"The best rougelike game ever, it even beats Nethack!"

Well ok, it isn't really a rogue-like, but it looks like one. Exile III - Ruined World by Spiderweb Software is the third installment of the Exile series. It continues the story of the war between the Exiles and the Empire and what a story it is!

Graphics: 7/10
Alright, so the graphics aren't great. Remembering it IS a rogue-like sort of game (top down view 2d). But what an improvement on the other games! All the maps are basically a grid with different sprites and objects (there are bitmaps showing the different tiles when you install it) but there are no lines unless of course you switch them on. The monster sprites are interesting and well drawn and unlike the previous games monsters which are "big" take up more than one square. Spell graphics are pretty good, portraits a little less so. But overall the whole game looks... nice.

Sound: 10/10
Ha ha! Excellent sound to accompany the game. While there is almost no music, only a bit of trumpet fanfare, the battle sounds are awesome. Explosions, zaps, ka-ching's you name it and it has the right sound for it. The clicking noise on buttons never gets annoying nor do any other sounds (although if you blow up a lot of slimes that screeching can get a bit edgy).

Gameplay: 10/10
This game has one of the best stories in history, it's good enough to rival Planescape Torment. In the previous games, you learn of a select bunch of humans exiled to the underworld. Naturally they want to return and war breaks out between the Exiles and the Empire. In this installment the Exiles finally do return only to discover their former home has been infested by plagues of monsters. Throughout the story your party of surface adventurers try to discover the source of these plagues and find a safe place to live. You will receive ridiculous amounts of side quests to do, either to earn you money, food or a special item. The difficulty can be altered to make the monsters have half their usual hit points but even in some cases it is a challenge to stay alive. Battle is turn based, and you have several options, fighting, spells, archery or running away if things get hairy. Levelling up your heroes takes experience and money, and besides using the character editor it is unlikely you will max out all of your statistics. There are plenty of ways to earn money, one in particular is a courier service where you can be asked to deliver messages or kill and supply magical goods. And one more improvement over the previous games, NO MORE TYPING! You can simply click on words in the dialogue to prompt a new question if you don't want to ask it yourself.

Replayability: 10/10
While I have only finished this game once (and thankfully it is very long) there is so much to do in the game you will never run out of things to discover. And if you want to try and go off track in the story I'm not quite sure what might happen but hey! Give it a shot (but save first!)

Overall: 10/10 One of my all time favourite games

Reviewer's Score: 10/10, Originally Posted: 09/02/05