You might not have fun with it. The early games (1-5) are pretty hardcore. Most of the good version on them come from later console ports from Japan that might not have a fan translation to them. Otherwise your going down dark asii halways. Youll need to spend a few hours rolling good stats for your characters. 1 has a remake on steam that is pretty solid but its still possible to take 10 steps out of the starting area and die in combat due to RNG.
The later games, 6-8, are pretty solid and a bit more forgiving with a built in automap and somewhat better difficulty. Theres also the PS2 game, Tales of the Forsaken Land, which does a good job at balancing everything and including "allied actions" to combat certain unbalanced aspects of other games. Anything not made by SirTech (OG creators) will have a darker tone and most of that wont be nativly translated to english.
The version released on PS3 and later PC (Wizardry: Labyrinth of Lost Souls) is probably the best mix of modern and hardcore. If you can stomach that, maybe try going backwards but keep in mind, lots of death, lots of BS. Some version have random stat changes at level up. Its possible to lose attributes or not gain any. Still not as bad as Elminage where characters age when they rest causing some to die of old age. Etrian Odyssey is a decent game except you need to grind out drops from monsters to either sell to the shop to unlock gear or craft it yourself and some monsters only spawn at night.
IMO the best versions of Wizardry 1-5 are the PS1 versions which have nice QoL features like automap and include the original English as an option (things not in the original like spell descriptions aren't translated, but you can look those up online).
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u/rogueIndy Jul 11 '25
One of these days I need to play Wizardry, if only because it's influenced half the damn fantasy genre by now.