So which is longer? Wiz 7 or BT 3?
Think BT3 can be done faster, as if you are familiar with the game, you can run to certain points to get clues, keys, whatever to finish a zone. On Wiz 7, there are lots of areas that can't be rushed. You can't get the ... uh... Yellow Waffer from the guards in New City until you are able to beat the Savant Troopers. You can't get on the island until you can swim well enough. You can't get into certain areas until you get certain maps or whatever. I just don't think you could do a speed run. However, BT3, well, if you know what you are doing you can run around and grab what you need and keep moving. The number of fights may be ridiculous, but this item or that is always in the same location. Once you are of a certain level, you get more SP and HP, but not that different. However, I'm more familiar with BT3 than Wiz7.
If anyone is interested in a speedrun of Wiz 7 while I do a speedrun of BT3, send me a message. I haven't played it in 10 years so may be rose colored glasses.
It takes forever to make any progress in BT3, with encounters every fucking time you just turn around to got your bearings, HP and SP depleting and Darkness squares sprinkled about, and a general "I hate you even more than Michael Cranford did" attitude of the whole game.
Well, as horrific as BT3 may be, I think BT2 really is "most brutal." Spinners, darkness, and damage squares in timed snares just felt like a kick in the balls when I first played the game. The part that people leave off the list of BT2 horrors is that ... you had to map (on paper) the Snares as well while you were running through them. Playing that game without a walkthrough, you had to map out the Snares on graph paper in real time while trying to solve them. So if you got spun around, you'd cast MACO and SCSI quick to see where you were, then move one square, case LERE, MACO, and SCSI and map it out, then get spun around and do the same.
The last snare in BT2 had a complex puzzle, limited time, and a huge area to map. That I only completed it once, and wouldn't again. Think it was all darkness, and you had to complete the sequence in the back of the BT2 manual just right. When finding encounters, i never had any idea if I moved to the next square or not when the fight would start, so I'd have to start the sequence over... and over... and over...