The Short-Lived Adventure of Wizerd

It's been a while since I played a RM2K3 game, but given some of the comments that have been written on a recent article by Addit about the continued viability of the engine, I thought it was about time I went back and had a look at a few. One of the points I made in the article was that it doesn't matter what engine a game is written in, from a gamer's point of view, (and that's the one I have) it's the game that I appreciate, not the engine, and I generally appreciate a good story and compelling characters.

Wizerd only has one of those, but it makes no secret of the fact that it was designed to the following stricture 'intentionally created to be a crass and unambitious parody of traditional RPGs with no coherent narrative or structure.' So I knew what I was getting into.

So we begin with a Wizard, Wizerd that you get to name. I called my Belgium because I really like the word and Belgians make great chocolate, which is the colour palette of the entire game. So Belgium starts the game being told he's in a Kingdom called, predictable, Kingdom and he has to rescue a Princess (who you also get to name, I went with Damsel in keeping with the parody theme) from overwhelming evil. Well can't get any more predictable, traditional than that.


Way to buck a fella up there, dev.

So after collecting keys from the a random chest, drawer and the refrigerator you enter the castle properly to discover that the Princess has gone missing, and you are tasked by the King to find her, he of course has no idea where she is because he's a tyrant but as always the servants have all the answers and a handily placed chambermaid can point you in the right direction.


Well, there's my quest.

As the game progresses so does the humour, this may have the oldest storyline known to mankind, the hero's journey, but it's having a lot of fun with it. I'm always a little wary of parody games as it is too easy to go overboard with in-jokes and self referential comments, but Wizerd toes the line quite well, restricting it's lampooning to the most basic of RPG tropes which everyone who has played more than a couple of games can recognise.

So our naive but determined mage goes to find his princess, traversing custom landscapes to a jaunty though ultimately repetitive custom soundtrack and visits such memorable places as Village Town and the Wet River, and faces dangers untold and hardships unnumbered, well a bunch of wolves, slimes and rabid vegetables actually, to make it to the evil tower where she is being held.


Oh no, flying turtles.

Battles are of course all random on the world map because this is 2K3, with an active turn based system, but since you start the game with the cheater's weapon (not sure if that was intentional or not as you do find progress weapons along the way), you can pretty much one shot just about everything you come across and gleefully loot their bodies for gold and items to be going on with. The battlers however are all custom and a bit of work has been dedicated to them, the final battler, Pure Evil even has a beaten battler to let you know when you are close to beating him. Each level of the tower increases the difficulty, with purely random encounters on the first level, random and visible static on the second; random and visible that chases you on the third and so on. By the time you make it to where the princess is being held you've gone up 5 levels and learnt impressive skills like Poizenem and Ahys (OK, so I'm a sucker for bad puns).

So you rescue the Princess and then end up in an alternate dimension where you are attacked by bread and mini bosses who eventually lead to the pure evil boss and after you defeat him, well it's all a dream. Yep that one.

Or you could choose a different path, and rather than fight the evil you can listen to the voices in your head and run away to fight another day. If you do you'll make it out of the dimension and return the princess to her father and then you can take on another quest to the fairy realm and another which eventually leads to a goblin uprising and the pure evil behind it all and to find...It's all a dream.


Yep, it doesn't matter what you do, the ending is the same.

I had a lot of fun with this little game, it gives you just what it says on the tin and a little bit more, which is always a bonus. Yes there were a few glitches along the way, the goblin king turns into a green blob on the screen when you talk to him, save is restricted, which is always a little irritating, especially in a comedy, the music whilst all original does become a little grating, and I'm still unsure about the Cheater's Weapon at the start. Still I wasn't expecting Cinemascope and Dolby sound here, and I did enjoy the short-lived adventure of a Wizerd named Belgium.