"A faithful port of a great game"

Made in 1981, few games have been as influential as Wizardry. It was the first turn-based RPG and it was the first first-person game. While it hasn't aged as well as some titles, it is certainly a good experience for anyone interested in older role-playing games. The NES port of the game improves the graphics and adds music, but nothing else has changed.

Gameplay 9/10: You create up to 6 characters from traditional races and classes, such as Fighters, Mages, Elfs, and Gnomes. You then take these characters into a complicated and sinuous maze. As you gain experience, your characters will grow in power and venture deeper into the dungeon, until the inevitable fight with the wizard Werdna.

You will spend a good portion of your time simply mapping the maze. There is no auto-map feature; you are expected to make a map with graph paper. Levels in the dungeon are composed of a 20x20 tile layout. There is also a spell that gives your coordinates and direction within the maze. At the same time, there are warp points in the dungeon, rooms that rotate, secret doors, one-way doors, etc etc. All of this makes mapping straight forward yet very complicated. Unfortunately, the Dungeon is not perfectly build. Once you understand the game, there are certain floors that you will probably never visit.

When you're not beating your head on a tablet of graph paper, you'll be fighting monsters. You fight in a turn based environment, with the first 3 characters able to attack and the last 3 characters protected in the back row. Commands vary between the classes, but they essentially break down to Fight and Magic. Spells are in Roman Characters, but they remain untranslated. For example, Dios is the spell for “Heal Wounds”. As a result, you may need an instruction manual or an FAQ to play through the game.

With the variety of classes and races, you can create some interesting multi-class builds and such. Unfortunately, the combat may be too bland for some people, thus actually getting to higher levels may feel like a chore.

Graphics 4/10: On PC, this game was a black and white wire-frame maze, so consider your plight lucky! This is your basic 3D maze, with the same walls and doors from beginning to end. Monsters in battle look fairly nice, but they are static images without any animation. You'll never seen an attack or the effects of a spell.

Sound and Music 5/10: There aren't many songs in the game, but what is there is catchy. The music in the maze is ambient and unsettling, while the battle theme gives you a sense of urgency. Different shops in town carry their own theme songs. This is a nice touch, but you spend most of your time in the dungeon itself. There are no sounds in battle – no swinging swords, not cries from the monsters, nothing. In fact, the only sound effects I recall is a menu confirmation or the opening of a door.

Story 7/10: The story is told in the instruction manual and not in the game. The King Trebor's amulet has been stolen by the evil wizard Werdna. You are one of the many heroes who have answered his call for help. It's certainly not a bad story, but there isn't much to it. There are no NPCs to interact with, there is no plot development. All you need to do is travel the maze, defeat Werdna, and return the amulet.

Overall 8/10: This is not a complicated game. The graphics are simple, the story is simple, the music is simple, the gameplay is simple – everything is straight forward. But this works for Wizardry. The experienced player will enjoy the variety of balanced professions and races, while the novice will enjoy tip-toeing around, defeating the weak Kobolds, and mapping their way through the game. If you can get past the dated presentation, Wizardry will certainly offer something to any fan of role-playing games.

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 11/28/05