Wizard’s Crown was released by SSI in 1986 for the Apple II and Commodore 64. It would be ported two years later for the Atari ST and DOS machines. Strategic Simulations was the dominant force in wargames from 1981 into the early 1990s. SSI began to wade into the role-playing game arena with releases such as Questron and Phantasie. Both did very well for the company and spawned sequels. In the late 80s SSI would sign a deal with TSR, Inc. to publish official Dungeons & Dragons games. The Gold Box games were thus born and took the company in new directions. Although SSI never stopped publishing wargames, the D&D license became their main source of income and produced their best-known products.
I am sure that role-playing enthusiasts were taken by surprise with Wizard’s Crown. I am quite sure many expected another role-playing game in the same vein as Phantasie or Questron. What SSI tried to accomplish instead with Wizard’s Crown was to take a fantasy theme and meld it with a wargame. The main focus of Wizard’s Crown is tactics. Each combat that takes place within the game runs about 40 minutes in length. You can choose to have the computer run a quick auto-battle which is over in seconds but nowhere near as efficient. Your casualties will run high.
The game is brutal. If you’re someone that is turned off by games where you are forced to grind, Wizard’s Crown is the king of grinding. Each battle is a fight for survival. In this game to get anywhere, you have to improve your characters.
You improve your character by taking your experience points and converting them into skill points. Each class, depending on your selection, will want to specialize and build up certain skills in their skill tree first. You are grinding and improving your characters all of the time. You use experience points to build up your skills and then you use coin that you find or sell items you’ve looted off of the dead, to purchase new equipment and training. This constant need for experience and coin in order to improve yourself is very real.
When the game begins you find yourself within the walls of a city. In order to survive you’re going to spend a great deal of the first part of the game roaming the residential district. Here you’ll encounter only thugs which are the easiest opponents in the game. The more that you traverse and patrol a particular area the less frequently encounters will occur. Once you’re done roaming the residential district you can begin to search and make your way through the poor areas. I made the mistake of venturing outside of the city and was beset upon by monsters in a matter of seconds. My entire party was wiped out very quickly each time.
There are five classes in the game to be explored. Fighter, Ranger, Thief, Priest, and Sorcerer. The game manual which comes with the game recommends that you have at least 3 Fighters in your party. The Sorcerer takes a long, slow time to properly develop so I recommend that you do not multi-class with this class. The other classes I recommend you multi-class. You create a party of eight characters. I created a party consisting of 3 Fighters, a Ranger-Thief, a Priest-Thief, a Fighter Priest, a Ranger-Priest, and a Sorcerer.
There are not a lot of graphics or bells and whistles associated with the game. Much of the game is text and it screams tactics. When you move into battle you can see how this game progressed into the future Gold Box tactical battles. I can also see why the game can be intimidating for many expecting a role-playing experience.
The game spends a lot of time and energy on injuries and the healing of those injuries. There is first aid or combat medic training and then there is prayer which is a magical way to stem blood loss or heal all wounds. When a character is injured they have body injury points and if they are bleeding or suffering from blood loss that blood loss continues until it is treated. There is an attention to detail here.
Thus far I am working on building up the combat awareness of my Fighters as well as their weapon skills. I am working to increase the Karma score of my Priests because a high Karma allows your prayers and magics to succeed in healing. I am working on improving the haggling skills of my Thief characters so that I can get the best deal when selling looted equipment. I am working on improving the Evaluate skill for my Sorcerer to ensure that I won’t miss any magic items after combat comes to an end. I have yet to earn enough coin to purchase any meaningful armor or weapons for the characters in my party.
I spent 32 hours this year playing and defeating The Bard’s Tale and I spent 32.5 hours playing and defeating Phantasie I. I can see already that I’m going to be putting in a good 40 hours into Wizard’s Crown in order to beat this thing.
Wish me luck. Until next time……
Good luck, brother! I was always too intimidated by the sheer scope of minutia in this game to ever get very far in it, but I look forward to seeing how well you fare.
It is daunting, I think you’ve hit the nail on the head. I would imagine that many, like yourself, were turned off or intimidated by the setup. Thank you for posting Chris