Wizardry: Proving Grounds of the Mad Overlord Reviews

Wizardry: Proving Grounds of the Mad Overlord is ranked in the 63rd percentile of games scored on OpenCritic.
May 22, 2024

The remake of Wizardry: Proving Grounds of the Mad Overlord is great. It revives one of the most historically important games of all time with dignity. These old bones may creak at times, but the foundation of all of your favorite RPGs can be found here. There’s a good amount of exploration and party-building to keep you busy. The no-holds-barred combat will be sure to test your mettle, as well. There is room for experimentation, and learning how to be efficient creates plenty of replay value. Be forewarned: even with tons of quality-of-life toggles, this game is unforgiving. The autosave feature and balancing that lean towards ‘brutal’ ensures that the age-old adventure still has teeth. There are even settings that allow players to experience the game balancing as it was in its original format and its slightly altered console ports from back in the day. I don’t recommend coming to Wizardry 1 for a deep storyline. Its premise is nothing more than mildly interesting. I’m also not a fan of the DnD style balancing, I much prefer how later RPGs handle their calculations.

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