Wizardry V: Heart of the Maelstrom

"Uh...no, I'm sorry, this game just isn't any fun"

For some reason, Wizardry games have always had a following for them. For this reason, many of the Wizardry games have been converted to console systems. However, if you play this game for any amount of time, you'll wish that they never had.

The object of this game is to make it through a super long, maze of a dungeon, fighting enemies at every step, and you have to do this all with little or no clues (not to mention little or no fun). You have to make your own characters, you can give them different stats, classes, race and alignment. The class tells you if your character is a wizard, a thief or whatever. The race says if it's a human, a dwarf, or whatever. And in the alignment, you make your characters good, neutral or evil. However, this just becomes tedious, as when you step into the maze, your characters die pretty soon anyway, and you have to go through the entire process all over again. You start at a text driven town, where you can go to the inn, the store,the guy that can bring your dead characters back to life, make your characters, or go into the maze itself. However, the town adds little to the game, as the stores have items so expensive that you'll have to spend days earning the money to get them, and they're not even worth it (to paraphrase, things are too expensive). As for the game itself, it's VERY difficult. You definately won't make it too far in this one. I've had the game for 4 or so years, and I literally haven't made it anywhere in the game. All I've been able to do is wander around lost in a maze, and what fun is that? (Luckily I got the game for free) It's played in a first person view, but this just makes it harder to navigate your way through the maze. I'm sure that there's lots of weapons and spells and stuff, but you'll probably be too lost to find your way to any of them. Sometimes the enemies leave treasure chests after you beat them, but more often than not they're trapped, and by opening them you just end up killing the character that you've leveled up for 3 hours (not that you'd play that long).

The graphics are ok...I guess. The maze itself could have added a few more details to the walls, but the enemies and the NPCs are drawn pretty well. The sound is probably the best part of the game, and even that's not that good. The multimedia of this game is just about average.

Ah, Wizardry...why was it even made? Well, I guess that some people like these types of games, and I respect that, but there's no way that you can get me to enjoy a game like this. It's too difficult, the maze is too hard, the maze is difficult to navigate through, it's too tedious, you have no clues to go off of, etc, etc, etc. I'm sure that the persistant player will find some enjoyment with this, but it's much too slow paced for me. I prefer the more Final Fantasy type games. Now excuse me while I fix the short leg of my table with this game. It'll serve a much better purpose that way.

Reviewer's Score: 3/10, Originally Posted: 11/01/99, Updated 08/07/01