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!