Wizardry: Proving Grounds of the Mad Overlord Review

Developed and published by Digital Eclipse, Wizardy: Proving Grounds of the Mad Overlord is a complete remake of the first game in the Wizardy series. I am a big RPG fan and appreciate the roots, but this game’s original release even predates me, being from 1981. The storytelling was powerful in the 80s but the technology for gaming was still in its adolescence so bringing these games out of the past and giving them a new lick of paint is happening more frequently these days as inspirations run dry. It’s not always a bad thing as there is a desire to play older classics on modern technology. But the trick is to capture the joy and brilliance it had in its heyday, and that is very rarely achieved.

                Being an older game the plot is pretty much written in the title. You build a party of up to 6 people who have to try and tackle a tough maze to prove yourself and kill the big boss at the end.  But the path to get there is far from straightforward. Built on the original game code, the difficulty remains the same as it was before and being an 80’s game you know that means super tough. But you have to give credit to this game as you feel and understand how much this game and series gave to the RPG genre.

                Graphically they have done a lot to bring the game to the modern era but staying true to the source. Even as you enter the maze you can bring up an overview to see how the game originally looked which is fascinating to observe. As with many DnD style games, there is a lot of planning that needs to go into your team build as you will need a bit of everything if you are going to make it through. You can use some of the autogenerated players but I would advise mixing things up. As a DnD style game, there is plenty of choice to be had in the character creation and it plays a very important part in your progress. It’s nice they have created graphical views of menus like the tavern and stores as opposed to the text that was there in the past. They don’t look like modern graphics by any stretch but seeing what they were before to what they are in this game is pretty cool. The combat animations are also good evidence of bringing the imagination to life from an old text adventure.

                They have provided some enhancements to try and make the game more accessible. This helps with levelling up and some battle choices which is a nice touch. But what they failed to add is any difficulty amending controls. I know they were trying to stay close to the source but by doing so I feel they will alienate a lot of the user base willing to give this a try as it is not for the faint-hearted.  A big aspect about the maze is that it is randomly generated. By that I mean enemies, traps, chests and discoveries. There is a spell to help you map the dungeon but this fades over time and doesn’t map secret entrances so you find yourself getting lost a lot. It happened to me just when I found that I made progress and made it to the second level, the difficulty spiked even higher and my party got wiped out by the first encounter. Modern thinking would say oh well I am not strong enough yet so I will grind a bit first before I try that again. But nope, once your party dies in the maze they stay there. You have to create a brand new party and start again from scratch to be able to rescue your original team and that’s just cruel. But you have to think with an 80’s head on and they didn’t have the storage to build massive games so they just made them super tough.

                The game is designed for you to be cautious. You have to explore a little and then find your way back out of the maze. Heal up, level up if you can and then dive back in again doing things piecemeal. This is only partly based on skill and a lot more based on the luck of the numbers. You can find easy times where you discover many chests you can disarm and loot, only to be decimated by a hard enemy swarm. Even some of the easy enemies can sometimes become the downfall of your party as you just keep missing with your attacks and they critically hit you. All the skills in the world cannot compete with bad luck. But with no difficulty slider or quick save option, your hard work goes up in smoke very quickly and these days that can be off-putting for new users.

Conclusion

Wizardry has made its mark in the development of RPG games in inspiring the next generation to kick on. A re-hashing of a text adventure and making it more graphical does sound very appealing but it only works if you make it more inclusive. I understand the older games were tough as they had to be to provide longevity but the new modern gamer may not have the patience for games as tough as this that require a lot of repetition and overcoming of frustration.

This game was tested and reviewed on Xbox Series X/S. All of the opinions and insights here are subject to that version. Game provided by publisher.