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.

Ultima V Day 2

Yeah I haven't posted in a while even though tuesday. I sort of forced myself to write before forgetting what happened.

Well I did forget :D What I can say though I that I am finally getting into my groove. So far I think I've played around 6 hours and I'm just getting comfortable. This game is much much harder to play than the previous ones. The day-night cycle and the oppressive atmosphere contribute to the difficulty and in fact are probably the source of it. At one point I ran out of food and I had to go from Minoc to Paws to get some. I managed to use a moongate but it took me a couple of tries to do it without having one my character die.

But now I have a boat, gotten from some pirates and more money. I also have a lot of surplus equipment which I could sell for my monetary needs. I got a couple of quests from the shrines and learned a couple of things from the fortune teller in moonglow. I'm still not sure about the big picture, what am I supposed to accomplish in the end? I still don't really know. But as I learn more about the little pieces it should complete the puzzle.

Is it me or is the morning star absolutely awesome? I love it!

I'm just getting into my comfort zone so I expect the real fun to begin here. I'll tell you more about it in the next few days!

Ultima V Day 1

Here I go! As you can see I started Ultima V yesterday and well, it was quite interesting. Before plunging in the game I had to create my character and I noticed that I could transfer my character from Ultima IV. I didn't think I could do it since I had played Ultima IV using xu4 instead of the original DOS program, but after digging around I found my savegames and they worked with U5!






Only my stats were not maxed out in Ultima IV. I finished the game with 50 STR, 46 DEX and 46 INT. That gave me 25 STR and 24 DEX/INT in Ultima V. I thought about it for three seconds and decided it was worth it to max out my character in Ultima IV before importing him.

So I fired up U4, got the heck out of the abyss using x-it, grabbed my boat, sailed to Britain, ran all the way up to wrong (the Truth + Love dungeon) and looked for an orb. Didn't take me long to find one, saved my game and headed back into Ultima V. Look at the results!




















From what I can see this gives me a HUGE, and I mean a HUGE boost early on! Everytime I tried to play Ultima V (which consisted of running around to fight monsters basically) before I thought the battles seemed quite hard even that early in the game. This should even the odds a bit. I know I can do the same for Ultima VI so this fills my heart with thoughts of glory and success! And also of Love, Truth and Courage of course. My capacity for good is INFINITE after all! At least I think it is. Oh no, wait, it isn't according to the rest of this post!

What do I mean? I'll get to it don't worry. Before starting the game I read through the manual, which is HUGE btw, far bigger than any of the previous ones, and found it quite interesting. I also read the player reference card, the spell book etc. What's fun about Ultima V is that I still have the original map! Lookie!





Yep, one of the few things left over from the games I had on the commodore 64 as a kid. The other things I have left are of course the Ultima IV guide I talked about earlier in a previous post, and two of the coins that came with some of the games. Having the map will keep me from having to use that black and white atlas that came with the Ultima Collection.

After importing my character I read the in game introduction, and I have to say that I was quite happy to hear stones. I finally feel like I'm really getting into Ultima now. Then the game started.

Oh boy. OH FREAKING BOY. Already in that hut I was OVERWHELMED with the possibilities offered to me! I was testing out the controls and I realized I could look everywhere, search everywhere, get the torches on the walls, push stuff. Can you imagine? Of course you guys can but for me it's day and night between this and Ultima IV. The complexity of this game, even that early on, seemed to be on a totally different level than Ultima IV. Oh and did I mention the equipment? So many more choices! And my characters actually started out pretty well equipped which is...actually I'm not too sure what I think of it since I like the concept of starting out in my trousers and then getting to buy some cool new stuff as time goes on. I guess I'll take every advantage they're going to give me, it's not like I have a choice though.





































After this little period of discovery my first thought was "Holy hell I'm in deep trouble". You know when I started this blog the title of it was "Follow Rotting Dragon as he TRIES to finish every Ultima". I wasn't sure I could do it and games like Ultima V shows me why. At this point though I'm sure I'll end up finishing all of them so I changed the title. It's not going to be easy though that's for sure.

Did I mention that I love the graphics? In fact I don't ever remember commenting on how ugly the overworld graphics are. The reason for that is that I DON'T find them ugly. I was raised with these graphics and I love them. Now I won't say they're good looking but they don't disturb me one bit. The dungeon graphics however that's another story entirely. It's just that I feel that a first person game relies almost entirely on the graphics to convey information to you, so if the graphics suck then it's basically like you're walking around blindfolded. That was certainly the case in Ultima III and it was also the case in Ultima IV. I don't know about you guys but I like to see where I'm walking. That's really my main problem with the dungeons. In a way their problem is that they're too ambitious for the technology that was available at the time.

I also like the music. Now I was slightly disappointed with the music of both U3 and U4 but the reason for it was because of the repetitiveness of it. As good as the music is, when you've been hearing it over and over and over again for 25 hours, you'll get tired of it guaranteed. One way to solve that is to make each particular tune longer, so you don't notice it as much when it loops because the track lasts 2 to 3 minutes. The other solution is the one they started to use in Ultima VI (if I remember correctly) which is to use more than one track for any given situation, totally solving the problem. I think, I'll know better after playing Ultima VI. But for the moment the music in Ultima V definitely sounds better than the two previous games. One reason for that is that I am finally hearing some classic Ultima tunes, such as the aforementioned 'Stones', which feels great.

I'm getting distracted a lot today aren't I? I decided to write in a more natural manner lately and rely less on screenshots. Anyway on to the game.

I headed in a straight line for the castle of Lord British. I found it quite quickly and entered it's surrounding suburbs (which is a nice touch). My first interaction with the population of this Britannia was,well,non-existent because it was nightime! And in Ultima V people SLEEP during the night! Holy cow that makes my job of gathering information THAT much more complicated! So I walked around trying to find something of interest and I found what seemed to be an empty bed at the healer. So I slept. After waking up the healer kept blocking the way to the door so I had to step on the bed of one of the patients to reach it. Oops!






















Afterwards I gathered a lot of info, learned the word of power Vilis, heard something about a secret quest given by the shrines, glass swords etc. I learned a good bit of info. The NPC's sure have a lot to say compared to Ultima IV, that's for sure! It makes it harder to detect the good stuff from the bullshit but I'll manage.

Something funny happened during my discovery of the game. I stumbling around at night and found a stable. Strangely the doors were unlocked so...I stole a horse. Now I don't know wether upholding the virtues is important in this game but I have a hunch it is and I still took the horse. The funny part is that I had no idea how to kept him from moving. The manual says really clearly that I have to leave my horse next to a hitching post if I want him to stay still and not run away. WELL IT DOESN'T WORK! I tried and tried and tried. I tried to leave him north of the post, south of the post, west of it and east, NADA. If I sleep or go up stairs that son of a mare leaves! After 20 minutes of this circus I realized that I just leave him outside like in Ultima IV he just stays put. Are those manuals supposed to help me or hinder me? I wonder :)

The rest of my time was spent gathering more information. I messed around with an harpsichord in LB's castle which was interesting and fired a cannon which seems to have made the guard pissed off at me. I didn't way to see what they were going to do to me I just restarded but it could have been interesting to see what happens when I get thrown in the dungeons.


I ended up going over to Paws and ended my session there. Total play time at this time stands at around 3 hours. My impression of the game so far are great but really intimidating. Ultima V is much much more complex than Ultima IV is. As long as I keep taking good notes I'll be fine!

Some thoughts!

In the comments section of my last post my ideas were criticized by Calibrator and it made me think a lot. I'd like to make a few things clear.

First off you guys need to realize what kind of person is writing this blog. Even though I've always loved the Ultimas I was never able to finish them. Why is that? Obviously because I wasn't able to handle them. I was raised with them up to the age of 7 but then my attention turned to the NES and I became a hardcore console players from that point onward. In 1997 we bought our first PC and that's when I had my first contact with Ultima 6,7, UW etc. I tried my hand at those games but I just couldn't play them. Even as a kid I didn't understand the concept of having to take notes in video games, I thought that was just stupid, that you shouldn't have to 'work' while playing a game. In a way I'm still like that, I think games are about sitting down and unwinding. I'm also quite the lazy person, both mentally and physically, so that obviously factors into the equation. I usually do things because I have to, not because I want to. For example I train at the gym because I need to, to be healthy and not die from an heart attack at age 29. I go to college because I need to, I want to have a job I like and not be stuck doing boring work for my entire life. I'd honestly rather not do anything but play videogames all day but I can't so I don't. With videogames though you often have a choice, if a videogame asks too much of you then just don't play it and that's what I've always done with the Ultimas even though I've always desperately wanted to finish them.

In a way that makes my blog even more interesting because it's about someone who's not an Ultima style player trying his hand at finishing all of them. Will I prefer the autonomous party members of Ultima VII? Most likely. Will I like the Nintendoish Ultima 8? I know I already do because of all the 'modern' Ultimas it's the one I played the most. By now you probably don't have to ask yourself why. Now the question is, will I like Ultima 8 MORE than the 'real' Ultimas or less? I might like it less you never know. But I might also like it more I won't rule that out :)

And Ultima 9? Action adventure games are not my cup of tea and that's why I never played it. The reason why I'm not a big fan of action adventure games is the mix, I don't like the mix of genres. To me, action and adventure games should be separate not together. I dislike being in a big action packed battle and then when you're done everything slows down and you have to figure out how to get to the next door or whatever. The mix of style doesn't suit me, give me either an adventure game or an action game, not both in the same package. I like the Zelda games but I don't love them for exactly that reason.

Aside from that I disagree that today's games are shallower than they were before. If you compare them to Ultima then yes obviously they are more shallow but then what isn't? There's nothing quite like Ultima out there and from what I know there was nothing quite like Ultima even when Ultima was the big thing! Oblivion isn't more shallow than something like the Bard's tale or Wizardy. Bioware is putting out some great rpgs still and they must be respected. The first person shooters of the 21st century are better than those of the 90's, adventure games might not be better than they were in the 90's but I'd argue that they are deeper storyline wise, Japanese RPGs are in a rut right now I'll admit but that's more due to the somewhat collapsing japanese gaming industry rather than due to mainstream taste.

I mean honestly, aside from the incredible depth of the Ultima series there was nothing before that was really deeper than what we have out now. The market is dominated by first person shooters and sports game but if you want a deep game you can find it, you just can't get an Ultima style game. Does the lack of Ultima automatically make the market shallower than it used to be? Well I think THAT'S a shallow thought. If you're not able to enjoy yourself except by playing the deepest of games then I guess that's your problem, not mine :)

I'll admit that I'm not the deepest person on the planet but I think there's place for everybody. You also have to keep in mind that I am NOT a native english speaker which explains my inability to write correctly sometimes. Just keep in mind that I'm a lazy SOB when reading my writings and you'll be fine! Oh and keep the comments coming, I like even the negative ones! I sincerily hope that Calibrator will keep reading my blog and will keep commenting, and I'm not freaking joking. Of course Natreg too and that anonymous guy (or maybe guys, that would be weird since I always see anonymous as being the same person over and over), whoever he is.

On another note I've started Ultima V and O M G is it a step up from Ultima IV, and I mean in difficulty! I told my friends on MSN that I was finally starting the Ultimas I've always feared. There's five freaking levels to LB's castle! Holy moly.

I'll tell you more about it tomorrow!

P.S: I usually answer comments directly in the comments section, so if you left a comment at one time chances are I answered it there!

Ultima IV Day 7 - FINAL -

So I finally managed to finish Ultima IV. The last few days were AWFUL. Once again the dungeons really really suck in Ultima IV. They probably were state of the art in 1985 but today they just don't hold up. The rest of the game still feels somewhat unique since there aren't any games like Ultima out there today, but dungeons? Dungeons are in every modern RPG thus they make those in Ultima IV feel so old, slow and boring. Crap I almost wanted to kill myself at some points.

I was hoping the abyss would be better but obviously it was much worse. The whole room system is awful, it's slow as hell and you need to steer your characters to the exit yourself which is awkward. Dungeons have just been done so much better afterwards, that's the main problem. Oh well.

Overall though the game is much better than the first three, but it's not quite 'there' yet. I don,t have much to say because what is there to say? I spent the last two gaming days going in the dungeons, grabbing the stones and then when I was done I went in the abyss, used the stones on the altars, answered the question and that was it. It was boring, that's all there is to it :D

I blinked my way to the entrance of Shame which is pretty nifty but since I had already done the trick for the white stone it's not quite as impressive. I used to think that Blink was an awful and useless spell but now I think otherwise, I friggin love it!

I'll be honest I'm anxious to put Ultima IV behind me and move on to Ultima V, a game I have pretty much never played. In a way I have now completed the first step of my journey: I have completed every Ultima game I had played as a child. Now I am getting into the obscure (to me) Ultimas, the one I completely missed at their date of release. Well Ultima 5 isn't exactly like that, we did own it on the Commodore 64 but I wasn't allowed to play it and when I finally did it felt clunky, buggy and it didn't have music. The game kept crashing too so I'm thinking our discs were going bad.

What do I expect of Ultima V? I expect it to be a substantial leap over Ultima IV, a more dynamic game with a much improved story. I'll probably start it tomorrow so stay tuned!

Ultima IV Day 5 & 6

Sorry guys I have been busy the last few days!

Also I'm at what seems to be an extremely boring bit of Ultima IV: the endgame. My guy is now level 8 so I recruited Mariah, giving me all companions. I found the mystic weapons and armors, found out you could sell em, sold a bunch of em giving me limitless funds, bought a bunch of reagents, created a bunch of spells etc.

I readied myself for the dungeons, and guess what? The dungeons SUCK, once again! I can't believe how bad and boring they are! Now I hope the abyss is better than the other dungeons because good lord this is not fun. I expect it to be since, you know, it's the endgame so it'll probably be pretty exciting :)

I won't say more than that tonight but you can expect a post from me in the next couple of days when I finish the game!

I'll post a couple of screenshots for you lonely sods :)

Ultima IV Day 4

...Honestly I did so much yesterday I have no idea where to begin, again. Generally, I found all of the runes, became a partial avatar in five of the eight virtues, learned a bunch of stuff about the Skull, the Wheel, the bell...well about everything I would say. I know exactly what stones should be placed on what altar, mostly by deduction. I even know the word that encompasses the three principles of virtue. I would go as far as to say that I know pretty much everything there is to know at this point. I have the three words that make up the word of passage too. Really the only thing I don't know about at this point are where the mystic weapons and armors are since I need to be an 8 part avatar for that. So for this post let's focus on the strange happenings once again, rather than just sort of being a parrot and repeating everything I did.



...Need I say more? I was looking for some mandrake in the bloody plains and I came upon this little spot of swamp. Now the dude who told me about mandrake specified about a place where the ground is always damp. I realized right away he meant that little wimpy spot. However I couldn't seem to be able to find any, but then I thought "Hey it seems most things can only be gotten when both moons are dark in this game so this might not be any different" and tadaa, mandrake root. Sort of lame if you ask me but hey, this was made in 1985 so no complaining.





Eventually the seer told me that I was a subject for elevation in the virtue of humility. Now that meant that I had to go to that crazy island in the southeast...an island with volcanoes, monsters and like a thousand pirate ships. I was also told that I needed a silver horn to scare away the demons guarding the shrine and that it was located somewhere "Some say the horn is buried on a small isle off the tip of spiritwood!". I'm sure someone could have given me the EXACT location with lat and long but I still didn't have a sextant so I wouldn't have been able to use it. I'm actually always very poor in this game somehow. So I checked out the map, saw spiritwood and noticed the islands. Away I went!



















I finally found it after searching like a madman. And this wasn't the worst of it, you should have seen me look for the Wheel today, pure craziness. Although that will be for day 5's post :)






Next I headed for that island in the southeast. At this point I'm not sure I had went yet, someone told me to check out the place "In the southeast!" so that's where I went. Oh boy I wasn't ready for this. I stumbled right into a lair of nasty pirates and after downing a couple found out the hard way that I wasn't ready. I guess that's the reason why the wheel is needed uh?





I headed up instead and eventually reached a spot that seemed to be the entrance to the shrine. It was sort of mazelike and confusing but I eventually ended up where I wanted to. I blew the horn, not once but twice and became a partial avatar in humility. Weeee!





After that I decided to learn how to use the moongates. Was quite easy, I just wrote down where each moongate would take me and now I can travel easily that way. I found out that I couldn't reach cove via the moongates though so I entered a whirlpool with my boat, who miraculously survived, and headed for cove. There I learned a bunch of neat stuff and I got the candle. I also learned about that crazy word there even though I had already sort of figured it out by that point.


Then I felt like exploring that island in the southeast. I had seen the lair of the pirates and the shrine but there seemed to be so much more! So I navigated there by way of Skara Brae and sailed around the place. I found a place that seemed like a volcano I could walk in. Now someone had told me that I should only use the skull of mondain at the mouth of the abyss to destroy it. I thought this was it, this was the place. So like an idiot I park my boat next to the swamp, cross it, enter the volcano, go smack in that spot that looks like a waterfall and used the skull. It sure as hell didn't work because it rid me of all my virtues. I rebooted the game and went to the same spot, but this time I pressed on every key on the keyboard to see if there was an 'other' option like in Ultima III. By mistake I pressed on Q and saved my game. LUCKILY I hadn't used the skull this time but two of my characters were dead and it was generally a pain in the ass since no one has enough MP to Resurrect yet so that was 600 gp to pay at the healer. I'm already poor darnit!



















Next is something absolutely crazy. The ghost told me that the white stone was on top of the serpent's spine and that I need to fly to get there or something like that. I was roaming around the spine and just couldn't think how to get there. I thought "Hey, there's probably a passage up there in the mountain to which I need to get." So I looked at the book of spells and saw the 'Blink' spell. It's sort of like a short range teleportation spell. I said to myself that if I timed the range right I could teleport myself right in the mountain and hopefully I would lend in the passage.




















As you can see I missed it the first time. So I backed up a bit and tried again. The results? See for yourself :





UNBELIEVABLE! There's no way in HELL that I could have, in my second try, teleported myself right in that small itty bitty spot! The only logical explanation I have for this is that the game is rigged in such as way that the moment you teleport anywhere on the mountain it immediately takes you to that spot. Because anything else would be insane, just insane. When I blinked out though it seemed like I went back to the same spot I started from so..who knows. Still can't believe it.

Next I tried to find the black stone. That was easier since all I had to do was search on a gate spot when both moons were dark. I wasn't having much success with the first few gates I tried so I tried Moonglow since its gate goes up at the dark moon and my guess was good, there was the black stone at the moment the gate went up.





So that's it for yesterday's news! I played the game for about 2 hours today and will probably play again before the day is over. You'll hear about it tomorrow!

P.S: Oh and a funny screenshot for you guys. My character died at one point and I got him ressed by LB. And guess what? When I got in battles afterwards my character icon was still the dead one, even though I was fighting and moving! Luckily a restart fixed all that.

Ultima IV Day 3

Holy cow this game is crazy. I took like 60 screenshots yesterday alone. I'm not sure where to start but I guess i'll take it from the beginning. I think from now on I will use a new way to write the blogs, as in I will write first and then afterwards post the fitting screenies. Before I would look at the screenshots first and then write something about each one but that takes forever and isn't really interesting, at least for me.



The last time I had stopped in front of the Lycaeum..no wait, that was Empath Abbey, I made a mistake there. My goal was to sail around the map remember? I gathered as much info as I could from the abbey, including stuff about the candle of love and some bard and whatnot. Afterwards I found Yew and collected the rune and the mantra. I also asked Jaana to join me since I wanted a pure magic user in the party to cast spells. I know it would make even more mobs appear but I don't really care, I'm used to random battles in JRPG's so this isn't much different. A thing I found funny is that the whole Antos family is well and alive in Ultima IV and the father came down from his crazy planet it seems. I met the brother, the sister and the father. And they all have crucial information about the candle, book and bell.

















In my travels I ended up going pretty much everywhere on the map. I'm not sure I want to get into the details of what I found out in every city and whatnot, it's a LOT of information and it would make for one long ass post, and I don't feel like writing that long. I will focus instead on the interesting stuff.

Once I had seen all three castles and almost all of the cities (at that time I hadn't yet been to Buccaneer's Den, Cove and Vesper) I realized that some of the stuff on the map was missing. Where was Magincia, where I had already been? Where was the den? I took a quick look at the Ultima V and VI maps and there were certainly more islands on there than on the UIV one. So I decided to check out if those islands were indeed in Ultima IV.



I sailed east from Serpent's Hold and ended up at a trio of Volcanoes. I thought it looked pretty cool and decided to take a screenshot for you guys. So I navigate in the middle of the volcanoes and then I realized something: That was the only way of entry and everywhere else there was shallow waters. In fact you can't even get close to the volcanoes because of that. Everything looked weird...and suspicious. Usually in an Ultima when you see something like there's something really important close by. Without even thinking I went south a bit to reach the corner, since everything in Ultima IV always seems to be in a corner, and pressed S. I didn't even think about it, it just came to me naturally and my finger went automatically on the S.

Holy crap the skull of mondain was there! Hahahah! That is so cool. In most modern games you can't get plot sensitive items unless you've gotten the quest or heard about them beforehand but in Ultima IV there's none of that. Sort of like the ghost episode in my last post luck and instinct allowed me to take a shortcut here! Now I just have to learn what I am supposed to do with that skull, someone told me that if I use it I lose all of my virtues. I won't use it :|




Afterwards I sailed upward to check out some of the other islands and I found Magincia and eventually, the den. I was happy to finally get my hands on a sextant but..wait..I don't have enough money! BUMMER! Man those FREAKING sea monsters don't give any money and that's all I've been fighting. I can't wait to get back on solid ground.






Also is it me or do NPC's sometime give out false information? Calumny told me that I can find Mandrake Root at the fens of the dead and on the bloody plains. So here I am at the freaking fens looking for Mandrake and I never found any. I searched every square there and I found NOTHING. What the hell did he lie to me? I'll have to check out the plains next and they better be there because if they aren't, I'll be pissed.





At this point I know all of the mantras and I have six of the runes. I know where the last two are but I wanted to be able to dispel fields before getting the one in Trinsic and to get a little stronger before getting the one in the forges of Minoc. Afterwards I'll focus on becoming a partial avatar in all virtues since it seems I need to do that to get my hands on some mystic weapons and armors. I already am a partial avatar in valor, my only one at this point in time! They gave me a vision when I became a partial avatar in valor and it's a weird one. It's a picture of someone fighting skeletons with the rune for F on it. What the hell?





Next I'll get the last two runes I need, get my points in each virtue high enough to become a partial avatar in them, get some mystic weapons and armors and well, plunge into the dungeons for the first time. I'm still really confused about this whole stone business. I know that each altar needs four stones..and the way I understand it there's an altar in every dungeon. Each dungeon is supposed to contain a stone although Hythloth lost his. So I need to know what stones go on which altar in what dungeon before going there. Oh boy, this is going to be something. I'm scared that I missed out on some information along the way, that's going to be painful. I also need to find Cove and Vesper and I think I know how to get there. That's it for today!

Ultima IV Day 2

I'm back! So I played a couple hours of Ultima IV today for the first time since the first day. It was interesting to say the least!

I did play some twice since the last post but they were quick 30 minutes trips at the most. I basically ran around, fought some monsters, gathered some gold and bought some weapons. Today had a bit of that too but this time I also gathered some information from multiple places.

The first thing I did today was go to Trinsic and recruit Dupre. When Iolo joined my party I was really shocked at the sudden increase of monsters outside and was regretting my choice a little bit. But now I sort of decided that since I recruited one member might as well get em all. So I started off with Dupre in Trinsic and proceeded to pillage the town of its information.

At this point in time I have 4 pages of notes on file. I use a word processor to takes my notes, finding it easier than writing them by hand. And they're easier to manage too. I wonder if I still have my dad's notebook somewhere? Probably but anyway that would be cheating, or almost.






Speaking of notebooks, I was recently looking for some of my old Ultima stuff and I stumbled on the book 'The way of the avatar, a guide to Ultima IV'. Back when I had Ultima IV on the C64 that book was in the box so I thought it came with the game. So I check it out and I'm like "HOLY HELL THIS THING ROCKS! It has dungeon maps!". I'm thinking that FINALLY Origin realized how awful it was to have to map levels or buy tons of gems so they woke up and decided to print the maps in the manuals! Man was I happy.

But then while I was reading I thought something wasn't right. In the description the book actually tells you that there is a certain stone in one of the dungeons. I thought "Hey why are they spoiling the game for me? I'm supposed to find that on my own not learn it in the manual!". At this point I started to think that maybe this didn't come with the box but was actually a guide for the game..I know what you're thinking: "It's written A GUIDE TO ULTIMA IV ON THE COVER DUMBASS" but you have to realize that I had always seen that book included in the Ultima IV box. I went on www.ultimacollectors.info and yup, it's not normally included with the g of a dungeoname. Bummer.

I'll still use it for those sweet dungeon maps though, I hate friggin mazes!

























Let's go back to my adventures shall we? So I decided to talk to everyone in Trinsic. I think I learned pretty much everything I wanted to. I now know the mantra of Honor, I know where the rune is but I want to be able to dispel fields or at least cure poison before trying my luck. I also had received advice from someone else to ask about...the white stone at the local pub so I did and they told me about some hermit living in lock lake. So once I did everything I could I moved on to paws.




In paws I did the same thing as in Trinsic, gather info. This time I surprisingly found the rune of humility there in some hills to the south east. I also talked to some guy at the pub who told me about the word of passage for the codex. He told me to seek his brother at Lock Lake. Again! There's actually a THIRD person who told me to look for someone there, so I'm starting to see a pattern here. At this point I have no idea how to get there but somehow I'd bet it has something to do with the whirpools, tornados OR the moongates. I'll try the moongates first :)









At this point I thought it was a grand time to learn to cast spells. I'll be honest with you guys, I've never really dabbled that much in the Ultima spell system. When I played Ultima IV as a kid I never tried to cast spells much. Ultima 1-3 obviously don't count since they use the classic magic points for their spells. The only Ultima in which I have used reagents in is Ultima Online, so yeah I don't know much. But it's actually quite easy when you look at the manual, and I think I'm going to enjoy this a good deal. In the picture here you can see me looking at how to create a cure spell, and you can also check out my notes in the background.




Then I smelled the wind and the wind told me "See the world friend! See the world!" So that's what I did. We boarded one of my boats and headed for adventure. Although to be frank I headed straight for Jhelom to buy some weapons and armors for my guys and then decided to head up to Skara Brae for...I can't remember why I did that. To check things out I guess, to smell the flowers and pray a bit. I saw Shamino and thought OH DUDE CMON IN WE HAVE SOME ROOM and he agreed so now I have four dudes in my party. I bought a bunch of reagents at the shop, 10 of each to be exact, and then took a look at my party and saw Dupre half dead so I told him "Cmon old Brother let's go take a nap". He Obviously agreed. At the inn the owner warned us that it was haunted..yeah right. Give me that key and shut your yap! So he did and I sort of regretted it at first..because when I woke up a ghost was in my room! He didn't seem hostile though so I engaged in a sweet conversation with him but there was a problem: he had nothing to say.

So I proceeded to exploit the Ultima IV system and ask him about rune, mantra and stone in succession and guess what? He knew about the white stone! He told me the stone was atop the serpent's spine and I'd have to fly to get it, or something. Weee!








After that we headed out and continued our dangerous trip, getting attacked from all sides from all manners of beasties. Shamino was having a hard time with his measly 200 hp so I parked in front of the lycaeum and that's where I stopped, and that's also where my next tale will begin! Take care!

Ultima I,II and III reviews

Recently I reviewed the first three games in the Ultima series on gamespot. Now I review games based on modern standards so that explains the poor scores the games received. I will post the reviews here for your reading pleasure:


ULTIMA I (PC)

The first official game in the Ultima series.

OVERALL: 6.1 (FAIR)

Gameplay

7

Graphics

3

Sound

2

Value

2

Tilt

10

• Difficulty: Easy
• Learning Curve: 0 to 30 Minutes
• Time played: 40 to 100 Hours

"Old-school"

Ultima I is the first official game in the Ultima series. It is a rather straightforward action rpg, sort of like Diablo but 10 or 15 years earlier. Gamespot states that the PC version of Ultima was released in 1980 but that is a mistake; Ultima was first released in 1980 for the Apple II and the Atari 8-Bit and was then remade in 1986 for the PC, Commodore 64, MSX and Apple II. So the version I am reviewing now is the 1986 remake for the PC, not the 1980 original which I have never played.

Like I stated earlier the game is incredibly simple. You fight monsters, get money, buy better equipment, fight more monsters, get more money, repeat process. Upon exiting a dungeon in which you have killed monsters you are rewarded with hit points, usually more than you lost inside. You can give money to the numerous kings for hit points. The goal of the game is to reach the evil wizard Mondain and kill him, to do so you need to complete quests given by the king, rescue a princess, engage in space battles and eventually travel through time. The game is sort of a mishmash of styles, containing both classical fantasy and out of place sci-fi elements. The graphics work, they are definitely not impressive today but they still catch the eye somewhat although I may be biased on that point. There is no music, and the sound is limited to footsteps and some sound effects for attacking. The game doesn't hold much value because it is quite short, being easily finished under 10 hours and even under 5 if you know how to play. It is also quite expensive if you wish to buy it on ebay. Don't even think about buying the original boxed version, but you can get the Ultima Collection for $30 to $50 which is the best way you can get your hands on Ultima I. I wouldn't recommend it though, this is a game that will be enjoyed only by those who feel nostalgia towards it. I wouldn't recommend it to anyone else. I like it though :)



ULTIMA II (PC)

The second and possibly the worst game in the Ultima series.

OVERALL: 4.0 (POOR)

Gameplay
5

Graphics

2

Sound

1

Value

2

Tilt

6

• Difficulty: Hard
• Learning Curve: 1 to 2 Hours
• Time played: 10 to 20 Hours

"Broken"

The second game in the Ultima series is easily the worst. Ultima I was slightly incomprehensible because of its weird mesh of subjects but Ultima II just totally goes into overdrive. Minax, the apprentice and lover of Mondain whom you killed at the end of Ultima I, is pissed off. She decides to destroy your homeworld...earth. So using the 'timegates' that spawned after the death of Mondain she comes to Earth, causes an holocaust in 2111 or something and then hides at the origin of times thinking she's safe. Obviously she wasn't because at the end you kill her.

Reaching her ain't easy though since this game is so idiotic. First off forget about playing this game as a good guy because you can't, you need to kill guards to get keys and you need keys to solve the game. I don't know if you could steal the keys from the guards though which would not be as bad as killing them. Also the timegates system is quite confusing early on requiring a lot of trial and error before getting a feeling of how to use them. Most of the game is spent wandering around with no clue of what to do, most hints you are given are quite short and cryptic in nature. The game isn't nearly as tightly sewn as the first game, at least in Ultima I you had quests to solve and princesses to save. Here you have no goal except to try and find out what the hell is going on. The game just feels plain random. The dungeons are absolutely useless, you can and will solve the game without ever putting a foot in there. They are also quite confusing unlike the simple dungeons of Akalabeth and Ultima I, so don't even think of trying them out if you're not a cleric (since he has the go down a level and go up a level spells). There's even some invincible monsters running around, specifically an invincible balron in Minax's castle. So Minax ain't the most powerful entity in the game? Okay...

I even think there are some missing hints in the game, or at least some really dubious ones. At one point in the game someone tells you that only the quick sword can kill Minax. Okay, point taken. Then one day during a spree of carnage in which you kill dozens of guards once again you might talk to someone who tells you "Beware! I have a quick blade!" Now tell me, would you make the link between that line and the earlier line? Even if you did, would you know what to do with it? Would you think of giving him 500 gold pieces? I'm telling you this game is RANDOM.

The graphics are not as good as the ones in the Ultima I remake but that's to be expected since UII was released in 1982 compared to 1986 for the remake. The sound is also worse, in fact everything is worse. This is just the worst game in the series by far and no one except masochists should play it.



ULTIMA III (C64)

A game that spawned a genre.

OVERALL: 7.0 (GOOD)

Gameplay

8

Graphics

4

Sound

7

Value

2

Tilt

10

• Difficulty: Hard
• Learning Curve: 0 to 30 Minutes
• Time played: 40 to 100 Hours

"Revolutionary"

Ultima III is often seen as one of the most important games ever. It brought RPG mechanics to a whole new level with party based strategic combat. It's basically the distant ancestor of strategy rpgs. The game is a big leap over its predecessors Ultima I and II who were simpler action rpgs. In Ultima III you create a party of four characters to play as. In structure the game is more similar to Ultima II than Ultima I which is surprising since Ultima I was a superior game. However I think Richard Garriott preferred a free roaming world to a more linear quest based one so he continued in that vein. Fortunately Ultima III is much more interesting than Ultima II and has more of a structure to it which helps keep it interesting. However it still has some weaknesses. The dungeons are a big hassle. In 1983 the technology wasn't yet good enough to allow detailed graphics in dungeon so you're left to wander around in a mess of orange walls. The only things you see in dungeons are orange walls and bright yellow treasure chests. It's not a stimulating sight and since the dungeons are much harder than in Ultima I it's not a pleasing one either. You need to spend a lot of time in the dungeons in this game so I would have liked them to be more interesting. The game also rewards playing as evil rather than good characters which is a bit annoying. Killing guards is the fastest way to gain levels and in some cases the fastest way to gain money. A nice touch now is that you can bribe guards if they are in the way of some information or a couple of treasure chests so you can avoid bloodshed that way.

The commodore 64 version had full music and it was quite impressive too. The only real problem with it is that it's relative brevity; the music loops a bit too much to my liking. The sound effects are still the simple ones found in the earlier games although with some additions. Once again I can't say Ultima III is a good value since it's quite old and expensive if you want to buy it. The Ultima Collection is still your best and cheapest bet. Even if the game is an improvement over Ultima I and II it still is too old and rudimentary to recommend to anyone else but Ultima fans.

-------------------------------------

I reviewed the C64 version of Ultima III because I couldn't simply review a game that I played with music and graphic patches. Now that I think about it I played Ultima II with such a patch (graphics only for that one) but it didn't change my view of the game much, the graphics were still ugly. But the patches changed the PC version of Ultima III a lot and I think a review should be based on the original version of a game and not a subsequently modified one, thus I chose to review the C64 one which already has music from the get go.

The time played stat also encompasses the time I spent on those games as a kid, that's why it's so high.

Hope you enjoyed them!

The ethicality of downloading old games

I've been thinking about this subject a lot lately. I'm the type of guy who wants to own absolutely everything he plays even if it's an old obsolete game. I was worried about the fact that I don't own Savage Empire nor Martian Dreams even though I would have to play them to complete my blog about Ultima.

So while browsing ebay I found this auction:
http://cgi.ebay.ca/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&rd=1&item=200138760738&ssPageName=STRK:MEWA:IT&ih=010

I immediately thought: "COOL! Those will probably go for really cheap and it'll allow me to legally download the game!".

Then I thought about it. Does that really make sense? Buying a pair of floppies from 1990, floppies I can't even use since I don't have a floppy drive, is going to allow me to download the game?

Now the problem with 'allowing' me to download the game is that no one cares about it. This game isn't being sold anymore by anyone, no one is going to lose any money if someone downloads the game instead of buying it. The only losers are the people selling the game on ebay, but even then you'd have to think that the type of people who would download the game wouldn't necessarily be the same kind who would want to buy a fully boxed and complete game from 1990.

From what I know none of the games in the Ultima series is officially abandonware. In fact I don't even think the term 'abandonware' is accurate since there's always someone out there who owns the original rights. Then again, do those care if you download the game or buy it off of someone on ebay? I highly doubt it.

Fact of the matter is, when you want to buy a game instead of downloading it, it's usually to support someone or some company. I think this is where the ethics or the lack of come in when talking about piracy. Pirates don't care about supporting the work of others, they only care about supporting themselves and their wallet. However, buying Savage Empire off of ebay does not support Origin, Richard Garriott, or even EA. So why would I want to buy it?

It also reminds me of when Natreg told me that "Some might object to the idea of downloading FM towns games...". I tried to look for them on ebay but now I'm wondering, would someone seriously object? I highly doubt it.

The way I see it, if the creator or those who own the rights of a product don't sell that product anymore and cannot benefit from the sales of it then I feel that that product can be freely distributed.

In my case though I just like to own the original box with the manuals, it gives off a tangible feeling that downloading just cannot bring. However too much is too much. In the end when it comes to dealing with older unsupported software whether you buy it or you download it depends on your preference, and on your wallet. And no one should care one way or the other.

I'm still alive!

Hey guys I know I haven't been posting lately but I've been busy these past few days. The last time I played Ultima IV was in the wee hours of thursday morning. I'm in the process of buying a new monitor (22 inch widescreen LCD!) and I have to study for an exam next week so I will be busy for at least another week, maybe two. So I probably won't play much Ultima IV during that time but you never know! I'll post if I do.

In the meantime check out what I got in the mail yesterday!







See ya! :)

Ultima III on the NES!

Hey I just received my Exodus NES cart I got on ebay :) I took a couple pictures of it and I even posted a video of it on youtube which you can watch in this post. The camera is a bit shaky but eh, I was trying to play and film at the same time.

I don't know when I'll play it, I just finished Ultima III on the PC so it won't be soon. Maybe once I'm done with every Ultima I'll go back and finish the alternate NES versions and whatnot. I'll see in due time.

Enjoy the pictures and video!


P.S: In case you were wondering NO I did not create those usernames, they were already on the cart when I received it. I'm happy though because it shows the battery is still alive and well!

Ultima IV Day 1

I finally managed to play Ultima IV. As I said in the previous post I was forced to use xu4 to play Ultima IV but at this point I sure don't regret it. I'm extremely impressed with the program, it doesn't only play Ultima IV but also improves it on many fronts. The only problem I've seen with it so far is that the sound effects are too subdued compared to the music but that's relatively minor. I took screenshots of the configuration screens to show you the amount of configuration options they've added to Ultima IV.
















































I pretty much enabled everything in the end. Automatic actions is pretty cool and text colorization makes everything easier to read. For example when I'm fighting and the enemy start to flee I see the text in yellow to the right so I don't even have to look I can see it from the corner of my eye. For the graphical options at first I used the 2xSai filter but I found it too soft quite quickly. I really miss the HQXX filter, that one is truly the best one I've seen. 2xBi and 2xSai are too soft while Point and 2xScale are quite sharp. I ended up settling on 2xScale at 4x magnification.


So what about the game you ask? I am absolutely impressed. Now I don't know how much xu4 is affecting my gameplay experience but the game just feels better than the previous games in the series. Seems like every problem I had with Ultima III was fixed here: The food consumption has been greatly lowered, the battles are much faster paced, the dialogue is much tighter (there's actual dialogue now) etc. Everything is better. I'm baffled at how I could once have thought UIII to be better than this, there's no way. The music is much better too, in Ultima III the base melody is good but it doesn't last long enough so you get stuck with the same song repeating over and over quite rapidly which becomes annoying in no time.




I ended up being a fighter like I always am. As a kid compassion was my leading virtue followed closely by honesty. It annoyed me because I can't say I particularly like mages or bards. But as I grew older valor came at the forefront and now everytime I take the Ultima test I end up as a fighter. However compassion is always up at the end against valor however this time it was honesty as it sometimes is. So you could say that I haven't changed much since being a kid.




I started out by learning everything I could at this point from the town of Jhelom. If I remember the rune here is in a jail cell however with no keys I can't get it. No problem I'll come back later. I learned many things here such as the mantra of valor, the location of the red stone and the connections between the dungeons destard, covetous, shame and hythloth. Afterwards I checked out the weapons and armors shops but everything was too expensive for me so I headed out.





I entered the gate that appeared next to Jhelom and appeared outside Skara Brae. I promply proceeded to once again loot the place of its information, at least of what I could get at this particular point in time. I learned of the location of the shrine of spirituality, I heard of Zair the wise in Paws who knows something about the word of passage necessary in the abyss, Nightshade in Vesper etc. I won't relate everything I learn in every city because that would be interminable but I learned a lot here. Most importantly I was told the location of the rune and what the mantra was.



I took another gate and arrived at New Magincia. I entered it but quickly realized I had no business here yet and should come back at a later date. So after entering a couple of gates I arrived south of Trinsic and decided to skip it to head directly to Lord British's castle.


















I thought his speech was funny, it seemed to directly criticize his previous game since those games were all about killing stuff and getting gold. I asked him to heal me and then headed off to grab the rune of spirituality. I have one! This is actually the only rune of which I remembered the location. I visited the seer to ask a couple of questions then took a walk around the castle to pick up a couple more conversations before heading out to Britain.



There I managed to both get the rune of compassion, its mantra and learned the location of the shrine! I asked Iolo to join me and then I headed off to the shrine however we came to a stop in front of a massive swamp. At first I tried to cross it but quickly realized that I couldn't do it without getting poisoned. I thought maybe I should go to Yew and ask for Jaana's (I think) services but then realized that there was no need since Iolo as a bard can cast spells! So all I would need are the reagents for a few cure spells and I could go meditate at the shrine!




But I was already planning on stopping for the night so I didn't have time to go hunt for reagents. I decided to stop by Britain and equip myself with some new equipment. I was disappointed to see that the shops in Britain truly pale in comparison to the ones in Jhelom, at least the weaponry and armour shops do! I still decided to pick up a nice sword, much better than the Axe I had previously. Next thing in line is try to get a bow or even better a crossbow for Iolo and some reagents, all the while stopping by towns to plunder them of their knowledge.

Ultima IV problems

I've spent the last hour trying to make Ultima IV work. The first logical way to play it is by patching the game with the Ultima IV upgrade. The problem with that is that it seems to be in conflict with my keyboard because most of the time the game doesn't recognize my input devices or if it does eventually it stops during gameplay. I tried running the game under dosbox but it seems even worse, however the music sounds good unlike when I try to play it under windows. I replaced avpatch with the one made for dos and it's not much different. I tried to change sound cards in the program to see if one worked better than the other. It seemed to help when I selected MPU401 instead of Roland MT32 but it sure didn't help enough. As far as I know I tried everything. I don't seem to be having any problems without the patches.

I tried to install the standalone music patch but unfortunately it's a much older version than the one in the Upgrade package and the music sounds FUNKY. The music is just ugly with that patch.

Those patches were made in like the year 2000. It's not surprising that they might be starting to struggle with more modern systems. It sure doesn't seem to work on mine.

I haven't tried to disable the vga graphics in the upgrade package though, I don't know if you can? The music sounds great in that one so if I could disable the graphics which seem to be the source of the conflicts I could have a good version on my hands...but I'll be honest I'd miss the VGA graphics. They look pretty good.

So that would leave me only one option: xu4. Now I'm a bit scared about using that program. It's still in beta mode so I'm scared of running into some crazy bugs. However the program does look excessively nice and the music is absolutely amazing. Anyways at this point it doesn't look like I have much of a choice, seems every other option has been exhausted. It's either xu4 or Ultima IV ega with no music, or Ultima IV ega with buttugly music with slowdowns in weird spots.. I'll take my chances with xu4.

Ultima III Day 4 - FINAL -

I managed to finish Ultima III today. I tell you I literally played ALL day. I had the day off so I just plunged.

The problem I'm having lately is that I tend to forget what I did earlier in the day. Like now I'm looking at some screenshots to try and refresh my memory. Let's see if it works.

I began the day with some typical guard basing. I guess I had decided to raise my levels a bit and that seems to be the best way to do it in this game. I had my sights well set on getting all the +4 bows for my characters and I needed a lot of money for that. However I was somewhat disappointed with the bows. Although I saw a difference between the normal and magical bow it wasn't as much as I thought it would be. At that point I had already bought two bows but I decided to focus a bit on raising my stats instead. So I gathered some gold and headed to Ambrosia. At first I focused on raising dexterity a bit and then afterwards I put everything into strength.


During that time I kept killing guards whenever I
so at one point I decided I was strong enough to take my foot off the pedal a bit and look for clues. The first place I headed to is LB's castle. I unlocked the doors of the prison and liberated some thieves. They started following me giving me my own little posse of brigands! Then I decided to check out if the monsters in the right cell had something to say, they didn't. In fact they tried to kill me so I returned the favor only I unlike them succeeded. Now for some reason the guard is pissed off at me and wants to do me in. Um, dude, they just tried to kill me I just defended myself isn't that ok? I guess he probably took offense with the fact I was the one who freed them from their cells in the first place.


So here I am making a fool out of the guards with my horse and look who's there! Lord British himself! He looks pretty darn pissed that I killed those monsters in the prison and he wants to teach me a lesson! Now there's no way I'm letting that guy get anywhere close to me he probably has a godly amount of power under his little finger. I've always wondered why he doesn't fix his own problems if he's so powerful? I guess he's too busy with h
is kingly duties.








However as powerful as he is there's no way he can catch my horse. I just galloped away and he got stuck on his own follower. hehehehe!










I left the castle and got right back in. Somehow that seems to have the effect to erase everyone's memory which is great for me. I decide to go look at some of the corridors hidden deep inside the castle and guess what I find? Freaking walls made of lava! Inside LB's castle! What the hell is he doing with lava walls? And how did it get there anyway? I decide to follow this suspicious wall of molten rock and guess where I end up? :!






At the oracle! Now that is weird. An oracle hidden deep inside a castle with lava walls. Now that would sound logical if this were Exodus' castle but this isn't it. Oh well. So I decide to repeat my little magical act of Ultima II and ask him everything he knows all while restarting the game everytime I run out of money. I learned a couple of interesting things. He tells me that I will learn to use the marks in devil guard...now I had no idea what devil guard was in fact I thought it was the town I kept looting over and over but I found out later it wasn't the case. Also I already knew how to use the marks, in fact I already had two..or maybe even three at that point. Yeah I'm pretty sure I had three, I got the fire mark and the force mark on the bottom of the Dungeon of Fire (I think) and I got the mark of king way back in the early game in the dungeon to the right of the castle. I haven't really taken a lot of pictures in dungeons, I guess they were too boring for that. Once I started using gems they were easy as hell too, I must have spent a couple thousand gold pieces in gems alone for the dungeons. Thanks to Draconius for the tip!

Now there were a couple of interesting things in the castle. At one point a guard kept following me but was not attacking which was creepy. I guess he was a fan! Too bad you can't other:autograph. Also I found a boat in the back which I kept in mind in case I lost mine. I didn't.


















At this point I decided to finish buying magical bows for my parties. I headed to..death gulch I think it's called and proceeded to loot the place. I got a little greedy and decided to loot the food joint and well, I got caught. Now at this point getting caught wasn't much of a problem for me however it was a major one for the town guards who were on the verge of getting slaughtered. I killed the two guard parties here, stole the rest of the chests here and then moved on to the armor shop.






Afterwards I headed up to the weapons shop. At this point pretty much every guard had been killed except for those two behind the gates. So I could steal in piece without getting disturbed. I headed down to show you guys the result of my destruction:







There you go. Cleaned it good uh? Nothing left! And I'd like to assure the noble citizens of Death Gulch that I put all of that money to good use by saving your land and all its people! You should thank me for the multiple massacres I did in your town! :|
The game is really evil. I totally understand when parents sent letter to Garriott claiming his games were promoting breaking the law. There's no way you can succeed without doing it :) I guess every impressionable kid who played this game came way from it thinking that If you don't break the law you won't get far.



















I finally headed to Dawn to buy my last bow. I was really happy about getting it so I went to the armor shop and proceeded to loot it clean, it and every other shop in the city. The guards were pretty mad so they chased me but they couldn't catch me. I even took the time to drop by the guild shop and buy some torches, keys and gems! At this point the guards were not only pissed but quite insulted, look for yourself:



Now the oracle told me two other things. He told me that I should look to the Montors for help from above and that I could find the lord of time in the dungeons. Now for the Montors bit I headed to Montor ...west I think, fired up a gem and understood right away what he meant: the prison. So I headed up to the prison, prepared to bribe the guard...and then thought what the hell I'm not spending another time on these guys let's just kill him. So once again I fended off another torrent of guards, quite easily.

I was really surprised when I headed to the castle for some leveling up and was answered: NO MORE! I was like WHAAAAAT! Seems the level cap is 25, holy crap I was already much higher than than and I wasn't done yet with the game, I still was lacking the mark of the snake, two of the cards and had yet to see the time lord!



Then I decided it was about time to finish the game. When you reach the level cap well, you should be thinking about finishing it up. Now at this point I had been to the bottom of four dungeons, giving me three marks. I went to the dungeon to the right of the castle because I remembered it was an easy way to get the mark of the king. I went to the bottom of dardin's pit because it was logical to do so; I was always in there for the gold anyway. I did two other dungeons randomly so I ended up with three marks out of four. I decided to try out the dungeon to the south of Death Gulch for the simple reason that I had seen a gate spawn there once and I thought "hey if there's a gate right in front of that dungeon then it might be an important one". It was. That one gave me the mark of the snake.

Now I had a problem. Where was the time lord? The oracle told me he was in the dungeons..that worried me. I had done five of them and hadn't seen anything resembling a time lord. Then I remembered someone telling me that I would learn to use the marks in Devil Guard. I had realized that DG wasn't Death Gulch but then where was it? I was stumped. So I looked at my atlas trying to think but nothing came up. So I decided to try the moongates. I hadn't even used one yet so I thought heck they might get me somewhere interesting. So after bumping from one moongate to another I ended up stuck in a narrow mountain path with no escape! I was like WHAT THE and then a gate appeared right from under me and it took me to Devil Guard. I was quite happy however they didn't teach me SQUAT. Everything they told me I already knew! I was REALLY stumped now..so I decided to get the hell out of there but I wasn't able to, I kept getting teleported to the narrow mountain patch and then back to DG! Just when I was getting desperate a gate took me right in front of a dungeon entrance, one closed off from the outside world! I knew this had to be it! Luckily I my HP was still pretty much at max, I had a enough gems for a dungeon trip and my food was high enough. So I plunged in!





The dungeon was quite easy actually. Honestly all dungeons are somewhat easy when you buy as many gems as I did. I just use like 3 per level and I'm in the clear. I got down to lvl 08 quite quickly and proceeded to the upper left corner. Guess who was there!






Here is the big man himself in all his ugly glory. He tells me the order of the cards which makes me giddy with joy. At this moment I had only two out of four cards but I knew where the other two were so it wasn't much of a problem. Yep, you heard that right, at this point in the game I had never been to the wisdom and intelligence shrines. Honestly I should have just picked four freaking warriors, the way I healed myself was to head down to the third level of Dardin's Pit, grab some chests, get healed and then come back up really quickly. No need for healing magic!



Here I am in my vessel going to Ambrosia for hopefully the last time. What's funny about this is that I can't find that darn whirlpool. I spent like 40 food just looking for it! In the pictures below you can see me leave filled with hope and then return to the same spot with despair in my heart and 30 food less per character!

















After my trip to Ambrosia I decided to try my hand at Exodus. Now I was a bit worried because none of my characters were closed to being maxed out. One character had 60 strength, another had 60 dexterity, and all of the others had a mix of those. My three other characters had 30 dexterity and something like 45 strength. My intelligence and wisdom scores were pretty miserable and useless. So I wasn't sure how well I would fare but I decided to try anyway.



















Here I am, my heart filled with rage and my fingers twitching with anticipation. I'm thinking "That thing is right up from here so that's where I'm headed, UP!". So here you can even see me going through the fire since that would have allowed me to state that I went through the fires of hell to reach my target. However my fairy tale wasn't meant to be because I came to face with the..







Phantom guards of Austin, Texas! Those sons of bitches were hard as hell when hitting me but everyone of my arrows just passed right through em! MAN I was thinking YOU HAVE GOT TO BE KIDDING ME. Was my dexterity not high enough? I said nah, that's impossible, I would at least hit them once every..ten times or something! So I settled on the idea that they were guards imbued with powers of an alien nature, somewhat like the Silver Surfer. Yes, they were all Silver Surfers disguised as guards.




So I rebooted my game, entered the castle and instead of going up decided to use the side door. I was promptly attacked by dragons but I thought "hey, no problem I've killed those things before!". Well the ones I killed weren't the Ghastly Dragons of Belzebub like these ones were. I was shooting my arrows like if they were rockets and the dragons just ate them or looked at them funny while gently avoiding them to the right or to the left. Something wasn't right and then it flashed, I remembered that bastard in Grey or some other hellspawned city telling me "Only exotics will protect you from great evil". CRAP.




I restart my game once again and equip the exotics. I go to the side and get attacked by wyverns this time, much better than dragons. I actually miss on the first couple of shots making me extremely nervous BUT THEN I START TO CONNECT! ALLELUYAH GIRLS AND BOYS I'M SAVED! However those monsters are TOUGH, they hit hard and I can't heal myself so I feel a bit nervous. When my two front line fighters start to weaken a bit I shift them back and replace them with my barbarian and lark.




So I finally reach the lair of the foul...machine, and WHAT'S THAT? I'm getting attacked! But I can't see my enemy! Is there even one? I look at the bottom right and it says I'm being attacked by the FLOOR, and I can't see it. ARGH. That was awful!


















On top of that I was poisoned so it was a pain to go through all those freaking mutant floor tiles. When I was done with them my lark had only 4 HP left! But I finally reached Exodus and proceeded to insert the four cards in the order the lord of time told me. Voila! Game done!


















FINAL NOTES


So what did I think of the game? I was disappointed. This isn't the game I remembered as a kid. At that age I preferred III over IV because it was simpler but now I think the roles are going to be reversed. In the end Ultima III is really similar to Ultima I and II except you have a party which both makes the game better but slower. But playing it through it again really devalued it in my eyes, it will never be again the same game for me, sort of like seeing that movie you were crazy about as a kid and thinking "Holy crap this ain't that good". Oh well. It's still good, it just isn't what I thought it to be. There is still no storyline in the game, the hackneyed dialogue from II is back in full force, the game isn't well balanced (those +4 bows are overrated I would have been better served spending that 26000gp I spent on the bows on stats instead, especially since I can't use the bows in the last castle). I'm happy to finally leave the first trilogy behind and enter in the realm of the true Ultimas, the second trilogy 'The age of Enlightenment' . Now I expect Ultima IV will take me forever to finish due to my inexperience with it. I know where a couple of the runes are although I don't remember the mantras. I also know how to play the game with the praying and all I need to do but really I never got further than a couple of runes and some characters in my team. It will be my first true test (although Ultima II was pretty harsh early on too).

I expect most of the problems of Ultima III to be fixed in Ultima IV. My characters should eat less food and everything should feel more polished. And hopefully the dungeons are better although I've never been in an Ultima IV dungeon before so I have no idea what to expect.

Anyway, see you in Ultima IV!