In fact, since I'm going to be taking a vacation, I'm trying to get a few weeks ahead of myself again, so expect...a few weeks of Five Ordeals content.
If I were going to play exactly one game from the classic Wizardry series (or if such a thought horrifies you, imagine I"m asking which one to play first), which one would you recommend? Assume I'm totally flexible about platform (but do have access to un-emulated NES and SNES hardware)
@mcc This question doesn't horrify me. In fact I recently made a video about "Which version of Wiz 1 should you play?" Honestly, most people probably only need to ever play one of these - if you play it and love it, you'll know how to find more. If you don't love it, you don't need to play more.
I will give you an unexpected answer, and I hope you'll forgive me if I take a while to get there.
The fundamental problem with the whole series is: the earliest games lacked quality of life features (because 1981) and most of the latter games assume that anyone who is playing is familiar with all the mechanics from the early games. This is a conundrum! So I think there are 2 answers, depending on why you want to play it.
For people interested in "game archeology" my recommendation is depending on what platforms you have to either play the Digital Eclipse remake of Wiz 1 on Windows, or the Playstation or SNES versions of same (PS and SNES are nearly identical, just slightly different art styles.)
For people who want to try only one game as a game qua game, I'd say the PS2 game Wizardry: Tale of the Forsaken Land, which has a really nice synthesis of the disparate Wizardry vibes from the US and Japanese lineages, and lots of quality of life and organic tutorials. Only drawback is the animations make the combat a bit slow.
There's a lot of love out there for the 5/6/7/8 games, but I never liked them. They just feel neither fish nor fowl to me. Wiz 8 has a certain 2001-era charm but it's quite quirky, in bad ways.
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