"The series almost starts to show serious punch here."

Wizardry III is a serious step in the right direction for the ''original multi-player RPG'' although it is ultimately not enough to make it a treasured classic. Sadly, you still need to have bought Wizardry I, and even more sadly any characters transferred in are reduced to level one and can't use the regular cheat to improve obscenely. Talk about a double whammy! The reason, at least, is plausible; you can only take DESCENDANTS of previous heroes, who will of course be wet behind the ears. As for the story, your party needs to find the Orb of Llylgamyn to restore peace to the land of--you got it--Llylgamyn. There are six levels, and you will actually discover some interesting twists. Two levels are not accessible by good-aligned characters, two are not accessible by evil characters, and the sixth is incredibly nasty and requires a special item to get anywhere. It turns out to be unfair later on, but the first five levels are well-organized, with puzzles and special encounters for certain items--even if one puzzle is an obscure reference to the Tarot and the rest are slightly trivial. Perhaps the classiest post-puzzle item was one that allowed you to go more or less directly to levels 4/5 so you didn't have to walk through 2/3 along the way--finally, Wizardry gives the player a break! Character building is still the same, with Lords, Samurai and Ninjas being complex fighters, Bishops being dual priests/mages with ability to identify items, and Fighters, Thieves, Mages and Priests making up the core classes. Character class transferring is still possible, but you can probably solve the game before then.

The game has the same controls as the previous Wizardry installments; in dungeons you have forward/left/right and frequently can't see doors without a magic light spell. Combat is still logical, with fight/run/parry/spell/use item options. However they've added what look like placemats to signify special squares. On these squares, messages appear at the top of the screen rather more tidily and much more frequently than in the first two scenarios. The only time this is a nuisance is when you try to enter a level that's the wrong alignment; there's a brief message and you're bumped back to the castle. Although you can take advantage of this bug, it's frustrating when you slog through the cute moat/castle dungeon on level one and are arbitrarily presented with a choice of doors. Maybe a spirit barring further passage would be corny, but it would be FAIRER. Still, the details in this game are nicely improved, with neater monsters even if their pictures still look ugly(Crawling Kelp, who give no experience, are an example.)

The town is still the only place you can save the game, and there's the usual disk recovery method for when you're lost in the dungeon and the power is cut(i.e. about to be killed so you shut the computer off.) It turns out to be an interesting slap on the wrist, and it is not as bad as Wizardry I as the monsters do seem to be better balanced. In town you have the usual shops and temples where you can try to resurrect people and then ashes, hoping your character isn't scrubbed from the disk, which happens(randomly) more than it really should. There's also uncursing; although many cursed items are obvious(i.e. PLATE MAIL -2) you may get saddled with a bad one sometimes. Given the prohibitive cost it is better to save the game, go in a dungeon, and try to equip and if it's cursed suffer a power outage(''Oh dear, bad things seem to happen all at once to me!'')

One thing that sadly wasn't sharpened up enough was the graphic display. The third time through, the programmers should have tried for significant visual improvements, as they really didn't seem to do much else. Yes, it's nice you can toggle character and command views, but you still have to refresh them when a character is poisoned. They also cut corners; for puzzles, there is an occasional picture that looks like a monster, there's an invincible dragon that attacks you on level six if you don't have an item(this goes through the combat engine too,) and as for graphic animation, FORGET IT. In fact, the cover-page that opens when the disk boots has 80 column text--which was very ugly indeed for the Apple. It set off a decent hi-res intro picture.

The challenges in this game are mostly of mapping and of building up a party(well, two parties to visit both floors, but you can transfer items through a neutral character, and it's all still less impossible than Wizardry I.) You have a few critical combats, and I've pointed out that one of the puzzles is also unfair as it involves knowledge of Tarot cards. It seems Sir-Tech always puts something bizarre in their games that makes it tougher by default. They might as well ask questions about professional sports sixty years ago, or various golf courses. But there's worse, and it drags the game down from nice to shaky; one item is not what the game says it is, and you're never given any advice to the contrary beforehand. You're just supposed to figure it out(''Hmm, that item seemed too easy to get, but those Wizardry folks are real hard-***es, so the REAL one must be somewhere else!'') So although this game's puzzles are less unreasonable than the first two, the plot is generally more robust and even non-linear although visiting good levels first is much easier, and monsters/special scenes are almost entertaining, there's the feeling it was still cranked out more than written, especially given the small bugs which weren't fixed. Too bad, the game had potential and didn't try to over-reach itself and even gave you an occasional break.

Reviewer's Score: 4/10, Originally Posted: 09/29/00, Updated 11/02/01