Yes, I know I'm not special, that plenty of you have done this, and no one cares what I've done.

However, my wife doesn't care and I have no one else to tell.

W5 was my favorite, by the way. Again, I know no one cares, but again, my wife doesn't either.

Of the main series, I've played 1, 2, 4, 5, and 8. Of these, I haven't ever finished 8, but I've finished the rest.

My favorite games in the series are 4 and 8. I really like 4 because it did something different, and I really do like the idea of relying on temporary summons for most combat. In fact, I wish there were more games like Wizardry 4, but perhaps considerably easier.

By the way:
* For Wizardry 2, I actually think the NES adaptation of the scenario is better than the original Sir-Tech version. (The Super Famicom version is based on the NES/Famicom version, but the Saturn/PlayStation version is not.)
* Have you tried any of the Japanese spin-offs? Since 5 is your favorite, I think you might like Wizardry Gaiden 4. (Note that you'll probably want a translation patch here, so that you can understand the NPC dialog, and I would advise you to never use the spell that removes cursed items, as there's a save corruption bug associated with that spell.)
* Also, speaking of Japanese spin-offs, don't forget that Elminage Gothic has a lot of similarities to early Wizardry, and it is available on gog and is quite cheap (and sometimes gets on sale with major discounts on top of that).

W8 has many superfans, but for me its a hot mess. Never any idea where I should be. Stuff scattered all over the place, lugging junk all over for no apparent reason.

I intend to try the other stuff you mentioned eventually, but now I intend to embark on M&M 1 to whatever, in order. So that will take awhile. Thanks for the suggestions!

Why not MM I-X? Well, X is Uplay exclusive, so I guess that's the issue.

Wiz8 is janky in some ways, but it's a wonderfully unique and fascinating game. My top three RPGs are all like that. (The other two are Daggerfall and Neverwinter Nights.) However, the game leads the player very well. No worse than Fallout, at least.

There are a lot of great blobbers you could try. Elminage Gothic is considered the zenith of jWizLikes. Starfish, Inc. is lauded for a reason. I've played some ZeroDiv games—Labyrinth of Lost Souls and Class of Heroes—and I can understand why people don't like them.

If you like the amateur cartography, I've heard, on good authority, that—along with The Return of Werdna—Chaos Strikes Back and The Dark Heart of Uurkul are masterpieces of the crawl & map genre.

If you like Might & Magic, Swords and Sorcery - Underworld might be worth looking into.

Other interesting games of note:

Wizards & Warriors. Great level design, awkward combat, and very janky. Made by Bradley.

Infinite Adventures. Bad graphics, voice acting, and word building. But, the mechanics work rather well, improving some of the issues of the Etrain Odyssey games. Gog rejected it, so...

Potato Flowers in Full Bloom. On the scale between strategy and puzzle, this veers closer to puzzle, but it breaks a lot of the rules of Wizlikes.

Frayed Knights. Interesting take on encouraging the player not to save scum. The sequel is not going to happen, because Jay Barnson discovered the very open secret that fictoneering is much more profitable than gamedev.

Some other games of note:
* The Bard's Tale Trilogy: If you've been playing CRPGs since the early Ultima and Wizardry days, there's a good chance you've heard of them. Basically, they're comparable to Wizardry, but with better graphics and without some of the harshest mechanics (though BT1 does have an intentional softlock in one of the dungeons in some versions). Note that not all versions are good: The DOS and Amiga versions of BT3 are too buggy to be fun, and the Commodore 64 version of BT2 has some issues that make the late game incredibly frustrating.
* Saviors of Sapphire Wings: A very Japanese take on the genre. There's a fixed cast (though the game lets you respec them into different classes; Rarone is canonically a Migmy healer, but you could make her, say, a Paladin with the stats of a Dwarf if you want, though note that you can't change the main character's main class (but you can subclass them)). Biggest problem is that there's a lot of mandatory dialog, there's one midgame dungeon that overstays its welcome, and the game is too hand-holdy even near the end.
* Stranger of Sword City Revisited: Included with SoSW (except, apparently, in the Japanese Switch release), this game is considerably harsher and less hand-holdy. You create your party this time around, and things can get difficult. (A character who reaches 0 LP will permanently die, though note that a character won't lose more than 1 LP unless you revive them in between.)

There's also Crystal Project, which I'm playing right now. It's not a blobber; instead it's a platformer/RPG hybrid, where the battle system has a Final Fantasy 5 style job system (except the game calls them classes for some reason), along with MMO-like threat mechanics.

False Skies may be worth looking into as well, but I haven't done so yet. Also, I have yet to play Mary Skelter.

Bard's Tale is absolutely worth playing for the historical significance alone. I'd add Dungeon Master and Pool of Radiance to that shortlist, despite their different combat. The latter two are also great games in their own right, in my honest opinion.

I've heard Experience makes good blobbers, but I've only played a bit of Operation Abyss: New Tokyo Legacy myself.

Worth noting that Dungeon Master is real-time, as is its stand-alone expansion, Chaos Strikes Back.

Note that you should play Dungeon Master before you play Chaos Strikes Back; CSB basically assumes you have the knowledge and practice from playing DM, and it's *much* harder. (In particular, CSB starts you in a precarious position, and if you aren't familiar with the controls, you do not stand a chance; this is unlike DM which has a gentle start to allow you to learn the controls.)

lost in W8 yet apparently comfortable with a wireframe skeleton of a game 100 years old. True story.

After hand-mapping challenges, traditional adventure gaming puzzles, rival parties, and the funhouse—rumored to still strike fear in many a man—to name just a few trials of the first seven, only to find a game with more hand-holding than Morrowind confounding. Just goes to show what a truly fascinating creature man is.

Yet, the US government trusts me to operate a 1200 MW nuclear reactor. Funny , huh?