Wizardry V: Two Steps Forward, Two Steps Back

Yo mama's so frigid, the only man who will have her is called the "Ice King."

Damn, this game takes a long time. I thought if I made a major push, I could win it this weekend, but now I'm thinking I've got another week or so at least. The bloody game does a brilliant job trying to revoke every bit of progress you feel you've made. I've been level-drained so often it's a wonder my characters aren't all Level 1 again. It seems like every level throws me up against armor-eaters (you can figure out what they do). Thieves and magnetic traps rob me of my hard-earned quest items. A few crucial items are hidden at the bottom of pools, but exploring them runs the risk of attribute and hit point drains. This game is brutal.

In 1988, I would have torn the disk out of my floppy drive and run it through a blender.

 
I can guarantee you one thing: I never would have won this without backups ("cheating"). I suffer a full-party death about once every 20 minutes. Three or four times, I've teleported into rock, which renders your party lost forever. My characters have suffered more failed resurrections than I can count. Any hard-core gamer that finishes this without frequent backup and restoration has my highest respect--and concern for his or her mental health.

In terms of overall progress, I've mapped six levels out of, I think, ten. The levels have been crazy in their size and shape--so much so that I'd assume I was missing something if I hadn't exhaustively searched every wall for secret doors. Here are Levels 4 and 5, for instance:

I feel like the shape is supposed to suggest something, but I can't figure it out.

On Level 6, I nearly put out a plea for hints, because for the longest time I couldn't figure out how to get past one encounter involving repairing a mannequin. It turns out I needed to steal a gold medallion from a character so I could wake up a character who told me how to fix it. I haven't had to "steal" prior to this part of the game, and it was only because I was trying every possible action that I was able to figure it out.

Fortunately, I finally found the answer, because there are 7!, or 5040, possible combinations of these different items.

 
I recorded a couple of videos over the last few days. The first, a short one (c. 5 minutes), shows how I go about the process of mapping in Excel as I explore the levels (I keep saying "Level 6" when I mean "Level 5," though):

The second illustrates other gameplay elements, including combat and puzzle solving, and it's almost half an hour.

I know some of you don't like to watch narrated video, so to summarize: I leave the castle and MALOR (teleport) my way to Level 6 (03:00), cast some exploration spells (04:25), and head out. After a couple of combats, I make my way to a pool (09:00), where my thief dives to the bottom level, triggering a tough encounter with Lady Neptune and her minions (10:00). I am victorious. I continue on, defeat some undead (13:52), and arrive at another part of the level, where there's a puzzle involving the repair of a mannequin (17:07). After solving the puzzle, I find myself encountering the Ice King (19:49), who kills two of my characters and reduces the rest to single digits before I finally kill him (21:42) and escape by MALORing back to the castle (23:00). After that, I resurrect my dead party members, identify my new equipment, swap some equipment around, and rest in the inn.

MALOR has made getting around quite a bit easier. As you can see from this screenshot, my mage somehow acquired priest spells. I have no idea how that happened.

I have to say, I have been enjoying some of the graphics. They're not nearly as polished as the colorful animated characters in The Bard's Tale III or Pool of Radiance, but they're very detailed, and the monochrome imparts an aura of gothic horror.

This woman looks scary.

The creatures themselves, on the other hand, continue to tend towards goofiness. We've got the "yomamas" that lead this posting, a whole level full of storybook monsters such as Frankenstein, the Wolfman, Dracula, and of course that terrifying symbol of French horror:

I don't remember Victor Hugo giving him an axe.

 
A pair of creatures that kept attacking me were labeled "Beauty" and "The Beast." They would have been fun if they hadn't kept paralyzing and killing my characters.

They'll paralyze your men / On your corpses they will feast / Fighting them is hell / They resist every spell / Beauty and the beast

 

On every level, I encounter some runes or glyphs that I am completely unable to decipher. I'm hoping I don't need them for the endgame or something. Hints appreciated here.

What is this? "Cive?"

I haven't really described the "plot" much, but you'd probably just think I was on drugs. I know I already covered this in my last posting, but it drives me crazy that the developers didn't even try to create a sensible plot that hangs together. To describe it, I'd have to say stuff like, "Today I met a thief called The Snatch who told me to use a pocket watch in the chamber of the Loon. The Loon--technically 'Thelonius P. Loon, Master of Time and Prophet Extraordinaire'--told me that I need to go into the triaxial gate four times holding a rod and cast a spell of summoning. Oh, and I bought a bird in a cage from him, but a thief stole it later so I guess I have to go back and get it again."

They might not mean that as a compliment.

I suppose we have to give it points for originality, at least. But I'm really ready for it to be over. Hopefully, it doesn't take much longer.