Just finished Wizardry III: Legacy of Llylgamyn. Out of the original trilogy this game was the weakest. There were a lot of good ideas, but I felt like they were not implemented well. The game does what Knight of Diamonds did well by making every floor important to the quest and adding some puzzle elements, but the puzzles were not fun or fair. One example is on the third floor you run into a NPC that asks you to trade your soul for an item. I have no idea why he asks for a soul because to solve the puzzle you need to have a broadsword in your inventory for him to take in trade for a medallion. No explanation or clues. Also two of the riddles require you to have knowledge of tarot card games. Also in the game some floors cannot be accessed by a good party, some cannot be accessed by an evil party, and some require that the party is not entirely neutral. This is a cool idea, but switching alignment is tedious and random (Luckily I made my party with 5 neutral and 1 good so I only had to change one party member). Instead of switching alignment you can create two parties, but the amount of experience gained from monsters in this game is almost nothing. I was not able to even grind past level 10, when usually your party should be at level 13 by the end of the game. Due to this the game is the hardest of the trilogy.
I played through all three games on the Japan PS1 game Wizardry: Llylgamyn Saga with no issues at all with the in-game translation and can highly recommend it to anyone interested in the series. It is definitely the most accessible with the dungeon auto mapping as you explore, updated graphics, and the ability to save to avoid permadeath. I had a lot of fun with my no reloading permadeath run of Wizardry 1, but I have been saving in the sequels to save time/sanity so I can actually finish the series. On to Wizardry IV!
