Closure

So as soon as I'm back, I'm gone.

Yes, I am here to announce that I am shutting down this blog. Well, not shutting down per say, but I will stop to post here.

I'm doing it because I don't feel like playing Ultima. I came back to Ultima VI not because I felt like playing it, but because I had a blog to update and 'fans' waiting for my return. At this point I've played about 4-5 hours of Ultima VI (I had day 4 coming but decided to write this instead) in my comeback and I'm just not feeling it. My mind is filled with thoughts of trying out that new Xbox 360 driving wheel I got way back during the summer and haven't yet had the chance to try, it's also filled with thoughts of playing some JRPG's, which I haven't done for quite a while.

Really, when I stopped because of college I just lost the beat and moved on to other things, and for the time being I don't feel like going back.

I will play Ultima again, for sure. For me, things are always in a continuous looping motion, which means that I always end up where I started. It could take two or three years, but at a certain point I'll think "hey, how about going back to Ultima, that might be fun!".

I'm also closing down the blog because of the blog itself. I have to admit that I didn't really enjoy writing the blog. I started it because I thought it would motivate me to play the games. It might have, since I'm not sure I would have forced myself through Ultima II if I didn't have a blog to write, but I know that I wouldn't have needed a blog to play through Ultima V. The blog was kind of time consuming since on average it took me at least an hour per post. And obviously, there's there "Damn, I need to play some Ultima because I have a blog to update".

I just don't want to feel that anymore. If I didn't have a blog, I would have put Ultima on the backburner without really thinking about it, but with the blog I've spent the last couple of months feeling slightly guilty about not playing Ultima. So yeah, with the blog closed down it's going to lift a burden off of my shoulders. I'll be able to indulge in the games I really feel like playing without telling myself that I should be playing something else because I need to blog about it.

Of course that would exclude me starting a blog about any other series.

So does this mean that this blog will never be updated ever again? Not necessarily. When I come back to Ultima, I might post again from time to time, but it won't be in the daily posts format, or maybe I should call it the daily grind format. A big mistake I made is to base my blog on Ophidian Dragon's blog. There are two reasons for this:

1. He really likes to blog
2. He really loves Ultima

Those are two things that I lack. I don't like to blog too much, to me it's more about leaving a trace than about actually enjoying it, and although I like Ultima, like I said in earlier posts, it's just not a natural gaming style for me. I think I talked about this before, but when I was a kid and playing games, I thought it was absolutely ridiculous for a game to require you to do 'work' outside of it, like taking notes or drawing maps. I thought that everything should be included inside the game. And we're talking about a kid playing games in the 80's here, when pretty much every serious game at the time required you to do these sorts of things. I guess it was a visionary thing for me to think, since now every game has an in game journal and an in game automap, and you can be pretty sure that if a game somehow 'forgot' to include these features that it would be lambasted by the gaming media and the players alike.

My affection for Ultima comes mostly from the fact that I grew up watching my dad play it. When I was three years old, sometimes I had pretty bad nightmares. My dad would pick me up, sit me down next to him, and ask me to listen to the Ultima III overworld music, telling me how beautiful it was. And yeah I loved it. So most of my nostalgia comes from that, but it also comes from Ultima Online, which I really played only for a month during christmas 1997/1998, but I loved it so much during that month that I played it during every waking hour, which meant I would get up, play UO until I had to go to bed. I did that during a full month and basically burned out on it :D But it was really really magical for a time, and I think it's also part of my Ultima nostalgia.

But, the most important thing to notice here, is that my nostalgia or my interest in the series doesn't really come from me actually playing the games. I played Ultima I to IV as a kid, I sort of liked them but couldn't undertstand them very well so I just went through the motions.

So yeah, what I'm trying to say here, is that I may love Ultima as...a representation of my past, but from a gameplay standpoint, I merely only like it. For me I really prefer games with more structure than that, I like a strong quest oriented system with specific goals.

And Ultima VI has flaws, oh man does it. I think they are that much more apparent to me now that I'm not in the mood to actually play it, but remember when I complained way back when that the closed up view made it nearly impossible to explore? Well god damn I wasn't kidding. I'm HATING that camera at the moment. Try to find a specific building in those towns I dare ya. How many times have I looked for the INN and couldn't find it? That's just...I wouldn't say inexcusable, this is a 1990 game after all, and they surely sacrificed a lot of thing to get that graphics engine in there, but I would say this: It's a freaking pain in the ass. And the fact that now each city spells specific equipment, and you can only sell back equipment to a store that actually sells it, is another pain. That means that if you want to unload a bit and make money, you'd have to run around the kingdom to sell your stuff to the shops who are willing to buy it from you.

And the spells? Darn. Now you need to look for specific people who sell specific spells. What happened to the time when all you needed were reagents, the words of power and high enough MP to cast the spell?

Oh well. Yeah like I said, I'm not feeling it, I think that's clear by now :)

So what am I gonna play now? Heck man I don't know. That's a hard one. There was a series I really liked to play back in the 90's, the strike series. It's basically a game where you control an helicopter, complete missions and the like. At the time it was innovative because it used cutscenes during mission which was rare for action games. It also had a dynamic system in which mission goals could change on the fly during a mission. I really feel like going back to that so I'm looking to get my hands on the first three games in the series, for the Sega Genesis : Desert Strike, Jungle Strike and Urban Strike.

I also have a JRPG itch I need to scratch, so I'll probably go old school again and take a stab at the first Phantasy Star for the Sega Master System. I already own that one so no need to look for it. The new Ace Attorney game for the Nintendo DS, Apollo Justice, came out last month and I have yet to get it. So I'm going to look out for that.

Ever since Gamespot went down the gutter I've been looking for a new site to host my reviews on. It took me a while, but I'll probably start posting reviews on mobygames. So look out for a GrahfZilla there. Also I have another blog on blogger at pospeaks.blogspot.com , but I don't really update it often. You know, me and blogs.. :D

I'll still be looking out for potential messages on this blog, so if you leave any I'll be sure to see em. So yeah, it was fun for a while, but now I'm looking for my fun elsewhere. Thanks for reading, hope you enjoyed it!

GrahfZilla.

Ultima IV day 3

I'm back! Although I can't say I'm back in full force, since today was kind of uneventful. Let's pick up where we left off shall we?

So the last time I played Ultima VI, I had just explored what was previously...wait...holy crap, what was it called again? *check out Ultima VI notes, can't find anything, goes back to his Ultima V notes* oh yes Stonegate (am I rusty or what?).

Last time I was ready to leave Stonegate, and I was still ready to do so. The first thing I did is head up north towards Minoc. But on the way, I remembered something I had previously read in the comments of my blog, something about liberating the shrine of compassion first since it was easier than the others. I thought I should try to do that...but I had a problem. I was stuck on the absolute northern side of the map with a skiff. Now I wasn't sure if I could get back down to britain on foot (Probably I guess), and with the skiff it would have taken forever. I didn't really want to abandon the skiff either. I remembered something about being able to use the orb of the moon to open moongates, so I tried it.






I left my skiff at the minoc harbor, I used the orb on the ground and out came a red moongate. I saved, stepped inside, and I was in LB's castle! Holy moly! That was EXACTLY what I wanted!







I immediately headed towards the shrine of compassion. Didn't take me long, and as soon as I got there I was attacked by three gargoyles: two small ones, and a big one. And guess what? I kicked their ASSES. It wasn't even fair, I just tore through them.






So next I inspected the altar. That was a bit weird. There's like a standing blue moongate that doesn't do anything, and an altar on which there is a stone. On the stone there was some kind of force field, stopping me from doing anything with it. At first I was a bit puzzled by that new development, but then I thought that I probably needed the rune and the mantra, and I didn't have the rune. So I went back to LB's castle, and asked him about shrine, and then about compassion. He told me to seek out his...chancellor, Tholden. I didn't know where to find him, so I looked around the castle and he wasn't there. To be honest I just didn't remember what a chancellor was exactly.



















However as soon as I left the castle, and noticed the...holy crap why I am forgetting all the names? I think it's the treasury. Well as soon as I saw the treasury, I knew somehow that it had to be there. And of course, he was. I asked him about the rune, and he told me the bards have it. I asked them about it, and the little girl told me to go ask her parents permission. I did so, then went back to her, and got my hands on the rune.






Obviously it didn't take me three years to head back to the Shrine, I went immediately. The gargoyles were back, but once again they were easy targets. As soon as I defeated them, I went to the altar, used the rune, spoke the mantra, and grabbed the moonstone.






Then something weird happened. I stepped into the moongate...and nothing happened. Or so I thought. I was immediately attacked by gargoyles, and I thought "Holy crap there were other gargoyles on the right side!". Now bear in mind that I had already saved after stepping on the moongate. I tried to defend myself...and I couldn't. The gargoyles kicked my ass. They were those 'invincible' gargoyles I complained about a couple months ago.







So I reload my save and try again. Nope, those gargoyles are invincible. Now I'm starting to get confused. I try to run away, I can't, the big crazy gargoyle keeps catching up to me and totally owns me with fireballs. I reload again, for like the fourth time, and suddenly I understand. When I saw the new moonstone in the middle of the altar, I thought it was a bug. But then I thought about it, and realized that it wasn't a bug, it was an ENTIRELY NEW MOONSTONE. And obviously, an entirely new shrine! I panicked a bit, and then thought, F it, I'll just teleport back to LB's castle using the orb of the moons.

At that point, I realized one thing: I hadn't gone up in levels. I remembered that you needed to use the shrines to level up, but somehow I hadn't. I thought, maybe I need to pray at the shrines again after getting the moonstone. So I headed towards the shrine of compassion, again, and as I thought, using the moonstone and saying the mantra leveled me up. I also realized that everyone were extra points in dexterity only. At first I thought it was a coincidence, but then I figured that it must have been because of the shrine itself, kind of like in Ultima IV. Love = dexterity, courage= strength and truth = intelligence. The virtues like Compassion which only contain one of the principles probably give more of one specific stat, while the virtues who contain more must give less. I saved and reloaded to see how many points exactly I was gaining, and I saw that I was getting three.

I decided to level up all of my characters there, after all dexterity is pretty useful for any class. Iolo has 29 though, so he can't get more than one point in DEX or it will be wasted. As for me, I was already maxed out at 30 everywhere so I didn't get anything except hit points.






The next thing I wanted to do is sell all of my surplus equipment. I had what seemed to be a hundred throwing axes and I wanted to get rid of them. It took me a while, but I managed to find the armorer in Britain. Unlucky for me though, he wasn't interested in buying any of the throwing axes. He did accept though the 25 or so spears I had, and most of the surplus equipment I wanted to get rid of. I ended up with around 500 gold pieces, so that was pretty good.






While I was looking for the armorer, I stumbled on a person sleeping on the floor instead of her bed. I checked her out and it was Gwenneth! What the hell is she doing!?!








So after getting ready for travel, I took a look at the map and decided to head south towards Trinsic. On my way there, I stumbled on the shipwright. He was selling a deed to a ship for only 300 gold! That was a bargain for me! I immediately agreed to the offer, and off I was with my new ship!








There's a whole lot of islands in the southern region of Britain you know? I thought there must have been something on those isles, but outside of giant freaking weird plants with vines all over I didn't find much. Those plants were the most annoying things to fight too, even if you kill the main plant the vines still attack you. I didn't even finish all of them off, I just got out of there.

I also found some peculiar things on those islands...






I then headed towards paws. I got out of the boat, ran around the town a bit and got lost. It's really hard to navigate your way around a town in Ultima VI, you just don't see much!

And that's it for my first day back. It's kind of late, and I don't have the time to post the screenshots. I'll do it tomorrow.

EDIT: There, I posted the screenshots! Hope you enjoy them!

See ya!

In case you were wondering..

I am back! Well almost, I played about an hour yesterday, and I will play another couple of hours later on today, and I will probably publish the official blogpost after that!

It's on guys! Oh and thanks to whomever recommended I start out with the shrine of compassion, I'll tell you more about it later :)

As for remakes, I AM planning to play any remakes that are out at the time I reach the end of the series. So if the U9 remake is done by that time, yes I will play it.

That's it, be ready for the big return soon!

Almost there!

I'm nearing the end of The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess. I have a couple days left at the most, I should normally be done before the weekend. At that point, it's going to be back to Ultima baby! Next week is an off-week for school too so that's just perfect.

Other blog

BTW, I don't know if you know but I do have another blog on blogspot, at pospeaks.blogspot.com

It's about gaming in general, and it's updated somewhat regularly, so if you're interested in other games beside Ultima or you want to know what I'm up to, check out that blog!

I ain't dead!

Yeah I've been absent for four months now, but I'm not dead! The last couple of months were sort of busy for me so I drifted towards simpler games during that span. But I'll be back on Ultima soon! You can expect me to resume my Ultima 6 playthrough before the end of february!

I'll see you guys then!