Wizardry: Labyrinth of Lost Souls

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.

Avrul, god of creation, made the Draguun, a race of dragon-like beings descended from the dragon gods. They excelled in magic. So much so, that they destroyed themselves in a great magical war.

Welp.

After the Draguun wiped themselves out, the remaining races succumbed to horrific infighting, until the Empire of Darua united the people.

100 years later, the emperor of Darua fell into madness, leaving three distinct kingdoms -- Diement, Qhopati, and Haersant. They formed a powerful alliance and a second golden age began.

Unfortunately, as the age progressed, monsters began to reappear. The "Elder Ones," demonic entities that were once sealed away by the angels in prehistory, began to appear.

During the chaos, the people clinged to their fragile peace, as adventurers appeared, searching for legendary artifacts of the Draguun while also hunting bounties to ensure the safety of the alliance.

Of course, very little of that has anything to do with anything, as the real plot is something along these lines: There's a few big dungeons in town. Go explore them.

Tropes used in Wizardry: Labyrinth of Lost Souls include:
  • Bokukko: Thanks to the Japanese voiceover being left in (as the only option no less), we get to hear the female Porklu hero be exactly this even in the English version.
  • Bribing Your Way to Victory: The game launched with a DLC pack for $5 which extends the intro / tutorial dungeon into a Bonus Dungeon; justified due to the game having been out for several years in Japan (a second one is incoming that doubles the level cap and adds a smaller Playable Epilogue dungeon.) Less justifiable (albeit nothing not included in the Japanese Wizardry DLC store) are the "Growth Seeds" which add extra points to character creation, and the "pay real money for in game items" DLC, such as paying $2 for a rare item that drops on floor 9 of the dungeon.
  • Damn You, Muscle Memory!: Your characters are assigned a random number of stat points at creation, from 6 to 47. It's heavily weighted towards lower numbers. Many, many players over the years have accidentally canceled the screen (rerolling the numbers) right before realizing they had a character with 30, 40 bonus points or more.
  • Doing It for the Art: A PSN only, very low key release, with nary a manual or tutorial to be found, of an RPG series that has been missing from Western stores for 20 years, from a company that's been out of business for 10. Why do something so unlikely to be profitable? Because it's Wizardry, it helped create the Console RPG genre and JRPG genres, and that's all we need to know.
    • The fact that porting it to the US is such an unprofitable venture is also why we didn't get it until three years after the Japanese release, where Wizardry is still a big name.
  • Fan Service: Surprisingly present. The human female's outfit is virtually Stripperific, and the gnome and porklu girls have fairly loose definitions of "pants", the gnome especially. The dwarf and elf girls are a little better about this.
    • In the depths of the dungeons, you'll start running into Succubi and Incubi. Both are completely stark naked -- the Succubi has Godiva Hair to make up for the fact that she's making an obscene pose at the camera, the Incubi is striking a pose from a greek statue, "pointing" away from the camera for decency.
  • Excuse Plot: Said excuse plot is almost word for word the same as the Excuse Plot from Wizardry 1, 2, and 5. Only thing missing is a justification as to why the dungeon exists.
  • Meganekko: Gnome females ding all parts of this pretty darn hard, especially with the voicework.
  • Nintendo Hard: Taken up to 11, but still not quite as hard as the original Wizardry games from 1981.
  • Our Dwarves Are All the Same: Subverted hard with Pegma and the generic male dwarf, who are the farthest thing from 'short' you can think of, being the tallest characters in the game by a notable margin, with only the human males coming close. Do note the females of the species play this straight, being about half the size of the males.
  • Shout-Out: The female dwarf sounds suspiciously like she's saying "Nipa~" from time to time when attacking with a weapon.
  • Wiki Rule: There's a Japanese wiki here, but the US one has not been updated as of yet.
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