Wizardry - Series

Series

Ultimately the initial game became a series:

• Wizardry: Proving Grounds of the Mad Overlord (1981)
• Wizardry II: The Knight of Diamonds (1982)
• Wizardry III: Legacy of Llylgamyn (1983)
• Wizardry IV: The Return of Werdna (1987)
• Wizardry V: Heart of the Maelstrom (1988)
• Wizardry VI: Bane of the Cosmic Forge (1990)
• Wizardry VII: Crusaders of the Dark Savant (1992) (Remade as Wizardry Gold in 1996)
• Nemesis: The Wizardry Adventure (1996)
• Wizardry 8 (2001)

The first three games are a trilogy, with similar settings, plots, and gameplay mechanics. Bane of the Cosmic Forge, Crusaders of the Dark Savant and Wizardry 8 formed a second trilogy, with settings and gameplay mechanics that differed greatly from the first trilogy.

The fourth game, The Return of Werdna, (Werdna being Andrew, one of the game's developers, spelled backwards) was a significant departure from the rest of the series. In it, the player controlled Werdna, the evil wizard slain in the first game, and summoned groups of monsters to aid him as he fought his way up from the bottom of his prison. Rather than monsters, the player faced typical adventuring parties, some of which were pulled from actual user disks sent to Sir-Tech for recovery. Further, the player had only a limited number of keystrokes to use to complete the game. It is generally considered one of the most challenging role-playing video games of all time.

Wizardry Nemesis was an even more significant departure from the rest of the series. It was done as a "solo" adventure, i.e. 1 character, no supporting party or monsters. All players used the same character—no class or attribute selection—and there were only 16 spells (compared to 50 in the first 4 adventures, and more in the subsequent ones). It was also the first Wizardry title where one saw enemies in advance, and thus could try to avoid them.