Wizardry 3: Legacy of Llylgamyn

Wizardry 3: Legacy of Llylgamyn is the third entry in the founding computer role-playing series from Sir-tech Software. Our record gives 1983, which matches the original release on the eight-bit machines of the time; the MS-DOS version came later, as was standard for Apple II titles making their way to the PC.

Wizardry stands with a small handful of programs from which the entire computer RPG genre grew. A party of characters advances through a maze drawn in first person, the map is kept on paper, combat resolves in turns and dead party members stay dead. The absence of automatic mapping is a deliberate part of the experience rather than an oversight.

The third instalment builds on the world of its predecessors and works with the legacy of an earlier generation of heroes, as the subtitle itself signals. The series was conceived as a continuous whole, with characters and progression designed to carry from one part to the next.

In 1983 the computer RPG was still finding its form. Graphics were reduced to wireframe corridors, the world was described in text, and everything else the player supplied from imagination. That austerity is why Wizardry still rewards planning rather than reflexes.

The influence of this series reaches further than it first appears. Its character creation, turn-based combat and first-person maze traversal were adopted wholesale by a range of Japanese games that took Wizardry as a starting point and developed its rules in their own direction. That lineage is more visible in Japan today than on the Western market, where the genre eventually went elsewhere.

Want to see what a classic dungeon expedition felt like? Wizardry 3 starts inside your browser window here on OldGame.cz.