Wizardry V: Heart of the Maelstrom — stories left

After Wizardry IV—which did not upgrade its graphics from the first game in the series—sold very poorly, Sir-Tech advertised Wizardry V as "breaking away from the Wizardry system of the past".

The game was reviewed in 1989 in Dragon #145 by Hartley, Patricia, and Kirk Lesser in "The Role of Computers" column.

Computer Gaming Worlds Dennis Owens in 1989 noted the game's similarity to the first three games, saying, "Heart of the Maelstrom is, at once, both more simple than Return of Werdna and improved over the first three scenarios".

The magazine's Scorpia in 1991 and 1993 wrote that the game was "better than some, not as good as others".

Compute! said that the game was good for both those new to and familiar with the series, but criticized the IBM PC version's use of CGA instead of EGA or VGA graphics.

In the Cross Review of the game magazine Famitsu, the Super Famicom version received 8, 7, 7 and 5 for a total of 27, and the PC Engine version 7, 6, 5 and 5 for a total of 23.

Tetsuya Asakura of "4Gamer.net", in a review article on the Windows version of New Age of Llylgamyn, described it as the culmination of the series that had continued since the 1st work.

After Wizardry IV—which did not upgrade its graphics from the first game in the series—sold very poorly, Sir-Tech advertised Wizardry V as "breaking away from the Wizardry system of the past".

Computer Gaming Worlds Dennis Owens in 1989 noted the game's similarity to the first three games, saying, "Heart of the Maelstrom is, at once, both more simple than Return of Werdna and improved over the first three scenarios".

Sales outside Japan were handled by Capcom.

Compute! said that the game was good for both those new to and familiar with the series, but criticized the IBM PC version's use of CGA instead of EGA or VGA graphics.