Wizardry V: Heart of the Maelstrom

"The old wizardry takes a spin on the SNES"

This is my first ever review so bear with me.

Once upon a time there was an RPG made by capcom. Wizardry ahh..yes the memories. A dungeon crawler, hack and slash RPG. I sold my soul to this game, and I still haven't beat it yet. Many classes to choose from. This is a hard core RPGers dream come true...if you have the time and patience. I'll be grading on the usual. Gameplay, graphics, sound, story line, and fun factor. Let's start

You start off in a town named llylgamyn. From there you can make your own class via Training grounds. You basically on your own create a totally customizable character, to the extent of how much money (gold) you have in your pocket at the time. From there you create anywhere from 5 to no more characters for your party. Though you can make characters, take their gold they start with. Then give the gold to another character, while delteing the old one. Sorta a cheap glitch that has always plagued the series. After you do that a couple of time buy you some equipment. You have a very large selection to purchase from. The only part that I can see that is bad on this system of being able to buy anything at the beginning of the game is that the the strong wand etc are so expensive. A regular mace costs around 25 gold. The thiefs dagger cost over 10000 gold. A very steep curve to the game is just getting the right equipment later in the game when gold amounts don't seem to really skyrocket in comparision to the beginning. Our you can just do that glitch for the rest of you life if you wish.

After you equip your character up with well, equipment. You then proceed into the maze. The maze always seems to make no sense in terms of logic. How the hell did they sprout a big castle in the middle of a maze, if infact it is a maze they wouldn't be able to find their way to make the town. Enough of my cheap talk, and back to the game. In the maze you get into random battles. The whole concept behind the battle I belive isn't even strategy at all. Just mash the button to fight. Then with luck you will come out victrouis. Though you're faced with another problem. Half the chests are locked therefore you need to have your third unlock it. Any other character that does so will get poised or die if the trap that is set off is bad enough.

I got to give credit where credit is due. These graphics are better than the FF's, BOF's. The detail of all the close to one hundred monsters is spectacular. The monster though don't seem to move very much in compared to other Role Playing Games of the time. infact they don't move at all
I don't know how capcom did it. Only flaw I see here is that the walls are a little bad. I do like how after you win any battle, it will show a mountain of gold and treasure, then it's like ''here's 2 gold and a stick''.

So the sounds the main flaw of the game. It's like a NES game. It keeps it simple which is good I think in these types of games, but they could have had more dramatic music (I.E) There's some towering behemoth, and you hear'' doink doink'' from the sword, you know something's up.(end I.E). The in town music the only good music, IMO. The other sound effect, ohhh wait what other sound effects. I must be mistaken. ''Doink Doink'' is about the whole selection of sound effects in the game. Such a shame

I know the story lines good, but I haven't got it all together yet, There's a lot of talking from people that are just standing there in the middle of the dungeon. So there's a lot to comprehend. If you have time and I mean a lot of time, because the story line is perplex. everyone seems to say something that doesn't make sense though you have to piece it together somehow.

It's a classic. A must own for any hard-core RPGer and/or SNES lover that has time on his hands. The good out weighs the flaws BIG TIME. I had a enjoyable time going through about 80% of this game. Before I got mad at trying to get all the stronger weapons. Then just shelved this title.

Overview

Graphics-10
Sound-7
Control- N/A
Gameplay- 9

Final Score- 8

Rent or buy?
Go to funcoland and get this for like 5 bucks like I did. I urge you to. I'll use the force.

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 08/08/02, Updated 07/29/03