Wizard Wars: Someone Else Won!

The final battle

I haven't had a bad string lately. After deferring them for most of the year, I won BattleTech, Sentinel Worlds, and Star Command in succession, and I'm on the cusp of winning Wizardry V, rounding out all the games that I was having issues with towards the end of 2011.

But there was another game I abandoned around the same time: Wizard Wars, the odd game from Paragon. I noted during my first posting that there were no walkthroughs online, so even though I didn't really like the game, I thought I'd try my hand at creating one. It ended up being a lot more trouble than I cared to invest in it, although I did get about halfway done. I gave up prematurely, and offered a premature GIMLET, when I couldn't find a spell components list, only to be told (to my embarrassment) that there was one in a pretty obvious place on MobyGames. But even with this, I finally got frustrated with trying to find spell components through repeated searches, especially where Skyrim had just been released. I never really returned to the game.

Well, since then, Tarn Adams took the resources linked from my postings and the associated comments, and won the game. Since my blog seems to be the Wizard Wars authority on the Internet, I thought I'd finish that series of postings with Tarn's endgame.

He reports that:

• Many of the spell components I was searching for in the First Dimension were, in fact, hidden on the eight maze levels of the Second Dimension.

• The purpose of the Second Dimension is, ultimately, to get the components necessary to cast a "death" spell on a chimera guarding a bound unicorn in the First Dimension.

• Rescuing the white unicorn then allows access to the Third Dimension, where the evil wizard Aldorin awaits.

Doesn't "Aldorin" sound a lot like "Alduin"? And then you've got the whole dragon thing. I'm not saying there's plagiarism involved, but come on.

 

• To get to Aldorin, you first have to pass three dragons. You can defeat them with magic or by answering riddles that they pose.

My version: "In North America, you see it every night. And you often see it during the day. So my guess is they never see it in Australia."

 

• After the final battle with Aldorin, Mazeus, the "God of Passion," instructs you to remain there and teach magic to worthy students.

Tarn offers three other tips: 1) Save your "evoke falcon" spell for the final battle, 'cause it's one use only; 2) there's a more complete spell list here; F10 mixes spells (this key is easy to overlook).

I don't often offer other players' winning screenshots, but there's no reason I shouldn't, so from now on when I abandon a game, I'll post the winning shots and narratives of anyone who wants to finish it up. (I'll even offer my save files in case you want to finish with my party.) (That's not happening with Wizardry V, by the way, so don't get excited.)

But what particularly motivated me here was the realization that I could have pretended to have won the game myself. There's no "character creation" in this game; you don't name your character or select any attributes. Every player has to get the same set of spells, go through the dimensions in the same order, and fight the same battles. There is literally no way to distinguish one player's screen shots from another's. What a depressing approach to a CRPG! After looking through Tarn's screenshots and reading his messages, I don't see any reason to adjust my GIMLET of 24. In Tarn's own words, "It really is not a good game."

I'll meet Paragon again in 1990 and 1991 with the two MegaTraveller games. The company went out of business shortly after.

Not much time to play Wizardry V over the last couple of days, but I'm still going at it. Maybe one more posting before the end.