Ultima V Day 3

I spent a lot of time playing Ultima V yesterday, my biggest day yet on the game. Man so much happened, my notebook is now 9 pages long, which is what my Ultima IV notebook was at when I finished it. That means that my notes for Ultima V will easily dwarf those of UIV in size, but that was to be expected.

The game is great, no two ways about it. It's harder to play than the previous games in the series due to its complexity but it also feels much more rewarding. At this point in time I have a solid understanding of what I am supposed to do.

1. I need to destroy the shadowlords. The way to do this is to call em out at the flame representing their opposite virtue and cast their respective shards in the flame. Repeat three times to get them all.
2. Find the artifacts Lord British left behind.
3. Save Lord British.

I already know the name of one shadowlord and the location of two shards. I know where the amulet, sceptre and crown are, at least approximately if not exactly. I know that Lord British is somewhere in the underworld.

There's a lot less "retro gaming moments" in Ultima V than in Ultima IV so it's a bit harder to write anything about the game. I did accidentally find the carpet in LB's quarters but at that point I was investigating every carpet I saw so it's not really a surprise. I have completed two shrine quests, a bit boring I must say.




So let's recap a bit what I did shall we? The first thing I did was go to Serpent's Hold. There I learned about the abyss, or wait, now it seems to be a generic no-name dungeon, and the shard of cowardice that lies at the bottom of it. The man said that I need a special spell to get it, what spell would that be?

I then headed up to Buccaneer's Den where I mainly learned about glass swords being lost on the serpent's spine (why does that ring any bells?BLINK ANYONE?) and about a grapple that would allow me to climb mountains. When I first learned about that I thought it sounded a bit useless, I mean, why would I want to climb mountains? Didn't make much sense. Well except that if I had a grapple in Ultima IV I would have simply climbed the spine to find the white stone instead of blinking my way on it. Hmmm.

So after that I decided to see if I could find a certain 'Sir Simon' who lives on an island west of spiritwood. And that's what I found:



.....Well I'll be damned. Where was that grapple again? Oh yeah that dude in the abbey. I have to say that I had no idea Simon was actually at the top of the mountain until someone told me in the Abbey (I think). I have to admit climbing mountains is pretty cool, even if a couple of my companions keep falling and hurting themselves.

I learned a bunch of things from Simon, such as the fact that I have to recover the artifacts and about the location of the Sceptre, INSIDE the Shadowlords earthly fortress, which I had learned of previously from a man named Sir Sean in the Lycaeum, a fortress guarded by a terrible demon named Balinor.

Lovely.

At least I know how to get there, that's a start.

Next is a little bit of cheating from my part, or at least some 'bending' of the rules so to say. I had been trying to infiltrate the mysterious organization known as the 'Oppression' for some time and I finally learned that I needed to speak to a mage in Skara Brae. Now reaching him is annoying because he's locked himself in a tower and the doors are magically locked.





See? It wouldn't be so bad if you only needed one skull key to get in, but everytime you unlock the door a bat comes out and attacks you. And of course once you defeat the bat, the door is locked again. In total it takes three skull keys to get in. I bought those keys for 100GP from the cook of the Lycaeum if I remember correctly. That's 60GP gone just to open a door. That sucks.

Once I got in he told me that to get in the Oppression I have to prove my loyalty by telling him the name of a council member SO THAT THEY CAN GO AND KILL HIM. Now wait just a minute, I am the avatar, the embodiment of all that is good in this world and I would go and do THAT? Give me a freaking break. So I gave him the name, in this case Annon, he gave me the word I needed to get my badge and then..I left the game, reloaded my game which I had conveniently saved right in front of his tower. I was then able to get my badge without giving the name of the council member, probably saving me a shitload of karma in the process. Isn't that lovely? I sure loved it.









So what else happened? Well I completed a couple of shrine quests, nothing really exciting there. It increases my stat increased but since I started out at 25 across the board I shouldn't have any problems maxing my avatar out. I also find a magic axe in a tree stump in Jhelom. How ridiclous is that? A magic axe left in a dead tree. Right. Hey I'm not complaining but it IS sort of stupid.

Now that magic axe is an absolutely ridiculous weapon, you can fire it across the screen and it always comes back! Someone at Origin around 1988 must have loooooooved magical axes because the best weapon in another Origin game released in 1988, Times of Lore, was also a magical axe that would come back to you after being thrown.

Talking of Times of Lore, while checking out its wikipedia entry I learned that Origin made another game similar to Times of Lore in 1990 called Bad Blood. I've never played it, which means I'm putting it down on my to play list for when I'm done with Ultima. Maybe my next blog will be called "Classic gaming with GrahfZilla"? You never know!

Okay back to Ultima. When I first visited the castle of Lord British I had seen many magical doors, and since I now had keys to open those doors I decided to check out what was behind them. To be honest I was a bit disappointed since the first two doors I unlocked had absolutely nothing behind them. What the hell?








But then I found the big daddy of them all, the door leading to LB's quarters. After evading the crazy guard who gently offered to throw me off the roof I promptly unlocked the door...and slept in the King's bed HAHAHA NICE you gotta love that!















I then checked out the room and saw the harpsichord in the corner. Now what better time to play Stones? I had learned the song at the lighthouse south of Trinsic and someone had told me to play it in LB's quarters so I did. It actually opened a passage in the wall containing a..sandalwood box. Now what the hell is a sandalwood box anyway? I can't open it but I can take it. Now what am I going to do with a box made out of sandalwood? Anyway, I then looked at the carpet, and my character remarked that it was an ODD RUG. OH OH OH, NOW WHAT DO WE HAVE HERE! I then gleefully picked it up and YES it was the famed magic carpet. I didn't even have to find that talking horse for Bandaii to get it too!

I ran outside and immediately put the carpet to the test. I was disappointed to find out it couldn't fly over mountains, but it can do pretty much everything else. I went to cove, talked to the sisters about the shard and they shared their vision, a very very long and convoluted vision might I add, and then saw that they actually sell Mandrake and Nightshade here! But it is horribly expensive, might as well go pick some up instead.

So I headed to that little spot of Mandrake in the bloody plains and waited for midnight. A good thing about Ultima V is that now you search NEXT to you and not on you so I can get mandrake without getting poisoned.






I then saved my game and called it a day. Whew what an adventure eh? Ultima V is pretty good so far! I haven't yet tried the dungeons though :D

I have to admit that I am a bit tired of the graphics engine used in Ultima 1 to 5. I'm anxious to be done with Ultima V and move on to the the 1990's where there's actually more than like 5 colors in the game (yes I'm exaggerating).

P.S: I've been thinking a lot about what I am going to play next after Ultima V. Now the logical answer to that would be Ultima VI, but I am instead thinking about playing Savage Empire and Martian Dreams first. My reasoning is that those two games are basically inferior games to Ultima VI, at least from a technical standpoint. They seem to have inferior graphics, music and depth to Ultima VI so why would I want to play the superior game before the inferior ones? Ultima VI came on eight disks while the two other games came only on two. Tell me what you think about my idea.