Wizardry: The Five Ordeals

Wizardry: The Five Ordeals is a collective and eight entry to the new Gaiden series, developed by 59Studio and IID (formerly IRI-CT). The game was originally released on June 8, 2006. In addition, download sales of the original version were held from September 18, 2009 to April 1, 2021. A remastered version was available through Steam under Game*Spark Publishing on December 17, 2021 as of Early Access (initially June 2021 before being postponed to another release date). On August 25, 2022, it was announced during Gamescom Future Games Show that the game now supported in English with two downloadable-content based on previous scenarios to be released on March and June 2023.

Gameplay


The gameplay engine borrows from "Wizardry Gaiden: Prisoners of the Battles" and the data part (scenario) that runs on it. Users cannot just only play five pre-installed basic scenarios in parallel, but also can enjoy user-created scenarios with an external editor.

Each scenario is completely independent not only in the labyrinth, item and monster data, but also in the handling of some game rules. It cannot be used continuously in a scenario. However, in a later version update, it became possible to transfer between scenarios while taking over only the basic statistical items that are not affected by the scenario: name, race, occupation, gender, personality, and the number of enemies killed. (Ability is the minimum value for race and occupation)

Official Scenarios

 * Traveler's Property
 * Children of the King Selene
 * The Devoid of Apotheosis
 * The Pickled Man of Galvan
 * The Wheels of Flame

DLC Scenarios (Steam)

 * Prisoners of the Battles
 * The Absence of Misericordia

Editor
A scenario editor that allows you to freely create stories, facility names, labyrinth structures, messages, monsters, items, etc. Since it focuses on being a scenario editor for "Wizardry with a system close to the initial work", it is not possible to add new races or new occupations. However, it is possible to change the rules of the game (such as whether to apply the rules for adding random magic effects to items similar to "Prisoners of the Battles") within a set range.

Created scenarios can be passed on to other users via the Internet. An uploader for sharing scenario data and a bulletin board for obtaining impressions are also officially prepared, and users can download scenarios created by other users from a unified place for free.

According to development staff members Tokunaga Tsuyoshi and Kaneda Tsuyoshi in a chat interview in 2021, more than 110 scenarios were posted at the same time, even if they were just scenarios that could be played properly. Some scenarios had a degree of perfection that they recognized as surpassing official scenarios.

Development
Like the previous work "Prisoners of the Battles", this work is also participated by Tokunaga Tsuyoshi and Kaneda Tsuyoshi, who were involved in the development of the Game Boy handheld "Wizardry Gaiden" series (herein after referred to as "old Gaiden") at ASCII.

After the release of the previous work, IRI-CT (now IID, Inc.), the publisher, wanted a sequel, but Kaneda judged that it would be difficult to prepare a new feature when making it into a series based on the development experience of the old Gaiden, so he was reluctant at first. had shown. In the end, it was decided to prepare a scenario editor as a feature, but Kaneda, who thought this was a "forbidden move", said, "If we incorporate this element, we may not be able to make a sequel anymore." In an interview with Kawasaki Seiichiro of 4Gamer.net in 2021, he recalled that he was reminded of the original. Kaneda didn't know if users could create excellent scenarios using an editor, so they decided to record five scenarios they created themselves so that they could enjoy it without an editor. Of the five scenarios, "The Pickled Man of Galvan" was written by the writer of "The Absence of Misericordia".

Remastered version
Like the previous game, "The Five Ordeals" was also made to run on Windows 98, but for many years it was unable to support Microsoft's OS upgrade. Although the user community had unofficially communicated how to support the new OS, the development staff wanted to formally respond. In 2014, Apple said, "From February 1, 2015, the iOS version of 'Prisoners of the Battles' will be 64-bit compatible. It will be deleted," and the development staff had no choice but to move. On the other hand, as of 2017, this work "The Five Ordeals" had iOS and Windows 10 versions, but Tokunaga decided to recreate the program in Unity with a view to the future.

In addition, Kaneda consulted with the publisher, IID, and decided to sell the game as a download through Steam.

At first, Kaneda was thinking of adapting "The Five Ordeals" to Windows 10 based on the iOS version of "Prisoners of the Battle". On the other hand, Yo Horie, the director of IID, thought that it would be good to have a UI that allows players to play on a large screen, but also thought that it would be good to have a UI similar to the old-fashioned "Wizardry", so he created a new one. Also, the scenario editor was planned to be implemented as "Wiz Tools 2.0".

Trivia

 * Oddly enough, as of Steam Remastered, "Prisoners of the Battles" and "The Absence of Misericordia" scenarios were made as downloadable contents despite both being a standalone game initially.