Review: Wizardry: Knight of Diamonds – The Second Scenario (NES)

In this review, we explore the ruins in the NES game, Wizardry: Knight of Diamonds – The Second Scenario. We find out how well this RPG game plays.

This game was released in 1992 and is a sequel to the game Wizardry: Proving Grounds of the Mad Overlord which we previously reviewed. That game ended up flopping pretty hard, but we wanted to, at least, give this series another shot.

The game itself doesn’t offer much of a storyline, but the documentation beside it offers a storyline.

Generally, if you played the first game, then you pretty much know how this second game plays. In fact, it’s virtually identical to the first game. So, rather than simply rewriting everything a second time around, we’ll focus on the differences of this game.

The first obvious change is the fact that the dungeon is completely different. It does, apparently, offer 6 levels of increasing difficulty. There are the usual traps such as teleporters, pits, complete darkness, and fixed boss battles. There are also features such as hidden doors, Non-Playable Characters (NPCs), and key items that help you advance through the dungeon. One objective is to obtain the KOD armour which enables you to equip said armour after.

A second change is a bit more subtle in that the game is a bit easier. Knowing how punishingly difficult the first game was, this ended up being a very welcome change. Previously, you had to grind for levels against enemies that could pretty much kill you at any moment. In this game, there is still a high risk of death, but the experience points you earn allows you to level up at a more reasonable pace. This helps this game be more approachable to newer players at the very least.

Unfortunately, what hasn’t changed are spells that aren’t even close to being something that resembles English. Combine this with the total lack of explanation of what each spell does, you wind up with a pretty broken game that either requires you to cast every spell to find out what it does, or “cheat” and look up spell definitions all the time online (I chose the latter simply because it was impossible for me to remember what the spells were for from my previous run-in with this game). At best, you could sort of pick up on prefixes and suffixes to get an idea that the spell is more powerful than a previous iteration or that it performs in an opposite manner.

While the game is, in fact, easier, it always has this annoying feature of randomly ending your run. For me, a seemingly harmless Highwayman on level 2 somehow managed to one shot my cleric, killing off my healing chances. After surfacing, I took the cleric to the Temple of Cant which turned the Cleric to ashes. The temple then asked for more gold then I had on hand. At which point, I decided the game simply wasn’t worth continued and discontinued my run.

Personally, when I play games like this, I already take a cautious approach and even find the best places to grind up levels. This ensures that I have the best chance of survival if I do attempt a level more difficult than before. In fact, during this run, I had made multiple trips down to level 2 and even got close to starting to cleaning out a good portion of that dungeon level on a regular basis. In fact, the levels below will tell you that I had, in fact, did a reasonable job of beefing up my characters for where I was located. So, when the Cleric instantly died, it didn’t feel like I did anything particularly wrong. Instead, it felt like the game decided that I wasn’t going to continue any further in any reasonable manner.

Of course, if you didn’t read my last review, you might just think that I should simply load a previous save file and retrace my footsteps. That is the problem with this game: there is no way for you to do this. Every action is saved, so it’s actually impossible to do so. Every decision is a permanent one no matter what and no multiple save spaces exists in this game. That alone greatly increases the difficult by design and makes this game far less playable to me.

One improvement this game does feature, though, is the increase number of monsters. Instead of fighting the same three or four enemies, there are actually a number of enemies you can encounter with similar difficulty associated with them. This does help with the variety.

Generally, this game does feature some minor improvements over the previous game. It does include more monsters to fight and the difficulty has been toned down somewhat to make this game at least half way approachable. While that does allow players to find a small amount of appreciation for what a game like this does have to offer, a number of pitfalls exists that definitely will turn players off from this game. It auto-saves every move, making every decision permanent This makes any unlucky moment a permanent thing. The game also features a nearly impossible to learn (on your own) spellcasting system. It also has a nasty habit of just seemingly ending your run despite your best efforts to make your run as survivable as possible. At the end of the day, while there are improvements, I still wouldn’t recommend this game.

Graphically, there are some minor improvements. Enemies feature a multitude of different pictures. This gives this game much more life then the previous instalment. Additionally, the 3D environment now features subtle squares on both the floor and ceiling. This generally indicates an event will take place there; most commonly, though, it’s stairs. This makes the game a bit more playable. While the 3D environment is impressive in its own right, I can’t help but feel that there could have been more added to the game. Given the effects and better sprite capabilities of some other NES games in this era, this game still feels a bit dated on this front. While it may be passable, there are other games that feature a better visual experience here.

The audio is OK. The music is not bad, but nothing that I would consider particularly memorable. The improvement here is that there is some simple sound effects thrown in. Again, though, compared to other NES games on the market at the time, this feels like a bare minimum improvement while other games shine quite well. The audio, in my view, is barely passable here.

Overall, this game does feature some interesting improvements. The increase in different monsters and enemies does give a semblance of an immersive experience. Additionally, the lowered difficulty does make this game more approachable than the previous instalment. Unfortunately, this game also features huge lingering issues such as the steep learning curve and auto-saving that makes every decision permanent. If you get unlucky, well, sorry, but that’s permanent now. Graphics are somewhat saved by this being in a 3D environment, but the graphics still feel a bit dated. Audio is passable, but nothing special. So, a game that is barely passable, but there are far better games out there to be had.

Overall

Furthest point in the game: Grew comfortable wandering level 2. Highway man one shot killed my cleric and the Temple failed to raise that character, ending the run.

Fighter 1: Level 8
Fighter 2: Level 9
Thief: Level 10
Cleric: Level 10
Mage: Level 9
Mage 2: Level 9

(characters peaked out at about level 10 before draining took hold on some fights)

General gameplay: 11/25
Replay value: 5/10
Graphics: 6/10
Audio: 3/5

Overall rating: 50%

Drew Wilson on Twitter: @icecube85 and Facebook.