The Adventurers' Guild

I've always been kind of frustrated by the game play of the DOS version of BT3. A few examples:

1. The lights go out when you step on an anti-magic square (unlike BT1 & 2)
2. Special squares trigger repeatedly when you turning around in them (try to get through the entrance to Valarian's tomb in Sacred Grove and you'll see how #1 and #2 combine to make things a pain)
3. Portals are invisible from a distance
4. You have to use the K key (instead of the up arrow) to open doors
5. Sorcerer Sight doesn't seem to work very well

On the other hand, it's always easy to find monsters, if you want them or not (bring the speedboots or the game could take forever).

The Apple 2 version is quite a bit nicer in some respects. A few dungeons (Sacred Grove, Shadow Canyon, Tar Quarry) have built-in lighting, like the wilderness, which is nice. In general, this version seems to be a bit more balanced. The graphics aren't great, but they're still as good as it gets for Apple 2.

Has anyone played the Amiga version? I would be interested to see how that compares.

A few more things to add to the list of things that seem "wrong" with the DOS version:

- Monsters don't have breath weapons

- The combat messages appear very slow unless you hold down a key while they're appearing. There doesn't seem to be any way to speed it up.

- The random selection of monsters is a bit off in some places. For example, it's sometimes possible to fight Arboria monsters in UnterBrae, Gelidia monsters in Arboria, or Viscous Plane monsters in the dry parts of Kinestia. I understand what they were trying to do here (make the monster selection more varied by using monsters from neighboring levels) but it had some unintended consequences.

On the plus side, this version does seem to have some sort of strengths/weaknesses based on elemental magic. Try using a Flame Horn in Gelidia and you'll notice it does a ton of damage.

hi, when i started bards tale 3 on the amiga i did not get far i think i only done about 3 dungoen levels and the game was as good as the first two there was no problems that i found with No.3. i did however have a few probs with destiny knight on the amiga hence the reason i never fished it still i hope to do that now with the ms-dos version

I was able to run all three without any problems from windows 2000. I have tried XP for BTIII and not had any issues. I haven't tried the first 2 on XP though. C