Wizardry: The Five Ordeals

It's classic Wizardry. I spent 26 hours leveling a party, only to irreversibly loose them all (and 300000 gold) by teleporting into a rock.

The best iteration of the old-school Wizardry dungeon crawling experience, with all the quirks that entails. When you get used to its interface, Five Ordeals plays at a lightning-fast pace, with a plethora of maps available if you include the user-made scenarios, enough to set you up for hundreds of hours. A lot of modern DRPGs are too gentle with the player, diminishing the fear a complex maze full of monsters should rightfully instill. Here, the unforgiving difficulty of the combat and maps, combined with Jun Suemi's art (which captures that old-school dark fantasy vibe perfectly) and Basiscape's moody soundtrack result in a very atmospheric experience despite the subpar dungeon graphics and the atrocious translation. The challenge keeps you engaged, and the game's fast pace smooths over the annoyances of grinding or having to create new characters because of TPKs. The scenario quality varies and some classic Wizardry mechanics, such as item identification and the inn system, could really do with some quality-of-life touches, as the Proving Grounds of the Mad Overlord remake demonstrated. But this remains a must-play for DRPG fans and those interested in the Wizardry formula. Th…

I wish the Scenario Editor would get a proper translation, but the game is great.

"The Five Ordeals" is not only a highly competent Wizardry construction set but one of the best playing old school dungeon crawlers on the market right now. The price may seem steep considering the simple graphics but youll get "All you can eat: Wizardry" for a lifetime. After youve downloaded the module/game of your choice you dont even have to be online anymore. So its probably good for gaming on the go as well. The first module is worth the price of admission alone and designed to teach people new to wizardry how everything works. Probably the longest tutorial of all time. After that you are free to either choose one of the 5 included modules or download one of the many user created ones. Most of those are at least as big as the original Wizardry 1. If thats still not enough, theres two additional and from what ive heard very big dlc modules to buy as an expansion. (These seem to be japanese wizardry games from the past but reworked and brought into Five Ordeals.) Highly recommended. And btw: Creating custom portraits and importing pictures is really easy here and a lot of fun. You are free to create the strangest party you can imagine. AND you can easily import your own music…

Wizardry kicks ass.

It's Wizardry and it's great. There are some translation problems/typos when playing in English but that is really the only true flaw this game has in my opinion. There is plenty of game to experience even before diving into the DLC or user created scenarios. I definitely encourage people who enjoy Wizardry or dungeon crawlers in general to give this a shot.