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Number of Ratings: 73
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Showing All | Show by Page - LoquySSS46 (Longueuil, Québec, Canada), March 27, 2024
- Artran (Taipei, Taiwan), February 10, 2024
- ENyman78 (Gold Beach, OR), October 30, 2023
- Andrew Schultz (Chicago), September 8, 2023
- Phil Riley, March 24, 2023
Adventure Classic Gaming
In some ways, Zork III: The Dungeon Master is the original Myst clone. There is a sliding blocks puzzle and some mechanical puzzles, all in the context of little plot and lots of ambience. There are also some standard inventory based problems, and a few very strange people to deal with. As such, there is not much of a story to propel you through the dungeon, just your love of exploration.
-- David Tanguay
- cgasquid (west of house), January 29, 2022
- Lance Campbell (United States), December 24, 2021
- Pirate Gopher (Fort Worth TX), September 2, 2021
- Nomad, August 25, 2021
- heasm66 (Sweden), August 10, 2021
- Ogre (A Cave), January 6, 2021
- Zape, August 23, 2020
- Tim Delag (Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan ), August 20, 2019
1 of
2 people found the following review helpful:
I finished the trilogy and all I got was this lousy grue, May 3, 2019An ambitious final entry into the original trilogy that is a pleasure to read but a veritable nightmare to play, Zork III’s value now is mostly for posterity.
Unlike the treasure hunting of the first two games, Zork III has you on a more heroic mission not surprisingly involving coming face to face with a dark foe of Frobozz. This is ultimately more satisfying than just collecting antiquities, and with high-level prose that provides a chilling atmosphere, it could have been a memorable adventure. However, the puzzles are incredibly hard with most of them being patently unfair. There’s even a non-obvious way to lock yourself out of victory, which was annoying as *$@! then and is intolerable now. And with even less character interaction and humor than earlier in the series, it really breaks the game for me.
That said, if you want to play the game for completionist’s sake, have a walkthrough handy so you can enjoy the ride.
- ishashobar, September 4, 2018
- Guenni (At home), February 6, 2018
- e.peach, December 28, 2017
- nosferatu, July 22, 2017
- TheAncientOne, March 25, 2017
- Spike, February 26, 2017
- EngineerWolf (India), December 18, 2016
- Xavid, December 7, 2016
- NinaS, July 3, 2016
- Denk, April 17, 2016
3 of
3 people found the following review helpful:
A haunting and evocative finale to the Zork series., February 3, 2016The finale in the Zork series is a big change from the first two games. The game is smaller as to puzzles and map, but much bigger on ambiance. This game feels like a refining purgatory, with a chance to demonstrate your courage, mercy, trust, and bravery. The setting is dreamlike and thoughtful. The puzzles are very difficult. For all of them, it is easy to try to solve them, get part way through, and have no idea if you succeeded or failed. Almost all of them are time-based, requiring you to wait, do several actions in succession, or to return frequently to a given place. Some places (like the land of shadow or the viewing table) will stay in my mind for a long time.
The Royal Puzzle breaks up the gameplay a bit, but I loved it. I first solved it in MIT Zork; as a mathematician that is terrible at most IF puzzles, it was fun to have a puzzle that I could finally solve on my own. I literally used a walkthrough on every other puzzle in this game.
- electromancer, July 19, 2015
- Pegbiter (Malmö, Sweden), June 15, 2015
- Thrax, March 11, 2015
- shornet (Bucharest), March 23, 2014
- KidRisky (Connecticut, USA), December 20, 2013
- Egas, August 18, 2013
- Robb Sherwin (Colorado), June 21, 2013
- DJ (Olalla, Washington), May 9, 2013
- absentsock, April 27, 2013
- hyst3ria, March 23, 2013
- dk101 (London, UK), March 2, 2013
- Jimmy Gonzolo (New Mexico), January 21, 2013
- EatenByAGrue, January 3, 2013
- Puddin Tame (Queens, NY), October 27, 2012
- kala (Finland), May 26, 2012
- Christiaan, March 27, 2012
- Jim Kaplan (Jim Kaplan has a room called the location. The location of Jim Kaplan is variable.), March 20, 2012
- Nav (Bristol, UK), November 24, 2011
- André St-Aubin (Laval, Québec), May 31, 2011
- Rotonoto (Albuquerque, New Mexico), May 16, 2011
- JasonMel (Florida), March 28, 2011
- artao (SW Wisconsin), February 2, 2011
- snickerdoddle, January 27, 2011
- Narcisse, November 26, 2010
- johno158 (New York, NY), August 22, 2010
- Alder (San Francisco), August 15, 2010
- Muskie, August 11, 2010
- Xervosh (San Jose, Northern California), August 10, 2010
- Doug Orleans (Somerville, MA, USA), April 10, 2010
- lavonardo, April 2, 2010
6 of
8 people found the following review helpful:
A difficult end to the trilogy, March 17, 2010This game picks up where Zork 2 left off (minus your inventory- I really could have used that magic wand!). You're stumbling down an endless stair to a cavern where you find your old friend, the brass lantern.
This game departs a bit from the first 2 games, in that the object is not to find all the treasures and drop them in a case. You're still looking for all the treasures, but they aren't apparant as such, and the game is looking for certain behaviors from you.
One complaint on this game is that one of the puzzles (the most important one, you might argue) is timed, so in order to gain the permanent light source, and one of the treasures, you need to do the puzzle RIGHT AWAY, otherwise you render the game unwinnable. And in Zork 3, it is easy to make the game unwinnable and not realize it.
It was possible in Zork 1 and 2 also, though it was much more apprarant- if you died at the volcano and you left some treasures in the balloon- they were unreachable. In Zork 3, you need to decide at one point whether to go for a staff or treasure, how to respond to a mysterious viking ship, choose between to solutions to a shifting wall puzzle, decide what items to try to steal during a time travel puzzle, decide whether to kill someone attacking you or not (and the choice is not obvious),decide WHEN to do a puzzle involving teleportation- and the wrong selection on any of them makes the game unwinnable, and you never realize it as such unless you go back and do things the RIGHT way.
Now, I don't know that this is UNFAIR, because I like difficulty, I would only wish I knew what I was supposed to do before I screwed myself up. If you do what many people might and explore the entire world right away, you've already lost too much time.
That being said, some of the puzzles are freaking BRILLIANT! A puzzle where you need to slide a mirror is difficult to visualize, but very smart. The shifting room puzzle gave me that real "AHA" moment as well. The time travel puzzle makes sense when you think about it, it's just not exactly clear how time travel relates to the time machine itself. If you're a fan of Zork I and II then you shouldn't be really surprised by the solution of the mysterious ship puzzle, and you should relish the chance of being able to walk past some grues in the dark. (A feat you will repeat in Spellbreaker, and possibly in Sorcerer).
The game does tie up the trilogy nicely, provides a good ending point, and gives you the challenge you deserve, without bogging you down in inventory management (very much) or much of a light puzzle (if you run out of light you either missed the first puzzle or did something stupid, like entering a lake with a torch).
If you like Zork I and II you will like this as well, just be ready for a bit more serious a tone and more difficult puzzles.
- hari (Erlangen, Germany), March 15, 2010
- Mr. Patient (Saint Paul, Minn.), December 6, 2009
- lupusrex (Seattle, WA), October 4, 2009
- Damon Graff (Boston, MA), September 11, 2009
- Cuxxu (Albany, NY), August 26, 2009
- googoogjoob, May 20, 2009
- John D, March 14, 2009
- qwrrty (Carlisle, Massachusetts), February 10, 2009
- albtraum, February 8, 2009
- Linnau (Tel-Aviv, Israel), October 31, 2008
- Nathan (Utah), October 26, 2008
- schifter (Louisville, KY), August 17, 2008
- Anders Hellerup Madsen (Copenhagen, Denmark), July 21, 2008
- Nathaniel Kirby (Pennsylvania), July 7, 2008
- Mike Ciul (Philadelphia), June 4, 2008
- TCWT, May 2, 2008
- Ghalev (Northern Appalachia, United States), March 13, 2008
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