Individual item skill is gained by using said item. Spells can be learned. For battle, commands are selected and the player then clicked on the target. There is a great deal of talking to be done to complete the investigation. There are many puzzle to be solved. All done with the mouse or keyboard shortcuts.
Conceived as a complex real-time adventure game with dialog and combat but with contrastingly simplified interface that is still "more than click-click-click". It does not take place in the same Universe as the main Wizardry series and gameplay has nothing in common with the main Wizardry series (even critics who loved the game gave it poor ratings for calling it "Wizardry").