Ultima III

Ultima, third of its kind.

Well, well, well.  The third installment of the Ultima series.  I have to admit, I'm wasn't much of a fan of the first two.  As examples of very early RPGs they are interesting, but as games in and of themselves, they are lacking.  But then, in 1983, Ultima III is released.  My main experience with Ultima III is from the NES.  It is probably one of the first few computer RPGs I ever came across.  There was The Bard's Tale and Wasteland on the C64 then Dragon Quest and Ultima III (Ultima:Exodus) on the NES.  For nostalgia's sake, I'm playing through the NES version this time.  I did some research and it appears that the differences between the PC and console versions are negligible and do not affect the core game.

An audience with the king.

Continuing, loosely, from Ultima I and II, a being known as Exodus is now threatening Sosaria, the world from the first game.  Exodus is creation of Mondain (Ultima I) and Minax (Ultima II) and he is now summoning creatures to threaten humanity (and others, I guess).  Lord British summons "you" to begin your quest and defeat Exodus.

Adventurers, party of four!

You begin the game by creating your party.  It's a bit confusing as there are a lot of options to choose from: 11 classes and 5 races.  The classes are mostly combinations of the standard Warrior, Thief, Priest and Mage classes and the races determine your maximum stats.  For example, a Paladin is a Warrior/Priest while a Ranger is a Thief/Mage type and a "Fuzzy" might make the best mage with higher max intelligence and a "Elf" might make the best Thief with highest max. dexterity.    It's the first time you're granted a party in the Ultima series, the previous incarnations have been solo affairs.  On the NES you will see all four members of the party trailing behind the leader.

Ahead on our way!

Once you've gathered your party, you are on your way.  Beginning with Lord British's Castle and the local village (Britain) you need to explore the world and talk to as many people as possible.  Each town you come across has important information for proceeding on your quest.  From locations of hidden towns and equipment to learning some extra skills, it's important to talk to them all.  Some locations will require you to use the 'moongates' in order to get there.  These gates move location and destination according to the phases of the world's two moons.  Figuring them out is important to proceed in the game.  One town is invisible until a particular combination of moon phases is present.  Then the town appears and you can enter to purchase some of the best equipment of the game.

Have at you!

Along the way, you'll fight many, many enemies.  The enemies are visible on the map still and you can usually avoid them if you'd rather.  In the NES version, with your train of party members, avoiding some of the encounters is tricky as contact with enemies anywhere along your "train" will initiate combat.  Combat has also been overhauled.  Instead of the "exchanging hits until one dies" method of combat, each encounter takes you to a combat screen which allows a simple, more strategic battle.  Dungeons have the same 3D view but look a bit better and are actually important this time around as you must explore almost all of them to procure "marks" (tattoos that provide immunities) and other information needed to beat the game.

Into the underdark.

Fighting enemies and exploring dungeons will net you experience and gold which you can use to level up and buy gear, but skill points can only be increased at the shrines in Ambrosia.  Ambrosia is a separate map that can only be accessed by boat.  Specifically, by driving your boat into the ominous whirlpool which wanders the oceans.  When you wake up, you'll be there.  There are few enemies in Ambrosia and you can explore fairly easily.  The four shrines (one for each stat) are there and donating money to them will increase the relevant stat for your characters.  It's an expensive process but necessary.  Once you have all the marks, all the cards, all the clues you need and your stats and equipment are good enough, you can assault Castle Exodus and face Exodus himself.

Tranquil Ambrosia.

I chose to try Paladin, Ranger, Thief and Lark for my party.  This gave me access to low-level spells from both Priest and Mage schools while giving me a good amount of melee damage as well.  I probably would have done things slightly differently playing through again, though, as some of the equipment selections are quite limited with this combination, esp. the Thief and Lark had limited ranged weapon selection.

Castle Exodus!

The game was engaging from the first and I enjoyed exploring the local continent.  Eventually, I procured a boat from some off-shore pirates and explored the wider world out on the oceans.  One of my biggest sticking points was cash.  You need a lot of money in the game and it doesn't come easily.  The dungeons will often cost you more than you find and you also have to keep your party fed at all times. Buying food is not expensive, but you have to constantly keep enough cash on hand for it.  The gear starts out fairly expensive, but the second tier weapons and armor (found in the hidden city) are incredibly expensive.  I found a town that had a ton of treasure chests hidden behind a store and was able to "farm" it to gain lots of gold.  Even this, however, was a long, tedious grind. It basically involved entering the town, heading to the back of the shop, stealing everything in sight (while avoiding guards), teleporting back to Castle Britain, then heading to Ambrosia to increase stats or Dawn to purchase gear.  Occassionally, you'd have to restock your teleport items, keys, food or other items.  It took hours of grinding to make enough money.  The rest of the game, however, became much easier afterward and I considered it worthwhile.

Loot, loot, loot, repeat!

Overall, I found the game very enjoyable.

The plot was a bit thin and the NPCs were a bit shallow but exploring and finding bits of information scattered throughout the game world was fun.  The selection of classes to choose from was good and your choices matter.  If you pick the wrong combination of classes in the beginning, you're going to have a rough time.  My picks were not terrible, but I think the game would have been easier had I picked others.  No class is particularly bad, but combinations of classes can be.  Party makeup is important.

I found the layout of the world and the way it gradually expanded as you acquired new travel means to be much better done than the previous Ultima games.  The scifi elements are mostly gone as are the references to Earth.  The towns and dungeons were fairly generic, but they all were unique and had different layouts and items.

The graphics are standard 8-bit in the NES version and glorified ASCII art in the PC version.  Nothing to write home about, but it's still and improvement from the previous Ultimas.  One of the more interesting additions is the line-of-sight restrictions.  You'll notice in some of the screenshots areas of black behind walls, trees, etc.  It shifts around as you move and adds some difficulty to exploring.  It's a concept I've only seen very rarely in games.  The sound in both versions is better as well and I'm fairly partial to the NES version here as well as it has a nostalgia factor for me.

Ship, with status windows, moon phases and line-of-sight visible.

The base mechanics of skill points, damage, health and experience was underwhelming and easily exploited.  I didn't do it much this time (other than the gold farming) but it wouldn't be too hard to create some super characters early in the game and cruise your way through it.  Levels increase every 100 experience and skills increase at a rate of 1 per 100 gold donated.  It's a linear scale so it tends to speed up near the end rather than the typical exponential systems that slow down leveling later in the game.

Some might find grinding experience and/or gold a bit boring and I can relate to that.  The game is also still pretty rudimentary as it is early in videogame history.  The lack of depth in plot and world building might dissuade modern players as it can seem pretty casual and light for an RPG.  However, if I were advising someone wanting to experience the Ultima series, I would probably recommend they start here.  The first two were forgettable and I don't think you'd miss anything from skipping them.  Ultima III, though, has a lot of unique qualities that you'd do well to experience for yourselves.

You bet you will!  Good game!

Ultima II: The Revenge of the Enchantress

This game had me stuck for a really long time.  It's not that it's difficult, it's not.  It's just that it's not a very good game.  The first Ultima was kind of fun and quirky and was interesting enough to keep me involved, but this one didn't have the same magic.

Plot-wise, Ultima II picks up where the first one left off.  You've defeated the evil wizard, Mondain, but his disciple, Minax has emerged to revenge his death.  And that's it... not much of a plot.

The game is almost exactly the same as the first Ultima.  Same graphics, same controls, etc.  It's located on Earth this time instead of Sosaria and takes place over 5 eras of history.  You start on medieval Earth and, through time-gates, make your way around Pangea, 1990AD, which is closest to "modern times", the Aftermath, which is a post-apocalyptic world and the Time of Legends, which is supposed to be the origin of time, or something like that.

The place is England, the year is 787...

In addition to the different time eras, you are also able to travel to the other planets of the solar system this time around.  Each planet is habitable and can be landed on and some of them even contain dungeons to explore.  Oddly, every time period and every planet contain the same exact set of enemies; So, in medieval England, Pangea, post-apocalyptic U.S. and Jupiter you will face Orcs, Thieves, Wizards and demons.

Space!

Sounds good so far, right?  Well, let's get on with the bad.  I'll start from the beginning.  You can choose your class from 4 options, however, since you can only use spells in dungeons and you don't actually need to go to a dungeon for anything at all, you may as well just pick one of the two melee fighters.  Wizards and Clerics are pretty useless.  Next, unlike the first game, there are no quests and, therefore, no reason to explore any of the dungeons or towers.  There are a couple of cities that you need to go to, to level up your skills and to get the rocket ship, but beyond that, there's no reason to visit any of the other cities.  You eventually get to space, but the only planet you need to visit is Planet X making the other planets irrelevant.

My useless Cleric.

In addition, the best way of leveling is to get yourself a boat.  Once you have that, you can shell enemies from the sea.  The ship has weaponry better than most land items and keeps enemies from ganging up on you since they cannot get to you at sea.  Essentially, I fought land enemies until I got the requisite item then procured myself a ship.  With the ship, I farmed enemies until I had enough money to buy the best weapons and armor and upgrade my health to several thousand points.  Then I went to the city with the rocket ship, launched to Planet X, got the item there and returned to face Minax.

Farming the baddies...

Overall, it was a very easy game and easily exploited.  I suppose you could try to play the game without exploits, but the game all but discourages you from doing so.  Going to dungeons and exploring further than necessary will only diminish your health and gold, leaving you weaker than before you entered.  You get no special items or quests from exploring them so there is, literally, no reason to do so.

Well, she's dead... so there's that.

So, non-existant plot, non-existant quests, half the classes available are useless and most the cities, planets and dungeons are irrelevant.  Did I miss anything?  I finally beat the game and it seems like it took forever to do it.  Hopefully, the next Ultima will be better.

A poor game... play it if you must, but avoid it otherwise.

Ultima I

 Released in June 1981, this was the beginning of the Ultima series.  I never actually played this one before.  I started in on the series around Ultima 3 but I thought I'd play them all for the sake of thoroughness.  This is one of the first games for the PC (in this case it was for the Apple II, Atari, Commodore, etc.) and probably the first RPG.
You start with 100 coin and a dagger.  After heading to town to buy some better equipment you can head to the nearby castle to gather the one quest available there.  You then can travel to the other castle on the starting continent or go dungeon delving.  The dungeons are randomly generated based on a template but there is no reason to explore more than one of them as all of the quests that require you to kill a dungeon monster (all 4 of them) can be achieved in any given dungeon.  The dungeons themselves are interesting as it switches to a first-person, vector graphics display.  One of the strange mechanics in Ultima I is the health system.  Depending on how many and which kinds of enemies you defeat in the dungeon you will gain a varying amount of health on exiting.  Meaning, if you go into the dungeon and kill 8 monsters then return to the surface, you will gain something like 128 health for that. It's odd, but it works out alright.

Title Screen

The wide world of Sosaria

After grinding long enough to gain more experience, gear, health and some for of water transportation, you are ready for the next phase of the game.  I should mention at this point that there are exactly two types of towns and two types of castles in the world.  All towns fall into either the Type-A town or the Type-B town.  Each sells about half of the equipment available in the game.  Similarly, all Type-A castles offer the same type of quest, i.e. find such-and-such location, whereas Type-B castles offer the other type, kill such-and-such monster.  I mention this because this next phase requires you to complete all 4 of the kill-a-monster quests.  Once completed you can return to the castles to receive a colored gem as your reward.  With all four gems in hand you can head to space... that's right, space.

A typical town

A typical dungeon

So you buy a shuttle and head into space.  I'm not really sure why, but the goal here is to shoot down 20 enemy fighters, which look an awful lot like TIE fighters.  Once you do this you gain the rank of "Space Ace" and can go ahead and head back down to earth, er, Sosaria.  If you have the Space Ace rank and then rescue a princess trapped in any of the castles, she will tell you about the Time Machine hidden nearby.  This thing just keeps getting crazier and crazier.  Once you find the Time Machine you can board it and, assuming you have al 4 gems, you can use it to travel to the past.  Apparently, the bad guy, Mondain, has grown so powerful that he is invincible and it is only be traveling back 1,000 years before Mondain gained too much power that he can be defeated.  After a quick trip back in time and a quick battle, Mondain is cast down and you get a nice screen of text telling you how the world now loves you and sees you as their hero.

The Star Wars portion of the game

The final boss, Mondain

This game goes from dungeon crawling to world exploration to space shooter to time traveling.  It's a strange game but highly ambitious.  It's a little odd that there is no real incentive to explore the world.  You need to visit, maybe two of the world's 20-ish cities and only one of the world's 20-ish dungeons.  There are only about 6 hours of gameplay here, depending on how many times you die while grinding for cash and health.  I was able to complete the game in a single day.  It really inspired a lot of ideas in future RPGs, however.  Particularly, I believe that Final Fantasy is heavily inspired by this game.  Final Fantasy has a more coherent plot (marginally), but it also sends the players to space and back in time to defeat the final boss.  Overall, this game was fun to play, partly because of the crazy directions that the plot went and partly just to experience this piece of gaming history.