WiZman’s World Re;Try Review
WiZdom of the Ages
I first covered WiZmans World in a pair of Japandemonium updates back in 2009. There wasn't much to say about this title back then, so it amounted to a basic plot description and some screenshots. The game released on the Nintendo DS to little fanfare in 2010, never ranked in the sales charts, and I don't think I have ever seen it physically in a store, new or used. The only reason I remembered its existence at all is because my brain is weird on interesting names, and this one stuck. So when this game received an English release in the form of the remastered WiZmans World Re;Try , sixteen years after its initial launch, I was the only person on staff to go, "Oh, that game." It didn't make me any less surprised to see it.
The plot of WiZman's World is simple and straightforward for most of its thirty-some hours of gameplay, but it begins with a mystery. Over a century ago, the world was apparently hit with a cataclysm. What, exactly, none can say, because one side effect is that everyone in the magical city of Wizarest woke up one day with no memory of who they were or how they got there. All they know at first is that they cannot leave. The city is surrounded by magically charged biomes referred to as 'dungeons' for the way they seem designed to keep people from leaving. At the same time, the edges of the world are crumbling, and the dungeons occasionally suffer instances of collapse, where the fabric of reality weakens further and things grow strange. For a century now, the sorcerous citizens of Wizarest have sought to find a way out through the dungeon biomes, but to no avail. At the start of the game, the player is introduced to the hero, a foundling taken in by an eccentric sorceress for training. Many years later, after his mentor the sorceress goes missing, it is his turn to venture forth and test the dungeons of the world.
[caption id="attachment_118918" align="aligncenter" width="640"] The start of an odd little story[/caption]
This is not a story-heavy game by any means. Each dungeon has a minor subplot and a critical decision at the end, but it's not immediately apparent how that decision affects anything. There are side quests, but they're neither that important nor that easy to figure out, as they may give obtuse clues and expect the player to spam the A button in the appropriate area to find the exact spot to examine without any visual cue. One quest in particular relies on an item drop with a severely low drop rate from a rare monster. There is a third-act twist that is handled quite well, but in the end, the plot exists to justify the adventure, and not the other way around.
The localization does help, though it is not without its minor faults. In particular, it has a few regular errors, such as using 'conscious' instead of 'conscience' or 'tenants' instead of 'tenets' many times throughout the second chapter of the game. There is something reassuring, even charming, about these errors, however, as they are unquestionably human typos and not an artifact of machine translation. Aside from this, the game's script is well written for what it is.
[caption id="attachment_143247" align="aligncenter" width="640"] It's a weird little world[/caption]
The hero is not alone in his quest through the shifting wilds, as his mentor leaves him her final masterpiece: three fairy-like homunculi, each with her own personality. Due to some quirk of magic, these little ladies are incomplete, and so they require fusion with souls taken from monsters in the dungeons to be useful. This provides a great deal of variety in party builds for the player to experiment with, as every non-special enemy can potentially be converted into a party member at the workshop in Wizarest. A limited number of skills can be carried over between form shifts, while special reagents boost stats which do not carry over to the next fusion.
All of this plays into the combat, which is the game's main draw. WiZman's World maintains a relative-turn system, where the initial order of friend and foe is determined by individual Agility stat values. A unit's action in one turn affects the wait time until their next turn in the combat order pops up. A marquee across the top of the screen helps the player keep track of turn order. There is also a four-element system in play, with enemies and allies being strongest defensively against their own element rather than having strengths and weaknesses go both ways. As an example, while water attacks hit fiery enemies hardest, watery enemies still take normal damage from fire attacks. The fusion system allows the player to mess with this, letting forms inherit abilities against their normal attack type or otherwise tailoring party members for specific boss encounters.
[caption id="attachment_143256" align="aligncenter" width="640"] With lots of strange little monster girls[/caption]
Consecutive attacks by party members enables the combo system, which provides boosts to damage, attack speed, drop rates, or spell point recovery. The exact bonuses depend on the attacks used, which means it can be manipulated to an extent, but generally, physical attacks boost the Agility stat, meaning that the party attacks faster and more frequently, while magic attacks allow for better drop rates and for recovering SP. This last aspect is important, as spell point management is a critical issue for longer battles or extended sessions in a dungeon. While the hero regains his SP after every battle, his little fairy helpers only recover upon level-up or resting at home base. SP recovery in combos allows them to recoup a little on the fly, either reducing the effective cost of attacks or even coming out of battle with a net positive.
This is crucial because WiZman's World has an issue with its healing items. It doesn't have enough variety to meet the needs of the party in combat, and what it does have is gated behind plot progression. For much of the game, the only healing items recover measly amounts for individuals, so in-battle recovery requires magic to deal with big damage or group healing. By the end of the game, the player is able to purchase mid-range and group-heal items in the store, but there does not seem to be an SP recovery item available at any point. The plus side is that health does recover to full between battles, so this is only an issue for big battles, but it is still an issue.
Comparing the old DS screenshots to the new version on Switch, it's obvious how much work went into this one. The user interface needed to be redone, simply due to the original functioning across two screens, but the visual aesthetics of the combat interface, the menus, and the character portraits have been made over completely to fit a standard more appropriate to its new platform and screen size.
[caption id="attachment_143250" align="aligncenter" width="640"] But lots of big action to be had![/caption]
On the other hand, the spritework appears to utilize upscaled versions of the original game sprites for all NPCs, locations, enemies, and homunculus fusions, and looks glorious for it. There are several dozen enemy types in this game, many with palette swaps and all animated for standby, melee, and magic attack poses. For every non-special enemy type, there is an equivalent cute monster girl fusion mode for the homunculi with their own poses and animations for standby, defense, melee, and spells. The people in charge of the remake realized which aspect of the game's graphics was its strongest suit and optimized accordingly.
The game's soundtrack has seen an upgrade as well. The original soundtrack has been remastered to sound better on the Switch, with its new main theme and instrumental versions of all background music done by a Japanese instrumentalist duo known as soLi. The boss battle themes in particular fit the mood well.
WiZman's World premiered sixteen years ago as a mid-tier DS title with a simple plot and dense monster fusion system, and not much has changed in the interim. This remastered edition is an improvement in most metrics of graphics and sound, but the core of the game remains the same. It is crunchy and combat-driven, with narrative as an afterthought, and it makes no apologies about that. It is, was, and shall remain a mid-tier JRPG, but sometimes that's just what an RPGamer needs. To anyone looking for a game that lets them tune out and wreck monsters without high drama attached, it's certainly worth a look-see.
Disclosure: This review is based on a free copy of the game provided by the publisher.
The post WiZman’s World Re;Try Review appeared first on RPGamer .
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