its the old Wizardry game from when I was a kid, just playing my first RPG, and its been made more modern, but still the same... I've been waiting for this for what feels like 35 years.

A good introduction to Proving Grounds—it retains the brutal, unforgiving, confusing dungeon experience, but updates it in terms of visuals and QoL. It feels like it may be tuned slightly easier than some other versions, but I can’t say for sure.

The new options here make it especially good if you haven’t played Proving Grounds before—things like a minimap, and the ability to turn off bad things happening to dead party members who are left in the dungeon, add a tiny bit of forgiveness in an otherwise unforgiving experience. I like that the minimap is not infallible, and quickly descends into a pile of spaghetti as you traverse warp zones and spinners. It forces the player to maintain a sense of their own surroundings and still cast DUMAPIC when in doubt.

Visually, it’s not bad. The dungeon looks like a dungeon, and the torch you carry conveys some useful info—it changes color when you have a light spell active, and it gives off an odd trail when you step on a warp zone. Monster designs look pretty good as well. Character portraits are underwhelming, and you can often see assets being reused from one to the next—it’s hard to get attached to your characters, but it’s Wizardry, you’re really not supposed to.

Like many other reviewers, I found the combat animations to drag down the overall experience. Grinding Murphy’s Ghost becomes such an unrewarding chore that you probably won’t want to do it much, if at all. There is a fast-combat toggle that speeds things up a bit, but at least on my Steam Deck it introduces ironic delays as the game engine seems to hang for a few seconds. All that said, I do think it’s good for new players to make the combat a little more deliberate—every poison, paralyze, petrify, and death is shown prominently so it’s hard to miss. I’ve seen even veteran Wiz players miss a character dying because they’re mashing through the combat dialogs.

Overall, I enjoyed my time with this remake, and would recommend it to new players and veterans who don’t mind taking their time. If you want a snappier experience, The Five Ordeals, Labyrinth of Lost Souls, or the console ports are better options.

As a lover of confounding and difficult games, I thought this remake was very well done. There's lots of options to fiddle with to get a more "original" experience or one with fewer painful idiosyncrasies from the days when there weren't many established rules about game design. It's like driving a Model T with a fresh coat of paint and a bluetooth adapter.