Ultima III Day 4 - I -

I've been playing Ultima III a lot today and I'm not done yet! I started the day by killing some more guards. After a while I decided that it was time to explore the cities so I set off and I talked to everyone in pretty much all cities. I discovered a lot of clues about exotics (not needed I guess), the silver snake, Dawn etc. But what I REALLY wanted to know was the location of those +4 bows! At first my guess was that they probably were in that crazy thief city or something full of locked doors. So I bought a couple of keys, my first set of keys in fact, and headed there. I was disappointed to find out they didn't have the bows however I did see a whoooooole bunch of treasure chests! I took a mental screenshot of that and then headed off to the only other location where the bows could be: Dawn. I sort of remembered where the city was from the last time I played Ultima III and I had uncovered the clue about it appearing at 0,0. So I went in the forest and lucky me, just when 0,0 hit the city was right in front of me! What luck! So I entered and YES they have the +4 bows, however they cost like 6500gp! That's extremely expensive! So I was wondering what I was going to do when I noticed they have a stable in there. I asked for some horses and they tell me it's going to be 800gp? Screw that!

So I decided to steal them. I went to the right side door, unlocked it, killed the two merchants and took a horse. Next thing you know the guards are after me which I'm sort of used to by now but then something magical happened: I could outrun them. Easily. The horses were much faster than the guards! So I slipped out of there without fighting which was awesome. So at that point my mission was clear: get enough money for those bows!















At first I resorted to my old trick of going down the dungeon north of the castle for money but that was a bit slow and a bit boring by now. So I decided instead to loot that city full of treasure chests. I boarded my boat and set sail to dreams of riches and crazy powerful bows. Surprisingly most of the treasure chests at the right of the armor shop can be taken without alerting the guards which is pretty cool! However to maximize my profit before leaving I always go down and steal a couple of chests from the armor shop and then kill the three guard groups who come down once I'm discovered. Then I leave and repeat until my guys are too weak. At that point I go back to the castle, go up to the dungeon, go down to the treasure room and use the healing fountain they generously provide me. At this point I have about 8000gp so I'm going to buy my first +4 bow soon, I'm really excited!

Ultima III Day 3

So the big theme of today's post is guard killing. Today I decided that I was finally going to try and get clues around the towns. So I grabbed a chunk of food off the grocer (again) and headed off. At first I talked to everybody in Britain and then went to Grey. At one point I entered a small room with a bunch of treasure chests and some thief attacked me! So I killed him and promptly started looting the chests using the open spell. Next thing you know I'm attacked by guards! So I'm thinking okay well I'm done..but no! I killed the first wave and that with near dead characters! At this point something flashed in my head. I thought "Holy hell I can kill those bastards somewhat easily and they give me a bunch of experience points!". So I started killing guards to get my levels up :)


Obviously it wasn't THAT easy, especially when you're doing it with characters who sometimes don't have much health to begin with so what happened happened one of my character died. Instead of reloading the last save I decided to head to the healer, I preferred that to losing 30 minutes of gameplay. However at that time I actually had a lot of money because I exploited the fact that treasure chests respawn in dungeons when you leave them. The dungeon right up north of the castle has a room filled with treasure on the second level so for about 20 minutes all I did was go down to the second level grab the chests go back up leave and then redo. I got about 3000GP quite quickly doing that and then I headed to Ambrosia for some stat raising. At first I concentrated on dexterity hoping it was going to make my characters more accurate in battle...however I'm not sure this game uses dexterity to calculate accuracy. I sure damn hope so. I'll probably repeat this many times until I get tired of doing it. I can do the important stuff later once I'm extremely strong :) Here are my current stats as of this writing:

Ultima III Day 2 - II -

I have to admit that I am disappointed with Ultima III, it's simply not as good as I remember it to be. Design wise it is really similar to both Ultima I and II except that you are controlling a party of adventurers instead of going solo. But that's not really the source of my deception, it being more the dungeons than anything else. I simply hate the dungeons in Ultima III. This time they are literally mazes, very low res mazes that is.

The problem is that if you're going to have complicated dungeons you have to be able to show them in detail. I've played Eye of the Beholder and I liked it but you could actually see what was going on in that game. In Ultima III everything is orange and boring. There's no way you can get your bearings in such a setting. The only thing you can possibly do is map the dungeon and that's something I'm not willing to do. When I first finished Ultima III I used a walkthrough with maps so I probably didn't notice how much of a pain in the ass the dungeons were but now I sure know. I loved the dungeon in Ultima I, you didn't need to map them they were simple and they were all about combat but now this is getting out of hand. I just hope that the future Ultimas can have detailed dungeons. Remember! I don't mind dungeons if I can see where I'm going!

The other thing that bugs me once again is the absolutely crazy food consumption, especially in cities. I can't believe how much these gluttons are eating in cities! It's turning me off of exploring because while I'm exploring every nook and cranny of the cities my guys are eating like crazy. From memory the food problem becomes negligible from Ultima IV onward. I honestly can't wait.

Some good news now, I discovered that bows are still better than exotics. It makes me feel a bit better about my choice of classes. I can't imagine the destruction we will wage once we get our hands on magical bows!

Later!

Ultima III Day 2 - I -

So I ended up going back and re-creating my second paladin as a bobbit. Since I wanted his role to be that of the main cleric in the party it was logical to have him as a bobbit, sacrificing some dexterity in the process. I also realized that I could create a bunch of dummy characters, form a party with them and one of my main characters and transfer all of their gold and food unto him. I did that a couple of time giving me quite a bit of gold and a lot of food. First thing I did with that gold is buy chain mail for my two paladins and bows for everyone. That was pretty cool :)

However I have to admit I am a bit disappointed with the game so far. The beginning is sloooooooow, I couldn't find any monsters! That combined with the once again absolutely insane rate of food intake makes for a pretty stressful early game. Running around looking for monsters while seeing that food counter go down and down. I was frustrated because I was spending far more money in food than I was making. Luckily at one point I stumbled on a pirate boat and immediately started hunting for the exotics. At first I didn't really remember how to get them, I kept (L)ooking for them but something didn't feel write. I kept looking for a 'search' button but there wasn't any. After looking on every island I check out the player reference card and noticed the 'other' key and then I remembered that I had to use that. At first I 'searched' with it but then out of the blue I suddenly remembered that I had to dig, so I did that and pretty soon everyone was equipped with exotics.















Now I understand that me doing so kinda ruins a part of the game. But it also brings some complaints from my part, namely the sameness of the character classes once you reach the endgame. At this point in time my party is much weaker than it would have been if I had picked a bunch of extremely specialized characters such as wizards, clerics, thieves and whatnot since they'd all be equipped with exotics anyway! I realize that's my own fault since usually you're supposed to look for exotics much later in the game but still I don't think an all powerful set of weapons and armor should exist. At least my characters will all be able to use +4 bows once they become available which is pretty cool while still wearing awesome armor.

Obviously at this point my party is extremely powerful because of the exotics. I had no problem going into a dungeon and getting the mark of kings to lift the 500hp limit on my characters. The reason I knew that is because I read it on Ophidian's blog when I first stumbled on it :) Now from my memories of Ultima III, here is what I remember:




- There are four marks and four cards to get. I believe all 8 are contained in the 8 different dungeons of Sosaria.

- To up my stats to their maximum I have to visit the island of Ambrosia by way of the whirlpool. However I don't really remember how much money I need.

- To get past the serpent I have to yell a certain word but I don't remember what I'm supposed to yell.

- I need to insert the four cards in a particular order to defeat Exodus but once again I don't remember the order.

That's pretty much it. I don't remember where I can get the magical weapons so that's a bummer, anyhow I wouldn't have enough money for them. Right now my money is all going into buying food :)

I have to say that after a slow start the game has certainly picked up. I'm not sure it can live up to the memories I have of it though, it's basically like Ultima II in design except it's not as random and you have a party of adventurers instead of going solo.

So next I'll go into other dungeons to get whatever lies in them and go from there!

Ultima III Day 1

Woohoo Ultima III! I freaking LOOOOOOOOVE this game! This is probably THE game of my childhood, at least the 0 to 10 years old portion of it. I love everything about this game...or maybe I should say loved. We'll see when I finish it again as an adult :)

One thing I always like about western rpg's are their really in depth character creation system. I love it and I swear that I spent a good two hours yesterday thinking about my party in Ultima III. It's quite complicated. The typical party in a game like this is a Fighter, a Thief, a Cleric and a Mage. However there are problems with that configuration. I don't like having only one front line warrior. So what, he's supposed to plunge head deep into danger while the others stay back? I don't like that. Also I don't like pure mages because I'm not a mage type. I'd much rather have a good archer than some dude throwing magic missiles. I like thieves and clerics however as the game progresses they start to feel limited because of their equipment limitations. So it was complicated.

At first I had decided on a Fighter, Paladin, Ranger and Cleric party. That would have given me three characters capable of healing, three characters capable of throwing down (the cleric would have been able to throw down also in the early game) and the ranger would have had some thieving abilities and able to do some sorcery. Seemed perfect...except for one problem. The ranger is limited to +2 weapons and I want everyone in my party to eventually be able to equip the strongest ranged weapon there is. Now I know that the Exotic armor and weapon can be equipped on any character regardless of class but the weapon is not ranged so that bugs me. That meant that my ranger would have had to use a weaker ranged weapon or an exotic and I didn't like that. So I decided to switch it up.

My final party is two paladins, one barbarian and one lark. The two paladins will act as my twin healers although one of the two will be more combat oriented while the other will be more clerical in nature. The barbarian will be my thief, a thief that can use every weapon out there that is. And the lark will be my replacement for a mage, being able to use every weapon and a good amount of mage spells. My party is a bit weak on magic but so far I'm pretty happy with it.

The two paladins are dwarves while the other two are elves. The logic behind the dwarves is that their weakest stat is intelligence which isn't needed for a paladin. At first I thought about making one of the paladins a bobbit since the bobbit is maxed out on wisdom. However they also have poor dexterity. So I don't know. I might go back and revise that to be honest since one of my paladins is supposed to be magic oriented so it would be logical to have him as a bobbit.


The other two are elves. For the barbarian it was a logical choice since his job is to be the thief in the party. For the lark it was a bit more complicated, I thought about making her a fuzzy which has maxed out dexterity and intelligence however he has a piss poor 25 STR max. That might have made her useless as a fighter in the endgame. I don't want to have to rely on her magic, that's not really my style. I mean if I'm going to have a lark with 25 STR might as well have a Wizard no? So I decided to pick the elf instead. That one was a hard choice but I can't really go back on it without gimping my lark. I want her to use the strongest bow and kick ass with it, not throw wind arrows.

So overall I'm pretty happy with my bunch of miscreants. I'll go play my heart out :)

Escape from Mount Drash

Man this is the worst game ever. It might actually be more awful than that E.T game for the atari. The fighting mechanics in this game are simply horrendous and at a certain point when you stop seeing things on your overhead map it just becomes retarded. It took me like 5 tries to understand how to solve that damn 13th level. I couldn't get into the portal! Eventually I realized that there were gems scattered around so I tried to teleport but my guy wouldn't teleport where I wanted him to. Just when I was ready to throw my computer screen I discovered the blast spell. That made it easy to finish the game.

I didn't even want to play this game, it's even an Ultima. It has the name slapped on it but it's not an Ultima. Sierra decided hey let's make a generic game and slap on the Ultima title on it that'll sell! This is called "Rotting Dragon's trip through Ultima", not "Rotting Dragon's trip through Ultima and all its derivatives, imitations, influences and every other game who used the Ultima name to try and make a profit" or whatnot. I shouldn't have to play a game like Mount Drash! *cries*

God damn.

Ultima II Day 3 - FINAL -

I've finally finished Ultima II. The whole last day of playing was spent killing monsters for gold. Can you believe it? That's all I did. At first I went around earth circa 1990 but there weren't enough monsters so I headed to pangea which was a lot better. Eventually though it still wasn't enough and I headed to the Time of Legends. There everything went much faster.















This game really wasn't good. Just to show you, here I am struggling to remember what exactly I did in this game today. It was really monotonous and it's affecting my memory :)

Let's see where I left off yesterday...oh yes. The first thing I did today was up my stats again at the hotel. I was really pissed off near the end when I realized that the more money I gave the clerk the more he raised my stats. If I had known that earlier it would have saved me a lot of running outside to save each and everytime I got a stat raised. I was also really pissed that every point of charisma after the 70th one was absolutely useless. Things cost as much at 99 than they do at 70.

New San Antonio. Unsurprisingly, when I talked to him he said he had a quick blade so I boughSo after raising my stats a bit I decided it was time to get the power armor. So, yes you guessed it, I killed monsters for money. Afterwards I bought the armor. At that point I had remarqued something funny; if I saw someone who was not moving in town then that person surely had something important to say. Well except for guards obviously. It got to a point where the only NPC's I talked to were the ones who weren't moving. There was one like that in the prison int it from him. Some other guy told me "She must be a 9-9-9!!" I thought he meant a year at first but I guess not. I talked to the oracle nine times to see all he had to say. At first I was really pissed off I thought he was telling me bullshit, he rambled on and on about some old man under a tree I couldn't believe it. Here I am giving loads of cash to this dude and he's raving like a lunatic? I wanted to kill him. But then when I was in NSA (again!) I opened a couple of doors and found an NPC standing below...some letters spelling "atree". Honestly that is so awesome and retarded at the same time. I guess British felt poetic but didn't have the technology to show his vision so he improvised :)

Like I thought yesterday, the power armor was the key to space travel. This time when I launched the shuttle it stayed in the air. I was confused at first since it said "You are drifting through space!" and I was like what the hell? Then I hit H for hyperspace and it asked for some coordinates, at this point I was on the verge of pulling my hair out but then I remembered "She must be at 9-9-9!" and I typed in that. Like magic it worked and I was on planet x. Well, after crashing the first three times that is but after learning how to land I was on planet x. Nothing much to see there. In fact there's nothing much to see in this game so that wasn't any different.

I have no idea how I had the presence of mind to type in "6-6-6" to return to earth but I sort of thought it must have been that. Back down I killed monsters up to about 5000 at which point I bought the ring from the old man (thanks to the oracle for pointing that out). With the rest of the money I finished upping my stats, maxed out my hit points and bought as much food as I could. See pictures:















At this point I was finally ready for Minax. Thus begins truly the only really fun part of the game. I went to the the time of legends with the plane ready to wage war. I didn't meet much resistance outside since I had already wiped out everyone but once I got inside it got a little bit more interesting. I headed straight up to the throne and was ASTONISHED that she wasn't there! I couldn't believe it! Had I forgotten to do something before going? I couldn't think of anything so I looked for her in the castle.


















I kept running around and couldn't find her. I was getting attacked from all sides but I was making mincemeat out of them. The castle is pretty messed up. You find all sorts of weird people like an insurance salesman (?) and a cleric who tells you to believe in the devil. Well I guess the cleric wasn't that strange but the insurance salesman sure was. At this point though I was on the verge of finding Minax but I had a problem...this invincible Balron was after me and he was literally taking chunks out of my HP every time he hit me! After running away from him I managed to trap him in a corner.















I was finally free to face Minax! The battle was sort of anticlimatic. I found her, hit her once, she teleported to another chamber, I hit her again, after five hits she dies. A weak game ends weakly, fitting isn't it? However the final line is pretty nice "All her works shall die!". Classic :)















Oh well. I'm done with this game and I couldn't be happier. I certainly don't regret playing, I had to. It's a game I played in my childhood and never understood but now I understand it. It's okay, there are worse games than that out there I guess. But I'll surely never replay it, once was enough. It will undoubtedly end up being the worse of all Ultimas I will play during my little journey. Now it's time to move on to Ultima III! Man am I excited about that one, Ultima III is probably THE Ultima of my childhood, it's the one I saw my father play all the time. I can't wait to finish it again!

Ultima II Day 2

Well I guess this will be the only day 2 post about Ultima II. Ultima II is certainly less exciting for me than Ultima I was, there is definitely a lot more tedium involved in this game. I take less pictures because of that and I guess I have less to comment on too. But there are a couple of things about this game I noticed:

- Dungeons are retarded. Compared to Akalabeth and Ultima I they're EXTREMELY complex so you can get lost really easily requiring you to map them if you actually want to accomplish anything. However, the dungeons seem completely useless. Everything I need to get I can get by killing monsters outside so why do I need to risk my neck inside? On top of that I just simply don't get enough torches off of monsters to go down even two levels, as a fighter I wouldn't be able to go back up. Maybe if I had picked a cleric I could cast ladder up and down spells and light spells making the trip feasible at least.

- This game truly rewards delinquent behavior. I don't see how someone could survive the early game without resorting to stealing food and even in the late game it's a big big help. Money isn't as easy to get than in UI so I'd like to spend the little I have on worthwhile stuff. Then there's the whole guard killing thing. How crazy is that? I was absolutely desperate to find some keys and since I couldn't find any I grew quite frustrated. At one point I blew a gasket and decided to go on a killing spree, I killed a guard and TADA that freaking gave me keys! Now are you telling me that I have to kill legions of guards to get keys? That's just plain retarded. I understand why Garriott received complaints from concerned mothers now :)

- This game just plain ain't that good. Well actually I already knew that but still. Honestly though it's better than I thought it was, it's actually playable which I didn't think it was but it's still pretty bad. I can't wait to be done with this. It just feels so random and there aren't any quests or things to do. You just run around kill stuff...that's pretty much it. Oh well.

At this point I have a plane which I am really happy with. I tried to take a shuttle but..I don't know what happened there seems to be a bug of some sort. The shuttle goes into hyperspace but then it sort of doesn't work? I briefly see the ztats screen and then I'm on the ground again with the tons of guard coming to get me. I guess I should try to get the power and reflect armors first in case it's anything like Ultima I (need to wear a specific suit of armor to go into space).

I'll leave you with a nice pic of me and my plane, talk to you guys tomorrow!

Message to Natreg

So where can I get the FM Towns version of the games? I suppose they're impossible to buy so I'd have to download them. Where can I do that?

Also what FM Towns emulator would you propose?

Ultima II Day 1 - III - and some more notes

Okay so I am sort of getting the hang of this. Thanks to Natreg for the tips, greatly appreciated :) And for your information, yes the patch fixes the 99-00 rollover so I don't need to worry about that.

At this point I understand how the gates work. I had read the manual before starting the game for the first time but when I read it again after playing for a bit it just put everything into focus. So now I can actually travel around without being confused which really helps a lot.















At first I created my typical male dwarf fighter character but I ran out of food. Everything was expensive and I couldn't seem to get anything done so that's when I realized that I would have to change my strategy. So I created a Female Elf Fighter instead. I thought about a thief for 5 seconds but I decided that the female elf was enough of a change for me. I also traded in some strength and stamina for charisma. The result is that stuff in towns is much cheaper, allowing me to get a great sword right off the bat instead of a sword. The added agility also allowed me to steal some food in towns.

Afterwards I went to the bar to ask some tips and wrote all of that down. Then I went out to fight monsters in the hope of getting a blue tassle..with no success. I'm not kidding I spent HOURS killing monsters and I was getting every freaking object in the game but never the god damn tassle. I was PISSED. Man this was so boring you cannot imagine (or maybe you can). Running around killing monsters, stealing some food, giving money to LB for HP, rinse repeat. There were boats everywhere trying to kill me and for my part I was just trying to avoid them to make sure that I could get one when I finally got my tassle. Well that moment finally arrived just when I was getting ready to go to bed. Wooo!

All of a sudden things got rosy. I was traveling the seas and totally blasting the hell out of monsters with the cannons it was awesome. I decided to check out to check out the hotel california in New San Antonio like some dude told me to in some backwater village and then I remembered that there is a guy there who can raise my stats if I give him money. However I thought for sure that he was a cleric and I could see a cleric behind a locked door..but I didn't have any keys! I ran around trying to find keys somewhere but I couldn't, so I guess you get keys by fighting monsters like with everything else but I never actually got any! At this point I realized something funny: There's nobody in this town. In most or all towns there's people walking around right? But in New San Antonio there are merchants locked behind their counters and guards. That's it. There's no one...except for this dude in Hotel California in front of the cleric's door. I thought that was suspect, he's the only accessible guy in the whole city. So I went outside, saved, then came back in and gave him some money. So I decided to give money to the guy in front of the door (I saved beforehand of course). And surprise he said ALAKAZAM! and raised my agility by four points! So it was him and not the cleric! So I gave him a bunch of money and he raised a bunch of my stats :)

At this point though I'm not sure what I'm supposed to be doing. I have the brass buttons for the plane...but since I have no idea what I am supposed to with it I haven't yet tried it. I have no idea what to do with the gems I'm getting nor with most of the other stuff for that matter. This is what my character looks like at this time:














So we'll see where I go from here. My plans for now will be to raise my stats at the hotel quite a bit, buy the best weapons and armor I can at the shop, try to find some keys, talk to everyone (I haven't yet really done that, I just don't have enough food and money yet to waste it walking around) and then use the plane. How come the horses are so useless? You actually use MORE food on horseback than on foot! Where's the logic in that?!

IN OTHER NEWS

There was a copy of Ultima IV for the Sega Master System on ebay and I almost bid on it but I decided not to in the end. It would have cost me $25-35 (depending on the shipping) which I thought was too much. I already have the best version of the game on the PC so to spend another $30 for another inferior version doesn't make much sense. I'll spend 20$ Canadian max on it, if I can't get it for that price I'll just play the PC version. It'll be easier to take screenshots that way :)

Ultima II Day 1 - II -

Wow this is as bad as I remembered it. I have no clue what's happening I can't even get my bearings.

Okay. So basically the way I understand this, the time gates don't only make me travel through the world but also through time. That means that I take a gate in present time North America it can warp me to Australia in the future or the past­. Now that I've understood that, how the hell am I supposed to get my bearings in there it doesn't make one freaking sense! :|

Ultima II Day 1 - I -

Oh my god, I'm scared. This game scares me. Of all the games I had for the Commodore 64 this had to be the most incomprehensible one, it just didn't make any sense! I had seen and played Ultima I, III and IV and at one point I asked Dad "hey how about II?" and at that point I think he told me "you don't wanna know" but of course I DID want to know.

Oh man where to begin? This game just felt OFF, it just felt FUNKY compared to all the other installments. I didn't really understand at the time how Ultima II could feel so much worse than Ultima I AND Ultima III. The only other time I can think of a an awful sequel sandwiched between two much superior version is the whole Devil May Cry debacle (great first game, awful second game, return to form in the third). Obviously I had no idea at the time that the Ultima I I played was a remake of the original thus it was actually an even more recent game than Ultima IV.

But really Ultima II was crazy. The colors looked funky as hell, the battle system was like so fast paced, you could miss your opponent 25 times and then hit him once and it just went by so fast. I missed the VVVVVVVVVVVVVV SHOOM sound in Ultima I when hitting enemies. In Ultima II it was basically like a ping or something.

And then there's the fact that the game was impossible to understand. WHAT WAS I SUPPOSED TO DO? The crazy part about Ultima II is that even with a freaking trainer I never could get anywhere! I think I was Minax's island but there were some invincible monsters on there I couldn't believe it I was maxed out and I couldn't kill em all! I never killed Minax. In fact I never did anything in this game.

This is what the game looked like on the commodore 64:


But now things look a bit more rosy. With the EGA patch the game actually looks like Ultima I which is a GREAT thing (well the PC Ultima II port anyway). It seems infinitely more playable. I'm scared but at the same time anxious, I've never really played this game I have no idea what I am supposed to do. This should be interesting to say the least. So I'll go try it and talk about it more later!

Ultima I Day 1 - Final -

I finished Ultima I yesterday before going to bed so that's why I still have Day 1 in the title. The game took a little bit longer than I thought it would but in the end I shut up Mondain for good, again. The endgame in Ultima 1 is slightly tedious, you run around from post to post getting your stats up for the final encounter and by doing so solve quests for strength. So all you're doing is traveling and killing monsters on the way which by this point is really useless since EXP is maxed out and you have no need for money anymore.

The space mini-game was simply awful, I couldn't believe how bad it was. It was also nervewracking because at first I picked the big ship with a lot of gas but no armor and I almost got shot down halfway through space ace, I had like 35 shield left on the darn thing. I managed to get back to base and get into the stronger starfighter with half as much gas and I finished it up that way. It truly was a pain, I was absolutely ecstatic to get space ace.

Plus that space thing doesn't make a bit of sense. A medieval world with some crazy futuristic technology? I'm happy RG reformed after UII and created a more streamlined medieval world for us to play in. I just don't like the idea of my character being in some kind of crazy reflective armor and running around with a blaster right out of Star Wars. He should have went all the way and made a light saber as the strongest weapon in the game :) At least I know he did something like that for UII.

I liked it when I saved the princess and she kindly informed me that I was ready for time travel. Now first off, what is a princess like that doing locked up in the castles of the supposedly benevolent kings? And where the hell does she get that information what did she take an engineering class in college or something? Talking of princesses, at one point I solved a quest and the king told me "If you are a space ace the princess will help you!" or something of the sort. So the king is basically telling me that if I want to proceed I'll have to kill his jester, a couple of his guards and run away with the princess locked up in his castle. Riiiiight. Plus the locked up princesses are all filty rich and they can somehow give me hit points and experience just like that. I have an idea how but I won't tell :D




So here I am next to my time machine. At this point I only had two gems so I couldn't use it :| When you get into it without all the gems it says "You have no idea how to use this thing".
That's funny because when you do get in with all four gems all of a sudden the hero gets a sudden surge of intelligence and immediately understands that he needs to put in all four gems. Right.





This time though I was ready for the time machine. In fact I was ready to go through hell if needed. This is the final screenshot I took of Sosaria before hoping in the time machine.

Here (upper left) you can see my final stats. I didn't max out strength because it was too much of a hassle to run around the castles again. I didn't bother about Charisma, Wisdom and Intelligence because as a fighter it didn't help me much. I was ready for Mondain.

See this is what I told you, he gets in and all of a sudden he knows what to do, but worse than that I can't actually get out even if I wanted to. I'm locked in ARGH! Man there should be some more safety features in those time machines this ain't right! What if there's a malfunction and it doesn't actually start!!? I'd be left in there to rot for all eternity is that it? I'm complaining to the manufacturer!

Here we are, face to face with the big bad dude himself. He probably thinks himself quite invincible at this point, but he has no idea what I am about to do...

VOILA! No more gem for you you son of a bitch now bring it on mano a mano I'm going to do you in BRING IT!

At this point I'm just blasting him up with my trusty Star Wars rifle and he's firing back with measly magic missiles that do like 5 points of damage. The only things that are truly dangerous in there are the darn walls, at one point I bumped into one and got hurt for like 110 points of damage! Those things are made of red hot lava I say! At one point I hit him so hard he started to backtrack and then transformed into a bat to try to get the hell away. As you could see in the first picture of this blog post it didn't work and I smoked him to ashes! SAYONARA ASSHOLE!















Voila. Funny that Lord British says that the entire realm of Sosaria would be at my service for all time henceforth. Didn't exactly work out that way eh?

All in all I enjoyed Ultima I. I actually liked Akalabeth more though, it was more focused than UI. There are some seriously tedius parts in UI such as the running around to get stat points and the space minigame. I'm still happy I took the time to go through it again, if you remember Ultima I is one of two Ultima games that I actually finished the other being Ultima III. This might actually be the last time I ever finish Ultima I which feels a bit weird. Maybe when I reach 60 or so and my life nears its end I might come back to the first game I played, to do a full circle like they say.

Next in line is Ultima II, and that game SCARES me. I will talk more about that in the first Ultima II post later on today.