I’ve been reading two new mangas, published recently, both interesting and heavy on dungeon-delving but very different in style: Tower Dungeon and Blade & Bastard. Tower Dungeon is the more interesting of the two in my opinion and I’ll probably talk about it soon enough, but today I’m gonna talk about the other one, or more precisely I’m gonna talk mostly about the inspiration source of Blade & Bastard – the original video game Wizardry that started it all.

What intrigued the most in Blade & Bastard is one of its main theme that the main protagonist explains to a rookie adventurer- you can die in the Dungeon – in fact, there’s a really good chance it will happen sooner or later if you keep at it – but other adventurers may find you, bring your corpse to the Temple of Cant and you can be resurrected (paying the Dime of course) and be back to adventuring. There’s also a pretty high chance that the resurrection magic doesn’t work, in that case, it it most certainly God’s will, or so the priestess says, deeming you worthy of an afterlife instead of sending you back to your adventuring life. NO REFUND. Or maybe the ritual has been botched… Who can tell?

So one thing leading to another, in a full on autistic endeavor, I’ve decided to try the steam’s re-mastered version of the first Wizardry video game, with all the « retro » options on. If I’m to believe the game’s blurb the only difference with the original (apart from vastly improved graphics, music and sound effects) is some corrected bugs that afflicted the original, the gameplay and content is essentially the same.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2518960/Wizardry_Proving_Grounds_of_the_Mad_Overlord/

Summary of my game thus far:

• After losing several characters in the Proving Grounds’ Level 1 (they clearly didn’t make the cut!), I finally managed to have a half-decent party of level 3-4 characters and explored a big chunk of Level 1 and 2.
• There’s several monsters in Level 2 that do POISONED, a real pain in the ass, each time I have to rush back in town to lose the effect as I’ve no easy way to counter it otherwise.
• My party also encountered Rotting Corpses that do PARALYSIS, and 3 of my 6 characters were affected, including my priest that could have removed it with his newly-acquired DIALKO spell. Back in town, I see that I can pay the Temple to remove the effect but I don’t have enough money.
• I recruit a bunch of new guys, level them up a while putting them with the 3 non-paralysed characters, lose some of them, get back two of my paralysed ones in time and then I find an elevator in a darkness-shrouded area of Level 1 while bumping in the dark.
• I try the elevator, can’t really do much in Level 2 with it so I go to Level 3 for the first time, just a quick look I said to myself and then the game throws one of its NUMEROUS CURVEBALL at me: the door I just opened is no longer accessible from the other side – I’m stuck in unkown territory… That’s really bad. I defeat a bunch of « level 3 priests » and then encounter six coyotes (of all things) that wipe the floor with my party. All DEAD.
• I still have one level 5 guy that I had left in town, Bragg the dwarf fighter, and I recruit another bunch of level 1s, enough in fact to build up two parties as I now want a back-up party at all time.
• After much grinding to level up the two parties, I begin the exploration of Level 3 but from the stairs now. I find out the hard way that Level 3 has several undetectable pit traps and I lose another entire party.
• Now, I go more cautiously around with my surviving no-longer-back-up party, my priest’s spell LUMILWA helps a lot as I can detect secret doors and evade the pit traps that way. My gnome priest now has LATUMOFIS to remove poison, so that’s no longer the big annoyance it was. And she can also casts MAPORFIC, a very useful spell that lowers (that’s good) everyone’s armor class for the entire delve.
• Anyway, I manage to reach the spot where my last party was TPKed, there’s a message on the bottom of my screen « characters are present in this area » or something like that. I can take my dead companions with me! But wait, I can never have more than six characters at a time in my party for some reason, I have to leave some of my living ones behind (they will wait there) but I still need to have the strength to cross Level 3 and get back in town…
• So I go with 4 living characters and bring 2 corpses back at a time, a real chore I tell you. Some I resurrect at the Temple sucessfully, some turn to ashes and are now too expensive to be worth resurrecting, some I just take their equipement (I have some +1 armors by now) and leave them be. Sorry, but I need the money.
• That done, I level my guys up some more in Level 3 and start to explore Level 4, both by way of the elevator and by the stairs.
• My A Team has now in the front row: a level 5 human Lord (when he changed class he dropped back to level 1, his stats dropped significantly but he kept his hp), a level 7 elf samourai (a fighter with low-level mage spells), a level 8 gnome priest (got up to 9 but was drained a level by a Shade), in the back row: a level 7 gnome bishop (mix of mage and priest spells, can also Turn undead), a level 9 halfling thief (almost useless in fights but necessary for disarming traps on chests) and a level 9 elf mage (the most useful character for big fights, her spells are devastating, but she has only 22 hp).
• I’m pretty confident by now, I’ve just killed two Gas Dragons (okay I thought I was doomed in that fight but they weren’t that fearsome at all). I found the stairs to Level 5 but I’m finishing Level 4 before I go further down.
• And then I open a door to an unexplored area (just got the gold key to open it) and immediately (programmed I suppose) get into an encounter with: a Masked Man, 2 Priests, 2 Robed Men, 2 Armored Men. Competing adventurers? I have no idea, this game doesn’t offer this kind of information. Now, the « Robed Men » are obviously mages and I think they are priority targets. I select my actions for this round, my mage’ll do a LAHALITO (level 4 spell, 6-36 dmg on everyone of a row) on the mages, attack them with my fighters too and my priests will soften up the opposing Priests, my thief will hide as it’s the only thing he can do. The actions are completed, I’ve killed only one mage, the Priests are wounded and that’s it. On my side… The opposing mage had let off a MAHALITO (level 3, 4-24 on everyone of a row) on my front row, not too bad. But the Armored Men and Masked Man do massive damage, 40+ each, my Lord and Priest are DEAD. My Samourai is at half hit points. UTTERLY RIDICULOUS. I get it now, another curveball. This is a serious, serious fight. I select MADALTO (level 5, 8-64 dmg on row) with my mage on the Armored Men, my bishop will try a MANIFO on the Masked Man to try to paralyze him (this spell rarely works but I have to try something), my Samourai and Thief will attack the Mage, hopefully they’ll finish him off before he acts. The second round’s results: the mage foe dies, that’s great. My bishop’s spell fails. My samourai is slain by an Armored Man. My mage is too slow to act and is killed by a single sword swing as she’s no longer back rank. My two surviving characters are my worst in a fight, my bishop and thief. They try to flee next round, they fail, they die. I’m back to grinding if I want to continue.
• An absolute beating… My soul is crushed. I have still some characters in town and I could assemble a decent team if I wish. But I have enough of the game for now.

I still enjoyed a lot the game, the playful nature of the dungeon’s levels, the joy of discovering secrets, of understanding what has to be done in order to survive, of gaining new spells that offers a new quality of life suddenly, etc. Apparently I was underlevelled for this big fight too. And my whole team had some bad rng for hit points except my priest I think, with my front rank not that great for tanking hits. But all that said, it’s gonna take a while before I play this game again, the grind needed to win it is painful and my leisure time is limited. But you have to respect Wizardy: proving grounds of the mad overlord, both for the challenge it offers and its legacy. A legacy particularly important in Japan due to some twist of fate, where it inspired a multitude of sequels and spin-offs.

And that leads us back to the Blade & Bastard manga wherein we can see all of the wizardry’s quirky gameplay on display but with the narrative format that allows to explore its universe from other angles, as with the aforementionned resurrection in the Temple of Cant. As a player of the video game I had some incentive to resurrect some of my characters, but only if it meant keeping a good character instead of the gring of building another one from the ground. In an immersive story it can mean much more obviously, getting back your fellow adventurers, long time friends and such.