a race (human, elf, dwarf, etc), select a role (fighter, mage, thief, etc), and even select an alignment (good, neutral, evil), something that rarely if ever shows up in future RPGs and then select stat bonuses and boom, character done. Neat stuff!

Think about how Phantasy Star 1's dungeons were. Think about every single game in the Deep Dungeon franchise, as well as Shining in the Darkness. The first-person dungeon-crawling perspective for these RPGs most likely originated here. Think about how many, many old RPGs have unforgiving difficulty, then amplify it up to eleven and you have Wizardry I's difficulty. It's quite insane. You want to run from enemies, hoping and praying they don't ambush you. You have to worry about teleporting into a different part of a dungeon (or worse, into a wall getting a game over). You have to deal with chests that can be booby-trapped. You have to return to an inn to not only recover, but to gain levels, something that can easily be forgotten. You have to worry about certain character classes being only in certain alignments, meaning good and evil can never work together. You have to remember the spell names, and extra care with revival spells because it has a chance of turning a dead character into ashes, and failing again can mean the character is permanently gone. You have to make sure to map everything since it's so easy to get lost. You have to watch out for dark areas or magic-sealed areas.

There's just a lot to remember when playing Wizardry, and it's certainly going to take a grinding toll. Much of my time was just finding a place to power level, against a monster known as Murphy's Ghost, an enemy that wields a lot of experience yet only has a weak attack and nothing else, going back and forth between where it is and the castle to get characters up in levels and spells and such. Simple sure doesn't mean easy in any way, and many hours were spent until I was strong enough, and lucky enough, to battle and defeat WERDNA.