Wizardry 7: Crusaders of the Dark Savant

Wizardry 7: Crusaders of the Dark Savant was released by Sir-tech Software in 1992 as the seventh chapter of one of the oldest computer role-playing lines. Wizardry helped define the genre back at the turn of the eighties, and this instalment is its late, considerably broadened form.

The player assembles a party of several characters, assigns their classes and abilities, and then moves through the world in first person, step by step and in ninety-degree turns. Combat is turn-based: every round you issue orders to the whole group before anything is resolved. A well-balanced set of classes matters far more than reflexes.

Compared with earlier Wizardry games, the seventh entry pushes the world beyond corridors and cellars. The party also travels above ground, runs into rival factions chasing the same goal, and parts of the plot can be moved along through negotiation rather than fighting. The series additionally allowed characters from the previous game to be carried over, an unusual link between titles at the time.

The 1992 interface makes no concessions. Many players drew their maps on paper, descriptions arrive as text, and the design is generous with traps and dead ends. That harshness is exactly what sustains the line's reputation and separates it from the friendlier dungeon crawls that followed.

Sir-tech had been publishing Wizardry since 1981, and by 1992 the series had grown from a pure dungeon crawl into something considerably wider. Other party-based lines were running on the PC at the same time, so the seventh entry reached a market where depth of rules was the main thing separating rivals.

If you want to see what that kind of mapping feels like in practice, OldGame.cz opens the game directly in a browser window.