Wizardry: Proving Grounds Of The Mad Overlord PS5 review – ground zero for RPGs

GameCentral

Published May 23, 2024 2:15am

Wizardry: Proving Grounds Of The Mad Overlord screenshot — Wizardry – the mother of all role-players (Digital Eclipse)

GameCentral reviews the most influential video game you’ve never heard of and the predecessor to everything from Final Fantasy to Fallout.

There was a brief debate, a few months ago, as to whether the term JRPG was derogatory. It was initiated by developers trying to promote Final Fantasy 16, so the argument may have had ulterior motives – with most neutral parties in Japan seeming to have no issue with the word. Although it’s long been a subject of debate as to whether it describes a specific sub-genre of games or whether it simply refers to all role-playing titles made in Japan.

In a sense though it doesn’t really matter, because all modern role-playing games have the same point of origin, in Wizardry: Proving Grounds Of The Mad Overlord. Wizardry was the creation of American students Andrew Greenberg and Robert Woodhead, who began work on the game as far back as 1978, inspired by both Dungeons & Dragons and various prehistoric video games that only existed on computer mainframes of the time.

Its first commerical release was in September 1981 on the Apple II computer and thereafter on various other 8-bit formats of the day, in both the West and Japan. There have been many sequels and spin-offs since then, with most of the recent ones made in Japan, where the franchise’s name is better remembered – even as it is remains mostly forgotten in the West.

It’s impossible to overstate the influence of Wizardry on modern video games, as while there were some other titles around that time with similar features it was by far the most refined – in part because the developers had to wait several months until they had access to a computer that could run it properly, allowing them time to playtest and balance it.

The most obvious way in which Wizardry influenced subsequent games is in its turn-based combat, which has enemies lining up politely, opposite your party (who are represented only as headshots) as you both try and take chunks out of each other. But the whole concept of controlling a group of people at once, kitting them out with new gear and levelling them up, was new at that time, even if it was very obviously borrowed from Dungeons & Dragons and other tabletop role-playing games.

In Wizardry you can use pre-made characters or create them yourself, with five different races (humans, elves, dwarves, gnomes, and hobbits), four class types, and four elite classes. Although unusually each character also has an alignment – of good, neutral, and evil – and you can’t mix and match the two extremes.

What will surprise many, considering its age, is that the game is technically a first person 3D game. The original Apple II version had a tiny square of the screen devoted to an incredibly primitive vector graphic view of the space in front of you. It’s impossible for the graphics to have been any more simplistic and yet games were still copying the same basic set-up a decade or more later, in everything from Atari ST classic Dungeon Master to Shining Force predecessor Shining In The Darkness.

However, the closest modern decedent is our beloved Etrian Odyssey and playing this remake we never quite realised just how similar the two franchises are. (Although the Wizardry remake draws the map for you as you explore, rather than making you do it.)

Along with the top-down Ultima 1, released just a few months earlier, what we think of today as JRPGs were all inspired by Western games, that were in turn heavily inspired by Dungeons & Dragons. This creates a very unusual family tree, especially when you consider games as diverse as Baldur’s Gate 3 and Dark Souls (Wizardry also has you going back to collect the loot of previously killed party members) on the outer edges.

All of which, finally, brings us to this remake by Digital Eclipse, which has been in PC early access since last year and… is really good. It’s a very literal remake, in that it maintains exactly the same gameplay and controls, as well as map layouts, but with a host of optional quality of life features – in part to streamline the experience and in part to compensate for the rock hard difficultly level and the threat of permadeath.

The graphics are not very impressive, but this is clearly a low budget labour of love, as you still move around the grid-based map in discreet steps. You can even choose to have a representation of the original Apple II graphics in the bottom right-hand corner or superimposed in front of you.

Digital Eclipse have long specialised in retro emulation and historical recreations and they’ve spared no effort here, with map variations based on many of the game’s different versions and not only a mountain of options – the role-playing equivalent of driving aids – but surprisingly detailed explanations of what they all do and why the developer chose to add them.

This helps to deal with some of the game’s more unforgiving elements, such as extremely annoying traps, although the menus and user interface always seem a touch too complicated for the very simple gameplay on offer. This includes the village with its various shops and services (which is, again, just like Etrian Odyssey) that you return to between forays or when all your party dies.

Wizardry is the Citizen Kane of role-playing games and while it’s not aged quite as well as its cinematic counterpart it is still perfectly playable today, thanks to this remake. It’s unfairly difficult, obscure, and repetitive and yet there’s still a tangible joy in creating your characters and carefully mapping out the dungeon. Even the combat is more complicated than you’d expect – as you realise how little has really changed until only very recently.

Etrian Odyssey is still more fun (number four is the best) but Wizardry is far more enjoyable than you’d ever expect a more than 40-year-old video game to be. It may be brutally difficulty and needlessly cruel, but this remake allows you to tame the experience to your own preferences, while still giving a clear view of a game for which the word classic is an understatement.

Wizardry: Proving Grounds Of The Mad Overlord PS5 review summary

In Short: One of the oldest and most influential video games of all-time remains surprisingly entertaining thanks to this loving and option-filled remake.

Pros: The core game is still perfectly playable today and the remake is stuffed with optional quality of life and difficulty settings. Still using the original graphics as an overly is a cute touch.

Cons: For a modern remake the graphics aren’t very good and the price is very high for non-fans, especially as the game is actually quite short. UI is quite daunting.

Score: 7/10

Formats: PlayStation 5 (reviewed), Xbox One, PlayStation 4, Nintendo Switch, Xbox Series X/S, and PC
Price: £33.49
Publisher: Digital Eclipse
Developer: Digital Eclipse
Release Date: 23rd May 2024
Age Rating: 16