Wizardry: Your Grandpa's RPG

[Music] in 1980 and 1981 three games defined the RPG genre as we know it today the first was Rogue which as the name suggests is responsible for the creation of the Rog likee genre the other two were ultimate by origin systems and Wizardry by ctech and chances that any and every RPG you've ever played or will ever play can't trace their lineage back to one or the other or both and even games and genes outside the RPG Spectrum owe a lot to these two Series in the early days of computing RPGs were often played in terminals which ran in College main frames many of which have sadly been lost to time though thankfully some have been preserved but technology was advancing rapidly and just a few years later consumer great computers like the Apple 2 were becoming more more commonplace there are more people in more places doing more things with apples than with any other personal computer in the world Apple computer and of all these people using apples most had never touched a computer before this is my apple apple the most personal computer [Music] this is where we start seeing RPGs being released towards a larger market like a cabat world of Doom 1980 which led to the ultimate series and Wizardry Proving Grounds of the Mad Overlord the interesting thing about ultimate Wizardry is that both essentially created the mechanics of the RPG genre as we know them today but focused on them in vastly different ways in the early ultimate series you were a lone character wandering a large open world and doing quests which ultimately LED towards a larger goal combat was done automatically by pressing in the direction of your Foe and progression was generally pretty linear Wizardry however pioneered in that you have a party of characters instead of being The Lonesome hero each character had a class with their own strengths and weaknesses with combat being more strategic and it even introduced a basic morality system for each character but of course as each series progressed they would evolve their own formulas while still drawing inspiration from each other so Ultima for example eventually had parties classes different types of combat and the morality system while Wizardry would eventually add open worlds into its formula but for the most part this series will be focused on improving combat and the dungeon crawling genre if you want to learn more about Ultima I recommend you check out the spon experiment's Ultima retrospective as this video will focus on the Wizardry series and for that we should start at the beginning with the series's first entry Wizardry The Proven grounds of the M [Music] Overlord yes this is how far back in time we're going no music no endgame story a tiny single beep as its Lonesome sound effect and the actual gameplay was relegated to a tiny window in the [Music] corner thankfully the first five Wizardry games will be ported to just about every system known to man from the commodor 64 and msx2 to MS DOS NES Super Nintendo Game Boy Color and even the original PlayStation and Sega Saturn so this is Wizard re1 launched in 1981 and its plot is nearly non-existent the evil wizard wna has stolen a magical amulet from King tror so a call has been put out for any adventurers to venture forth and retrieve it little side note that always seems to get ignored the Mad Overlord in the game title refers to King tror not the evil wizard W you see the maze was meant to be used as a training ground but tror did such a good job at it that no one has been able to clear it and now that wner has taken refuge in there it all kind of backfired on him this all might sound pretty interesting but none of this is actually conveyed to you in the final game the entire plot was written in the game's manual and hardly any version of Wiz one actually takes the time to let you in on what little story there is basically it's an excuse to go and defeat the big bad wizard from there on you have to create a party with the game's mechanics being clearly inspired by DND while still implementing its own set of rules you pick from five possible races and four possible classes fighter Thief Mage and priest which can later evolve into more advanced classes like the bishop Lord ninja and Samurai and if these classes and their advancements are starting to sound familiar to you even outside DN D then yes this is where Final Fantasy 1 got its original classes from I should also point out that creating your party is a major Endeavor onto itself see when you create a new character the game rolls the amount of bonus stats you can distribute for that character usually that renes anywhere between 6 to 11 extra stat points but on rare occasions you get a critical role where you get a whopping 20 extra stat points at the start this means that that character will be nearly four times stronger at the start than a counterpart who only roll six bonus stats but like I said rolling a critical is rare and your party can have up to six characters so rolling for these takes quite a bit of time after that you buy whatever gear you can Master with your me your fans and Venture on to The Proving [Music] Grounds once there it's just you and your party in a dark dungeon trying to survive there are no Maps or autom map features so you'll have to trace your progress on graph paper and getting lost in Wizardry is usually a death sentence you have to slowly build up your strength money and gear to progress all while mapping the dungeon and learning which places you should avoid as well as what items you need to get and where to get them to progress through the game the dungeon is 10 levels deep with secret passages dark rooms that leave you completely blind passages that can only be accessed one way but not another alternate pads that need to be entered through specific methods and locked doors that require magical items enemies come in Random Encounters and combat is turn based creating the defining gameplay features that so many jpgs will let use your visibility is limited and any chest you find is most likely locked and trapped and you can only hope that your thief identifi the Trap correctly and is able to disarm it without triggering it first sure you can use a spell to These Arm traps but in Wizardry the number of spells you can cast are worth their way with in gold and is it really worth spending one for a random chest that might only have a few gold pieces and make no mistake this game is hard the entire Wizardry series is known for its brutal difficulty and in that regard it makes most Souls like games seem like a cakewalk the game divides her party into two rows with the first three characters being in the front row and the remaining three in the back row this means characters in the back don't suffer from physical attacks until you lose someone in the front row but conversely characters in the back have no means of creating physical attacks either the game has no bows or slings and this feature wouldn't even come to exist until wizard re5 instead those in the back row can only use spells but in this game healers are actually quite adapt at physical combat so most players tend to use two Mages and a thief for their back row the latter of which serve serves no purpose other than opening chests and disarming traps it's an inelegant solution but when you're the first game of your kind a lot of things that are common sense today would not come to exist until much later even the dungeon design suffers from questionable design decisions that feel mindboggling when viewed through a modern lenss but such were the Growing Pains of the genre like for example the dungeon has 10 levels but level three can be skipped entirely there are no Quest related or special items to collect there and its only purpose is to grind for experience if you're so inclined though there are better ways to do it you progress through the dungeon by finding important locals with keys and items that unlock doors and passageways further down but you can theoretically visit these places as often as you'd like so you can have multiple copies of the same key in case you happen to lose your party but on the other hand inventory space is limited and pretty pretty soon you'll find yourself managing some tight constraints because once you pick up a key you'll always need it to open and reopen set door then there's the fact that if a character goes down not only will someone from the back row move up a slot but there's also a good chance that you'll lose them forever you see you can't return to town but Reviving a character is honestly super expensive and it more often than not fails and if it fail s that character is turned to Ash once that happens you can try to revive them once more although now it's even more costly and your chance of success is even lower and if that fails that character is gone forever so I hope that you remember to strip them of all their gold items and Equipment beforehand the Vitality stat does give you a slightly better chance of being revived which is good if you're a warrior but not so good if you're a Mage and it's made even worse that leveling up is so much randomized and in some cases you can actually have your stats go down sometimes important stats you can be a warrior whose strength and vitality go down upon a level up while his intelligence goes up which uh yeah you kind of don't want that and this is what defines Wizardry [Music] there's something about the early Wy games particularly the computer versions which always stood apart for me when you're alone and bleeding lost in a dark dungeon filled with hundreds of monsters waiting for the slightest opportunity to finish you off all while you're carrying the lifeless bodies of your comrades with you not in the hopes that you might save them but solely because you need their gear and money so that you can hire their soon to be dead Replacements that is Wizardry you're not even going to try and revive them the cost is too great the money is too valuable and the chances of success are too low and playing the PC versions the ones without music and only the most basic of sound effects often makes wizard re feel more like a horror game than a fantasy RPG and it becomes even more immersive when you're drawing your own maps and have the manual Always by your side as your own little personal spell book to look up what each item or spell does and in the case of the computer versions to type out the name of the spell you want to use when casting it yes in the computer versions you do not select your spells from a menu you have to type each and every one of them when you wish to use them and this little step makes Wizardry such an immersive experience as you you need to prepare for the dungeon both in and out of the game in this game you will die your friends will die and your Replacements will die and that is the Wizardry experience it does not matter how strong or leveled up you are or how good your equipment is because many random foes have one hit kill attacks you might be in a party with five other people but this sense of exploration loneliness and fear that from Wizardry Is Real at no point in this game do you ever feel like the hero of the story you are simply another nameless adventurer like many before you who will meet their R here and be completely forgotten Wizardry is a deeply nihilistic game and you can see its influence in so many games and even other media ever play a game where towns are essentially mini maps with important locations that's Wizardry party creation party classes strategic turn-based combat class advancements and party rows that's Wizardry one of the most powerful swords in the game being called the muramasa that's also Wizardry games where your good or evil choices affect the story outcome of the game well that one's actually Ultima but Wizardry had a morality system first Wizardry was popular in the west but even more so in Japan for example you know the Dragon Quest slime mascot the Creator confirmed that it came from Wizardry heck Dragon Quest in general it's Wizard's combat party management and leveling up system with the open world of the ultimate series same for final fantasy fantasy star Persona wizard re's influence even spread outside video games namely anime ever seeing that fantasy anime Trope where characters explore deep dungeons filled with monsters only to watch their friends die in the process that is also Wizardry it's it's true that dungeon and dragons came first and indeed it was the basis for Wizardry your dungeon master has placed you in a dreadfully precarious position you're playing the most phenomenal game ever created your skin grows cold from your first glimpse of the enormous Beast it's a product of your imagination survival depends on a quick decisive move your choices are limited stand and fight or run use your lightning po victory is yours win the treasure TSR Hobbies Dungeons and Dragons games products of your imagination but dndd never really caught on in Japan instead Japan fell in love with properties like Wizardry Ultima and the record of lotos War which were offshoots of DnD there's actually a really good video that delves deep into how wizard re influenced your favorite game by YouTube channel the crawl and I highly recommend you check it out [Music] despite wiard's nihilism it knew how to balance it with humor for example if you look at the original wiard re manual the illustrations felt more like comic strips and anything else and the series was also known for hiding jokes and references within the actual games like how one of its most powerful weapons was called the quiz art named after the brand of food processors with the weapons designed being literally four spinning blades on a sword hilt or how about Murphy's ghost a farmable enemy with low attack stats but tons of HP named after two of Wizard's testers Helen Murphy and Paul Murphy think about it you're a tester on a game Infamous for its crazy high difficulty where you keep losing and discarding party members left and right so who do you fight Murphy's ghost quick little side note Murphy's ghost was most likely the first enemy in in any video game that players actively farmed for experience and gold in fact farming Murphy's ghost was so common that 22 years later he was still being referenced in the Japanese version of Star Ocean tree till the end of time I'm also pretty sure the Healing Temple in the game is called the Temple of K because more often than that they can't help you and then of course you have King travor and The Wizard wner who are actually the serious's creators Nam spelled backwards Andrew Greenberg and Robert Warhead and yes that's the same Robert Warhead who would later found an Amigo a movie distributor in the US of anime and Samurai films yes King tror The Mad Overlord was a weeaboo and that's actually part of the reason why the Wizardry series would eventually fall off and I'm not even kidding the interesting thing is that when the wizard re series came to Japan the translations were Infamous for being of a lower quality with little to no localization efforts so a lot of these jokes would get lost in translation or be ignored entirely so Japan got all of the nihilism and none of the humor and you can definitely feel that in how they interpreted the games you see Japan loved Wizardry so much that they ported the early games to everything and created dozens of spin-offs there are so many games out there that the wizard re Wiki focuses on series and subseries instead of individual games and even the official Wizardry website leaves a lot of games out of its official timeline but one thing I've noticed with the Japanese spin-off media is how seriously they take the source material not only did the monster and enemy designs keep getting more serious and imposing with each New Port of the game but by 1991 we would see the release of a wizard re [Music] [Applause] [Music] anime a 50 minute Japan only OVA which took some liberties with the first game but genuinely retold the event the first game though it it's an original party cast and even a backstory for wna and how it ties into the anime's party the anime is pretty fun and definitely worth to watch though it really is funny how seriously they take this world and wordner heck by 2008 Japan would create Wizardry Labyrinth of lost souls as part of the short LIF wizard Renaissance and by then they went all land on the nihilism with the new theme song being called Meo [Music] Mori for those unaware that's Latin for remember you will die this cultural split in how wiry is viewed by the west and in Japan is also part of the issue why the series would eventually die out and why none of the many attempts at bring wizard re back have been successful simply put longtime Western fans expect a certain style of tone and gameplay while the Japanese have a completely different view on it and balancing them both has not proven easy though personally I feel with d the Lil gamman Saga for the Sega sat and Playstation had the right idea with concept art that mixes both sides without going too far into a realistic western style or anime Aesthetics so with all of this said which version of Wizardry The Proven grounds the Mad Overlord should you play well it really depends on what you want as most versions have some differences from one another I should also point out that almost every version of Wizardry is in English even if they only launched exclusively in Japan some make their English language options easy to see from the start While others like set and Playstation versions you'll have to hunt it down in the options menu if you want the original raw and unfiltered Wizardry experience then you want the Apple 2 version this one barely has any sound and gameplay is reduced to a small window and most western computer versions and even some Japanese computer versions are similar to The Apple 2 original the MS do version is fairly easy to find online and it's much much like the Apple 2 version but with the gameplay window increased the problem is that this version has a bug that increases a chances of you getting stat decreases whenever you level up which as you can imagine makes this game way more difficult then we have the NES version this version is interesting in that unlike its MS DOS commodor 64 pc88 and PC n yet counterparts it was the first version of Wizardry to contain an actual soundtrack composed by canaro haneda whose other works in video games and Anime includes matross Barefoot Gan Fel Yamato and sua then this is a soundtrack that most Japanese ports going forward would use including the Game Boy Color and super famicom this sound track became so iconic in Japan that in 1991 there was a series of orchestral game music concerts in Tokyo simply called game music concert these were helmed by game and Anime industry Legends like kii sugiyama yokoo and others whose combined Works include Cowboy bbop card captor Sakura Dragon Quest Sheron The Wanderer and honestly more works that I could name in this video and they decide to open this series of concerts with [Music] Wizardry [Applause] [Music] and as if to drive the point home even more the second song was from the third Wizardry game to put this into perspective the remaining concert featured songs from The Legend of Zelda Dragon Quest and even Mario but they opened with Wizardry that should give you an idea of how big Wizardry was at that point and how influential the NES soundtrack was and the NES version also revamps the graphics to something a little more more tolerable but unfortunately this version is notorious for having a bug that makes the fense points worthless so this means that none of the armor Shields or AC spell boosts to use actually do anything making an already difficult game even [Music] harder [Music] the game by color version improves the graphics from the NES version while retaining the same graphical style and once again uses the NES soundtrack it also includes several new items and monsters from the sequels and an opening cut scene similar to what they did for the sequel on the NES so if you want an 8it version this is most likely the one to play though it does require a fan-made English [Music] patch the PC engine version includes with Dre 1 and two and once again improves the graphics the soundtrack here is original but it's honestly really good I've never played this version for very long and some minor parts of the game are still in Japanese but for the most part this is still a playable version and definitely a great way to play wither [Music] [Applause] Dre [Music] [Applause] [Music] a wizard 31 123 story of lgan is a compilation of the first three games for the super famicom this one massively improves the visuals while still keeping the NES soundtrack the game also introduces a few gameplay enhancements from wi 3 five like for example thieves now have the hide ability this game also requires a translation patch to play but it ranks as one of the best and easiest ways of playing wizard [Music] dream there's also Wizardry lilan Saga this is a compilation disc for the PS1 Sega Saturn and windows PCS that contains the first three Wizardry games and is fully playable in English I feel this one is up there with the Super Nintendo version mostly due to the way the game moves in a 3D space which helps you get a better sense of direction when compared to the Super Nintendo version this game also contains a handy automap feature which can be pretty useful if you don't feel like like drawing your own Maps but on the other hand I feel the enemy designs and the art style for the dungeon itself was better on the Super Nintendo this version also features an original soundtrack and while I generally prefer the NES inspired soundtrack on the Super Nintendo this one is still pretty [Music] good [Applause] [Music] we also have the Wonders Swan color Port this version plays mostly the same as the console ports but has new additions such as pictures for items and events an automat feature and the ability to download a new exclusive Maze and new item but unfortunately wonders Swan's online service Wonder gate is now defend making it impossible to download these exress on real Hardware legitimately but you can get them through a fan-made patch it also featured a new unlockable survival mode which consists of fighting waves of enemies for high scores sadly the wond swan only received the first game and none of the [Music] sequels [Music] and finally there's also a remake literally launched 2 months ago which I haven't had the chance to play yet I will say that I was pleasantly surprised when I discovered that it was using the same soundtrack as the NES version and from what I've seen the game does look pretty good but it's currently in Early Access so maybe once the game is completed I'll actually sit down and play this one but for now I'll stick with what I [Music] got with success of the original Wizardry although really success is a little relative here as the first game only sold 24,000 copies during its first year but hey it was a different time it would not be long until we started getting sequels in the form of Wizardry 2 the Knight of diamonds and Wizardry three Legacy of lgan although calling this game sequels is something of a redcon see originally Wizardry had something called a scenario disc basically you installed the game on your computer and then you had to insert a floppy disc with the scenario which was The Proven grounds of the Mad Overlord and that's basically what Wizardry 2 and three are scenario discs basically new dungeons but the game itself is still the same so they were more like expansion packs or DLC rather than F sequels the thing is Wizardry 2 expect you to have finished Wizardry 1 first so you can't create new characters for the sequence rather you need to import them from the first game and they need to be sufficiently leveled to play the sequel and I want you to think about that for a second you've just completed one of the hardest RPGs ever one where characters drop like flies and if one of them died in the sequel he would now have to go back to wizard 31 create new characters and start leveling them up and equipping them all over again oh and in case you're wondering no you can't just go to a previous is safe because the wizardy games do not save your progress they only save your characters their level gear and money and whether they're alive or dead it does not save how far you've progressed in each dungeon so as you can imagine this Min people would just make multiple copies of the character files in their computers or create multiple parties and level them up concurrently but even then wizard R you was sadistic for this reason alone the game justifies this with the plot being that the heroes who defeated wna were summoned for a new Quest I don't know something about recovering some staff or other the plot doesn't really matter in these early Wizardry games you might also be wondering what the reward is for completing the first game and well if you beat wiard 31 you get this did you see it let's try again in slow motion and what does this do you ask nothing nothing nothing what does that mean nothing yeah it does nothing it's only there for bragging rights and that's assuming your character does not die on your next run at least the dungeon in Wiz 2 is smaller than the first game with only six floors instead of 10 though unlike the first game every floor is necessary to progress to the game so you can't just skip them later visions of the game on consoles would simply let you create your character for wiard R2 instead of having to play the first game all over again either because importing simply was not an option like the NES version or simply because no one wanted to grind the character all over again well I mean you can still import characters from the first game in the PC engine Super Nintendo Sega Saturn and PS1 versions but it's not mandatory and everything I said about the various ports of the first game applies to the sequel as well except for the armor Buton bug on the NES that was corrected for the sequel another issue with importing your party from the first game to the sequel had to do with their age you see in Wizardry characters start at the age between 14 and 16 and spending time at the end to recover has a chance to age that character by one week and if they become old enough their stats can start to go down or they could even die now in the first game this wasn't much of an issue because you would have enough time to finish the game while they were still in their 20s or 30s at the latest but suddenly the need to import them from the first game to the sequel means that age could be a problem and you need to start considering if sleeping on an in is worth the time investment but again this is mostly for the computer versions the console versions are immune to this unless you import your previous party if you really want to other than that though this is the same game as wizard re one in terms of spells glasses and weapons which now leads us to wizard ret [Music] tree Wizard Retreat the legacy of lgan is the third scenario this for Wizardry and once again you can import your characters from either Wizardry one or two but you don't need to actually complete Wizardry 2 to play the third game I suppose that on some level the designers felt that they were most likely going too far better late than ever I guess one interesting thing about this game is that when you import your characters you don't actually play as them but rather you play as their descendants so what this means is that new characters will start at level one but the stats of their ancestors will determine what stats they get in this game so yeah if you've ever played Fantasy Star Tre Fire Emblem genealogy of the holy war or the agest series this is yet another gameplay mechanic pioneered by Wizardry another interesting Innovation about this game is that your alignment now actually has a gameplay purpose in the first two games you could pick each character's alignment between good neutral or evil but in practice it meant very little basically some alignments were barred from certain classes like how you cannot have a good thief a neutral priest or an evil Samurai good parties also cannot attack the occasional friendly monster encounters while evil parties cannot run away from them and doing the opposite of what you're supposed to do will change your alignment you also cannot mix and match characters of opposing alignments so this means that you cannot have good and evil characters on the same party though everyone's fine with neutrals I guess wizard Retreat though adds a new layer of complexity and that is that you now need your characters to be of a certain alignment to reach parts of the maze so that means that you'll need at least two sets of parties to complete the game one good and one evil heck you might even need three parties if you feel like you need more neutrals other than that though this is essentially the same as wizard re one and two and while wizard retrie was still well received it was clear that the formula was needing some shakeups after all their greatest rival Ultima had also introduced party combat and management with ultimate tree Exodus which was released the same year it was becoming abundantly clear that something had to [Music] change this is Wizard re before the return of wna and when I said things had to change boy howy did they ever change so much so that this game is often seen as the worst one of the main franch despite being the fourth Wizardry game this is still the same engine as Wizardry one but now the formula has been completely turned on its head gone is the character import system of the previous games heck he won't even be creating any characters in this one at all and that's because in this game you play as wna the evil wizard from the first game you awakened from a deep Slumber in your tomb after your previous defeat in the first game and now you see to escape this new dungeon you find yourself trapped in so this means you start out on the 10th floor and you must now claw your way out the concept in of itself is actually super interesting but a few issues do crop up immediately like how in Wizard re before there are no towns cities in shops money or any interaction that you would normally do outside a dungeon in a video game any gear or items you find you will do so by defeating it enemies never true trading Additionally you play as wna and only wna there are no other characters or party members so how does the game work well each floor has one or more magic pentagrams hidden the first time you reach a pentagram on that floor you will automatically unlock some of your original Power from Wizard re1 which is a fancy way of saying you level up pentagrams can also be visited as many times as you need to completely heal up your car and you summon monsters basically the stronger you are the more monsters and monster types you can summon however in the original PC versions you do not control the monsters you summon rather they attack automatically and you only control word which makes this game super difficult even worse when you consider how obtuse a lot of the game's puzzles actually are some of which require you to have played wizard every one and even then they're still pretty like how right at the start of the game you need to summon a group of evil priests and one of them needs to cast the light spell in combat for you to see the exit outside of combat it's because of B like this that the return of wner is often seen as the worst game in the series so much so that after its release ctech basically pretended that this game never existed but honestly a lot of this only really applies if you're playing the computer versions but before I get to that I think we need a little context you see this game was stuck in development hell for 4 years and during that time technology in gaming graphics and sound Advanced greatly in the meantime I mean wizard rewind launched in 1981 and the graphics looked Cutting Edge for the time but by 1987 you already had games like Zelda 2 East and the original Final Fantasy 1 even in the west ultimate 6 was only a year away I mean heck wi 3 4 came out the same year as dungeon master another firsters dungeon calling RPG that also revolutionized its own sub genre but graphically they were night and day another issue was that for some reason the main designer had gotten feedback that the previous games were too easy which they weren't and that return of wner had to be even more difficult than the previous games which it didn't in fact the whole feedback that the previous games were too easy never made much sense to me is especially because no one actually played these games fairly they would just copy their friends's Maps copy files of their characters so they would not lose them or they would just grind Murphy's ghost until that poor bastard regretted ever being unborn but as if all of Return of warness gameplay features did not make the game hard enough your enemies would often consist of characters and classes that you played as in the first three Wizardry games in fact players who had sent their floppy discs to ctech to prove Pro they had completed the previous games would be surprised to learn that their parties were now being used as enemies in Wizard re before and this is especially cool if we consider that actor and comedian Robin Williams was a fan of this series we don't know if he ever sent used this to ctech but if he did there's a chance that one of the enemy groups you fight in this game was the one that Robin Williams used to complete Wizardry how cool is that of course the problem is that you're fighting against against player created parties that completed the previous games which means you'll be fighting against the most well-oiled wor the killing machines you could imagine and as if that weren't enough the spirit of the Mad Overlord Trevor also haunts this dungeon and if he touches you even once it's game over and you wake up back in your tomb making this game even more difficult so difficult in fact that even blogs and content creators who devote their life to so playing old computer RPGs often give up on this one indeed the return of wner is usually known as the hardest RPG ever made both in and out of Wizardry and chances are they're right personally I have never played the game harder than this one and because of this wizard re for the return of wner was a commercial failure that nearly bankrupt ctek and nearly ended the Wizardry franchise so much so that out of the original five games this one barely got any ports and that's a shame too because this game is filled with excellent ideas but terrible execution I mean the game even has multiple endings which was a rarity for the time but like I said most of this negativity only applies if you play the computer versions which is what almost everyone does this is because the PC engine CD and PS1 ports actually make this game somewhat easier but they're also very obscure ports that never left Japan not only do both of these versions have an automap feature but you can now directly control the render Lings instead of hoping they randomly perform the action you want them to the console ports also increase their party size from 4 to six meaning you can now have more monsters and a greater variety of them with you at any time and finally some of the more obscure puzzles were removed entirely including that PR puzzle I mentioned earlier I mean don't get me wrong this game is still impossibly difficult I've never even come close to finishing it and it wasn't for a lack of trying but this does make the game a little more manageable because of this I feel the PC engine CD and the PS1 ports are the way to go [Music] here even now 36 years later wizard 34 is one of the most unique RPGs ever made think about it you play as the final boss from the first game and you wake up in a dungeon a tomb prison built specifically to contain you your goal is now to claw your way out of the dungeon and because you are alone you need to summon monsters to make up your party members but unlike other RPGs you do not control them they're monsters you summon them and they're loyal to you but you only control wner you have to conserve and replenish your monster Army scrunch the dungeon for items weapons and armor to survive and throughout all of this you're being constantly taunted by the tomb's Guardians and enemies who were the heroes of the past games all of which are characters created by players who completed the previous Wizardry Games The Return of wner feels as much as a survival horror game as it does an RPG at times and as you play the game wna often comments on what happens and you also hear his thoughts and learn more about who he is and his personality which ironically makes wna the first true main character in The Wizardry series I mean sure his personality is still a little basic I mean look at the game what did you expect but even now both he and this game feels so unique and refreshing which is why I just wish that this game weren't so impossibly hard another fun about the return of wna is that this game gives you a very unique glimpse of what people would name their characters in video game RPGs during the early 80s I mean just look at this I did not name these characters these are the names created by the people who completed the previous games and sent their floppy discs to ctech so yeah if nothing else this is one of the most unique RPGs ever made some believe that the return of wna was the inspiration for the meami games and their creature related [Music] mechanics and while the two are indeed similar I personally doubt this is true mostly because both games came out the same year and the return of wna wouldn't even come out in Japan until the following year but at the same time it is true that the return of wna launched first and that Japanese developers often owned Western computers and imported Western games including Wizardry and Ultima because they were fans of the series but also because they wanted to see what the competition was doing not only that but seeing as how the game was stuck in development hell for 4 years it's also possible the developers might have given an interview or two in which they seted their plans for the game and in turn it could have influenced the first mega miense game it's difficult to prove one way or another but I'm leaning towards two Studios having the same idea at the same [Music] time [Music] sadly though the return of work not nearly bankrupted ctech and the end of the Wizardry series was well in sight and only a miracle could save them now but what could that Miracle [Music] be but that is the story for another time in the meantime I'd like to thank Tony tun for sending me some wizard re Apple 2 footage and gamer hany for proofreading my script and providing a source where I could cross check my knowledge as well as Elma Elma for capturing and sending me footage of Wizardry 123 for the Super Nintendo and Wizardry for the W Swan I would also like to thank my newest patreon supporters Ethan chat normal Al dark wind PT genre and vot thank you for helping make the channel better anyway I hope you have a great day bye

Channel: St1ka

Views: 232,561

Keywords: Wizardry, Wizardry: The Proving Grounds Of The Mad Overlord, St1ka, NES, SNES, Super Famicom, PC Engine, Turbograffix 16, Ms-dos, the first rpg, how rpgs were created, rpg, wizardry labyrinth of lost souls, wizardry: labyrinth of lost souls, Super Nintendo, Super Nintendo RPGs, NES RPGS, Ms-Dos RPGs, DOS RPGs

Id: aMwhCj0kv3c

Length: 49min 39sec (2979 seconds)

Published: Tue Nov 21 2023