Review Chovus 3/5 · Sep 17, 2020
The quest for teleport
Wizardry 5, for SNES
Rating: 6.0/10; Above average
Too tedious to recommend without walkthrough and save states.
Wizardry 5 is a western style rpg that is so rooted in its pen and paper roots that you have to put up with excessive random rolling, mind numbingly tedious navigation, frustratingly limited inventory and needing an encyclopedia to know what …
Wizardry 5, for SNES
Rating: 6.0/10; Above average
Too tedious to recommend without walkthrough and save states.
Wizardry 5 is a western style rpg that is so rooted in its pen and paper roots that you have to put up with excessive random rolling, mind numbingly tedious navigation, frustratingly limited inventory and needing an encyclopedia to know what stuff does. Compared to the only other Wizardry game on the SNES, Gaiden 4, it is simpler and more primitive, which means it has less obtuse obnoxiousness but also less user friendly features.
The game starts in the menu based town where you can either use the premade party or make your own characters in the training grounds. There is no gender, only the standard fantasy races and a modest selection of classes. The options are considerably less than Gaiden 4 though there is still plenty of depth from the reclass feature, which allows a character to start over at level 1 in a new class while keeping all known magic spells and hp, but losing attributes. The magic system only has 2 schools and a character can cast X spells per spell type and level per rest, with X depending on both spells known and class level. So a pure caster will be able to cast more spells than a reclassed character. Classes come in the 4 basic archetypes of fighter, thief, cleric and mage, while also having advance classes that are hybrids; including every combination of fighter with the other 3 classes, and the bishop (which the SNES calls wizard for some reason) being a mix of cleric and mage. Character creation is simple but highly randomized as a random number of bonus points are given for you to distribute amongst the core attributes. Each class has minimum attribute requirements that becomes quite extreme for the advanced classes. In practice, expect to spend a couple hours or so rolling characters if you want good stats. Getting a good enough roll for a samurai or bishop is not hard, but the odds of rolling high enough for a lord or ninja are absurdly low. Random rolling does not work well in video games. A point buy system would cut down on the time spent creating a party, but since all bonus attribute points are lost when reclassing, there is less need to worry about good bonus rolls unless you don't want a character to change class or it won't be going for an advanced class any time soon.
The game allows you to create many characters, so you can have bench warmers, mules and extra adventurers to drag the corpses of your A team back to the temple in the event of a wipe. A side effect of this is that good and evil characters can meet up in the dungeon to group up. You can also keep a bishop in town to ID stuff, but this is even more ridiculously tedious than in Gaiden 4. The chance of success depends on the level of the bishop compared to the power of the item, so that level 1 bishop becomes increasingly more likely to fail, become afraid (requires going into the dungeon to fix) or cursed. Combine this with the fact that most quest items (like keys) need to be identified before they can be used and it is almost mandatory to have a bishop in your core team. Unless you don't mind going back to town every time you find a quest item and spending the time or gold. Every item found in the dungeon is unidentified and there are plenty of cursed items to mix you up. You can also find starting gear, which can't be sold. Some quest items are found by searching for items in a nondescript tile, which would be pretty much impossible to figure out with the huge maze of the dungeon and its many empty rooms and corridors. There are hints to find and npcs to talk to, which is how you are supposed to figure out what to do. Other loot is dropped after combat, where enemies sometimes drop a chest with 0 or more items. These chests are usually trapped, which can have devastating effects if your thief or ninja fails to ID or disarm; ranging from damage, poison and instant death for to thief to paralysis, petification and massive damage/death for the entire party. Do these people not know how to keep safe distance? Traps can often be worse than combat so you have to decide whether or not the loot is worth the risk.
Combat is typical random encounters with menu based turn combat, where you tell your party what to do at the beginning of the round and then both sides go in order of speed. Attacks and spells will be wasted if the target dies before a character's turn, even so far as making sure spells still get cast after the last enemy dies, just to penalize you that bit more. Enemies can have a variety of abilities to devastate your team, from status effects to instant death to high damage hit all nukes. Good thing running away is pretty reliable. Just like Gaiden 4 the combat system uses rows and weapon ranges to make combat more tactical. The first 3 characters and first 2 monster groups (enemies can come in stacks that are vulnerable to area magic) are in the front row and can freely hit each other while the back can only be hit with ranged weapons and magic. The game has 4 different weapon ranges: close for the front row to fight the front (most melee weapons), short so your back characters can attack the enemy front (polearms), medium (which is only 1 weapon and seems pointless) and long which can hit anywhere (bows). Shields can be used regardless of weapon; there are no two handed weapons or dual wielding. The worst thing about the combat is the inventory system. The only information displayed about items is whether or not the character can equip it. You can additionally find the range in the shop, but only for things for sale. If you want to know how good a weapon is you need to try it out in battle and take notes. If you want to know how much AC armor gives you need to put it on and see how the number changes. If you want to know about special abilities, good luck figuring it out. Even more annoying is that characters only have several inventory slots, which includes equipped items. So a fully decked out character will only have 2 free slots to carry loot and quest items. And the game expects you to carry around several quest items at once. The gauntlet to the final boss requires 9 quest items! The game continues the Wizardry tradition of having nonsense spell names. There are not even spell descriptions in the game. You are expected to keep the manual on hand to look up what each spell does, unless you have played so much that you know the gibberish like a second language.
Getting around in the dungeon is a tedious chore. You start off with no navigational aids whatsoever. You are expected to find your way around in first person perspective without a map or compass among walls and doors that all look the same. The only way to see the auto map is to cast the level 1 mage spell, which the mage does not even start off with! You have to grind your mage to level 2 without getting hopelessly lost and hoping the random level up gives you the spell. And then you can only use it so many times. There is an expensive item you can buy that has infinite castings of map, which is the only sensible way to play without save state scumming for infinite castings. The map (and a mini map with compass) should be a basic feature of the menu not locked behind magic. It is even worse in dark zones, where you literally can't see anything, even with light magic. There is no audiovisual feedback for turning so it is extremely easy to get hopelessly lost without the map. At least the dungeon is not that big. 8 floors with plenty of traps, locked doors, teleporters, fetch quests, npcs selling stuff and the pools. Swimming skill is a thing and it determines how far down you can swim. The only way to raise it is to swim lower than you can safely go and hope the character does not drown. There are important quest items found in the bottom of the pools so you have to deal with swimming. There is an item that makes characters immune to drowning though, so you can ignore the stupid swimming system. Outside the mandatory quest diving, the characters can be subjected to positive or negative effects for reaching certain depths. Often there is a random chance of a bonus or penalty. In practice the pools are not worth the trouble unless you have a guide and hardcore save state scum. There are bonuses that can seriously power up characters if you are willing to put in the effort. The dungeon is not really linear in that some paths lead to parts of other floors that are not accessible from the rest of that floor. There are also no short cuts, so you will be treking through the entire dungeon both ways every time you need to go to town to rest, level up, ID stuff and sell loot. This gets old real fast and I found myself wanting that sweet teleport spell ASAP.
Despite being an extremely tedious and unfriendly game, it can be a reasonable amount of fun if you take measures to bypass the bad parts. A walkthrough with maps and item stats is mandatory, and there is a good one online. Save states are recommended and cheating might be a good idea; I would have liked a max level bishop to stay in town to be my ID bot, and a way to cast teleport early on. The game has much better pacing and combat balance than Gaiden 4, culminating in a final boss fight that will most likely wipe the floor with you. The game lacks the ultra hard post game content found in Gaiden 4, which could be a good or bad thing depending on your opinion.
Pro
- Tactical combat with weapon ranges
- Hp gain on level up tends to balance out with huge gains to compensate for low rolls
- Chest trap system has you ID the trap with thief or magic, and then pick the correct trap from a list to disarm it
- Interesting enemy art
- Variety of classes and reclass feature gives considerable tactical depth
Con
- Story is only in the manual
- Characters do not auto change target if it dies before their turn
- Spells are still cast and consumed after the last enemy is killed
- Random roll character creation and level ups, including spells learned
- Thief cannot disarm dungeon traps
- Trap effects are too dangerous
- Terrible navigation system with no compass or mini map. Map is a spell
- Light magic and items do not illuminate dark areas
- Only the shop and bishop can ID items and bishop’s ability depends on his level
- Most unidentified quest items cannot be used
- No cursor memory, which makes bishop ID and healing outside battle tedious
- No display of item stats
- No spell descriptions
- Gibberish names for spells
- Separate commands in the menu to search for objects, secret doors and people
- Entire swimming and pool system
- Hard to figure out what to do and where to go
- Way too much backtracking