Re: The Passing of the Mad Overlord

On Sun, 01 Sep 2024 08:15:32 -0400, Mike S. <Mike_S@nowhere.com>
wrote:

On Sat, 31 Aug 2024 16:40:31 -0400, Spalls Hurgenson
<spallshurgenson@gmail.com> wrote:
>

Classic CRPG fans, take note of this sad day. Andrew C. Greenberg, one
of the two co-developers of "Wizardry", has passed on.
>
I'll admit it; I never cared much for the Wizardry series. They were
too focused on the mechanical aspects of the RPG genre --the stats,
the loot, the combat-- and not enough on the bits I actually cared
for: story, world-building and characters. They often were ruthlessly
hard too; 'git-gud, scrub' games long before Dark Souls made that a
meme. I played games for entertainment, not challenge.

>
The git-gud Wizardry was Wizardry IV. I lost my patience with that one
and gave up. Apparently, everyone else did as well as it was the worst
selling Wizardry title. The earlier ones (and the fifth one) are very
easy by comparison.
>
I still have yet to play 6-8. I really should get on it.

I won't argue too much, since I don't consider myself a Wizardry
expert. However, my own personal experience was that the "Wizardry"
games were, from the start, more difficult experiences than their
contemporaries like "Bards Tale", "Might & Magic" and "Ultima". Those
games could be difficult, but "Wizardry" always felt a lot less
forgiving.

     [Admittedly, that is probably because most of those games
      were developed later than the early Wizardry games and
      took lessons that were unavailable to Greenberg and
      Woodhead because they were pioneering the genre.]

It didn't help that the production values of the Wizardry games lagged
far behind its competitors

     [Again, partly to blame on the titles' age, although
      even the early Ultima games, which were contemporary
      with Wizardry 1-3, looked better. At least in my
      opinion.]

Still, lacking nice visuals and sound, the games were forced to rely
entirely on their gameplay, and overall I found the experience a lot
less welcoming to new players. Differences between character classes
weren't always clear, the monsters were lethally hard, the maps
stupidly mazelike and -given the lack of a strong narrative- there
wasn't much reward to finishing the game.

Were the Wizardry games actually /harder/ than "Bards Tale" or "Ultima
I"? Maybe not. Like I said, I'm not enough of an expert on those games
to really say. But my subjective experience was that they felt a lot
less forgiving.