Publisher: Infocom
Developer: Infocom
Year: 1982
Platform: Everything

An ambitious final entry into the original Zork 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 fuck 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.