In this review, we try to make our escape in the 16-Bit DOS game, Wizardry: The Return of Werdna – The Fourth Scenario. We find out how well this RPG game plays.
This game was released in 1987 and is the fourth game in this series.
We have some experience with this series. We first tried Wizardry: Proving Grounds of the Mad Overlord. That game pretty much flopped for us. After that, we played Wizardry: Knight of Diamonds – The Second Scenario. That game barely passed. While we could have played the third instalment, things don’t seem to be going all that well for us in this long series. So, we thought we’d skip ahead a little to see what advancements were made after the large gap in releases.
This game separates itself from the other games. Unlike the previous games, you don’t formulate a party of four and tackle a dungeon. Instead, you basically play as a super villain. You basically start off in a 2 by 2 room that appears to have no door. This appears to be some kind of prison for your evil deeds. Luckily, there is a pentagram on the floor which enables you to summon monsters. You get a list of monster parties to choose from. You can only select three monster parties at a time. These monsters are your party tasked with defending you.
Next, your objective is to escape from the prison. As it turns out, you need a group of Level 1 priests so they can summon a light spell that enables you to see hidden doors. Without being able to see them, you can only bang on the walls or take on random encounters. So, seeing those doors is required even if you know where they are.
A number of the core mechanics still operates the same as other games otherwise. This includes casting spells, attacking, parrying, being able to camp and a number of other minor mechanics. A key difference, however, is the inability to go to stores or rest. Resting was a key component of levelling in previous games.
Your ultimate goal is to escape the prison that you are in.
For me, this game does have an interesting core mechanic. You basically are playing the role as the bad guy which is an interesting flip on the whole idea of an RPG system. What’s more, you are using monsters to aid you in your quest to escape. I honestly really like that as a mechanic because its a novel and different concept from what you’d traditionally see in a game.
As interesting as those positives sound, that is where the game’s positives generally come to an end.
One of the more frustrating part of the game is the fact that message zip by you at an exceedingly fast speed. Because of this, it’s very difficult, if not, impossible to really tell what is happening in the battles. This effectively eliminates a good number of ways you can figure out strategy on your own. If you take on a fight and you only know that you are either dead or stripping the bodies of belongings, you can’t really tell all that well what is and is not working. For instance, if your orcs are constantly missing and are useless in the fight, you really have no good way of knowing. So, you might very well be employing a bad strategy and not even know it. After all, this game is, in fact, about strategically summoning the right monsters to better your chances of survival.
Another problem with this game is that it has such a steep learning and difficulty curve. If you happen to not summon the priests, then all you know is that you are stuck in a single room. It’s very easy to assume that this game is a terrible 2 by 2 room and quit after you get bored. Even if you do successfully leave, you are far from out of the woods in difficulty. As far as I can tell, you can’t really level up anything (either that or I never survived long enough to find out).
Even worse is that if you happen to have a party that is wearing out, you can return to the room and realize that even with the priests, you can no longer escape a second time. You might think about refreshing your legion of monsters, but it looks like this game doesn’t permit this. So, you kind of have to hope that you get lucky with the summoning and get not only the right monsters, but also the right number of them as well.
Apparently, the developers made this game with the intention of being the hardest RPG game in the industry. That is a pretty trivial accomplishment if your end product is kind of half broken. The end result is that you have a, well, unlikable game. It’s not necessarily hard because the enemies are tough, it’s tough because you are given little to no opportunity to figure anything else.
The game also is apparently marketed as requiring knowledge and experience from the first wizardry game. Well, I have it and only found it to be mildly helpful. I can see Badios briefly flash on the screen and know a damage spell is being cast. Beyond that, I was able to figure out which monsters gave me problems in the first game and summon those first. This helped narrow things down a fair bit. Beyond that, I don’t think it helped me get that much further along in the game. I still died every time on level 1. The only question is, how far can I get before getting a game over.
Graphically speaking, this game isn’t all that great. While it is apparently an improvement over previous instalments on the PC, it winds up being very dated anyway. Just remember that the NES was released in 1985 and even Atari 7800 games were definitely in circulation at that point in time. Other games on the PC, at the time, easily trounces the graphics seen here. An example of this is the first Might & Magic game. While there was still plenty of black, at least there were simple textures to be had here. This game still sticks with wire frame walls and some really simple textures. The enemies, at least, had some half decent graphical representation, but that is just a small bone thrown to the player in an otherwise very lacklustre game.
There is no audio to really speak of outside of some very basic blips and buzzes. Other games floating around at the time were way far ahead of this by now. Even the more basic games had, at minimum, a basic jingle of some sort. This game doesn’t even really offer that. This may very well be the first time I marked a zero for anything, but it’s happening here.
Overall, this franchise started pretty badly and I’m not seeing much in the way of improvements here. This game offers few opportunities to learn the game just to get a basic understanding of what all is happening. After that, it hammers you with bugs and difficulty to ensure that you probably won’t succeed. With very dated graphics and virtually non-existent sounds, this game is definitely one to avoid.
Overall
Furthest point in game: Got the outer guardian down to 6 hits before dying on the first level.
General gameplay: 9/25
Replay value: 4/10
Graphics: 3/10
Audio: 0/5
Overall rating: 32%
Drew Wilson on Twitter: @icecube85 and Facebook.
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