Revisiting: Wizard's Crown (1986)

The title screen establishes Wizard's Crown as a game oriented towards numbers, not graphics.

    

Wizard's Crown

United States

Strategic Simulations, Inc. (developer and publisher)

Released in 1986 for Apple II, Commodore 64, and Atari 8-bit; 1987 for Atari ST and DOS

Date Started: 13 June 2010
Date Ended: 20 July 2017

Total Hours: 51 (includes 10 hours from 2010)

Difficulty: Moderate-Hard (3.5/5), although adjustable on the main screen.

Final Rating: 38

Ranking at Time of Posting: 202/256 (79%)

       

By 1986, Strategic Simulations had already made a splash in the RPG market by publishing Charles Dougherty's Questron (1984) and Winston Wood's Phantasie (1985), but the company was far better known for its detailed wargames, some based on historical battles (e.g., The Battle of Shiloh, The Battle of the Bulge), some fantastical (e.g., The Warp Factor, The Cosmic Balance). Wizard's Crown was the first major effort to unite the two genres; "a role-playing game with tactical combat," as promised by the box.
     

       

(1983's Galactic Adventures technically precedes Wizard's Crown in offering detailed tactical combat in an RPG, but it was only published, not developed, by SSI.)

And, boy, was the combat tactical. RPG players used to Ultima or even Wizardry must have been a little baffled. "Enough options to give a migraine to Sun Tzu" is how one reviewer described it. With battles taking up to an hour--and, of course, no guarantee of victory for all that time--I suspect most players used "quick combat" most of the time. Eventually, SSI realized that while RPG players may want tactical combat, they probably don't want to micro-manage which parts of their bodies their shields are covering, and thus adopted a much simpler system for Shard of Spring (1986). It was this less complicated approach that, coupled with Dungeons & Dragons rules, gave us the superb combat systems in more than a dozen Gold Box titles. Wizard's Crown also directly influenced the excellent tactical combat of Disciples of Steel (1991).

Such an important step in RPG evolution deserved more attention than the three short posts I wrote on the game in 2010 (starting here) before giving up because it was too hard. (Honestly, how did I keep any readers back then?) I tried to revisit it last year but got frustrated when Blogger ate my draft. But I always knew I'd give it another shot before attempting its sequel, The Eternal Dagger (1987). This time, I played it on the Apple II, since Dagger was only published for that platform and the Commodore 64.

Wizard's Crown is far more attuned to its strategy/simulation sources than its RPG sources. (I gather from interviews that lead designers Keith Brors and Paul Murray--both of whom went on to Pool of Radiance--both loved tabletop RPGs but came from more of a wargame programming background.) It is minimalist in graphics and sound and heavy on logistics and numbers. Even the title screen is text-only. Success is heavily dependent on developing a couple dozen magic, combat, and adventuring skills, on which you directly spend experience. Instead of just a pool of hit points, there's an injury system and a bleeding system. There's a morale system, an encumbrance system, an ambush system that is influenced by which character you have "on point." Armor doesn't just have an "armor class"; it has separate defensive ratings against each type of attack. This is, in short, a hard-statistics RPG.
     

The ability to spend experience directly on skills distinguishes Wizard's Crown from typical "level-based" games.

     

The backstory concerns the Crown of the Emperor, which grants power and wisdom to whoever wears it. For centuries, the Fellowship of Wizards governed the land of Arghan by passing the crown from wizard to wizard every so often--until Tarmon, Wizard of Thunder, refused to give it up. The resulting civil war left the land leaderless, the wizards exiled, and monsters roaming the land. Tarmon locked himself and the crown in his laboratories and was never seen again. Now, one of the old wizards, Kaitar, has convened a group of adventurers to recover the crown and return peace to the land. [Edit: as Tristan Gall points out below, the story owes a lot to Steve Jackson's Sorcery! gamebooks (1983-1985), where the goal is also to retrieve a crown that bestows leadership abilities.]
     

Later in the game, you find that Tarmon has a different take on the backstory.

     

The party consists of 8 members drawn from 5 classes: fighter, ranger, thief, mage, and cleric. Each class requires a minimum intelligence between 3 (ranger and thief) and 11 (sorcerer). You can multi-class, but to do so, the character has to have the combined minimum intelligence for both classes; for instance, a sorcerer-thief would require 14. The manual suggests having a character of each class, that only 1 or 2 characters should be non-fighters (I assume it includes multi-class fighters, too), that you should have 2 priests, and that one of them should be a ranger-priest. I'm not sure what the rationale is for that last bit.
     

Allocating attributes during character creation.

     

I dumped the default party (I guess a lot of people loot them for their weapons first) and created a new one, using the long names the game allows to remind myself of the character's profession and chosen weapon:

• 2 fighters: Marek the Slicer and Axe Thaxler
• 2 fighter-priests: Lyria the Blunt and Florian the Flailer
• 1 fighter-sorcerer: Paengo Closecutter
• 1 ranger-priest: Talonias the Thrower
• 1 thief: Laeu the Lifter
• 1 sorcerer: Drachmar the Dark

You start with 20 experience points to spend on skills. At the outset, knowing which skills to prize and which are completely useless is difficult. Since there are separate skills for each weapon type, it makes sense to have each character specialize in only one weapon, or perhaps two if you want to fight a lot of tactical combat and switch between melee and missile weapons. (I basically ignored missile weapons for my playthrough.) The game is frank that "Hunt" isn't used in Wizard's Crown, but it doesn't bother to tell you that neither is "Track" or "Treat Disease." I don't think I ever found more than two traps for "Disarm Trap." I was never quite sure what "Combat Awareness" was doing for me. "Shield" seems like an important skill, but later you find that the best weapons are two-handed. And while I understood the uses of "Scan," "Stealth," and "Alchemy" in tactical combat, I was never sure if they made a difference in quick combat.
      

One of about 5 places were "Read Ancient Writings" is important.

      
The game starts off easy enough as you try to clear the town itself. There is one side-quest involving rescuing a maiden from some brigands, after which you can visit her family mansion and get some gold and a broadsword +2. Wandering around the town at night continues to provide battles against brigands and thieves for a while, but eventually you clear all of them and get a gold reward from the mayor. From then on, the town is safe to wander around in, and you only have to enter the small wilderness north of town or the ruins south of town to find enemies to fight.
     

The town offers a temple, an inn, a tavern, and various shops.

     
From my experience 7 years ago with the DOS version, I remember an extremely sharp difficulty curve once the characters leave town and start exploring the ruins. It was so hard, in fact, that I stopped playing. I was sick of having to reload after 5 out of 6 combats. I didn't encounter that at all with the Apple II version, making me wonder what the difference is.

The game is quite small geographically. The ruins south of town (about 60 x 90 squares) hold exactly three "dungeons": the old thieves' guild, Gozaroth's Mansion, and Tarmon's castle, which are two, three, and six levels respectively. There's also a "dungeon" of sorts inside the city--the Rusty Nail tavern--but there isn't much to do there unless you want to attack people for no reason. If you just explored the dungeons and hit the quest points, you could complete the game in only a few hours.
     

Approaching Tarmon's Palace in the outdoor ruins.

    
But the dungeons--particularly the final one--hold nigh-impossible combats that you have to prepare for, which means a lot of grinding. I'd say that at least 80% of the game is grinding. You spend it running back and forth within the ruins, fighting monsters, gaining experience, collecting gold and items, and returning to town to sell your loot and improve your characters. I spread this process out over several months or I would have gone crazy. Every time I thought my characters were pretty damned powerful, I'd head into the ruins, which get more difficult the further south you travel, and get slaughtered by half a dozen gargoyles or a couple of ancient vampires, and realize I still had a long way to go.
      

My party, who I thought was powerful, meets a group of dragons who show them what "powerful" is.

    
Given that grinding is so vital to the game, at least it grinds very well. Character development is constant and rewarding. Every battle imparts a dozen or so experience points that you spend directly on your skills--no need to wait for "leveling" as in most RPGs. If you can save 100 of them, you can increase strength, dexterity, or life points by 1. When I first started the game, I thought I'd never even get my primary skills to their maximums, let alone save enough experience to increase attributes. I was wrong about that. By the end of the game, everyone had hit 250 in their primary weapons, 250 in their spellcasting abilities, even 250 in tertiary skills like "luck," and a couple of them hit the dexterity maximum of 30.
      

Looting items after a battle. A strong "Evaluate Magic" skill helps identify the important stuff.

     
The equipment and economy systems also play a vital role in character development. You can't buy most of the best equipment: you have to loot it from slain high-level enemies. Magic armor starts at +1 and goes to +5 and occasionally comes in rare "elven," "dwarven," or "reinforcing" varieties. There are also necklaces, bracelets, crowns, rings, and cloaks at various "+" levels that impart various types of protection. Magic weapons come in three varieties: those that have a "+" (up to +5), those that do extra magic damage (proceeding in order through magic, frost, flaming, lightning, and storm), and those with a draining effect (dark, doom, soul, demon, and death). There's even a rank of non-magic but still-cool weapons that goes fine, very fine, sharp, very sharp. And any item can have some extra random enchantment on it that raises a skill or offers special protection. Almost every expedition brought me a new and useful piece of equipment.
      

A "flaming" weapon does a lot of magic damage in addition to its normal thrusting damage.

      
Meanwhile, the economy remains relevant throughout the game for two reasons. (Most of your money comes from sale of looted magic items, and the "Haggling" skill is vital.) First, you can spend money on training skills, up to 100. It's a good way to build lesser-used skills to a minimum baseline. More important, a series of mages' shops will increase the level of your magic gear for 50 gold pieces. This will, for example, take your +3 mace to a +4, or increase your flaming sword to a lightning sword. 50 gold pieces is about as much as you can raise in one day of fighting and looting from random enemies, and with so many inventory slots for 8 characters, you really never run out of things to improve.
    

50 gold pieces turns a +1 great axe into a +2 great axe.

      
Still, it gets pretty boring after a while, and I'm glad I spread out the gameplay. If I had played this in my normal sequence, instead of over a few months getting ready for this entry, you would have had a succession of about 14 entries describing how I had done a bunch of grinding, improved my characters a little more, and found a chain mail +3. Most of the 40 hours it took me to win the game involved the same sequence of activity: leave the inn for the ruins; wander around fighting random combats and picking up treasures until my priests' karma was all gone or until my inventory slots were full; return to town and visit the temple to restore karma and get everyone healed; visit the tavern to restore morale; equip new items and sell excess items in the market; visit the magic shop and increase the "+" of one or two items; return to the inn, spend my experience, and rest.

The tactical combat system is both a highlight and key problem with Wizard's Crown. Given all the fighting that you have to do, only an utter lunatic would fight every combat on the tactical screen. Even fairly ordinary battles against half a dozen enemies can easily take 20-30 minutes. I would say that a true master of the tactical combat system is more likely to succeed in a given combat than someone using "quick combat"; among other things, you have to use tactical combat if you want to cast particular spells, use potions, swap weapons, or change fighting styles.

However, the edge offered by tactical combat isn't that high. In the time it takes to fight one battle, you could reload and try "quick combat" about 20 times. Given that, it's hard to justify spending the time on tactical combat unless you just really like it. These same considerations govern Roadwar 2000, released the following year.
      

Tactical combat outdoors. It's tough to keep all the icons straight.

       
I'm quite curious what's happening behind that "quick combat" screen. I assume it's not simulating the terrain on the tactical map. I have no idea if it really simulates casting spells or just uses your magic ability as a force multiplier. Similarly, I have no idea if it ever simulates actions like "Fall Prone" or "Shield Bash" or sneaking. It does seem to make effective use of skills like "Turn Undead," but it never has priests heal injured characters. As noted before, it never changes weapons or attack styles even if the defaults are ineffective.
     

"Quick combat" gives you the results much faster.

     
It would have been nice to have more defaults and quick-key options. Every time you leave camp, for instance (which includes after every battle), you have to specify who takes point and how far away from the party he'll scout. It's almost enraging that you can't just set this as a default. Post-combat healing could also have really benefited from a Gold Box-style "Fix" command.
        

Post-combat healing. The game uses a complex system of basic and severe bleeding and injuries, in addition to hit points, with a variety of priest "prayers" that cure different conditions.

      
I never got used to the movement system, which has you press "1" to go north, "2" for northeast, "3" for east, and so on. I realize the Apple II didn't have a keypad or a full set of arrow keys, so there weren't necessarily any better options. It still sucks.

The movement system becomes more of a problem when characters enter dungeons and become individual icons. You can set each character to act independently or to follow a lead character. But "follow" means "crowd around" more than literally "follow," and I found when I tried to move the party en masse, the active character would routinely get blocked and everyone got hopelessly hung up on corners and in narrow corridors.
      

Half my party failed to round the corner and ended up getting stuck in the water. Meanwhile, when my thief wants to turn around and head back, he's going to have to get those two fighters out of the way first.

      
The temptation, then, is to leave everyone behind and just roam around with a single active character. But I found that no one character had all the skills I needed. My thief, with his "search" capabilities, was the obvious choice, but inevitably he'd run into a lock he couldn't pick, and I'd have to call up a sorcerer to cast "Unlock" or to make sense of some ancient writing.

Keeping the party split also makes tactical combat nearly impossible, since everyone starts at his or her actual position in the dungeon level. "Quick combat" seems to assume the party is all together when combat begins, although I was never 100% sure about that.
     

Tactical combat is tough in a dungeon if one character has been doing all the scouting. Most of my party is trapped in an earlier hallway.

      
One interesting thing about dungeon exploration is that it all occurs on Disk 2, and the game saves your progress there, yet you can only save the party on Disk 1. The odd result is that you might trigger an encounter on Disk 2, lose, reload from Disk 1, and find the encounter not present when you return to the same area. This is positive if the encounter was a difficult battle you didn't want to fight, but it's negative if you were supposed to get an item or a piece of intelligence. Fortunately, the game's main screen allows you to "reset" a dungeon level. This could be abused to reclaim a nice piece of treasure again and again, except that I never found treasure in dungeons that was notably better than the random stuff I got outside.

The dungeon levels tend to be small and easy to explore without mapping. They have frequent textual descriptions of rooms and textual encounters, possibly inspired by SSI's own experiences with Phantasie.
       

The game mimics a tabletop session with detailed room descriptions as you enter.

     
A variety of hints, including some ramblings of an old man in a party and/or an encounter with the thieves' guild master, leads the party first to the old thieves' guild. The dungeon is two levels--you have to use a rope to climb from one to the other--and there isn't much to do there except to find an Emerald Key that you need for the rest of the game. You also find a clue where to find a secret area in the next dungeon.
      

This thief searches a lot more thoroughly than I would.

     
Gozaroth's Mansion is opened with the Emerald Key and consists of two regular levels and one small one. You follow clues overheard from ghosts to find the three pieces of the Golem Staff, which I carried for the rest of the game but never found out what it did. Ultimately you find the undead Gozaroth, who tells you the password needed to enter Tarmon's Palace (ROBIN) in exchange for one of your priests praying to release his soul.
     

Meeting Gozaroth in his library.

      
Tarmon's Palace is six levels and extraordinarily difficult. I kept thinking I was strong enough to make it this time, only to die repeatedly at one of the mandatory combats with various types of demons. It has one type of enemy--"wardpact demons"--who are immune to all but one attack type (bash, cut, and thrust), determined at random for each group. "Quick combat" doesn't cycle these options, so you have to fight them in tactical combat to survive them.
     

A typical message in Tarmon's fortress.

       
Level 3 of the palace has a maze of invisible walls and traps, but you can find a map to navigate it on Level 1.
    

A map helps you figure out where it's safe to walk on an otherwise-blank screen.

     
Level 4 has a central room with doors in each cardinal direction. Various combinations of opening and closing these doors allow you to progress through the level; fortunately, there's a code key on a pillar on the previous level, but it takes a while to interpret what it's telling you.

The level also has a key textual encounter with the mummy of Melos the Seer, who magically recorded his voice as he died, to be replayed when someone opened the door. He warned me that attacking Tarmon with any magical weapon would result in that weapon being destroyed, and he suggested that I find non-magic versions of my favorite weapons to use against him. (Fortunately, regular weapons drop frequently from most combats.) He also gave me the password (DORVAL) to the demon who guards the Wizard's Crown, and he told me that I could find it in a secret compartment on the floor of Tarmon's laboratory.
    

The game doesn't have a lot of text, but it occasionally goes overboard.

      
Level 5 looks like a maze, and I spent an embarrassingly long time running into dead ends before I realized that you can just walk over the ruined walls. It culminates in a huge battle against demons that I kept failing, resulting in yet another few hours spent on grinding.
    

Ugh.

     
Level 6 starts with another huge demon battle, followed by a stream that fully heals the party, followed by a block-and-tackle puzzle where you need at least 150 feet of rope (three individual items) to open a secret door. I must have traipsed back and forth between the entrance to the palace and this level 15 times, at first because I couldn't defeat the demons and needed to go back and grind, and then because I had to get more rope.
     

At least Tarmon doesn't pretend that we "fell into his trap" or something.

      
Beyond this door is the big fight with Tarmon and a host of demons. First, Tarmon gives you the opportunity to join him, but if you do, he just immediately poisons you.
     

You know, I think my characters would have been smarter than to drink that wine.

      
I figured I'd need to fight the battle tactically, since I'd want my magic weapons to kill the demons and my non-magic ones to attack Tarmon. But I couldn't do it. I spent over two hours on a couple of tactical battles that ended in full-party death.
       

I aim a "Fireball" at a pack of demons in one of my ill-fated attempts to win the battle tactically.

       
On a lark, I tried "quick combat," and I won on the first try, albeit with 2/3 of my characters' magic weapons destroyed and most of the characters dead. I assume what happened was that my characters broke their weapons against Tarmon and ended up killing him with their fists.

I was able to raise and heal everyone but I hardly had any karma (priest spell points) left when I was finished. I retrieved the Crown from the next room and had my sorcerer wear it (it has some pretty good stats), and began the long process of retracing my steps through the fortress and to the exit.
      

My thief finds the crown.

       
All was fine until I reached the entryway on Level 1, and demons burst out of statues and attacked. Although I was victorious, I didn't have enough karma left to heal everyone. I had to use bandages and my ranger's "First Aid" skill just to stop the bleeding (if you leave camp with characters still bleeding, they automatically die). I hoped my party would be unmolested returning to town.
      

This was not a nice surprise.

     
Ha. In fact, once you have the wizard's crown in your possession, there's about a 50/50 chance of a random combat every step through the ruins. I didn't stand a chance. I ultimately had to adopt the strategy of saving with every step that didn't result in a combat and reloading when it did. I eventually made my way to a temple about 40 steps away. (Resting at temples restores karma points to priests.) There, I was able to get everyone healed and mince my way through vampires, dragons, skeletons, demons, hell hounds, goblins, scorpions, bandits, giant spiders, adventurers, and so forth to the exit.

Upon reaching the end, I got a series of screens imparting the following in text only:
        

As you walk through the gate, Kaitar meets you with a wide smile and watery eyes. He speaks to you with eloquent pride: "You have fared well, mighty adventurers. You have returned with the treasure we have so long awaited."

Kaitar turns and shouts to the air. "Behold! The crown has returned, bought through the skill and courage of these adventurers!" From nowhere, the wizards of the fellowship appear and gather in a circle about Kaitar. The crystal in the crown glows brightly. "These gallant souls have rescued the crown from evil and chaos. Its power will once again guide the fellowship in wisdom and truth. Such a gift cannot be matched, but we must attempt to show our gratitude to these honored friends. Therefore, let us join hands and cast the enchantment of champions!"

With that, the wizards form a circle around your party. As they link hands, they begin to chant. The light from the crown pulses with the rhythm. Almost, you can understand the words. Visions of great deeds fill your mind and you see yourself performing these deeds. A sense of power comes to you. Nothing can stop you! Finally the chant stops and the visions fade...but the sense of power remains.

Kaitar takes the crown from you and gently, slowly places it on his head. As he rejoins the circle, he looks at you and says, "I see many more adventures for you and your companions. For myself and the fellowship, we thank you once more. Now we must begin the rebuilding of Arghan."

Once more, the fellowship begins to chant. Slowly, the circle fades. The last thing seen is the crown of the emperor, then all is gone. You and your friends turn and enter the inn.

       
The "enchantment of champions" raised everyone's strength and dexterity by 6 and life by 30. The game saved the party for use with The Eternal Dagger and allowed me to continue playing. I feel like the party members are so overpowered at this point that I can only expect that the sequel will find a way to take them down a notch.
     

You don't have many screens in the typical RPG where the developers speak directly to the players.

     
In 2010, not having played much beyond the town, I gave it a GIMLET of 32. Let's see how it does today:
      

• 3 points for the game world. The setup is decent enough and the world, though small, shows an internal consistency. There just isn't much in it.

• 6 points for character creation and development. This is clearly the high point of the game. The game gives you a lot of leeway with party composition and the way you develop their skills and abilities.

• 2 points for NPC interaction. There are only a handful of them, and they're more "encounters" than NPCs, but they do tell you important things about the game world. 

             

An old man who tells hint-filled stories in the park sort-of serves as an NPC.

    

• 4 points for encounters and foes. The game's bestiary is just D&D standard, but it still does a good job with their special attacks and defenses. One of my criteria here is "areas respawn," allowing for grinding, and that's certainly true. Unfortunately, there are only a couple of puzzles and no role-playing encounters.

• 5 points for magic and combat. Wizard's Crown errs on the side of making tactical combat too complicated, while quick combat is mostly just boring. The spell list isn't very long or impressive, with almost nothing except light spells and "Unlock" useful out of combat.

      

Fighting tactical combat as rarely as I did, I didn't really explore the nuances of all these spells.

       

• 6 points for equipment. With so many characters and so many different options per character (weapons, shields, armor, headgear, bracelets, necklaces, cloaks, potions), you're constantly finding item upgrades. The best stuff is randomly distributed, and you can pay to improve it.

     

My fighter's equipment list towards the end of the game.

     

• 6 points for economy. It's not very complicated, but there's an extraordinarily useful money sink.

• 3 points for the quest. There's one main quest and a quasi-side quest early in the game. No options or role-playing choices, though.

      

An early "side quest." It's too bad there aren't more of these.

      

• 1 point for graphics, sound, and interface. Easily the lowest point of the game. They didn't even try on graphics--no title screen graphic, no winning graphic, and bland icons and environments along the way. The Apple II version doesn't even have sound. And I covered issues with the interface above. (The Atari ST version, released in 1987, does have a title graphic, better iconography, and some in-game sound effects and would get another 2 points here.)

• 2 points for gameplay. Despite its strengths, in the end the game is a bit too long, too linear, and too hard, requiring far too much grinding. I should add, though, that I didn't experiment with the difficulty slider on the main screen. Perhaps "4" or "5" would have produced a shorter, less grindy game.

This gives us a final score of 38, 6 points higher than I rated it in 2010. This feels better. It still ranks lower than Phantasie, which it should, but a notch above The Bard's Tale. It would be a nominee for "Game of the Year," but this was the same year as Ultima IV, so it didn't really stand a chance there. I did, however, correct a longstanding deficiency by adding Wizard's Crown to my "must play" list. You absolutely need to experience this game to understand the SSI games that followed, including the Gold Box series.
     

An early promotion advertises Wizard's Crown next to Rings of Zilfin (1986). The two games couldn't be more different in their approaches to role-playing, character development, and combat.

      
Scorpia's review from the September-October 1986 Computer Gaming World concludes that it is "recommended, although a little less hack and a little more puzzle would have been better." She also notes the lack of meaningful NPC interaction, and she has some of the same comments that I do about tactical combat versus "quick combat." Still, I was surprised that she didn't make more of the sheer complexity of the tactical combat; then again, she does mention the earlier Galactic Adventures (1983), and perhaps she was more versed than I am in the strategy side of SSI's portfolio.

The August 1986 Compute! called Wizard's Crown "the most unusual fantasy game to hit the market in some time," and warned that it was much more difficult than SSI's other offerings, coming "very close in flavor to the actual Dungeons and Dragons role-playing game." You couldn't imagine a better review for SSI to have in hand when, hoping to acquire the license to design D&D games, they pitched themselves to TSR the following year.
      

Resting at the inn, my party prepares to enter the sequel.

     
I'm glad to finally convert this to a "Y" in the "Won?" column, but I mostly did all this to set the stage for the sequel, The Eternal Dagger, which I understand plays mostly the same but keeps the party to one icon, even in dungeons. I was going to jump right to it, but I probably need a few days off from this kind of gameplay, so let's get started on MegaTraveller II first.

****

Further reading: Read about the titles directly influenced by Wizard's Crown, including Shard of Spring (1986), Roadwar 2000 (1986), Pool of Radiance (1988; the first Gold Box game), Disciples of Steel (1991), and of course its own sequel, The Eternal Dagger (1987).

Wizard's Crown: Packing It In

A Wizard's Crown dungeon.

       

I hope it's obvious by now that I hate to start a game and not finish it. Since I started this blog, the only games I haven't finished (that were "winnable") are Wizardry II and Wizardry III, and this had more to do with their rules about character creation and importing than it did with the games themselves.

But Wizard's Crown is simply no fun. It has some neat innovations, but these are wrapped in countless hours of rote combat and death. I was toying with quitting it during my last posting. Then I went to D.C. for a few days and slept on it. When I got back today, I played for a few hours, but I'm just not feelin' it. I'm going to give it a final ranking here with the understanding that I didn't finish the game so I may have missed some things.

1. Game world. There's an interesting setup in the game manual having to do with a golden age brought to a close by a theft and usurpation. I covered this in my first Wizard's Crown posting. There isn't much history or lore associated with the game, though. You encounter buildings and dungeons with intriguing names but no back story. There are a couple of quests, like clearing the town of thugs, that have some effect on the game world, but otherwise your presence isn't really felt. Final score: 2.

      

The introduction from the game manual.

       

2. Character creation and development. It's not bad. Although I was confused during the creation process, the game is fairly unique in the way it gives you experience points to divide among different skills. I'm not sure I ever came up with a good strategy for it, and there were some skills that never seemed to be used, but kudos to the developers for including a character development system ahead of its time. Since you get experience from every battle and can spend it more-or-less immediately, character development is swift and constant. This is the first game to allow selection of your own icons (although from a limited pool), and it might be the first to allow multi-classing. On the other hand, the game offers the exact same experience no matter what your class. Final score: 5.

         

Spending experience to increase skills.

3. NPC Interaction. Virtually none. There's an old man in a park who tells you different stories, and a girl you can save from some thugs, but your interaction with them is limited to just listening what they say. You learn a few things about the game world from them, but there is no dialog or role-playing opportunities. Most of the game is combat. Final score: 1.

     

Your primary NPC interaction is an old man ranting about some nonsense.

       

4. Encounters and foes. There are no real unique monsters in Wizard's Crown that I could see--just your standard D&D fare like goblins, orcs, and brigands. Such monsters are not described in the manual or the game itself, and they're distinguishable from each other only in their icons. There are no opportunities for role-playing in the encounters. There are a mix of random and fixed encounters in both dungeons and surface, which is nice. The surface constantly re-spawns (you never "clear" it), and there's an option to reset dungeon levels in case you want to play them again, which is nice. Final score: 3.

5. Magic and combat. Tactical combat, described in my last posting, is where Wizard's Crown really shines. There are almost too many options having do to with range and direction of attack, but it's hard to complain about the complexity when the game offers a "quick combat" option. You can theoretically role play during combat by having your characters behave in unique ways. The magic system is a little weak, offering a paltry selection of spells for mages (I did finally get these to work by pouring experience into spellcasting) and no offensive spells for priests. If your characters are knocked unconscious or killed during battle, you cannot heal them, which is a bit of a drag. My biggest problem with combat was that I could never do as well in the tactical combat as I did in the quick combat--you would think the reverse would be true. Final score: 5.

6. Equipment. Wizard's Crown offers a wide variety of weapons, armor, and accessories, and it's not too hard to figure out how the items compare to each other. These are generally randomized within the game world, and you even have the opportunity to "customize" items by paying to increase their enchantments. None of the items are described, however, and there are a lot of baffling accessories that either do nothing or I just couldn't figure it out. Final score: 5.

        

I saw no reason to visit the armory after my first visit.

  

7. Economy. You get gold for killing monsters, but there's hardly anything to buy with it. You can buy a limited amount of training, but beyond that it's just about increasing item enchantment, which costs way more gold than I ever had. The good news is, because it's so expensive, you never find yourself with too much gold. Final score: 4.

8. Quests. There is a main quest in the game, but it's easy to forget because the game doesn't give you a lot of hints about how to proceed along it. There appears only one outcome to this quest, and no opportunities for role-playing. I counted two side quests, one of which I guess allowed some limited role-playing (I could have let a young woman get beaten by thugs). Final score: 3.

9. Graphics, sound, and inputs. The graphics are mediocre, especially on the character and dialog screens which are text-only. The only sound is the occasional combat effect. Keyboard commands are intuitive enough and easy to grasp, but constantly having to specify a point man when you leave camp is annoying. Final score: 2.

10. Gameplay. The world is so constraining, and it's so hard to avoid dying, that the game feels very linear. It offers no different experiences on replay, and I found that it varied between too easy and too hard: either I won combats in a snap or I was thoroughly trounced. Final score: 2.

Final score: 32. This puts it above some of the worst games on my list, but not as high as Wizardry or The Bard's Tale, which feels right.

Next up: The Bard's Tale II!

*****

Further reading: Not satisfied with my abrupt departure from this game in the early days of my blog? Good news: I returned to it 7 years later, won it, and updated the GIMLET. Read the updated entry.

Wizard's Crown: Ultra-Tactical Combat

An unfortunately common message in my Wizard's Crown adventures

Since I last blogged about Wizard's Crown, I have:

• Found the marketplace where I can sell goods. This is different than the Town Square, which had me confused.
• Cleared the town of monsters and got 2 gold pieces a person for my trouble.
• Received a broadsword +2 as a reward for rescuing the aforementioned girl.

 

What, does everyone know I'm after this crown? Nice punctuation, incidentally.

• Found a hidden magic shop where some day, when I have way more gold than I do now, I can improve the enchantments on my weapons and armor.
• Got some hints at a tavern. I need an emerald key to get somewhere. The password to something else is "breakfast." A master thief told me of a thieves' guild in the ruins I ultimately have to explore.
• Fought a lot of battles for which I got experience. I used this experience to increase my weapon, magic, and thieving skills. Putting a lot of points into karma for my priests turned out to be a good thing because it gave me access to high-level healing spells fairly quickly.
• Discovered temples scattered about town which immediately recharge your priests' karma. It's handy to use these immediately after battle and heal your characters.

 

I'm still confused about a lot of stuff. For instance, I keep finding bottles and jars and wands after I kill monsters, but they don't seem to have any purpose. The game manual suggests that I can spend experience on increasing statistics but the game never gives me that option (maybe I need a lot more experience than I've been accumulating). My sorcerer never seems to be able to cast a spell successfully no matter how many points I channel into power and spellcasting ability. Every time I leave the inn or camp, the game asks me who I want to put on point and how far away I want them to scout, but for the life of me I can't figure out what this actually does or who I should choose.

 

It wouldn't be so bad if you could set a default.

All of this pales in comparison to my most serious conundrum, though, which is that I don't know what to do from here without dying. Every time I leave the town, I die. I don't mean a single character dies--this is easily fixed with a "raise dead" prayer, which believe it or not I already have. I mean my whole party gets wiped out. But since I cleared the town of monsters, wandering around in town only occasionally offers up a paltry battle in which I get some minimum of experience. I feel kind of stuck.

While I figure this out, let me use this space to talk about the tactical combat system, which is both interesting and confounding. I can only say that I'm glad that they simplified it for the Gold Box games, because there are enough statistics and options in combat to give a migraine to Sun Tzu.

Let's start at the beginning. When you come across a group of monsters in Wizard's Crown, the game asks whether you want to engage in quick combat. If you do this, the game fights your battle for you in seconds, which is nice, but you don't get to use the full variety of spells, items, and actions at your disposal, which is not. The only way to successfully win difficult battles is to do it the long way. Unfortunately, at this stage the game doesn't tell you how many of each monster type you face, so it's tough to gauge whether quick combat is worth the risk.

To be fair, a "thug" really isn't a monster type so much as a profession.

If you choose to eschew "quick combat," the game puts you into a tactical battle screen. The first step is "placing" your characters--selecting their starting positions. You have a limited space in which to work, but it's easy to set up a defensive wall with your spellcasters and archers protected.

Placing my characters before combat.

Now we come to the first thing I don't understand: why can't I see my enemies? It's not that they're off-screen. Oh, no. As soon as battle starts, they'll be right up against me. I don't know why they get to be hidden until they attack.

After the placement phase, the combat phase begins. There are no less than 20 actions that each of your characters can perform in combat. There are three attacks: a regular (a)ttack, a reckless "attack to (k)ill" that sacrifices defense for offense, and a conservative (d)efensive attack that does the opposite. If you want a sure hit, you can waste an entire round aiming at your (t)arget before exercising an attack the next round, or you can spend your round (z)ig-zagging to avoid being hit entirely.

Gahmuret targets a thug with his bow.

You can (f)all prone if you're facing archers and you want to minimize your chance of getting hit, then stand (e)rect once you engage them in melee combat. If you're an archer, you can (l)oad your bow or crossbow, a sorcerer can (c)ast a spell (although, and this is item #2 I don't understand, they never seem to work) or use a (m)agic item, and a priest can (p)ray to heal companions in combat or turn (u)ndead. Thieves can (s)neak, but I'm not sure what this does because there doesn't seem to be a back stab. There's also a (v)iew command which maybe is my solution to the hidden enemy problem, although it never seems to do anything. If you run into a door on the combat screen, you can (o)pen it. You can waste a turn (r)eadying a different piece of equipment, and finally you can (i)nspect your character or just (q)uit your turn. Understand that all of these various commands apply to each character in each round.

This happens literally every time.

Ah, but that's not all. The game also considers the direction you're facing when calculating the likelihood to hit, how much damage you do, whether you can target a particular enemy, or whether your shield does anything to protect you. Note in the screenshot below how the northeast, east, and southeast are highlighted (the "9" and the "3" correspond to directions on the numeric keypad). This means I can move, attack, and (I think) defend in those directions. If I want to aim or move somewhere else, I first have to use the comma key to turn my character in that direction.

This battle isn't going so badly, but note that Anfortas has a moderate injury (6) and minor bleeding (2), but still has all 25/25 of his life points.

When you strike a hit, or when any enemy strikes a hit against you, the game is very specific about where it does damage and what kind of damage it does. This lends the game an air of realism, but it also introduces a quirk unique to Wizard's Crown: the overall number of hit points that you have is treated separate from your current level of injury. There are two types of injuries: bleeding and...well...just injuries. You can have a serious injury and be knocked unconscious and still have all 25/25 of your hit points. Bizarre.

This does make it more fun to picture the battle.

When battle is over, you get a bit of gold and you can take the items owned by your enemies--usually just basic weapons and armor that you can sell. Occasionally you find bandages, which a party member skilled in first aid can use and thus save your priests' karma points.

I have no idea what that vial is about.

Also after combat, you want to check out your party members' statuses. In my case, Feirefiz has a minor injury, Anfortas has both minor and major injuries and minor bleeding, and Sigune has a major injury and minor bleeding. If you leave the camp while your characters are still bleeding, they die, so this is where I have to use my priests' healing power to deal with their injuries. Note again, however, that none of them have suffered a loss of life points.

 
Tactical combat can take up to an hour with enough enemies. This is particularly frustrating because, as I've said, every time I leave the town, all my characters die. Wasting 30 minutes on combat only to lose everyone and have to start over is a bit demoralizing--and not just to me. The longer the combat takes, the more your characters' "morale" score dips, making them less effective at all of their skills. You have to spend a night in a comfy room or spend an evening of revelry at a tavern to eradicate the effects of poor morale and get your characters in fighting strength again. This is another first for Wizard's Crown.

My morale is restored and I got a hint on the side.

I'll echo what I said yesterday: I'm grateful to this game for being an obvious precursor to the Gold Box series, but I can't say I'm loving it. Nonetheless, I'm determined to improve my characters enough to start exploring the ruins and see how they differ from the very constricted game so far. Again, I certainly appreciate any tips or advice from readers who have played this game before!