Daily iPhone App: Wizardry Labyrinth of Lost Souls

I'm torn on spotlighting Wizardry here -- on the one hand, it's a pretty successful rendition of the old computer role-playing games made for the Apple II and other platforms. Once you figure it out, the turn-based gameplay is nicely complex and provides for some pretty fun dungeon crawling, running your party of various classes and characters through a first person 2D dungeon.

The problem is that getting to that point can be a pain, and if you don't have a lot of experience with this type of game, you might be completely lost as to what you're supposed to do and how to do it. This version of Wizardry's interface is annoying at best and confusing at worst. There's little to no explanation of what your options do and roaming off into the dungeon (if you can figure out how to do that) will likely get you killed and make you give up right away. That's not to even mention that apparently the iTunes reviews say it doesn't work on phones older than the iPhone 4, and it's buggy (though I didn't have any issues with bugs personally).

Still, at its current price of free, I can recommend it to players who really want some excellent turn-based combat gameplay and a little nostalgic taste of the old dungeon-mapping and party creation of the old Wizardry games. Anyone not willing to fight through the very rough issues the game still contains, however, should probably go for something a little friendlier, such as Dragon Fantasy or Guardian Saga.