Play Wizardry Knights of Diamonds Online

Wizardry Knights of Diamonds came out for the NES in 1990, published by ASCII Entertainment. It was part of that wave of early console RPGs that tried to bring the dense, complex feel of computer dungeon crawlers to a living room audience. You got a full party creation system and a first person view into some very unforgiving dungeons, which felt pretty ambitious for a cartridge at the time.

You control a custom party of up to six adventurers, choosing from classes like fighters, mages, and priests. Your main goal is to navigate a multi level dungeon, fighting monsters, disarming traps, and ultimately defeating a boss to recover the Diamond. The game uses a strict grid based movement system, screen by screen, and combat is a turn based affair where you input commands for your entire party each round. It is notoriously difficult, with frequent random encounters and a high penalty for death; losing a character means creating a new one from scratch. Playing it feels like a tense, methodical puzzle where every step forward is a calculated risk.