Wizardry: Proving Grounds of the Mad Overlord
System: NES
Release Date: July 1990
Developer: Sir-Tech
Publisher: Nexoft
Genre: RPG
Dive deep into the dungeon to prove your worth in Wizardry: Proving Grounds of the Mad Overlord! Late one night, while the king slept, his fabled amulet was stolen. Left on the table was a note from the Great Wizard Werdna claiming responsibility. The Mad Overlord, Trebor, puts out a call for help in destroying his nemesis. Create a stable of adventures and head into the Proving Grounds to retrieve the king’s amulet.
Wizardry is a series that I always putzed around with as a kid, but never really got anywhere. I certainly didn’t realize that I needed to map out the levels to know what I was doing or where I was going. I’d always just battle until my guys died and then give up for something else. I was determined to defeat Werdna this time around.
You begin by either taking the default party into the maze, or by creating your own cast of characters in the Training Grounds. You must choose the character’s race, each with different starting attributes, choose from good, neutral, or evil alignment, then allocate bonus points to qualify for a profession. Fighters require a high level of strength and benefit from vitality and agility. Clerics must have a high piety value and cannot be neutral, they excel in magic for healing, buffing, and undead cleansing. Mages benefit from high I.Q. to unleash their damaging spells. Thieves can not be good and need agility to inspect and disarm treasures.
The prestige/hybrid classes are the Wizard (mage/cleric), Samurai (fighter/mage), Lord (fighter/cleric), and Ninja. These are usually accomplished by a Class Change in the Training Grounds when your stats and alignment meet proper thresholds. Typically, you need to level a character up several times and hope for good stat increases, instead of stat loss, but occasionally you get a ton of bonus points on character creation and can get one right away.
Before starting your spelunking journey, stopping at Boltac’s Trading Post to equip yourself is smart. Unfortunately, you don’t have much money to do it. The maze is a ten level dungeon. The view is first person and shows the wall configuration directly in front of you. It’s best to have a pen and graph paper ready or open up Excel to aid you. There are plenty of hazards, including darkness squares, pitfalls, and spinners to mess your maps up. The mage’s Dumapic spell lets you know your coordinates in the dungeon.
Random encounters with enemies are few and far between. Most of the time, you can see the category of enemy, but not the precise enemy you’ll face. Only the first three slots have the ability to attack, meaning you should have the heavy hitters in that front row. Magic users have a limited number of spells to cast per each level of magic. When you run out, it’s time to leave the maze and take a nap at the Adventurer’s Inn. Recovering at the Inn costs time and money, so it’s better to heal by Cleric and have them nap in the Stables for free to recharge. If a character happens to die in the labyrinth, taking them to the Temple of Cant gives you a shot at reviving them, but if you fail, they turn to ash!
There is a sequence of items that you must come across in the dungeon in order to move forward. After grinding a couple class changed Samurais and several back up characters on Murphy’s Ghost, I mapped my way down to the 4th level. It was about this time that I read Armor Class is bugged on the NES and I lost the wind in my sails.
Graphics: 1.0
Honestly, pretty bad. Lots of text, plain dungeon walls, and poor enemy portraits.
Sound: 2.5
Music is good and sound effects aren’t annoying.
Gameplay: 1.5
I hope you like mapping… and grinding… and loss of stats when you level up.
Difficulty: 2.0
You get into trouble by pushing your luck while diving in the dungeon. Sometimes you get a bad roll that messes you up.
Fun Factor: 1.5
It needs to be polished more to be totally enjoyable.
Overall Rating: 1.7
Wizardry: Proving Grounds of the Mad Overlord earns a C-. If you love mapping games, you’ll dig Wizardry. If filling up your graph paper doesn’t do it for you, feel free to skip.