How Wizardry Influenced Your Favorite Game

in the early 1980s three video games came out that changed the medium's history forever first was rogue in 1980 the super challenging procedurally generated adventure that would later inspire the modern roguelike and roguelite boom then in 1981 ultima one of the first open-ended pc role-playing games and the progenitor of narrative-driven rpgs it has a staggering scope and a depth that many modern games still struggle to match and also in 1981 wizardry a challenging dungeon crawler with a heavy focus on combat party building and exploration of course these games were also inspired by even earlier text adventure and proto rpgs not to mention tabletop roleplaying games and choose your own adventure books but wizardry ultima and rogue were the major milestones in the evolution of electronic rpgs and video games in general almost every game you know and love today traces its lineage back to one or more of this iconic trio of early 80s pc role-playing games however unlike rogue's everlasting cult appeal and ultima's reputation for constant innovation wizardry's legacy isn't as well known by your average gaming enthusiast at least not in the west and that's a shame because in my mind wizardry is just as important as its fellow rpg pioneers and in some ways even more so while wizardry is admittedly a niche and formulaic series overall and also brutally difficult to play it also directly inspired many of the video game franchises of today whether rpgs or beyond so today let's take a look at this hardcore rpg series we'll cover wizardry's complicated history look at its legacy in the surprising ways it's influenced some of your favorite games and of course we'll wrap up with my recommendations on how to get into this series and other games like it if you're curious the main wizardry series is a collection of eight fantasy role-playing games released throughout the 80s 90s and early 2000s created by north american game development studio surtec then there are the numerous other spin-offs in side games from other studios especially in japan to be honest i am more familiar with the japanese side of the series and i really only got into the western games in the last couple of years and in some cases i only played a few for the first time over the last few weeks while researching this video but anyway we'll get into the japanese wizardry games in a bit for now let's touch on the eight original games in the main series since they are by far the most important the first three games in the series are known as the lilgaman saga these games were written by andrew greenberg and robert whitehead throughout the 80s these first three games are the classic wizardry trilogy but instead of three distinct sequels it's better to think of them as a single game split into three scenarios you're actually supposed to start with the first scenario so that your characters will be strong enough to take on the second scenario and subsequently the third this gives players a real ownership over their party and the items and experience they collect along the way of course later ports let you use pre-made parties if you want to skip two later scenarios rather than tackling all three in order the first scenario is called proving grounds of the mad overlord and it came out in 1981 you create a party of six characters and delve into a 10 floor labyrinth under the castle lilgaman to retrieve the mad king's amulet stolen by the evil wizard wardna the second scenario night of diamonds came out in 1982. again you enter a dungeon this time to find pieces of the knight of diamonds lost armor and the third scenario legacy of lilgaman came out a year later in 1983. once again the party must delve into a dungeon but this time it's a volcano and you're seeking the dragon luck breath to stop earthquakes and eruptions that are threatening the city personally the original logan trilogy are pretty much my favorite games in the wizardry series they're brutally challenging and the grind can be repetitive but i really appreciate their gameplay-focused presentation and more grounded fantasy tale about a group of freelance adventures taking on important tasks rather than being the chosen ones saving the entire universe wizardry 133 are also hugely important games even more so than the games that came after it in the series they introduced ideas that most rpg players probably take for granted and were the birthplace of many mechanics that plenty of rpgs still use today even if they're not necessarily taken directly from wizardry i'm talking stuff like multi-character parties and character creation party formation like having a front line in a backline where your frontline characters take all the damage and your backline characters are dealing damage with spells or projectiles character classes and jobs including unlocking advanced jobs or changing classes to min max your character's combat abilities and of course the character importing so bringing your saves from one game to another wizardry was one of the first games to do that another interesting one is spell syntax where stronger spells of the same type have bigger words to represent them in the menu this is ever present in rpgs today think about how in final fantasy you have fira that turns into faraga or how in dragon quest you have fizz that turns into fizzle that all started with these first wizardry games and was actually a way to work around some of the memory constraints that the programmers had while making the games for such primitive hardware another fun thing is friendly random encounters and negotiations for peace against enemies this is something we'll see crop up in other wizardry games and would go on to influence a lot of rpgs in surprising ways that we'll talk about soon of course the first three wizardry games also codified the traditional rpg dungeon crawler loop where you start in a town go to dungeon get a bunch of loot and fight monsters return to town to heal up sell your stuff upgrade your equipment and then repeat this is the template that virtually all drpgs use even to this day and if you want to know more about that check out my drpg explanation video for more in fact wizardry also just came up with the concept of dungeon crawling in a video game in general not necessarily the first but it definitely was the most expansive and truest realization of the tabletop dungeon crawl in a video game at that time another major aspect of the series difficulty you know how games like dark souls spark polarizing opinions because the games forced you to learn each lesson the hard way or how old nintendo games didn't have much memory so they couldn't explain much of the game to you at all and sometimes they would even purposely mislead you as a means to create tension yeah well wizardry does all of that but like multiple times over we're talking obtuse mechanics constantly getting lost in the dungeon super difficult combat everything is expensive or difficult to do tons of status elements that will hamper your progress at every turn there's also an auto saving feature in the first three wizardry games it's both a blessing and a curse because if you make a mistake you're stuck with that mistake however if all of your party members die it's not game over you just re-roll a new party and can go into the dungeon to save them of course this difficulty is also the biggest barrier to entry for these games but it's also wizardry's biggest strength it's learning to overcome these challenges that makes them so rewarding and that's true of the entire series games like dark souls elden ring or the last few levels of the latest kirby game that all took inspiration from wizardry but we'll talk more about all that soon for now let's get on to the rest of the series cause there's a lot more to cover the fourth game in the wizardry series was called return of wordna came out in 1987 and it was the last wizardry game made by the greenberg and woodhead duo in this game you actually play as the evil wizard word nun you start out at the bottom of a dungeon this time around and you have to escape by making your way through all the floors you know kind of like in uh metroid dread in an interesting twist you actually fight against other adventurers as opposed to monsters and i mean like actual adventurers back in the day surtek had players send in their save data to be used as the combat encounters throughout wizardry 4. wordnet isn't alone in this adventure however instead of a party of your own adventurers you actually recruit monsters to your party throughout the dungeon this was an idea that would be expanded upon just a few months later in the original megame tensei game though i can't say for certain whether mega10 took specific inspiration from wizardry 4 either way they were obviously dealing with the same idea and mega 10 would go on to influence games like dragon quest 5 and of course pokemon but so did wizardry 4 in a really big and important way however unlike recruiting monsters in mega 10 you're actually only able to summon monsters from very specific points in the dungeon you can also only power up wordna at specific spots in the dungeon you're not leveling up and fights don't give you gold or experience points or gear and there's also a bunch of annoying puzzles and unfair instant death traps to deal with that made wizardry 4 incredibly difficult some people even say that they never even made it out of the first room and in my experience it's really hard this is actually the first wizardry game on this list that i did not beat and i've only played a little bit of just to get an idea of what it's like for this video a lot of other players kind of felt that this game was unfair even back in the 1980s so surtek followed up wizardry 4 with wizardry 5 heart of the maelstrom in 1988 this is the first game designed by a new lead designer dw bradley interestingly enough dw bradley actually completed this game years before wizardry 4 but surtek held it back so that wizardry 4 could come out first wizardry 5 sees a return to the basic party of adventurers going into a town heading into a dungeon it's once again set in lilgaman but it expands upon the wizardry rule set with new stats new abilities new character classes new races to choose for your characters and it's also got a much more epic storyline unfortunately wizardry 5 because of wizardry 4 just didn't sell very well and it also was seen as kind of a regressive game however on the other hand it also became the standard rule set that many japanese spin-offs and wizardry-like drpgs would use in the future wizardry 5 is also the last game in the lilgaman saga from here on out the wizardry games would grow in scope and ambition starting with wizardry 6 which was the beginning of an all-new wizardry trilogy called the dark savant trilogy it further expanded on the systems dw bradley implemented in wizardry 5 and was once again made by dw bradley but it's also where we started seeing major changes to the core idea of what wizardry is for starters it added sci-fi elements to the game not very much at first and just kind of as a little window dressing here and there but these elements would go on to become extremely important later in the series wizardry 6 is also interestingly enough the purest dungeon crawl in the entire series instead of returning to town to rest and heal up and buy new equipment players spend the entirety of the game in a dungeon there are some places where you can meet up with npcs and sell some goods and heal up if you need to but getting to those safe places is part of the intro of the game you're just dropping to the middle of this evil castle and you have to figure out your way through personally while i think the first three wizardry games are the purest and maybe the most fun to play wizardry 6 is the most fun to explore it's also really obvious that this is where fromsoft got a lot of their ideas for the dungeon crawling in general you see a lot of this in shadow tower kingsfield and really the first dark souls take this approach to their dungeon design wizardry 6 also saw a new save system which was kind of easier but in some ways you can really screw yourself over more players are free to save whenever they want and if you die you're sent back to the most recent save that you made well that means that you can save before a difficult encounter and retry it immediately rather than going back to town or being forced to create a new party if things go really bad it also means that if you save at a bad time you're stuck in that situation and you might be forced to restart the entire game to get past that another cool thing that wizardry six does that i never really realized remember back in the shining the holy ark video where i talked about how cool it was that the random encounter enemies would walk into the screen well i should have known better wizardry did that first we see that in wizardry 6 especially in the super nintendo version of wizardry 6. now for reasons that i'll get into in a second this is actually the last game in the core wizardry series that i have a lot of personal experience with it's also the last game on this list that i have beaten and it took me a long time to do that but i'm really proud of the fact that i did the next game in the series however crusaders of the dark savants which came out in 1992 i kind of wish i'd played for a lot of people they say that this is the best of the wizardry series it was also the last game in the series made by dw bradley now wizardry 7 is still rooted in grid-based dungeon crawling but it's way more ambitious there is way more sci-fi elements here in fact it starts off with your troupe of medieval adventures being sent to an entirely different planet and not only are you sent to an entirely different planet there are sci-fi elements like spaceships strange cosmic horrors weird alien races and an interesting blend of classic fantasy and high technology wizardry 7 is also considered to be easier than previous games in the series of course it's still incredibly tough by most standards and it has the same save system as wizardry 6 but because the combat is a little bit more open-ended many consider it easier than the previous games unfortunately i can't comment on that because i haven't played wizardry 7. it's the one game on this list that i have absolutely zero experience with because the ms-dos version just doesn't want to play well with my computer however to make up for that i'm going to link down below to an incredible review by the youtuber michael snow and i highly encourage you check it out if you're interested to hear more about this game now like all good series wizardry 7 ends on a huge cliffhanger setting us up for the final game in the series unfortunately that game wouldn't come until 2001 almost 10 years later in that time dw bradley had split with surtek due to some legal reasons that i'm not going to go into here instead wizardry 8 was made by an all new team helmed by the prolific game designer brenda braithwight romero now wizardry 8 is the most ambitious game in the series it is also radically different in some ways from anything that came before it instead of grid based movement it's completely free roam it's an open world that you can explore on your own i've only put a little bit of time into this game it took a little while to get it running on my computer but once i finally did i was immediately engrossed in this world and so far it's probably the best wizardry game out there while it's a much bigger game and is really hard to call this a dungeon crawler it's more of just a huge open world classic computer rpg there's such an amazing game here and i can't wait to play more not long after wizardry 8 launched however surtech folded and sold off the wizardry license to companies in japan where it bounced around between a few different companies though wizardry remains a japanese property to this day but before we get to wizardry's presence in japan let's talk about a few spin-off and related games first is nemesis the wizardry adventure released in 1998 in the almost 10 year gap between wizardry 7 and 8. this is the only official spin-off developed in north america it makes dungeon crawling gameplay of the older wizardry games with a point-and-click adventure style interface now this game was poorly reviewed and frankly i think it looks pretty bad but i'm sure this game has its fans out there and to be honest the more adventure style gameplay probably led to some of the interesting innovations that we see in wizardry 8. next is wizards and warriors no not that wizards and warriors that one this was released in 2000 for the pc and was directed by dw bradley after leaving surtek and forming his own company heuristic park it's considered by some to be what wizardry 8 would have been if he had stayed with the franchise and i definitely see that it's once again a first person free roaming blobber but with an interesting combat system that while it does take from wizardry it also takes from plenty of other crpgs of the time as well then there is a game called grimoire heralds of the winged exemplar which if you couldn't tell from that title this is one old-school wizardry ass game once again developed by another ex-wizardry programmer cleveland mark blakemore this game was released in 2017 but you might not realize it by looking at the gameplay footage in fact this game was in development for over 20 years grimoire is a faithful throwback to wizardry's ms-dos era specifically pulling from wizardry 6 and 7 and some other wizardry adjacent titles like might and magic eye of the beholder and the bard's tale it features hand-drawn sprites grid brace movement a big chunky interface a midi soundtrack and most importantly old-school gameplay design that favors a hands-off approach lots of stats to tinker with and a high degree of challenge especially in the combat while you think that be an old-school player's wet dream the reviews on this one are pretty mixed in general an updated version called version 2 was better received that said some fans certainly do see this as a return to the old wizardry 7 style of rpgs finally there was one last game i want to touch on it was called shaker it was in development by brenda braithwight romero and tom hall they originally envisioned it as an rpg inspired by wizardry and other games like doom it had a kickstarter campaign but ultimately it failed to reach its goal and in general that's kind of the theme for wizardry in the west now let's talk about the japanese games in this franchise going back to the 1980s wizardry was huge in japan honestly so were ultima and rogue but wizardry really struck a chord to the point where the wizardry series is still actively celebrated in japan wizardry's popularity in the 80s resulted in many ports both official and unofficial of several of surtex wizardry games to japanese computer systems and home consoles like the famicom super famicom game boy playstation 1 sega saturn and more and ironically enough those ports tend to be the best ways to play many of these games today at least in some cases the wizardry license eventually was bought by japanese companies and that resulted in over 40 wizardry games across sub-series like wizardry guy den wizardry empire wizardry summoner wizardry asterisk wizardry renaissance and wizardry exit few of these games came west however there were some notable exceptions like wizardry the forsaken lands which is part of the wizardry boosten series and several of the wizardry renaissance titles including labyrinth of lost souls wiz rogue and wizardry the five ordeals there was also another game in the wizardry renaissance series called wizardry online which was a mmo that looked to recreate wizardry's hardcore dungeon crawling gameplay in an online setting unfortunately that game was only active for a few years in the west and while i played it a bit i don't have very much to say about it however i do think this game deserves its own video so maybe we'll come back to it on this channel in the future as for today there's actually an upcoming wizardry mobile game called wizardry va that's planned for a north american release of course very little is known about the game or what type of experience it will be and chances are it'll be another gotcha game but who knows you might know more about this game soon outside of that though most of the japanese wizardry titles are only playable in japanese aside from a few fan translated entries then of course there are also tons of dungeon rpgs or drpgs that are wizardry in all but name the elmanage series in particular and the dark spire on the nintendo ds which just happens to be my entry into this entire genre there's also a class of heroes which is like a wizardry game set in a medieval adventurer anime school beyond that there are the rpgs made by the developer experience who actually previously made some wizardry spin-offs their latest game under knots labyrinth of yomi and stranger in sword city are two great examples on top of that there are scores of japanese dungeon rpgs that are directly inspired by wizardry even if they use different rule sets or gameplay systems etrian odyssey is among the most popular especially in the west others include labyrinth of refrain ray gigante and zaki zero the last beginning there are even official wizardry manga and anime series it also inspired a bunch of other dungeon crawling themed anime and manga as well including one of my favorites delicious in dungeon while ultima rogue and wizardry again were all popular in japan wizardry was crucial to the boom of japanese rpgs and console rpgs in the 80s and 90s one of the most famous is wizardry's inspiration on the dragon quest series as well as many other early jrpgs like fantasian cerserian and xanadu wizardry's influence on dragon quest in particular also spans to other important console rpgs like final fantasy and really all of square enix's rpgs fantasy star i mean the first fantasy star even had first person dungeons in it other sega rpgs like the shining series which would eventually become the golden sun series of course i've talked about shining the holy ark in a previous video which i'll link here right now and once again the mega 10 or shin megami tensei series which includes shimagame tensei persona digital devil saga strange journey soul hackers all of that they all were trying to be like wizardry especially those early games and then of course pokemon while those monster catching mechanics are rightly credited to mega 10 and dragon quest 5 in particular it's likely those games got the idea from wizardry 4 and they certainly were inspired by it nonetheless then there's the falcon games like trails of cold steel and trails in the sky and the east series which all came from earlier falcom games like dragon slayer xanadu brandish all of which were taking direct inspiration from wizardry in their gameplay then there's the mystery dungeon series pokemon mystery dungeon torneko sheeran the wander that all came because the creators of the mystery dungeon series wanted to mix wizardry rogue and dragon quest into its own roguelike on the super famicom and let's not forget the souls-like genre which was influenced of course by wizardry and other early first person dungeon crawlers like eye of the beholder that led to king's field shadow tower demon souls dark souls bloodborne and then today elden ring and you know by extension sakuro even though it's more of a tenshi successor and not really an rpg but anyway wizardry also played a major role on the development of many early nintendo titles surprisingly enough zelda is a pretty interesting one it's more of an ultima like with arcade combat than wizardry but many design elements in the first two zelda games came about because of wizardry's popularity at the time in fact the first zelda game was almost entirely dungeons with no overworld later ocarina of time was almost a first person exploration game as well just like wizardry and here's a really surprising one how labs the people who made kirby in the first smash bros game they had their own wizardry like dungeon crawler rpg on the super nintendo called arcana while metroidvania level design is oftentimes credited to games like well metroid and castlevania the reality is wizardry experimented with that style of level design years earlier in a way you could call non-linear castlevania games with rpg elements like symphony of the night 2d side-scrolling dungeon crawlers and that influence applies not just to 2d metroidvanias but 3d metroidvanias as well metroid prime is almost like a sci-fi first-person dungeon crawler albeit with a mix of action-adventure and first-person shooter gameplay rather than classic rpg systems but the tank controls and the more adventurous aspects remind me more of king's field than it does halo and kingsfield obviously was inspired by wizardry in the first place so the lineage is certainly there wizardry also influenced a lot of capcom games obviously breath of fire is a jrpg that was inspired by games like dragon quest but there are other interesting links to wizardry and other capcom series as well one of the most interesting is mega man legends think about it the structure of this game is you start in a town and you're going underground exploring a non-linear dungeon fighting monsters and going back to town to sell your goods there's even tank controls kind of like clunky first-person dungeon crawlers on ps1 and if you think that's a stretch consider this the misadventures of tron bond the second game in the series has not one but two dungeon crawler modes including a full-on first-person dungeon crawling mode called rpg where you explore a twisting labyrinth solving puzzles avoiding traps fighting bosses and interacting with npcs another one that might shock some people is resident evil so wizardry obviously influenced a lot of early jrpgs and a lot of adventure games and action-adventure games including a game called sweet home which is a difficult jrpg horror game set in a haunted house with adventure game elements and many of its rpg systems trace back to wizardry and of course sweet home is the game that directly inspired resident evil in fact many people consider it an important early part of that franchise even though it has a different name and setting there are so many other connections that i could point out here to wizardry's importance in the japanese game development scene however i don't want to overlook wizardry's legacy in the west either wizardry like dungeon crawlers are admittedly less popular in the west compared to japan on the other hand other games in the first person dungeon crawler crpg lineage are a little bit more impactful these days like the bard's tale might and magic dungeon master and i have the beholder those last two dungeon master and out of the beholder are incredibly important because they introduced real-time combat to the first-person dungeon crawler might and magic's larger open-world scale and the real-time combat of dungeon master and eye of the beholder are more common inspirations for western drpgs for example the legend of grimrock or vaporum or even more experimental modern titles like the darkest dungeon or severed the thing is though none of these games would exist without wizardry and wizardry's influence and legacy and the western game space expands far beyond modern first-person rpgs baldur's gate lanescape torment divinity original sin just wouldn't exist without the combination of wizardry ultima and rogue and then there's diablo which started life as a turn-based roguelike and eventually became the action rpg we know it today but one of the most important elements is its adherence to that classic dungeon rpg loop start in a town head into the dungeon collect stuff and head back and sell it i mean we've seen this in fantasy star online destiny warframe monster hunter and virtually all action rpgs branch off from diablo so you know again without wizardry and rogue you wouldn't have action rpgs like diablo another interesting one are bethesda's elder scrolls games this one's kind of obvious but it's interesting how this came about wizardry of course influenced eye of the beholder and iv beholder influenced an ultima game ultima underworld 1-2 that's right ultima actually has its own sub-series of dungeon crawlers and these dungeon crawlers would go on to inspire the elder scrolls arena and of course daggerfall and morrowind oblivion and then skyrim and obviously the fallout games that bethesda has made as well wizardry's influence on the ultima underworld series also helped influence the immersive sim genre talking stuff like system shock and system shock 2 half-life bioshock far cry 2 deus ex and then there's arcs fatalis which was a spiritual successor to ultima underworld once again it's a first person dungeon crawler and the folks who made that game would make dark messiah of might magic followed by the dishonored series and prey 2017. then there are other games in the immersive subgenre like thief or even hitman and metal gear solid 5 while these aren't first-person dungeon crawlers they do trace their lineage back to ultima and eventually wizardry and if you want to get really broad the original wizardry was one of the first games you played entirely from a first person perspective in a 3d or pseudo 3d environment that you explored in real time so it can be argued all first-person games are direct descendants of wizardry whether or not they're rpg's in fact wizardry has two direct inspirations on two of the biggest first person shooter series of all time john romero and john carmack of id software who created wolfenstein doom and quake have referenced wizardry as part of their inspiration for the level design and the first person perspective of these games and here's one that surprised me bungie the creators of halo and destiny well one of their first games was called minotaur the labyrinth of crete it was a multiplayer dungeon crawler inspired by you guessed it wizardry however it was their next game pathways into darkness that shows even stronger ties to wizardry it makes first-person shooting first-person dungeon crawling and point-and-click adventure into what was basically the prototype for what would become the marathon series which of course eventually spawned into the halo series and then later destiny so yeah wizardry is super important thing is though is if you look at the youtube listings or on twitch not a lot of people talk about it today and even fewer people play it at least in the west it's still huge in japan obviously but it's funny because i've seen a lot of people shocked when they discover that wizardry isn't originally a japanese series so it's really sad that it just doesn't get a lot of attention here in north america or really in europe either part of that issue is that it's kind of hard to play these games today but let's close this video out on how to play these games if you're curious to try this super influential series of rpgs for yourself and also i want to talk about some wizardry like dungeon crawler rpgs that i think you should try out even if you don't play wizardry proper my recommendation for experiencing classic wizardry gameplay today is not actually to play the original eight games it's to play wizardry labyrinth of lost souls which is available on the playstation 3 and on the pc then there's wizardry the five ordeals on pc as well it's still in early access and in the process of being fully translated into english but you can easily pick it up right now on steam and it comes with a bunch of tools to create your own wizardry scenarios so you can play tons and tons of this game if you fall in love with it as a backup option i would say try wizardry the forsaken land on ps2 this was actually my first wizardry game it's not hard to emulate if you want to and it's a more story focused approach battles take a little bit longer in this game but you can see enemy encounters on the field funnily enough this came out in 2001 same time as wizardry 8 but it plays more like the old school wizardry games if you want to try the actual wizardry games however i would recommend you try one of the translated roms of wizardry one through three on the ps1 or snes and then move on to the translated roms for wizardry four and five also again ps1 snes there's also saturn versions as well then wizardry 6 has a great translation on the snes personally i prefer the more streamlined interface that we see in the other collections but this is by far the easiest most accessible and best looking way to play wizardry 6 today unfortunately wizardry 7 is the one game in the series that i haven't tried and that's because there are no easy ways to play this game you can try to play it on your pc if the ms-dos version runs well for you there is a port for the ps1 and the sega saturn that has a more streamlined interface easier controls and it has anime and style portraits if you like that but the problem is this version was never translated into english so unless you want to use a guide and your phone with google translate on it i just wouldn't recommend playing this version you can try by all means try but i would go with the nsdos version if you're just really really passionate and you have to play wizardry 7 today as for wizardry 8 this is probably the best wizardry game and i can't wait to play more of it i've only played a few hours of it just for this video but i've already fallen in love with this weird sci-fi world thing is though i don't think this is the wizardry you should start with just because it's so much bigger so much more ambitious and even if it's quote unquote easier it does lose something of that classic wizardry feeling ask for games that are like classic wizardry but not properly part of the series well i have tons of recommendations for that first of all there's the elmanage series it's basically just a wizardry spin-off that they couldn't get the license for i would recommend starting with almond age original there's also element h gothic as well then there's the dark spire on the ds i adore this game it has such a neat comic book style presentation it's very tough but if you can get into it it's just so good oh and the soundtrack is amazing i just can't recommend this game enough i know so many people who love etrian odyssey or other atlas style dungeon crawler rpgs who have never played this and i highly recommend that you do speaking of which entry in odyssey now this is my personal favorite dungeon crawler series at least of the wizardry style dungeon crawlers with turn-based combat and tile-based movement there are tons of games in this series and while any of them could be a great place to start with i think i would say start with three four maybe nexus actually no just go with three or four nexus is basically like the super smash brothers ultimate of the etrian audiences series and it's kind of overwhelming if it's your first one the reason i like this series so well though is because of the map creation in older dungeon crawler rpgs you had to use grid paper to map out the levels by hand later games in this genre would replace that with auto mapping it's much more convenient but it does lose some of that tactile part of the adventure and etrian odyssey recreates that because it's a ds and 3ds series so you use the stylus on the lower screen to draw your own maps you can skip that if you want and just have it auto map yourself but this really adds to the game a lot and i just find it so immersive and fun and relaxing and if you like etrian odyssey and you're looking for something more like it i would recommend going with class of heroes i mentioned it earlier it's basically a wizardry style but with a cute medieval school anime vibe it's tough but there's a lot of content here and while it's not the best in the genre i absolutely think it's worth playing if you really like these games of course i would also recommend shine the holy ark this is a game that i've done a video on already so why don't you just check that out i won't say too much here but i highly recommend it and i can't recommend experiences dungeon crawler rpgs enough under knots labyrinth of yomi is the most recent and in my opinion the best but there are several others like stranger of sword city that are well worth your time and then there's star crawlers again on pc this is a strictly sci-fi take on the core wizardry formula although it does have randomized maps as opposed to bespoke dungeons but it's still excellent and a lot of fun as for games that are more experimental but still a lot like wizardry there's darkest dungeon which is a super difficult side-scrolling dungeon crawler rpg but it's not like a platformer you're just exploring the dungeons side to side as opposed to first person or in 3d the real draw here is the combat it's really tactical it's really challenging there's a lot of layers to it and it's probably the most interesting cthulhu mythos take on dungeon crawling i've ever seen really just cthulhu mythos take on gameplay in general and then there's dungeon encounters this is an interesting take on the formula with a lot of smart innovations a minimalist yet engrossing design and it cuts right to the heart of drpg and just role-playing design in general and knows what makes it good and really focuses on that interestingly enough it was made by some of the people who are most important in the final fantasy development like hiroyuki ito who made almost all the battle systems and the job systems that you love in these games and nobu uematsu arranged the music if you can't tell from my voice dungeon encounters is great it's one of my favorite games in fact it was one of my games of the year for 2021 check out my video for more info on it as for recommendations for other western style dungeon crawler rpgs one of the most obvious is legend of grimrock one and two again these are more like i have a beholder or dungeon master with their real time combat but these are still excellent dungeon crawlers awesome puzzle design awesome dungeon design highly recommend these ones as well then there's might and magic 10. i know it's not everyone's favorite might and magic but it's the most accessible one and while you do have to deal with some annoying ubisoft account sign in stuff if you can get it to work i definitely think this is a fun one if you want something that's like older might and magic games i would actually check out legends of amberlands this is another one that i've dabbled with a bit that looks and plays more like the older games but without a lot of the cumbersome interactions that you have to deal with with those older interfaces it looks like an old game but it plays a little bit more like a modern game then there's severed that was made by drinkbox studios the people behind guacamelee this one uses a really interesting combat system that is motion based or at least touch-based so playing it on phone switch or vita is definitely the preferred way to play but it's really cool there's a lot of interesting puzzles in this game and i really like the story in it i don't really say that very often about games in general but you know what this one is one that i would absolutely play for the story even if the gameplay isn't quite your thing and last but not least there's the shadow tower and kingsfield series i've talked about these before the link to my video will be down in the description if you like any sort of weird hardcore friction focused rpg you really need to play these games yeah they're weird and they're not the most intuitive thing to play but if you get into them i don't think that you can get a better dungeon crawler anywhere these might be the best at least a traditional first person dungeon crawler i should also note here that kingsfield additional one and two are even closer to being wizardry likes than any other fromsoft rpgs and i think looking back at the video that i made looking at all of fromsoft's older dungeon crawlers i was a little bit unfair of my assessment of kingsfield additional i didn't like the dungeons at first and that was because i was so used to dungeons like etrian odyssey and shining the holy ark where it happens in real time 3d whereas kingsfield edition 1 and 2 are trying to play like the original wizardry games and knowing that now i have a deeper appreciation for what kingsfield editional was trying to do i'll talk about some other dungeon crawler styles in the future because look this is just the tip of the drpg iceberg there are tons of other great games in this genre including loot based action rpgs mystery dungeons and roguelikes and there are tons of other upcoming first-person dungeon crawler rpgs that i hope to talk about on the channel for anyone interested in further reading or watching on the wizardry series or really a lot of the games i talked about today i'll link some other reviews and retrospectives from several other youtube channels like super derrick rpgs michael snow and a podcast with the retro knots podcast where they interview some of the old developers of wizardry i'm also going to link to a couple blogs old gaming hermit blog and hardcore gaming 101 and there's going to be tons of other stuff down there so please make sure you check it out if you want to see more also i want to give a shout out to cassativ on youtube this video was inspired by conversations with her on discord you should definitely check out her channel her recent video essay on the biblical apocalypse themes in eldon ring is excellent and i highly recommend it she also regularly streams playthroughs of many from software games on twitch and writes essays about the lore on medium i'll have links to her channels down below as well anyway that's gonna do it for me in this video i hope you enjoyed this overview of the wizardry series and maybe even learn something about these super challenging role-playing games and its importance on the modern gaming scene i'd love to hear your thoughts down in the comments or hit me up on twitter at brendan underscore lh which is also where you can find updates on my latest written work and my game dev updates as well also i just want to say that i recently started a kofi page as well so if you feel like supporting this channel in a more direct way you can do so there but anyway that's all for now friends thanks for watching and i'll see you in the next upload [Music] you

Channel: The Crawl

Views: 64,361

Keywords: Wizardry, RPG, JRPG, DRPG, Dungeon Crawler, Video Games, Old-School RPG, Retro, Retro Gaming, PC Gaming, video game history

Id: zAuqTHGYIng

Length: 41min 16sec (2476 seconds)

Published: Wed Jun 01 2022