Ghislain, thanks for the reply! I missed this response until today. Yep, I got my VIC-20 and was ready to roll with the game - sadly my 1541 drive I've had for my 64 since the 90's but stuck in the closet for a couple of years is out of alignment and my attempts to fix it were for naught. But I'm still enjoying the game in VICE!
Things I love:
1. The fact that when you choose a spell level you see the actual spell names -- no memorization required like Ultima or Phantasie of some list of numbers or letters. For that matter, all of the "R" to Run commands are listed out -- again, who wants to have to look at a manual for commands?
2. Nice 3D dungeons with features in them -- in a VIC-20! -- they look good from what little I've seen of them so far (see below)
3. Ultima/Phantasie-style overland map.
4. Retro-cool graphics in the Inn, Temple, etc.
5. Tight gameplay -- unforgiving and challenging.
I just got my first "Special Item" today - a +10 Flail - cool!
Suggestions:
1. For low level adventuring in ROQ III, turning in gold for XP is very dicey. If you drop ALL gold into XP, then get poisoned by monsters that do not drop gold after you kill them, well, I've found myself lost in those situations and glad for frequent save games! So....I would suggest a time limit on the poison. Say 40 turns? That way if you save your healing up you at least have a chance to survive. Otherwise you're dead and looking at a hard road to 500 gold to rez at the temple, unless you have a level 3+ Priest in your party when someone is poisoned and you're out of gold. For this reason I've found myself sticking close to town with my party and avoiding the dungeons until later. Am I doing it wrong? Will fountains cure poison in dungeons? As a tip to players I'd suggest pumping all Gold for XP into your Priest at least until the character hits level 3...!
2. Allow Charm Monster to work a bit more frequently on low level monsters as I went about a dozen times before finally getting it to work. Otherwise it makes more sense always to cast Magic Missile. Unless...see #3...
3. I'd love it if in ROQ Sixty-4 you would add the Bard's Tale-like ability to add certain (all?) monsters to your party. If you limit it to simple beasts like Giant Rats or whatever they could have their special ability - poison, petrify, whatever, but otherwise work like Monks using "unarmed" attacks with a scaling claw/bite. If leveling them is too much of an involved process, a player could use them as-is for a while, then drop and charm/tame a new creature after outgrowing the non-leveling addition to your party. The ability to add monsters to one slot in your party was one of my favorite features of the Bard's Tale series. (Not sure when they added that - III?) This could also be helpful if you lose the beast in a dungeon to poison or something - you could drop it and add a new creature.
3. A flavor description of the other towns on the map would be neat (though I've only been to two so far).
4. Auto-map feature for Dungeons (probably only realistic for the ROQ Sixty-4 version). Either an auto-map or "flavor" objects in hallways or occasional torches, cobwebs, etc. on walls to help remember where you are visually. Either way. I was never very good with the old Wizardry type dungeons!