..This is a PC port of an older game...
Wizardry: Labyrinth of Lost Souls started its life on the PS3, PlayStation Vita, and iPhone, back in 2009. This review is for the PC version released in 2020. The big change for this version is that, unlike its original release, all of the DLC is already included in the game. There is one free DLC, the Growth Fruit, which can optionally be installed for either the Steam or GOG releases. I'll cover what that does later in the review. The important thing is this version appears to be the complete kit and includes all the DLC dungeons.
..So this game is part of the Wizardry series. What is that?..
Wizardry is a series of RPG dungeon crawlers where you would assemble a party of heroes to conquer a mazelike multifloor dungeon. Labyrinth of Lost Souls is not a remake of an earlier title but instead a new entry in the series. Although later games in the Wizardry series allow for more unrestricted movement, both the original games and Labyrinth of Lost Souls keep the party moving on a grid with only the ability to face one of the cardinal directions.
..What kind of adventurers can be assembled?..
There are five races and eight classes to create your party from. Creating a new character has it randomly roll for an amount of bonus stat points, which you can assign to whichever stats you wish. As each class has a minimum stat requirement, the race's base stats and these assigned bonus stats will directly determine which of the classes the character is eligible to select. There are also a few restrictions on which alignments are allowed to use each class, but for the most part, only the Ninja requires (Evil). (Good) and (Neutral) are used by everything else.
As both a character's chosen alignment and starting stats can be altered during the adventure, these initial choices won't lock you out of anything. Whenever in town, there is an option to promote each character into a different class. This returns their level to 1, keeps half of their HP, and preserves all know spells. As over time each character's stats will increase (or, rarely, randomly decrease) as the character levels up, they may not be able to become a Lord or Ninja when they are first created but will very likely have that option eventually if you desire it.
Besides the distinction between the classes being whether they are a melee or a magic user, an important attribute of each class is its special skill. This skill doesn't transfer when the class is promoted and can be powerful enough to turn the tide of battle in combat, or in some cases, very useful outside of combat. The Bishop can identify unknown items for example.
Races mainly determine the base/max stats but have one other effect on the character, and that is their visual appearance. Unfortunately customization of the look of each character is very limited. Only two portraits per race, one for each gender. With one exception, the first character created as the main character gets a color swapped variant of that race's portrait.
..Enough character creation. What monsters are there to kill!..
As your party moves through the dungeon, they randomly encounter groups of monsters. Combat has both the enemy and party divided into rows. For the player's party, the left side of the screen's three slots are the front row with the right side's slots being a more protected backrow. The more distant a row, the longer reaching melee weapon is required to strike at it.
Magic users can learn spells as they level and gain individual charges for each tier of spells called magic points. To cast a spell requires the expenditure of one of these points in a corresponding spell's tier. There are many types of spells per tier of magic. They can be used to deal damage, heal the party, cure status effects, or have other utility functions like teleporting around the maze.
Although enemy monsters can fling as many spells as they want (And they will...), the player's magic user's limited magic points can only be restored by resting at the inn back on the surface or when they gain a level. Magic users can be very highly effective but the melee fighters will be doing the heavy lifting the majority of the time due to this limited magic ammo.
Enemy monsters are all visually displayed as reasonably detailed still images. Each row of enemy monsters can contain several of the same beast. There is no way to directly target a specific individual monster in a row. Instead, the target row of monsters is selected when attacking, and one of the enemies in that row will be randomly chosen to receive the attack.
Aside from health diminishing melee and magic attacks, many monster's inflict crippling status effects and may even have a chance to drain a character's level or outright kill them regardless of their current HP. Enemies that target the entire party with a potentially lethal instant kill attack are common. Better armor and higher levels can provide some resistance to this, but there is always a chance of suffering an unlucky fatality.
There are consumable items that can be acquired and used during combat. I made it to the end of the game barely using any of these, so they aren't really important.
..How's the exploration?..
There are three dungeons to choose from in Wizardry: Labyrinth of Lost Souls. Floors are composed of individual tiles that can be stepped between in a 20 by 20 grid. Usually almost all, if not all, the locations in those grids are able to be traversed with very little sections of the floor being left unused. Although it may sound a bit compact, I'd say the dungeon floor design is one of the better parts of the game.
Additionally the dungeon walls wrap around, so if you move west from the western edge of the map, you'll pop up on the eastern side of the dungeon in the same row. The standard bag of dungeon crawling tricks are all here: Hidden doors, traps, spinning floors, areas covered in darkness, teleporters and levers that open doors elsewhere.
The third dungeon is filled with very high level monsters and was no doubt meant to sell the "Wizardry: Labyrinth of Lost Souls - Limit Free Levels" DLC for the original version of the game. This DLC unlocked the level cap so that each character could increase their level to 99. The PC version already has this DLC included.
..Do I need to map each floor by hand?..
Unlike the original Wizardry, there is no need for physical graph paper to map the dungeon. Either by carrying an ingame map item or casting a spell, a detailed map of the currently explored sections of the dungeon can be displayed. This map screen can also switch which floor it is currently displaying, which can be useful in some situations.
..Is there a quest in this hell hole of a dungeon?..
What story there is isn't that interesting. The story is delivered through a sparse number of visual novel segments with still images of various NPCs. If you're thinking of playing this game, don't buy it hoping for a compelling narrative.
There are several quests that can be taken from the town's adventurer guild or from other townsfolk while your party is outside of the dungeon. Unfortunately they usually boil down to: "Bring me X of item randomly dropped by a monster." or "Go to place X... but I won't tell you exactly where".
Some of the quests are maddening in how they are setup. Unfortunately to activate a quest, a prerequisite must have been completed before you are given it. What this means is that you may have completely explored a dungeon floor before being given a quests that requires you to go 'somewhere' on that floor. The only solution is to carefully step through that entire dungeon section again...
I'd go so far as to say the quest design is the worst part of this game.
Some events are visible as a floating skull or hooded figure while moving about the dungeon. Others are invisible until you step on the right grid coordinate.
..Gold... GOLD!!!..
There's a really odd design choice in Wizardry: Labyrinth of Lost Souls involving its economy. All monsters drop gold and there is a shop back in the town to purchase items from. However this shop only has a finite number of each item and you will quickly find purchasing from it next to useless. You can sell items to this shop for gold, and buy them back later if you wish. Another use for gold is to very expensively identify items, which a Bishop can do for free...
So what use is gold? There is pretty much only one answer to this. If you visit the temple, gold can be converted directly into EXP leveling a selected character.
... that's it.
Spending gold for EXP is very useful. It just is a strange choice that there is really nothing else to do with it.
The majority of the equipment your party will use is acquired either by finding chests after combat or found in the dungeon. This is where the thief class's talents go to work disarming any traps that would otherwise go off when the chest is opened.
The adventurer's guild in town also allows the player to swap a specific item for another specific item. Which item can be exchanged for which periodically changes. (This trade costs no gold...)
..So how hard is it. Is this hardcore?!..
The early game combat isn't that difficult, and with strategy, the chance of getting wiped out by the more lethal opponents can be greatly reduced. If a party member is lost, there are a few ways to bring them back to life. Many of these come with a terrible risk. If a resurrection attempt fails, that character will turn to ash. If another attempt is made to revive the ash pile and it fails... the character is gone for good.
So yes, permadeath plus enemies that can on-hit-kill a party member remains a constant threat throughout the game.
.."NEEEEEE~!"..
In the sound department, each of the character's in your party are voiced, although not in english. The female dwarf is kind of funny as she has a tendency to loudly yell "NEEEEEE~!" if you accidentally walk into a wall. The visual novel style event dialogue is also voiced. As with your party characters, this is also not in english. What music is present in the town and during battle is pretty good:
► Combat Music
► Town Music
► Hard Fight Music
..Quality of life features..
The game has good controller support. With the exclusion of typing in a character's name, the entire game can be played with a gamepad. I don't remember seeing a way to rebind the controls, but they were laid out pretty well, so I'd recommend it for this one.
The speed of both combat and movement in the dungeon can be increased. There is also a button which when pressed will automatically set all characters to attack with their melee weapon during combat. Considering there is a bit of grinding to be done in this game, these features are very welcome.
..What is that "Growth Fruit" DLC?..
If you have installed the Growth Fruit DLC then during character creation, you will be able to use a limited number of growth fruit to increase the available bonus stats of a character. This is useful if you want to make sure a character has enough stats to start as a specific class. There is no way to get more of this fruit during the game, so use them wisely.
..Any bugs or other show stopping glitches?..
Unfortunately, yes.
I encountered two bugs during my play through. The first isn't all that bad and involves the chest image after combat being replaced by a white square. Certainly annoying but not that serious.
The second one is a terrible corruption of one of the later quests. There is a solution that managed to get me past it, but it really sucks, as it requires a lot of grinding if you aren't already carrying specific items.
SpellSword wrote: ↑ May 28th, 2025, 19:21Nature of the bug:
Areas of the dungeon that should load an event trigger the wrong event, no event, or provide an incorrect message that the event on that dungeon tile has already been activated... which it unfortunately hasn't and does not count it towards the quest's completion. There are also scatterings of strange events I've been encountering randomly on these dungeon floors that vanish if I reload the game. Often these seemingly randomly placed events don't trigger anything when stepped on, so they are yet more corrupted mess.
From what I've read, this is an often encountered issue with this quest, and there may be a solution:Seth0708 wrote:Quest: Judgment of the Disturbers
It also can be pretty glitchy, so if something is not where it should be you will need to go and complete one of the repeatable quests to "reset" it and hopefully make the trigger spawn where it should be on this quest; on the forums I have seen it claimed that The Cursed Weapon will cause a "reset" properly every time.
..What's the verdict? Worth trying?..
The design for some of the quests and the terrible bug I mention above unfortunately leads me to say that you may want to skip Wizardry: Labyrinth of Lost Souls. It just isn't polished enough to be worth the frustration.
