Game:

Wizardry: Proving Grounds of the Mad Overlord (1981)

Duration: 3:31:02

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In this video, we come back to the Wizardry: Proving Grounds of the Mad Overlord remake in celebration of its official 1.0 release on May 23rd. We check out some of the new Quality of Life options that have been added, and talk about what's changed since I last put heavy hours into it way back during version 0.1.0.3 in October of 2023 (Spoilers for those looking to go in mostly blind, we do hit basically all the major item spots, including fighting W E R D N A, the final boss).

In brief,

The good:
The game is generally a lot snappier and more stable. Certain build lines were better for this than others (The 0.3.X line was basically unplayable for me), and it's great that they polished it up and got it running smoothly for me, someone whose laptop can generously be described as "showing its age".

Speaking of polish, the included enemy animations on death/attacking/etc are cool, particularly W E R D N A's.

In general, the quality of life options/enhancements are cool and help the game respect the player's time a bit more, even if I didn't necessarily use all of them.

The option for Original or NES Levels 6-8 is neat. I played through this version before they added that; maybe some time I'll do a second playthrough on the Console levels just for it own sake.

The new title screen theme inspired by the NES version is amazing.

The new Bestiary has actually been in several builds, but it's nonetheless very cool. It gives your back row something to do besides Parry-Parry-Parry in most battles, and actually can force you into some difficult decisions in harder battles.

Now for the bad:
I actually mis-spoke in this video regarding class change and didn't realize it until afterward. It turns out that class change not reverting your stats is a bug that was fixed as of the 0.3 release (I didn't need to class change post-0.1, so I didn't realize this until watching someone else class change earlier today). This...I know "revert to lineage minimum" is how the game always worked...but it also kind of disincentivizes ever class changing. I've spent some time discussing with other people some other potential ways to go about it; either way, given some of the exclusive quality-of-life changes in this version, I'm a little surprised they didn't make "Keep stats on class change" an option going forward, or at least add an option so your stats are reduced, but not to the lineage minimums.

I mentioned the awesome NES-inspired title screen theme. Unfortunately, the rest of the NES-inspired music that was in the pre-0.4 builds is now gone. From looking in the credits and seeing "NES opening theme licensed by...", my rampant speculation guess is that there was legal chicanery preventing the use of the other NES songs, which is sad.

Still, I'm not at all sad I day-one-purchased this in Early Access. Hopefully this does well enough that we see similar remakes, or at least re-releases, of the other "classic" games (2-5) in the Wizardry series as well!

...oh, and for stream regulars, yes, we pay the Cat Tax as well.

Watch me live at https://twitch.tv/emptyeye

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