Wizardry: Proving Grounds of the Mad Overlord
The Mad Overlord Trebor was once only power-mad, but went off the deep end after he acquired a magical amulet of immense power, only to have it stolen from him by his nemesis, the evil archmage Werdna. Werdna, not quite sure how to use the amulet properly, accidentally causes an earthquake which creates a ten-level dungeon beneath Trebor's castle. To avoid looking silly, Werdna declares the dungeon to be the new lair for him and his monster hordes. Trebor, not to be outdone, declares the labyrinth his new Proving Grounds where adventurers must prove themselves for membership in his elite honor guard, and incidentally retrieve his amulet in the process. The first Wizardry was one of the original dungeon-crawling role-playing games, and stands along with Ultima and Might & Magic as one of the defining staples of the genre. The player generates and control a party of up to six different adventurers, choosing from four races (humans, elves, dwarves, gnomes and hobbits), three alignments (good, neutral and evil), and four basic classes (fighter, priest, mage and thief). These can later evolve into elite classes (bishop: priest with mage spells; samurai: fighter with mage spells; lord: fighter with priest spells, and ninja: fighter with thief abilities) if they meet the necessary level requirements. After outfitting the party with basic weapons and armor, the player sends it into a 3D vector maze-like dungeon to fight monsters in turn-based combat and find treasure.
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My only issues are the useless alignment system that only wastes your time and I wish the lower levels weren't so risky to grind as they are basically unusable if you don't want your characters to die
One of the first RPGs ever and influential in ways you need to play to fully understand, the NES/Famicom port of this game is probably the biggest influence on the japanese side of the genre at the time and it's influence can still be felt even in games made much later who developed further away from those roots, sadly as game it's one of those cases where you can tell it's one of the firsts in the genre still trying to figure how to be.
The game itself ain't as brutal as it was made out to be, as someone used to the convetions of older RPGs at least, but every encounter of even level with the enemy could mean a potential reload depending on how things go, particulalry on later in the game, still regardless of that the game is rather dull since the dungeon floors as big as they are don't have much a reason to explore them, you won't find loot outside combat encounters and even then you won't find much worthwhile outside the late game, making most the floors pointless to explore outside needing exp and grinding, this is also a game where you might want to reload after a level up because your stats got worse. I managed to beat the final boss solely because he didn't use his party nuke spell on one attempt which otherwise would've meant need to grind for a few more hours to beat him.
As fascinating in it's influece as is I didn't find it particularly enjoyable