Wizardry V - Heart of the Maelstrom

At first I was surprised that nobody mentions the fifth Wizardry at all, when it really deserves the attention. It's a dungeon crawler from 1988, when this style was still being played persistently under MS-DOS despite graphics already being pretty dated. In Wizardry V you're once again in the role of adventurers wandering through dark corridors, fighting monsters and collecting treasure — that classic formula that worked then and works now.

The game is definitely tougher than you'd expect from a fifth installment. You move across tiles from a bird's eye view, you only see a small section of the map, and you encounter plenty of invisible traps. Mechanically it's classic — you gather party members, equip them with weapons, wizards memorize spells. Combat runs in first-person perspective, where things happen as they will, and you just watch it play out on its own. It's not about action, it's about how well you've set up your characters and how lucky you get.

The worst part here is the waiting. Long stretches through empty corridors where nothing is visible and nothing happens, until you start wondering if you're already on the wrong level. Visits to taverns, shops and temples between expeditions are obligations, not entertainment. Maps are complex and you get lost easily — without paper and pencil you don't stand a chance. For a player who only cares about action and progress, it's torture.

Yet Wizardry V draws you in precisely through this isolation from the outside world. You're not in a video game, you're sitting by the fireplace hearth and staring into darkness. There's something massive and unwelcoming about it that simply isn't done anymore. Graphically it looks like a sketch from 1975, but that graininess adds an atmosphere that colorful tiles just can't deliver.

These days it's worth playing if you're interested in RPG roots and have the patience to measure your time in hours, not minutes. You can manage it in a browser without having to worry about processor recommendations — just prepare yourself for a slow choreography that knows exactly where it wants to go.