tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-55411745037245007872024-03-13T19:31:41.847-07:00Blogging UltimaOphidian Dragon blogs his way through the entire Ultima series, from beginning to end.CageBloggerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12053920092747626561noreply@blogger.comBlogger154125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5541174503724500787.post-3705830359860975132010-05-05T18:26:00.000-07:002010-05-05T18:46:50.499-07:00Fake Ultima 7, Day 5/6<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_3WacBST0pXU/S-IekDmlLBI/AAAAAAAABdQ/pdZ1qW7_wOM/s1600/Sphere.jpg"><img style="float: right; margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_3WacBST0pXU/S-IekDmlLBI/AAAAAAAABdQ/pdZ1qW7_wOM/s320/Sphere.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5467966502372453394" border="0" /></a><br /><br />I'm back! I've played a few more hours of SNES Ultima VII the past couple of days. Among other things, I tracked down and destroyed the sphere and I'm currently--literally, right at this very moment--in a dungeon beneath Serpent's Hold where I am waiting for my magic points to regenerate enough to cast several Unlock Magic spells. This version of the game only has a few of the tunes from the original game, so I am listening to an endless loop of the music I associate with the taverns. The MIDI you can download has a particular name, but it's not coming to mind. I was sad that the F<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_3WacBST0pXU/S-IedrtXSII/AAAAAAAABdA/5Cf4UUP6Uhg/s1600/BrickWallVoice.jpg"><img style="float: left; margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 280px;" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_3WacBST0pXU/S-IedrtXSII/AAAAAAAABdA/5Cf4UUP6Uhg/s320/BrickWallVoice.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5467966392879237250" border="0" /></a>ellowship music doesn't seem to be present, which was always my favorite from Ultima VII. I even taught myself to play part of it on the piano, an amusing experience since I had not otherwise played piano :-P<br /><br />I am getting off topic. Most of the past few gaming sessions have been spent in dungeons. It seems I never give up hope that I'll find something cool in them! I am specifically targeting the dungeons for which maps don't exist. However, I am beginning to understand why maps don't exist...For example, in the Britannian Sewers, I worked my way to the third level or so and all I get is a door with a brick wall behind it. In fact, the Guardian's head pops up and for some reason expresses his disappointment (see screenshot). I would have enjoyed hearing the Guardian voice from Ultima VII say that, actually. There's also some kind of system of caves by which multiple dungeons are connected, but I<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_3WacBST0pXU/S-Iej8oNM5I/AAAAAAAABdI/pf-5gQSylwc/s1600/Zorn.jpg"><img style="float: right; margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_3WacBST0pXU/S-Iej8oNM5I/AAAAAAAABdI/pf-5gQSylwc/s320/Zorn.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5467966500500222866" border="0" /></a> have such low confidence that the dungeons will be worthy of exploration that I'm loathe to figure it out.<br /><br /><br />I just took a break to play the game and discovered that instead of finding my way to the cube generator, I seem to have found my way to the Fellowship Meditation Retreat--And what an un-relaxing retreat it is, full of mongbats and giant spiders firing yellow spheres and green blobs, respectively. This seems to mean I need to delve back into the dungeon. Argh! I should probably create a map this time around...<br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_3WacBST0pXU/S-IedN1bDuI/AAAAAAAABc4/1V0J4sPBvLw/s1600/BrickWall.jpg"><img style="float: left; margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 280px;" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_3WacBST0pXU/S-IedN1bDuI/AAAAAAAABc4/1V0J4sPBvLw/s320/BrickWall.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5467966384859975394" border="0" /></a><br />I have attached some screenshots. These include the stupid brick wall (maybe I should have used a powder keg on it?), the destroyed sphere generator and a conversation with Zorn. Why Zorn? Well, I talked to him recently and it's probably worth seeing how the conversation system has changed. I feel like, but am not certain, that a bunch of the graphics were taken from the SNES Ultima VI. Especially the potted plants and cauldrons, which look suspiciously familiar! I'll need to include those next time.CageBloggerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12053920092747626561noreply@blogger.com13tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5541174503724500787.post-64036595816417885042010-05-01T20:25:00.000-07:002010-05-01T20:50:04.218-07:00Fake Ultima 7, Day 3/4<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_3WacBST0pXU/S9zw9Gk4RPI/AAAAAAAABcY/5WHqtSo0BZU/s1600/capture_01052010_230458.jpg"><img style="float: left; margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_3WacBST0pXU/S9zw9Gk4RPI/AAAAAAAABcY/5WHqtSo0BZU/s320/capture_01052010_230458.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5466508980248921330" border="0" /></a><span style="text-decoration: underline;"></span>Well, I'm back. I played an awful lot of Ultima 7 SNES the past couple of days, and a high degree of disappointment is beginning to set in. I feel like the broken-ness that plagued Serpent Isle and Ultima VII is showing itself in this release as well. I say this because I spent about an hour wandering around Dungeon Stonegate yesterday, and eventually had to give up and load an old saved state because the dungeon appears to be insoluble. Understanding why this was required entails some understanding of the absurdity of the SNES Ultima VII dungeon system: When you enter a dungeon, you are teleported to a beginning spot in a maze and are unable to exit <a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_3WacBST0pXU/S9zxBzYtV_I/AAAAAAAABcg/jcLVikfApWY/s1600/capture_01052010_230524.jpg"><img style="float: right; margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_3WacBST0pXU/S9zxBzYtV_I/AAAAAAAABcg/jcLVikfApWY/s320/capture_01052010_230524.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5466509060996945906" border="0" /></a>until you find a usually-weakling boss, kill it, and retrieve the "dungeon key" which can then be used on a particular kind of door, teleporting you out of the dungeon. Most of the dungeons are fairly small and repetitive, but they frequently have puzzles including levers, switches that look exactly like Ultima VI's wall switches, and even Zelda-esque holes in walls created via powder kegs. This is all well and good, except a decent percentage of the levers and switches don't seem to do anything at all. There are also keys, most of which look identical, and each of them goes to a particular type of door. Sadly, it seems that keys don't even exist for some of the doors in <a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_3WacBST0pXU/S9zxIR_gr5I/AAAAAAAABcw/mMg1zB-ao_U/s1600/capture_01052010_230642.jpg"><img style="float: left; margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_3WacBST0pXU/S9zxIR_gr5I/AAAAAAAABcw/mMg1zB-ao_U/s320/capture_01052010_230642.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5466509172291973010" border="0" /></a>Stonegate (also true of Conceit, and probably other dungeons). Sigh!<br /><br />The other thing I don't enjoy about the SNES Ultima 7 dungeons is something that was also an issue with the dungeons of Ultima IV and before: There's just no reason to go in except for quest items. I spent another hour earlier in the week exploring dungeon Conceit, and found nothing except junk--small amounts of gold, potions, and weapons already available from monsters. One of the fun aspects of Ultima VI and to a greater extent VII was that you never knew quite what you would find hidden in the depths! In this <a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_3WacBST0pXU/S9zxFWjX4uI/AAAAAAAABco/zh6Ffl1vAF0/s1600/capture_01052010_230544.jpg"><img style="float: right; margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_3WacBST0pXU/S9zxFWjX4uI/AAAAAAAABco/zh6Ffl1vAF0/s320/capture_01052010_230544.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5466509121976525538" border="0" /></a>game I've become leery of doing any exploration because I might be wasting time and mapping.<br /><br />I attached some screenshots. One is of the sea navigation system in Ultima VII--Hope you like selecting destinations from a map! Another features the Time Lord with some special purple tiles created just for him. Another includes a stone harpy from the dungeon that replaced Sutek's castle, and the remaining image is of the ethereal monster, which brings to mind another irritant: One of the townsfolk in Moonglow commented that Penumbra had been asleep forever andno one knew how to wake her, but maybe I could figure it out! Well, guess what? The provision shop sells an "awaken" potion! I guess no one thought of that? Anyway, they sold it for 1000 gold, which is pretty absurd given that most monsters drop only a handful of gold coins, maybe 3 or 4. Or else a turkey or a lockpick or one of several fairly crappy weapons. Fortunately, just like Ultima III, you can engage in absurdity to load up on the gold by repeatedly casting "lift" on a big rock near Minoc, fetching a stack of gold, entering a house, exiting, and repeating. That's how I earned enough for the potion and for the boat, which required 3000 gold.<br /><br />As a final note, I was vaguely aware of the guy on a forum somewhere playing through all the Ultimas with extra screenshots. I seem to recall there were also some blogs for Zelda and for Dragon Quest, but I am not sure if they made it all the way. There's also a masochist out there who is going to play every RPG, and insists on avoiding save states, which seems impossible for some of those early, poorly balanced games where you are wiped out by a tough monster as soon as you enter the dungeon. If life were D&D I think he'd have a higher constitution than I.<br /><br />I think the blog project the world *REALLY* needs is someone to write about playing every single Tetris-esque game ever made!CageBloggerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12053920092747626561noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5541174503724500787.post-6983850621945807022010-04-29T19:26:00.000-07:002010-04-29T19:45:19.796-07:00Fake Ultima VII, Day 1/2/3Well, I did it. I began the SNES Ultima VII. My opinion is pretty torn. On the one hand, it''s much less fun a game to play than the original; it feels as if someone took the basic plot outline of Ultima VII and stapled it on top of a fairly typical console action-RPG. Here''s some of the similarities to the original and some of the differences:<br /><br />1. Most of the monsters and character figures are the same as on the PC, with some strange exceptions. There are bouncing green heads as monsters in addition to the skeletons, scorpions, rats, headlesses and trolls. Similarly, the generic robed man has been replaced with a robed man with no hood, and the generic grungy townsperson is now a same grungy townsperson but with blond hair!<br /><br />2. The world geography is quite similar, but on a much smaller scale. Most of the dungeons have shifted in position or ceased to exist altogether. Unlike the PC game, the dungeons are on a distinct map from the overworld (more like Ultima VI). All of the dungeons have been completely replaced inside; none of the maps are even close. They are much more combat focused than the original, with monsters being generated even if you walk only a few feet away! The puzzles at least so far are nearly nonexistent, besides the ocassional lever or object that needs to be lifted to reveal...well, another lever!<br /><br />3. The towns are all there, but reorganized. The conversations are also generally there, but dramatically truncated, and most of the quests have been shifted around. For example, Skara Brae''s quest is largely handheld. Mordra allows you to speak to people; Trent gives you a music box; Rowena gives you a ring; Trent builds a cage; Rudolfo (!) attacks you; you put his bones in a cage; put the cage in a well; use the potion Caine gives you. <br /><br />4. The game does not seem very dramatic at all. A typical example if Owen the shipwright--instead of killing himself, he just expresses mild annoyance that he won't get a statue of himself. <br /><br />I suppose today''s entry is just a brief introduction. I have been a bit of a lazy bum and not captured screenshots...maybe next time. My next entry will describe some of the things I find entertaining and some of the things I find highly irritating. Overall, I don''t think the game''s horrible reputation is all that deserved. It feels a lot like Runes of Virtue, actually--less serious, more action-oriented, but still with a certain amount of charm. The downside is that it's a port of a very different sort of game, and it suffers badly for the comparison.CageBloggerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12053920092747626561noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5541174503724500787.post-31717224490779446262010-04-25T11:16:00.000-07:002010-04-25T11:25:44.177-07:00Ultima VII again, sort of!Recently I had a sudden inspiration: It might be fun to blog an experience of playing that infamous Ultima VII port for the Super NES. I remember trying it once and hating it, but at the same time being eager to see just how different the game is as you go further into it. It is interesting to me how the Ultima III and IV for the NES were in some ways superior to their PC cousins, yet the SNES Ultima VII was so much worse. I assume it has to do with the gap in time between their respective releases--NES graphics are obviously superior to the Apple II graphics, even if I always thought the NES versions were irritatingly cartoonish. I also recall how Ultima III for the NES had a little bit of additional game balancing by forcing you to get the gold and silver picks before you could go dig up the exotics. It's been too long since I played the NES version of Ultima IV to remember any major differences there. Well, besides the toilets in the hotels!<br /><br />Anyway, I think I'll start that sometime soon. It should prove amusing. In the comments someone asked for my e-mail address. It seems like there ought to be a way to send a message to me through Blogger that provides your email such that only I can see it...but I can't find any such method, so you can send me an email at zacwbond@hotmail.com. I'm leery of getting new messages from spambots, but on the other hand I get so much spam already it won't matter much.CageBloggerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12053920092747626561noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5541174503724500787.post-24716308047458495992010-02-19T05:53:00.000-08:002010-02-19T06:00:25.379-08:00Defunct?A commenter recently asked if this blog was defunct. I guess there's two answers:<br /><br />1. Yes, because the stated objective was completed long ago. Consequently, there is nothing compelling me to come back and add posts.<br /><br />2. No, because I remain alive and periodically have the urge to do Ultima-related stuff. See the replay of Underworld.<br /><br />I hope my non-answer was useful :-) I have some other possible blog topics I could do. I tried doing one on the books I have been reading, for example, but it proved too time consuming and too reminiscent of schoolwork. <br /><br />I do need to go in and delete all the spam comments on this blog, though. SO there's at least one more thing to do!CageBloggerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12053920092747626561noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5541174503724500787.post-74819562447370826512009-12-05T20:48:00.000-08:002009-12-05T21:12:10.922-08:00UW, againTurns out I had a backup copy of UW in, not shockingly, a subdirectory called "backup" in the UW directory on my laptop. I think I had simply corrupted some files or something because the backup played fine. Playing as a mage wasn't terribly different from playing as a fighter, though--except that virtually every skill is obviated by magic. The exception is combat! Most of the offensive spells are ranged, and the others like flame wind and sheet lightning seem kind of random in their effectiveness. One thing to keep in mind during the game is that a decent number of the harder quests can be ignored until later in the game, when they become almost comically easy. My favorite example is Rodrick, whom I ignored until I'd fully explored levels 5 and 6. Then I took him out with two fireballs. The gazer in the mines was also very easy with a couple of lighning bolts. <br /><br />Here's a few random thoughts for some of the spells:<br />--detect monster, much like the tracking skill, seems pointless when there's a save game feature. The rune of warding also seems pretty dubious.<br /><br />--You get a lantern early enough in the game that there's not much need for most of the light and night-vision spells, unless of course you want to ditch the lantern. I might have late in the game when I had to lug around those talismans, but instead I just dumped them by the level 8 staircase. <br /><br />--poison could be a good spell, but it's too hard to tell what its effect on the target is.<br /><br />--Remove trap and the equivalent skill are the most worthless in the game. I can't even remember any traps that they worked on. <br /><br />--By contrast resist fire may be the best spell in the game because fireballs are so incredibly powerful and those fire elemental in level 7 really blast you with them. <br /><br />--Open is of limited utility when the only doors that open with it are ones you can bash to bits with your fist anyway. The same goes for picklock as a skill.<br /><br />--gate travel could have made life easier in a few places (like going all the way back up to see Shak) but I never really bothered to use it. <br /><br />--I could have sworn there was part of the game where telekinesis was required, but apparently I was wrong. Must be remembering most of the other Ultimas :-P<br /><br />--ally and summon are cool in concept, but it's a bit of a nuisance that the creatures don't start attacking immediately. It's also kind of pointless since they attack you after beating the enemy. <br /><br />--invisibility doesn't seem to be all it's cracked up to be. Monsters don't seem to have much trouble seeing me.<br /><br />--reveal is a weird one. Is there anything invisible out there? It's hard to know where to cast it unless you know something is invisible! <br /><br />--Fly is very helpful in navigating big areas quickly, especially on level 8 when I want to go back to the stairs.<br /><br />-flame wind and sheet lightning seem kind of inconsistent. I enjoyed using flame wind to blow away a gazer and four goblins during the trek to the key of courage, but sometimes it didn't seem to do much of anything.<br /><br />--Sheet lightning and tremor were even less effective. I don't think the few times I used them that they hurt anybody!<br /><br />--roaming sight is a lot of fun but very hard to control. <br /><br />This time I also played as a mace user, but there's a lack of great maces. Maybe I should play as a ranged weapons user instead! That might be impossible. lol, or maybe unarmed! <br /><br />As I mentioned a year or two ago, when I first wrote about the game, the thing I wish most were different is that the major quest items, the talismans, are almost all useless. I don't know exactly what I'd have them do, but it's annoying to lug around a bottle of wine I can't even open.<br /><br />Enough ranting! I enjoyed replaying the game. I think I'm going to go amuse myself with roaming sight. I can get the same sort of effect from the Underworld map viewer out there, but it's not as fun because roaming sight also shows the items and creatures.CageBloggerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12053920092747626561noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5541174503724500787.post-47130758529681008292009-11-09T20:29:00.000-08:002009-11-09T20:36:34.344-08:00UWI just spent about an hour and a half searching google to no avail, when I decided I should use the blog instead! I was feeling the urge to play some Underworld as a mage for the first time, but DosBox fails. The graphics on the "looking glass productions" screen are totally garbled, but the "Ultima Underworld" with the flaming letters looks fine. The next screen, with journey onward etc. does not appear at all. The sound works great and I can even select the intro and hear (but not see) my dream and subsequent visit to Britannia. <br /><br />I haven't played the game or, as I recall, changed any settings since my blogging back in 2007. It's very strange that it spontaneously quit working. Any suggestions out there? I also brought the game to a different PC (I wanted to play UW on my 28 inch monitor just to enjoy the absurdity size mismatch) and had the same problem with v0.73 of DosBox as I had with 0.72 on the laptop. Perhaps the game itself is corrupted. Too bad the CD is a few hundred miles away at present!<br /><br />Kind of sad I might not be able to play the game again. For what it's worth, though, UW2 works fine.CageBloggerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12053920092747626561noreply@blogger.com11tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5541174503724500787.post-51613176329317459282009-10-18T16:18:00.000-07:002009-10-18T17:01:19.987-07:00Sigh! 9.It's finally that time! Finally time, that is, to say some words about Ultima IX. The decade since the game's release has softened my opinion of it quite a bit. I'm going to zip through some of my biggest complaints about the game and at the same time mention the way in which my opinion has gotten softer over the years with respect to each issue. I'll start by mentioning the most-voiced complaints, ones which I can't say much to soften. First, the game is extremely buggy. I have no doubt this will unleash a torrent of comments saying "weird, I never had any problems" but I think such problem-less folk are in the minority. For me, on three different systems I've used over the years, there were frequent crashes to the desktop, especially in the Stygian Abyss and in Covetous. The game has the feel of a rush job, even though it spent something like five years in development; the multiple patches (even an unofficial patch!) help a lot, but are imperfect. I don't really care about bugginess in my overall view of the game (I try to think of what a non-crashing game would be like when I give these overviews) but I need to acknowledge that the quality was very low--Ultima VIII had serious gameplay problems, but I think there weren't so many complaints about crashing. The other main complaint is one I tend to dismiss--that it's too slow. All I can say is that it's not too slow anymore! Time heals all slowness issues, though I have to say their choice of the dead-end Glide API over DirectX definitely mirrors the old Voodoo memory management system from Ultima VII days..In short, Origin went a direction different from the rest of the world without initially realizing it, and now it's a bit of a pain to get U9 working perfectly. The Stygian abyss semi-cut scene with Lord British fighting Blackthorn and the earthquakes in the caves of Covetous are pretty much ruined by the need to repeat them over and over due to crashes, whether or not I used the Glide wrapper that was so effective with other game problems.<br /><br />In any case, as far as the actualy game is concerned, there's really only a few things I don't like, but they're pretty major things! First, the world feels extremely tiny and very static. The sprawling city of Britain has shrunk, and I don't feel as if there are many landmarks surviving from the previous games. The towns seem completely off (especially Moonglow and Yew), and there's a strong since that each of them is just a set-piece, entirely disconnected from the rest of the world. They cities also seem utterly disconnected from the history of the world, especially the island of Minoc and Valoria, the city of like six people around a volcano that hadn't previously existed. The fact that most of the cities are on islands that you can't reach until certain points of the game adds to the sense of disconnectedness. The lack of some of the features we've come to expect from Ultimas such as NPC schedules and sometimes-over-dense conversation trees are also absent. In summary, Britannia of Ultima IX feels like set pieces populated by cardboard characters--almost the feeling I got wandering around the thousands of randomly-generated cities in Daggerfall (except in Daggerfall, most of the NPCs were also LOOKED like cardboard cut-outs). You could also compare the characters to those in Ultima Underworld I, most of whom were also generics. <br /><br />I appreciated the efforts that went into referencing earlier games, but some of them felt like they were simply stapled on top of a game that was basically complete. Ultima IX was one of the only games to acknowledge that Ultima II took place on earth! I don't understand how the British museum managed to find Khorgin's fang, though. More absurdly, the skull of Mondain was sitting there! Paraphrasing Erethian from the Forge of Virtue, "I thought someone let that artifact slip into a volcano..." These 'skin deep' references to earlier games are good, but the big ones you would expect (cities and characters having some relationship to their past incarnations) are mostly absent. <br /><br />So what do I like about the game? Well, the plot's pretty neat. It's no really as 'epic' as I might want in the final game of the series, but the whole idea of city-corrupting anti-virtue pillars popping up out of the ground is cool for several reasons. First, it ties back to earlier games and puts the shrines to good use. Second, it conveniently sets up a nonlinear dynamic, whereby you could travel around the world and fix each pillar whenever you wanted. And third, it provides a sense of graduated accomplishment, where each act you complete changes the area where you completed it. Serpent Isle was pretty good about this--when you did stuff, there were consequences. The plot as used in Ultima IX does a good job with the first idea, barely attempts the second, and tries for the third but falls short because cities of cardboard remain cities of cardboard even if the generic characters say nicer things. I've read the famous Bob White plot but I don't think the plot change is really the big problem--that plot overlaid with the game as it stands would still be problematic. The re-use of the original cut scenes for other purposes, does grate with me, though, especially the absurd summoning of Pyros to gain entry into the Stygian abyss. Ridiculous! <br /><br />The visuals, on the other hand, were pretty awesome. I remember looking out over the ocean near the shrine of Compassion and thinking, "Wow." There are a few places like that in the game where you can experience a sense of Britannia in way you only might have imagined in previous games. And in spite of all the flaws and bugs, the game's pretty fun to play, with some cool puzzles and awesome, if misplaced, special effects. The real complaint I have is that it 'could have been' so much better, and I feel like the series went out with a whimper instead of a bang. The last few paragraphs seem really bitchy compared to my claim in the first sentence that my opinion has softened, but you should read all the complaints as sighs of regret rather than cries of anger. <br /><br />So that's all I have in my head on Ultima IX. Sorry it took FOUR MONTHS to write this! I actually wrote part of it, shelved it for a few weeks, wrote a little more, shelved it, etc. until I reached this absurd point. However, this isn't the end because I still need to take some photos of the lovely crossbow Lord British sent me quite some time ago! Then I guess that will wrap up the blog. I have the strong desire to replay Ultima Underworlds I and maybe II as a mage (I never made much use of magic in those games!), but I'm not sure I'll blog about it when I do or not.<br /><br />As a side note, I seem to have been spelling Khorgin's Fang wrong all this time because the only hits I get in Google are my own blog! But I trust everyone knows what I mean :-)<br /><br />Till next time!<br /><br />-ZacCageBloggerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12053920092747626561noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5541174503724500787.post-31850326597518991622009-05-31T13:55:00.000-07:002009-05-31T14:34:26.943-07:00U8 / ROVSo it seems I'm not going to make my deadline, as planned last month, to finish U9 by today. But I am not upset; I'll try to do it this week. Still, it's good to squeeze U8 in here while it's on my mind!<br /><br />As I've always said, the Ultima series kind of went out with a sputter. The way I see it, there are two issues at hand--First, the desire to take the series in a new direction and increase its appeal to a wider audience. Second, the propensity for the games being rushed and/or interrupted by other issues. To my mind, the first is worse, but the second is more depressing. We see elements of the second clearly in the second half of Serpent Isle, where everything just seems to fall apart with clear hooks for a much grander plot left in but unutilized. The random bugs and problems that occur in that game also seem to my mind symptoms. <br /><br />Ultima VIII suffers a lot from this as well, from the infuriating jumping system (before the patch) and the absurd quest in which you are sent to the birthplace of Moriens, which doesn't even exist (before the patch). Most of these problems can, well, be corrected by the patch! I think Ultima VIII's bigger problem--and importantly, not one shared by Ultima IX--is the desire to go in the new direction towards a more action oriented gaming experience. You can't fix that via a patch! <br /><br />But I'm getting ahead of myself. What were some of the neat ideas about Ultima VIII? Well, I liked the fact that Pagan is an island and thus the rest of its world is basically unknown. The plot is also fairly creative, with the elemental Titans each having distinct personalities and a distinct style of magic. I also enjoyed the shift of emphasis; in the earlier games, the goal is always directly attached to Britannia in some fashion, and is basically finished by the end of the game. Ultima VII was the first to have an uncertain ending, since the black gate's destruction did not also destroy the Guardian, but the immediate existential threat is gone. By contrast, Ultima VIII is mostly about getting off Pagan and at its end really nothing is resolved except for the almost incidental fact that you liberated Pagan, for better or for worse, from its elemental overlords. <br /><br />So the question comes...how did the design choice mess up what could have been a good game, and how was this made even worse by the lack of testing and general sense of being rushed that pervades the last games? I can point to a few things I really didn't like about Ultima VIII...First, there was a heavy emphasis on the smoothness and realism of its graphics, which produced severe restraints on the possible variety. That's why we end up with, what, only eight or nine distinct monsters? How many did Ultima VII have, by comparison? What strikes me as even more disappointing is that I didn't think the graphics were that impressive. Everything seems dull, gray, and blurry. NPCs are particularly smudgy, and the absence of character portraits robs them of the distinctiveness that otherwise they would have had. <br /><br />Ultima VIII is also short. Much of the game seems to have been torn out, including an exciting-sounding jaunt through an underwater city to find the Tear of Seas. It seems the game instead is padded with inane jumping puzzles and obstacle courses that while amusing in small doses, get old fast. The worst are probably the sinking-stone puzzles or the impossible "floating rock" puzzles associated with Stratos--they even have the old platform game standby, floating rocks that fall when you stand on them! Oy. I don't know to what degree these aspects were conceived of to begin with, but they feel like ideas that were added later merely to fill out the game which otherwise would take only a few hours to complete. <br /><br />I don't feel like I have much to say otherwise. I don't like being too bitchy, and this entire post is bitchy, lol. But it's hard not to complain about Ultima VIII given what went before, even though it does seem to have some pretty intense partisans out there in favor of it. I can't even do what I will probably do in my Ultima IX discussion--talk about how the game could have been a lot better--because I think Ultima VIII's problems arose from some pretty fundamental design choices and I can't guess how a game based on its premise might have been otherwise. <br /><br />On a more positive note, I'd like to stick in a comment about Runes of Virtue! I'm not sure how positive or negative my playing of those games came across, but overall I enjoyed them. They felt like a clever mix of elements from the first Zelda game and Lolo-type puzzles, plus a lot of humor tossed in. I still can't believe there was a pie factory. I also enjoyed the fact that ROV2 was so clearly an improvement on ROV1; I don't think there was anything at all that I missed from the first game. I guess that's the advantage of re-using engines! It's like the first and second Underworld games--there was nothing in UW1 that I missed in UW2, really. Sometimes I have wondered if some of the Ultima games might have been better had they been created with older engines; then again, half the excitement of a new game was seeing how Brittannia a new design.<br /><br />Anyway, one downside of the way I wrote this blog is that I didn't experience some of the more innovative features of Runes of Virtue. I didn't need the save-game feature thanks the the emulator, and I wasn't really able to enjoy the game link multiplayer feature. In fact, I didn't even realize it had a save feature; evidently it saves to battery at every screen instead of having an explicit means of saving. The ROV series' team lead, Dr. Cat (whom fans might recognize for his various cameos as characters in Ultima games), posted a helpful comment to this effect to one of my blog entries:<br /><br />http://bloggingultima.blogspot.com/2007/07/runes-of-virtue-day-4.htmlCageBloggerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12053920092747626561noreply@blogger.com15tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5541174503724500787.post-49627139956217942652009-05-19T15:18:00.000-07:002009-05-27T16:42:18.003-07:00U7sHello, world.<br /><br />The best way to start an Ultima VII blog is probably by answering a recent question--what happens when you start if you don't have a mouse? As I recall, Iolo whispers to you advising you to purchase one. It's kind of an amusing and rare fourth wall moment.<br /><br />Over and above any of the other games, Ultima VII is far and away the most immersing, in my opinion. It results from a combination of factors, many of which derived from earlier games. An obvious example is the NPC scheduling, which originated in Ultima V but by VII is massively expanded upon to include very detailed NPC activities. Upon first playing the game, it is pretty amusing just to wander around town and observe people going about their business--children playing tag, cooks baking or filling pots with mysterious green sludge, bureaucrats dropping letter openers and other sundry junk at different locations around their offices. I especially like the way NPCs react to the weather, opening shutters and making comments. The size and detail of the game world also aids immersion--from the wide assortment of different kinds of trees to the random corpses in the forest with magic items and the caves with imaginary walls. You can, and I think many of us did, just spend hours wandering the terrain, playing with the interactive objects, and collecting treasure from the endless streams of enemies (especially in the Great Forest, where I tended to hide my booty in the mysterious wisp castle full of books). There are also plenty of little details that I appreciated--the way your companions leave you or even attack you if you steal too much, or the way NPCs react when you move objects while you are invisible.<br /><br />Other aspects of the game were a bit less popular. At first I was sad at the lack of typed conversations, but I have to admit it improved believability since characters no longer say "I don't know anything about that" to obvious queries. The most disparaged aspect of the game was the combat, and it's understandable considering your companions' propensity for killing you with their weapons (particularly anyone with a firedoom staff--ye gads!). It's true that there was no strategy involved, but frankly I found the older strategic combat tedious, and the fact that the game freezes when you open up your inventory makes up for it at least a little bit, since it's possible to take a breather and change strategy mid-course. Probably even more disliked was your companions' incessant whining for food, which I have to say got pretty annoying. It seems like it would not have been too difficult for your party members to feed themselves with whatever is available! I guess maybe the designers didn't want them eating your special food or something, but surely there could have been a way. Interface-wise, the randomly reorganizing inventory objects proved very frustrating, especially with respect to the inevitable Gigantic Bag O' Keys That All Look Similar. I suppose saving the exact location of every item in any container might have been challenging, but at least the game could have displayed them in some coherent order.<br /><br />But that's about all the grips I have. The leap between Ultima VII and Ultima VI was at least as giant as the Ultima V to Ultima VI leap, which itself was very noticible. Even today I still am fond of the graphics of Ultima VII, which seem to have just the right mix of sharpness and detail--Everything was bigger in Ultima VIII, for example, but NPC faces and such just looked like smudges. They are smudges in Ultima VII too, but since they are also smaller it seems more appropriate. I also find the Ultima VII soundtrack to be perhaps the most memorable of any of the games. Unlike Ultima VI, each location has distinctive music, and unlike Ultima VIII the tunes are very individual and it doesn't feel like a movie soundtrack, to the point that I can enjoy listening to the music (as I am right now!) outside of the context of the game. LOL, I can even play part of the Fellowship Theme on the piano. Too bad all the recordings of this stuff seem to be MIDIs (even the nice soundtrack CD).<br /><br />So now let's move on to the other side of the coin--Ultima VII Part 2: The Serpent Isle. It's amazing to me that originally Serpent Isle was conceived of as its own game--That would have been a truly gargantuan effort to play through. On the other hand, I would have enjoyed being able to equip my party myself! It always struck me as absurd that you show up in Britannia with some of the companions wearing no shirt! Or at least I think Shamino isn't. This is one of a wide variety of minor but noticeable problems that crop up in the game: It'd never clear what exactly the Ice Wine replaced; the serpent teeth owned by the Mages in Moonshade seem to just magically appear; after Monitor is destroyed Harnaa talks like nothing happened; etc. I attribute these problems, most of which occur late in the game, to its rushed delivery, a problem that also resulted in many issues with Ultimas VIII and IX and lots of other games.<br /><br />But let's focus on the things I like! Serpent Isle took the 'real-worldness' of the game to greater heights in a few ways. Most obvious are the gigantic and very attractive character portraits; more subtle is the fact that the portraits largely look like the figures on-screen! On a related note, only rarely is the same figure used to represent different people in the same town, even though this entailed a large number of new types of bodies. The inventory paper-dolling was also very nice, and I was a big fan of the overall design of Fawn with its crisscrossing walkways overhead and so on. <br /><br />I also appreciated the fact that the world changes upon y our interaction with it, sometimes for better or for worse. Ultima VII and earlier games always bugged me a bit because it was uncommon for someone to notice that you finished anything; an extreme example is the fellow who tells you to retrieve Lord British's crown in Ultima V and doesn't notice that you've returned with it. In Serpent Isle, however, even random people notice things you've done, including new conversation wordings that arise after your become a knight to the wholesale destruction of the towns by your companions. The world is decidedly non-static. <br /><br />The Guardian...In general, I'm positive. His introduction was pretty impressive, speaking to you from a computer monitor! I loved how he'd make random comments in Ultima VII, especially. He's threatening yet also foolish, so some of the oddities of his plans didn't bother me much. Ultima VII was an especially effective presentation of him, because you only slowly learn the truth over time and it presents a fun mystery. The same is true in Serpent Isle, where you arrive to chase Batlin only to discover that what's going on is vastly more significant than chasing down one guy, even if I get a bit muddled on a few of the details of how the order and chaos serpents ended up where they are and how it is that particular actions solve the problem. The storyline in Serpent Isle was brilliant, tying an already epic quest (stopping the Guardian from destroying the Universe, more or less) with extensive or minor references to very many of the previous games, producing the sense of continuity that I loved so much playing the game. <br /><br />The downside of such an effort is that it's hard to follow up on; there's the sense that the next game must necessarily be as epic, but in a lot of ways Pagan is non-epic and requires very pragmatic choices.<br /><br />A few words about the add-ons! I consider Forge of Virtue excellent. It was coherent, the quests were fun, and it tied itself into the story of Ultima despite not strictly relating to the plot at hand (which is good; it needs to be self-sufficient). Erethian was a lot of fun to talk to. Silver seed also had a lot of fun quests, and the notable advantage of variety. Unfortunately, being structured as a time travel adventure leads to some confusing questions (where is this place in the modern-day Serpent Isle? Did planting the silver seed actually accomplish anything?) so plot-wise I liked it a bit less. I also got the sense that it was more of a rush job--which is the sense I get from Serpent Isle overall. <br /><br />To end this meaty post, I'll just toss out some of my most memorable moments in the two Ultima VII's. There's plenty of them to go around, so I'm sure to forget a few:<br /><br />-The situation of the Mages, comic but sad. <br />-Almost every aspect of the Skara Brae quest<br />-That strange serpent-shaped landmass on Ambrosia<br />-Destroying any of the generators<br />-Confronting Batlin with the Cube. <br />-Shattering the daemon mirror on the Isle of Fire<br /><br />-The Mountains of Freedom, especially the dream-like sequence where a woman is killed by her nightmare and a man is struck by lightning after you put flowers on a corpse nearby<br />-The test in Furnace<br />-Confronting Rabinrath in the dream world<br />-Shamino and Beatrice<br />-Confronting Batlin and your companions' speeches<br />-Speaking to the dead Heirophants<br /><br />There's plenty more. These are probably why the game has so much replay value, besides the fact that you can pretty much ignore the plot and have a great deal of fun exploring and interacting.<br /><br />That's enough for today. I still have a few games to go! See you next time.CageBloggerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12053920092747626561noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5541174503724500787.post-31303868148969566612009-04-13T15:37:00.001-07:002009-04-13T16:26:55.301-07:00UWI apologize for disappointing the person who was enthusiastic about hearing my thoughts on <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_0">Ultima</span> VII, because today's post is going to be devoted to <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_1">Ultima</span> Underworld! Not one, but both.<br /><br />It's hard to remember now, but by far the most remarkable thing about the original <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_2">Ultima</span> Underworld was its free-flowing, smooth movement. It's hard to exaggerate how game-changing this was, pun intended, in terms of the variety of things you can do and ways of looking at the world. In the older <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_3">Ultimas</span>, where you had first person perspectives but were limited to "block by block" motion, the environment felt constrained. Even though <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_4">Ultima</span> Underworld's maps are small, the fact that you can wander freely throughout makes them seem enormous most of the time, especially considering the random secrets you find lying about. One of my favorite examples is in level three with the Lizard Men. One of the quests you must go on is to fetch the bones of Osaka--and it feels like a difficult quest to an out-of the way spot. Yet if you load up a map viewer and just look around the level, it seems horribly claustrophobic and small, and Osaka's bones seem literally within sight of the <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_5">Lizardman</span> who asked you to retrieve them! Somehow, when playing the world seems much larger and intricate. I feel that's a consequence of the challenge involved in getting anywhere, the ability to swim, the dark and <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_6">opressive</span> lighting, and the mood set through some of my favorite music in the series. <br /><br />What's also exciting is the variety of ways in which you can play <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_7">Ultima</span> Underworld, due to the wide array of skills available. That also greatly adds to its replay value, because each type of play style results in a different experience. The 7<span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_8">th</span> level, where magic can't be used, was certainly a breeze for me since I as usual had mostly eschewed magic! However, I expect other parts of the game would benefit for a more magic-savvy character, especially since at many points magic obviates the need for other skills such as lore and swimming. I have also never attempted to play the game as an expert in ranged weapons or fist-fighting, but it might be worth a try. <br /><br /><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_9">Ultima</span> Underworld is highly divorced from the story of the rest of the series--you are captured by a Baron you've never heard of and have to save a Britannia that is unaware of your presence from a monster you never hear of again. This fact has its pros and cons; personally, I think it adds excitement because the game doesn't have to meet expectations with respect to characters and locations, and there is more surprise. Also, as any fan of almost any franchise knows, trying to retrofit the story to what we already know about the history of Britannia is entertaining all by itself. I particularly enjoy trying to determine the year of the events based on the brief clues provided by characters in the game, although sometimes these seems a bit inconsistent! <br /><br />Some parts of Underworld don't fair so well in the end. I think the bartering system is overall fairly weak, and almost no characters in the game ever seem to have anything I actually want to trade for besides the occasional required quest item. I also find that, although every level of the abyss has its own personality, that fact seems to overshadow a unifying sense of place; that is, every level could practically be its own world or even a separate dungeon. I'm not sure how I feel about the combat system. It was pretty fun to run, dodge, run, dodge, but it's hard to tell if and when you're in range of your opponent, or when you are in his range. The fact that the 2-D opponents also move in a jumpy manner can also be confusing. To round off my small stack of complaints, in spite of being designed for free flowing movement, the world seems awfully box-like to me. In some places this makes sense since people tend to construct with boxes, but I enjoy the more natural seeming <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_10">environments</span> and wish there were more of them. Oh, and one more thing--I wish more of the virtue talismans actually did anything! The taper of sacrifice, the sword and the shield are quite nice...the bottle of wine and the standard of honor? Not so much. <br /><br />So this brings me to about the end of my Underworld I comments! As usual I'll pick a few memorable moments, though there aren't a whole lot that stand out in Underworld I. Playing the flute for the cup of wonder is pretty interesting, as is that mad dash for the key of courage. To me, the <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_11">Lizardman</span> level is the best in the game, though it's tough to explain why. Whenever I think of <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_12">Ultima</span> Underworld, that's what comes to mind. And of course, there's re-burying <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_13">Garamon</span>, fighting off <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_14">Tyball</span>, and tossing away all your useful (and sometimes useless) tools in the abyss. <br /><br />I was surprised by how much I enjoyed <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_15">Ultima</span> Underworld II when I played through it; I remembered liking it, but I didn't quite remember how fun exploring the wide array of worlds was. Not a whole lot changed from the original Underworld, but all the changes struck me as positive. Conversations are a lot more useful, and there's a much stronger sense of having an impact on the world, from the slow decay of Lord <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_16">British's</span> castle and the murders <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_17">committed</span> therein to the fact that you can free a friendly troll in the goblin tower, and feel both amused and depressed as he slaughters all the goblins who had been <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_18">harassing</span> you. There's also a certain bizarreness to the whole experience of playing--no one seems to notice that you literally just walk out of a wall and into their home, a fact that's especially glaring in <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_19">Killorn</span>. <br /><br />In terms of atmosphere, I'd call Underworld II perhaps the best in the series. Playing this game can be a very depressing experience due to the overwhelmingly <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_20">oppressive</span> atmosphere virtually everywhere in the game, from the lonely wasteland of the ice caverns to the forgotten <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_21">irrelevance</span> of <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_22">Killorn</span> Keep or the emptiness of the <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_23">Scintillus</span> <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_24">Acadamy</span>. This all reaches a head in the Tomb of Praecor Loth, where you're forced to fight with the three companions of the dead king, who manage to be utterly self-centered in their unwavering loyalty. It would be extremely sad if the combat weren't so painful! The constant theme of the Guardian destroying everything ties all these worlds together, aided by a soundtrack in which the game theme is reapeated in a variety of ways throughout each realm. <br /><br />Underworld II is also notable for its variety of in-jokes and game references, from the fake version of Akalabeth in which you fight stick men in the ethereal void to the random comment by Mayor Patterson that he found a key from "the days of Minax" or, on a related note, the comic references to Mondain having a nice wife by Pracecor Loth's wizard. Finally, Ultima Underworld II features one of only two references that I'm aware of to the World of Ultima series; you see yourself on Mars in a crystal ball in the Ice Caverns (the other is Spark referencing the dinosaurs of Eodon in Ultima VII). It also includes a forward reference to Dupre's death in Serpent Isle and even provides an item for that same game--assuming you do something totally unanticipated while playing by speaking to goblins you had dealt with in the beginning of the game towards the end.<br /><br />In terms of memorable moments, Underworld II is pretty chock full of them--many of which I mentioned above. I also found reading the note planning a meeting to deal with the approaching Guardian by the wizards of Scintillus pretty chilling, as is the act of jumping into the Guardian's mouth in the purple section Ethereal Void. <br /><br />As much as I like Underworld II, though, I can't pass it buy without one glaring, absurd problem...<br /><br />Lord British, where the hell is your throne!?<br /><br />I'm glad I got that off my chest. In a way Underworld II is also a bit dissappointing--I think it succeeds largely because its interface and game system was perfected to some degree in the first Underworld game, and the team building it could concentrate on the story, the atmosphere and so on. This also seems to be the case with Martian Dreams and Serpent Isle, which feel like more epic games than their predecessor using the same engine. Yet, the expectation of a whole new way of playing with each sequal drives the series. I guess there could be a happy medium somewhere. <br /><br />Hope everyone's glad I finally posted! :-)CageBloggerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12053920092747626561noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5541174503724500787.post-36030634229378349082009-03-26T20:00:00.000-07:002009-03-26T20:17:44.327-07:00Hi!FYI, I am still alive! But as you may guess I am preoccupied with other projects, mostly musical. Someone said the first days of U1 and U8 were messed up, but I don't have any trouble viewing them on other machines when I am not logged in. The probability of a Blogging Zelda is nil, but I will probably play that U5 remake one day when I feel inspired to play games.<br /><br />So I did a pretty good job of updating this thing when my goal was to finish all the games in a year. I have done a less than inspiring job of writing my "final thoughts." Perhaps that is because I lack a goal. Therefore, all my Ultima final thought postings on the final eight games will be posted by the end of May. They will probably be combined posts for the Underworlds with a brief note for the Runes of Virtue games. Then I will write individual comments on the other four games; Black Gate and Serpent Isle will have brief notes concerning their respective add-on games. Faithful readers are welcome to take a "I'll believe it when I see it!" view of this plan.<br /><br />Then I need to post photos of the lovely crossbow Lord British kindly had Iolo create for me! And maybe some photos of myself if I go to the RenFair this year. After that I have no idea what to do with this blog...I'm a bit sad that I don't think any of the blog-the-whole-game-series efforts finished. The other Ultima guy gave up, and I think the Zelda and the Dragon Warrior blogs died out, too. <br /><br />An idea for someone else who, like me, is cheap and who hasn't kept track of gaming since the mid-90s and wants to create a blog...write a collection of game reviews of PC games released 10 years ago, as if they were released today. To my mind, they'd be as fun as "new" games because they are "new to you," and they would have the advantage of playing great on recent PCs and incorporating every patch made over the past decade, so you would see each game in the best light possible! Well, there's probably some that won't run correctly...but I bet there's workarounds. If U9 works, surely everything else does...CageBloggerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12053920092747626561noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5541174503724500787.post-72395127366935168862009-01-10T21:59:00.000-08:002009-01-10T22:52:22.668-08:00SE & MD and some fluffAh, I really need to spend a week and finish the last few games up so I can start a new blog. It's pretty fun to recall my experiences with the Ultima games and comment on them, but it's hard to do it very frequently because it requires a degree of inspiration! <br /><br />First I want to make some notes. One of the amusing things about blogging is that other people sometimes post comments about your blog, so I can go search for "blogging ultima" on Google and find that people are talking about me. Ah, the rush of Internet pride! Anyway, I wanted to address two comments I ran into on bulletin boards:<br /><br />#1<br />Someone commented, "<span class="postbody">You know, in reading through the "My trip through Ultima" blog and the blog for "Blogging Ultima", what struck me is that both chroniclers resorted to cheats at various points to get through the games."<br /><br />I did? Well, I guess it depends on what he means. If save states are cheating, than I cheated all day in U1-3, especially 3 because its natural savegame system is so punitive. If that doesn't count then I don't think I did. I never even used a hex editor to change double-capital letters in my character's name in Underworld II (ZAchary)! I did consult walkthroughs on a number of occasions, when I was hopelessly stuck (usually it turned out I failed to set some game flag somewhere). Maybe I did do some other cheating somewhere along the line, but I don't recall it. <br /><br /></span><span class="postbody">#2<br />Someone else said, "Heh... when Ophidian Dragon gets to it, he'll probably complain at first. Then after he finishes 9, I bet he says "You know, in retrospect, Ultima 8 was actually pretty decent." We'll see if I'm right, eh?"<br /><br />For what it's worth, I think I complained about both Ultima VIII and IX (and all the rest...it's easier to complain than praise) but in the end I believe I had a much more positive attitude towards IX than VIII. I am unsure if that is reflected in the blog. <br /><br />PS: If you wrote those comments...I apologize for my failure to give you attribution!</span><br /><span class="postbody"><br />Anyway, now it's time to talk about Savage Empire and Martian Dreams! Because these are fairly peripheral, I expect my discussions to be pretty short. <br /><br />Savage Empire is most notable for incorporating more "adventure" elements. These come in a few specific ways--the puzzles that require specific, non-obvious solutions (such as tossing a bomb to knock a tree over a chasm), the comedic elements (the Three Stooges tribe), and the brevity of the game overall. I really liked the more realistic scale of the game; you are in a very tiny part of the forest rather than supposedly wandering across an entire planet. I also enjoyed the emphasis on ancient cultures, even though it was sort of confusing to have such a mix of times and places in one spot. On the other hand, the combat was pretty rough, or rather, it was too frequent and that prevented me from wanting to do much exploration outside the roads, and I missed a lot of interesting features as a result. It was also disappointing to see so many "generics" wandering around, all saying the same thing. Overall, I also found the end of the game, specifically wandering through the underground city and then enterying the Myrmidex caves, to be frustrating, mostly because both feel like a "whole lot of nothing," e.g., gigantic maps with little of interest to see or do. I guess the underground city did have some cool elements, but I had to make extensive maps, which didn't seem to jibe with the otherwise-simplified structure of the rest of the game. Except for those extended sections, I thought it all tied together well, and some of the world interaction, such as mixing chemicals to create gunpowder, was impressive. I found it a light diversion, for the most part, with an inventive back story. I guess there weren't any particularly striking moments. Perhaps when you shut off the power to the underground city and your golden robot friend expires? That was pretty cool. <br /><br />Martian Dreams is similar in a lot of ways. It features some of the same characters, has the random appearance of guys that look and act like Iolo, Shamino and Dupre, and it has a strong science-fiction background. I thought the diverse elements of 19th century characters, H.G. Wells-style fancy and alien life on Mars were brought together extremely well in this game. If someone were to tell me, "Hey, I've got this game where you save Mark Twain from his own nightmares on Mars" I would have thought it absurd, but the way the game is presented it actually makes sense. Kudos to the storyline team! I also thought the music in this game was spectacular, especially the character creation sequence and some of the outdoor music; far superior to the Savage Empire music which I barely even remember. This one was also a bit combat-heavy, and I got really sick of those damned jumping beans! Finally, I was especially impressed by the dream sequences; they were well-attuned to the characters involved and I particularly loved the Shadowlord sequence. The Avatar's conversation with Astaroth, the Shadowlord of Hatred, is particularly memorable. I even got a bit of a tear in my eye as the game ended and all the characters were lined up in a row to wish me well (or to tell me to hurry up...). A very vivid game! It actually bothers me some, too--one of the things Lord British always did with each new game was to recreate the engine from scratch. But Martian Dreams and Underworld II were both, in my opinion, both much better constructed in terms of story and its relationship to the engine than the games from which their engine derives. The same could be said of Serpent Isle (if you imagine it in its completed state). So does one of the most fun aspects of the Ultima series, being surprised by a brand new presentation of (usually) the same world, detract from the quality of the game? I think it probably does. <br /><br />Well, those are my late-night comments for these two games. It's harder to scrounge up enough interesting thoughts with the spinoffs, I'm afraid! I should have better luck with the Underworlds, though, since I was very fond of both of them. Do not expect insightful essays when I discuss the Runes of Virtue games, however...<br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /></span>CageBloggerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12053920092747626561noreply@blogger.com11tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5541174503724500787.post-76871595463442998352008-12-06T19:43:00.000-08:002008-12-06T20:16:43.151-08:006!Well, I didn't post anything over my vacation, but I don't suppose anyone actually believed me when I said I would, so perhaps it's all good. Tonight I'll talk about Ultima VI! I'm lucky to have extremely vivid memories of this game, not the least because I played it many, many times before my blogged experience of it. Let's talk about the more technical stuff first--this is a beautiful game on many levels. This was the first Ultima game to focus on its PC incarnation, and consequently there's a massive change in the look of the game. All previous games were limited in their pallete and the proximity of colors due to the limitations of the Apple II; in VGA mode, Ultima VI looks more vibrant and alive than any of the previous games. I think this creates a different mood--in the old games, there was this almost constant black background no matter where you were, whereas in Ultima VI the grasslands seem lush; I especially loved the animated flowing rivers when I first played the game! The perspective is also somewhat more logical--walls have a slanted appearance (though this is misleading since you can't walk under walls that are in perspective as in Ultima VII) instead of a square appearance, and other people are not always facing you as if they are lying on the ground. In short, the more realistic graphics really helped bring the game to life for me when I was first introduced to it.<br /><br />Of particular note is the conversation system, which is made much more enjoyable by the large and attractive character portraits given to every person in the game. This is the first Ultima where I find it easy to attach personalities to particular characters, just because I can remember the face of, say, the dishonest ruffian who accosts you outside Lord British's castle, or the dog with a dish in his mouth, or the horse-seller south of Trinsic that inexplicably says "Later!" if you mention sex to her...<br /><br />I didn't say anything about the music of Ultima V, which was foolish since that was certainly one of my most favorite aspects; that game had some great tunes, especially the Grayson's Theme and the outdoors theme. Ultima VI has some good ones--I especially like the combination of Gargoyle Theme and "Rule, Britannia!"--but in general, the score is not memorable because much music is straight out of Ultima V, and also particular pieces are usually not tied to specific locales. Hence, few stick out. <br /><br />I think the game is most famous for its level of interaction and the wide array of objects which can be collected and use, and the seamless world which presents the cities and outdoors at the same scale, albeit shrunk compared to the (apparent) long distances of previous games. Of course, Ultima VII took the interaction to almost absurd heights, so I guess I don't need to dwell on it here.<br /><br />Where the game doesn't work so well is in the plot department. The idea is very attractive--The gargoyles thought the Codex was theres and you just destroyed the Underworld--but it's pretty hard to fit the gargoyle realm of Ultima VI as the other side of a flat planet with the Underworld, which was obviously an underground realm on a round (actually toroidal...sorry for preventing a nitpick, nerds) planet in Ultima V. That confusion aside, pretty much no one in Britannia seems to care much about the gargoyle threat except Lord British and some groaning dudes in Cove (Why can't someone just cast heal on these guys, anyway?) The music hall director in Minoc even demands you go build some panpipes and play a tune before he lets you have the rune required to save the world! In another odd game design decision, you are given instant access to almost everywhere on the planet with the Orb of the Moons in the very beginning of the game, obviating the need for a huge bulk of the plot (namely the map pieces quest to get the pointless silver tablet). As a result, Ultima VI can probably be finished without cheating in perhaps under and hour! It also had the amusing effect, the first time I played, of confusing me when I teleported to the Gargoyle world, killed everyone, and didn't understand why the game hadn't ended. In any event, the game may be a bit too easy and I sometimes wonder if it was intentional or an error.<br /><br />Among the more interesting and memorable events in the game are your interactions with the ghost of Quenton, which remains unresolved in this game, your submission to Lord Draxinosom (accompanied by a question, "Why?" whose answer took me absolutely forever to figure out the first time), and, most curiously, your strange, ambiguous interaction with the disembodied spirits of Mondain, Minax and Exodus, who speak of their atrocities in a bizarre, detached manner. I would say that was my favorite, and the most surprising, aspect of the game.<br /><br />Overall, Ultima VI has a special place in my heart as the first game in the series that I played. It was a big step forward in a lot of ways, and I can't help but like the abandonment of the tiresome combat from earlier in the series, though I know a lot of people who were upset by some of the changes. Still, it remains a favorite, though it's not in as high esteem as it might have been before I went and played through the series over again...I think it would come in slightly ahead of Ultima Underworld I were I to rank my favorites, but behind VII, Underworld II, and Serpent Isle. However, I'm not sure, and those are all extremely stiff competition anyway, so the A+ I give to Ultima VI might be slightly below the A+ I'd give to the others, lol.<br /><br />Up next are the spin-offs, Savage Empire and Martian Dreams. The former is so short I may combine the two into one entry. Soon I will also need to come up with something to say about the Runes of Virtue series, but that's going to be tough...CageBloggerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12053920092747626561noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5541174503724500787.post-39392160239794361612008-11-23T14:32:00.000-08:002008-11-23T14:53:10.764-08:00In Which I Say Nice Things About Ultima VWell, reading my comments indicates i totally failed to address one aspect of Ultima V that made it vastly superior to all the previous games--namely, the storyline. Ultima 1-3 had stories, but the events and impact of them were contained almost entirely within the documentation. Ultima IV was strangely plotless--it was a quest of self-improvement, but there wasn't really any compelling need for the world to have you as Avatar. I would summarize the back story of that game as, "Everything's going OK I suppose. Let's find someone to be the Avatar!"<br /><br />In Ultima V, by contrast, the first thing that happens (granted, in a cutscene) is that you get attacked by a Shadowlord. They also take over towns, and Blackthron harasses you on a regular basis; guards demand bribes, and so on. Unlike the previous games, there's the sense of impending disaster and the well-being of the world hanging in the balance. The illusion breaks at points (like any game), but it's there for the first time. Ultima VI's major failure is in this regard; I still can't get over the moron that makes you build and play some panpipes before letting you save the world; moreover, hardly anyone cares about the Gargoyle threat in general. At least in Ultima IX, Katrina apologizes for wasting your time!<br /><br />I would also disagree with a commenter who said Ultima V's combat was insufficiently strategic and thy preferred Ultima IV. I thing the opposite; for most battles at the end of IV, I just repeatedly hit the A key and the up arrow because the massive barrage of magic arrows and wand bolts and whatever pretty much cleans the board of all enemies. As for the argument that a Shepherd or a Fighter is the best character class in IV because you can ge them to level 8 more easily, I say there's no particular reason to bother. Even in the abyss, everything was dead before my uber-Shepherd gets in melee range, and besides, touching those orbs is tedious. <br /><br />I also got some other comments! Someone said that the item in Serpent Isle which trades for the ice wine was "obvious" but can't remember what it was; I say that such an item does not exist. Finally I was attacked for not showing Ultima Underworld sufficient love, but I maintain that I was fairly positive in my comments :-P If I'm overly critical, it's only because criticism is more fun to read than positive comments. <br /><br />Hope everyone has good holidays, or at least those of us in the United States. I am on vacation so I may publish more this week.CageBloggerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12053920092747626561noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5541174503724500787.post-30651233016954987792008-11-05T18:04:00.000-08:002008-11-05T20:53:41.316-08:005!The time has come at long last to tackle Ultima V. I can probably cut and paste my last intro here--it doesn't feel like it's been long since I wrote the last one, time flies, etc. etc. At this rate I won't be done for another year! Then again, I'm not too concerned about that.<br /><br />I have a pretty mixed view of Ultima V. When I originally played it, after getting the Ultima Collection back in 1994 or so, I found it extremely painful to play. The combat sequences are pretty long, and you get fewer hit points per level than in IV, and it seems monsters hurt more than in IV. Since generally I find combat to be the least enjoyable part of any of the Ultima games, I gave up pretty quickly. I did eventually see the endgame via cheating, but I think that doesn't count! <br /><br />Since I'm already enumerating downsides, I'll mention another. I felt like the towns in Ultima V were a lot less distinctive than they were in Ultima IV, though it's hard to explain why. In Ultima IV, when I think of any town I can imagine its map in my head today--and the same is true for Ultima VI and VII--but this is not the case for Ultima V. I think it has to do with the fact that almost all seemed to have walls, which limits the space for character per town. Finally, the Underworld was intensely difficult, especially the section which involved very tedious blink spells to go from one small hole in the mountains to another--mapmaking in other parts of the Underworld was actually fairly entertaining, but here it was simply a chore and I never got distances quite right. <br /><br />Now I can enumerate some of the points I liked. Dungeons were vastly improved, as was your ability to interact and affect changes in the world otherwise--you can move objects and use things, and monsters leave rational treasure instead of just the gold you found in most earlier games. Of course, I exploited game mechanics heavily! I noticed that invisibility rings have the curious side effect of bringing monsters' hit points to near zero so that one hit kills them. I also noticed that leaving one monster alive in a dungeon room brings them all back to life if you return. Thus, an easy way to amass treasure was to become invisible, kill a bunch of dragons in a room, leave one, then exit and return to the room, over and over again! This probably qualifies as cheating, but the game in its initial stages was difficult enough that I didn't feel bad about it. This was a bit of a side track from my main point, which was that the dungeons were vastly more interesting to explore than they were in Ultima IV, where I largely dashed to the treasure with down and up spells and then immediately exited. <br /><br />The most impressive change between the games is the improvement in the way the world exists independently of you--there is a day and night sequence, characters have specific schedules, and I am told seasons also occur. There are also astrological phenomenon that cause Shadowlords to invade towns! I mentioned this change in independent existence of the game world as a key theme in how the games developed over the years; the other key theme is how the world treats you as a person, and how your actions have an impact on the world. There's less evidence of this in Ultima V, or at least I didn't notice it, but I did notice glaring problems. For example, a member of the Underground tells me to head to Blackthorn's castle to get Lord British's crown, which I do--and when I return to get a new quest, he doesn't acknowledge the completion of the old one. Similarly, if you give up the names of the Resistance to Blackthorn there's no effect; indeed, you can get trapped by him over and over again and no one seems to care. Most hilariously, you can wander through his throne room and so long as you don't touch anyone, they are oblivious to you. I attribute most of these flaws to the small size of the game, and they certainly exist in every other early RPG, but they are more glaring because the game is so effective in presenting a realistic "breathing" world in so many other ways. <br /><br />Overall, I would say my memories of Ultima V are weak, even though it took me something like 35 hours to finally finish. It's hard to explain why, because my memories of Ultima IV and Ultima VI are fairly vivid--there's just something about this game that did not sear it into my brain; maybe some of your quests are repetitive (shrine quests *extremely* so), and maybe I didn't find characters as charming or memorable as in the previous game. Maybe the long conversations without portraits made keeping track of who was who a lot more difficult? In short, my impression of Ultima V has never been very high, despite a neat plot and a far more realistic world, yet I don't know quite how to explain why.<br /><br />On to a few of the most memorable moments of the game! It's easy to start with the very obvious--killing the Shadowlords. Tossing the shards into the flame and yelling a name and they are destroyed; I like imagining how that would play out in some kind of cutscene. I am also quite fond of meeting Captain John in the abyss and learning the origin of the Shadowlords, which I had never understood prior to encountering him in his unexpected fort! Ultima V also contains one of the most bizarre and mysterious sequences in any of the games, too--the strange, backward-colored realm that Lord British is trapped in. Why is he totally lacking power here? Why is it furnished with a bed and clocks and books and all? British proposes it to be an ancient location, and thinking about how it got there and what it was used for is one of the pleasures of finishing the game.<br /><br />That's all I've got on Ultima V. I'm curious if anyone else feels the way I do about it--On paper everything about the game is good, but the experience never really seemed that great to me.CageBloggerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12053920092747626561noreply@blogger.com10tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5541174503724500787.post-29619339419906081832008-09-12T18:12:00.000-07:002008-09-12T18:57:35.862-07:004!Holy guacamole, I thought I posted my last one in August sometime, but evidently it was way back in July! Man, time is zipping by. So, I'm going to spontaneously write about Ultima IV without having though about it much in advance. Here we go!<br /><br />Ultima IV is commonly considered one of, or sometimes the, best RPG video games ever made. The argument usually goes that instead of trying to kill Foozle, you are trying to improve yourself and become something greater. I always found this a little bit misleading. It's true, there's a basic theme to the game of being nice to people and not stealing their gold (a necessary tactic in the previous games!), but in terms of quests, the game is pretty much one long scavenger hunt, and although you don't kill any Foozle, you do kill an enormous quantity of orcs, dragons, ghosts, gremlins, zorns (or is the plural zorn?), brigands and so on. I'd go so far as to say that perhaps as much as 90% of the human population of Britannia consists of brigands, evil wizards, and other bad guy types. So in terms of actual gameplay, I don't think the thematic shift from killing lots of things to becoming a paragon of virtue while killing lots of things is a very big shift.<br /><br />Instead, what makes the game work are the incremental shifts forward, which continue until Ultima VII, in two areas of immersive gaming experience. First, the sense that the world you are gaming in can exist without you. Second, the sense that your presence in the world has an impact. The first item is brought to mind by some of my favorite features of the game--the moons which, albeit comically fast in changing, guide your travels, and the new conversation system such that most characters spout off several lines, and you are forced to interact with them. For me this is a gigantic difference from Ultima III, where an NPC is just a signpost; here, the options for talk are limited but the fact that I am forced to treat them in a more human-like manner makes the game immersive; I don't particularly enjoy lying to them. In some ways I think the future version of this, where you pick a topic from a list instead of typing it, is an improvement, because I see insulting or cruel responses I COULD make, but which I actually feel kind of crappy making, even though I realize I'm talking to a few blocks of text in a computer program. <br /><br />As a side note, I am a big fan of the style of conversation in this game. Everything you do in Ultima IV has a sense of importance attached to it, and the sparse, direct dialog add to that. The goofiness is limited to skeletons in the woods and the occasional ghost; everyone else is relentlessly serious. <br /><br />The virtue system is the primary mechanism for the improvement in the second area of immersion. Although almost none of your actions in the game have a permanent impact (slaughter a town and they're all back when you return) on the game world, they *do* prove to be a significant impediment to your progress in the game. In short, the choices you make in the game, tied to a particular ethical system, matter. I guess in Ultima III, they mattered too--but in a more crass way. In Ultima III, you killed guards to improve your experience score, while in Ultima IV you give to beggars to improve your compassion score. On the surface these are pretty much the same--actions with consequences to your stats. However, I think the former is a huge breach of immersion because you can't take the game seriously when you are hacking guards to death by the hundreds. Giving gold to beggars, though, forces you to treat the in-game characters as more "alive" than those burly guards, and therefore your choices seem to impact them (even if they never cease begging). In the end you can take more pride (ironically, since you are supposed to be humble) in your actions in Ultima IV than in Ultima III, and it makes the game a more memorable and immersing experience.<br /><br />The above paragraph is a bit meandering, mostly becuase the "you have an impact on the game world" only really becomes significant later in the series--Serpent Isle being the best, albeit flawed (and enormously depressing!) example. But...baby steps! <br /><br />Well, what else can I say about Ultima IV? My favorite version is always the PC version for the improved colorfulness of its graphics (I'm talking the old graphics from the original PC release--same bitmap as the Apple II version, as far as I can tell, but with added colors). I especially like that the background remains black, which is key to the atmosphere of all the original Apple II versions of these games. The music patch also does a pretty good job--I say pretty good because at the time I played the game again, the best version of the music patch is tied to an annoying (to me) graphics upgrade, and I had to revert to an older, slower, slightly glitchy version to avoid the graphics upgrade. So anyway, when anyone plays this game I advise the PC version with music patch, as it gives you the "best of both worlds." I don't understand Garriott's faithfulness to the Apple II platform after Ultima IV...But I guess I still have a 5 1/4 floppy drive on my present PC, so maybe I can't criticize.<br /><br />I really enjoy the music from Ultima IV, and in fact all the games until Ultima VIII where it mostly became "mood" music that did nothing for me. My favorites from Ultima IV are the castle theme and the outdoor wandering theme. <br /><br />As always, I've reserved my final thoughts for the most memorable moments of the game, or the most "moving" elements, even if I feel odd using that word in the context of a video game. Probably topping the list is that strange moment just before the end of the game where you meet and slaughter a mirror image of your own party, except of course that the mirror Shamino immediately flees! Of course, the anticlimactic ending is pretty impressive, where you answer questions from a booming voice, see some nice line art, and are tossed back into Earth. I guess most of my favorite moments are centered around the abyss, aren't they? It's understandable...that IS the final quest, after all--and entry into the Abyss also appeals to me; some stolen ritual with the bell, book and candle (where was this from originally?) and tossing the skull of Mondain into the volcano. Wow! <br /><br />What about some notable scenes outside the abyss? I guess since the game is mostly, as I mentioned, a scavenger hunt, there's not many plot events (or even much of a plot) to take note of. I would mention that speaking to the water in Lord British's castle is kind of surreal, and the grove in Empath Abbey comes to mind. Maybe the Ankh in the midst of the mountains? I remember being rather puzzled the first time I played this game and viewed a gem and saw a strange random dot hidden in the peaks...I'm also fond of the ruins of Magincia and the curious disparity between attitudes of the ghosts--some angry, some sarcastic...and help coming from the oddest places; a daemon and a snake who attacks you after you converse. Strange.<br /><br />I think that's enough on this game, though I could probably go on (I barely touched on combat and I ignored character creation, which was shockingly different from the usual procedure we'd come to expect). In short, I think Ultima IV deserves its lofty reputation. I think playing it is still quite an experience, even if it's less fun now than it would have been in the past--I think this is because its ideas were expanded upon so much in later games in and out of the series; I see it basically as a gigantic milestone in video game, particularly as a game that can be taken seriously as a creative enterprise (e.g., art) rather than simple entertainmentCageBloggerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12053920092747626561noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5541174503724500787.post-71763177467861120632008-07-22T19:14:00.000-07:002008-07-22T19:27:12.212-07:003!So I thought my last post was a lot longer ago than it actually was. Barely a month!? I should wait a longer time before I talk about Ultima IV!<br /><br />Actually, I've gotten a lot of comments lately. One person called me a retard for thinking "Pagan World" (whatever that is) is not a good game. This buffoonish insult made me almost skip several games and go ahead and talk about Ultima VIII, but it seems to me I can't offer any good reasoning without going through the previous five or six games and show why I think Ultima VIII went totally off the rails in terms of the direction the series had been headed. <br /><br />Other comments included yet another request to play the remakes, which if I were to do would need to follow my completion of all my per-game discussions, which will take another decade or so. But I won't rule anything out...Finally, someone asked what games to play without having to start at the beginning. To my mind, you should play 4, probably 5, definitely 6 and 7 and Serpent Isle. This assumes you're only interested in the "main series." Ultima III is a fun game, but hard to play today, and unless the situation has changed lately I don't think there are any really good ports. All of the games before VI may be more challenging, or at least more repetitive in their challenges, than any of the later games. A big chunk of my time in Ultima III was spent stealing from the same treasure chests over and over again, for example. <br /><br />On a total side note, it seems to me that if video games are to be considered as art I think we should abandon the criteria of "fun." There are plenty of works of literature and music and film which are decidedly unpleasant or disturbing to experience, but which are acclaimed. So there's a lot not to enjoy about Ultima III, like many early video games, it can be repetitive and unrewarding, but I don't particularly care.<br /><br />Oh yeah, I think someone asked about which versions to play. The DOS versions of II and III are trash so forget them. The DOS version of IV has much better (well, more colorful) graphics and there's a patch to add the Mockingboard music from the Apple version--although I would add that you have to go to work to get it because it's currently bundled with a dubious graphics upgrade that I find detracts from the atmosphere. The Apple version of V stinks unless you really get a kick out of disk swaps, and after that there's little choice. Someone said that the Sega Master System of IV was enjoyable, because it gives it 2D dungeons, but IMO you're not even playing the same game anymore after that sort of edit.<br /><br />Now, let's talk about Ultima III! The most substantial change between II and III is the inescapable sense that Ultima III actually takes itself seriously. You don't have anachronisms like space ships and air cars, and the characters in the game seem for the most part to be in character, insofar as they can be with only one line of text to say. That being said, the world itself is pretty damned loony. Death Gulch is a typical example--It's a ridiculous maze of mountains and trees, and really the only thing worth doing there is looting the armory. This is such an efficient way to gather gold that most likely you'll end up repeating the process over and over again. Most of this gold ends up being spent at shrines in Ambrosia where, oh by the way, you inexplicably find the cards used to destroy Exodus.<br /><br />Still, the much-decreased amount of silliness in this game is appealing--except for one item, the name ("Exodus") which is totally inapt and nonsensical, almost as if Garriott didn't know the meaning of the word. There are fewer stock characters who have nothing of interest to say, and the dungeons no longer seem quite as randomly constructed as they literally were in Ultima I and seemed to be in Ultima II. Most of the locales in the game also have some value in existing--the dungeons even if they lack marks do have fountains and gold in them, and some of them are themed, such as the "Time" dungeon in which (also rather inexplicably) the Time Lord resides. We also see an increase in the number of puzzles and quests to figure out--there's the hidden city of Dawn, there's the whole continent of ambrosia, and there's hidden commands such as BRIBE and DIG that you only learn about as you progress in the game. In Ultima II, it seemed as if the puzzles were almost undocumented. I don't recall any hint to anyone that you needed to give money to the old man for him to give you the ring to enter Minax's castle, whereas Ultima III is far more effective at providing clues to the solution of the game.<br /><br />Ultima III also features a boatload of new features, including an extensive character creation system, lots of character classes (some being a bit dubious, like the Barbarian and the Alchemist), and other standard RPG features like the concept of leveling up, restricted armor and weapons, and so on. There's also a fresh new party-based combat system, much of which would persist (with increased complexity) until abandoned in favor of the much-derided real-time combat of Ultima VII. The layout of the screen itself (party on the upper right, commands on the lower right, and a game view on the left) would also survive that long. Finally, I can't write this commentary without praising the music, which give the game a more exciting atmosphere. I much prefer the Ultima 3 through 7 style of specific, non-atmospheric melodies associated with activities and locations; with a few exceptions I don't go around humming the music from Ultima VIII or IX, despite the fact that they get more praise for their scores.<br /><br />There are also ways in which Ultima III reminds me of its predecessors. First, it's still hard to survive the beginning of the game. You start with few hit points, and though the food situation is not so tight as to DEMAND stealing the way it did in Ultima II, there were still times when I trudged back from some adventure basically starving. On the plus side, magic is actually worth having in this game; in fact, it is utterly essential once poisonous monsters begin showing up. By the final castle I was casting the various mass-death spells with every single combat. <br /><br />All that aside, the best feature by far of Ultima III is that it's chock full of memorable moments for a game of its age. One of the things I love about playing the early games is that the primitive graphics force a vagueness to the artwork, and the lack of memory prevents the text from explaining things you see except in the vaguest terms. When I play these I feel like I'm experiencing the story through the lens of some old, fragmented text, like reading Sappho, or like deriving a society's mythology through images on potsherds and sculptures. By far the best example of this is the Time Lord, who resides in the cave of Time, shows up as a "?" on the gem-map, and who appears in his stick-man form for a split second to announce in distinctive ALL CAPS the order of the cards to defeat Exodus (with the warning, "ALL ELSE FAILS"), and then vanishes. Even knowing the future of the series and his role in Ultima VII, this was pretty jarring. I've written extensively, previously, about the endgame, the first of a series of fairly anticlimactic endings, but with this made up for by its distinctive mystery--answering the series of questions posed by a booming voice in Ultima IV and drawing a Codex symbol in the process, and the visit to Lord British's distorted underworld "prison" in Ultima V. Ultima III takes the cake though, bringing you face to face with a computer complete with a card-reader defended by the very floor around it. It was a weird twist that was fun even though I already knew about it from long ago, much superior to fighting some random powerful boss. <br /><br />So in summary, I think Ultima III was the first in the series of five games that really define the Ultima series for me; we get our first look at some of the styles and themes that would develop as the series continued. Its sense of immersion and 'seriousness' set it apart from its predecessors; the charming and mysterious experience of the world of Sosaria make Ultima III a classic.CageBloggerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12053920092747626561noreply@blogger.com14tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5541174503724500787.post-75275110425830131222008-06-22T10:07:00.000-07:002008-06-22T10:29:59.316-07:002!So in response to the anonymous comment, no, it's not over. Or yes, it is. It depends on your perspective. I will not be posting much, but I do want to finish my slow review of all the games at some point. Most likely I'll post a new one whenever someone adds a comment saying, "Hey, where'd you go!?" <br /><br />So with that in mind, a few words about Ultima II. To my mind, of the official, canonical games, this one is clearly the worst. I explained a lot of reasons back when I wrote the original blogs about the game, but in summary I think it's just the unused potential. The game world in Ultima II is much bigger than Ultima I, at least in terms of what I would call "density of interest," eg, how much stuff on the map is interesting to see and how much is filler. In Ultima I, the towns, for example, are largely clones of one another, whereas here they are distinct, often have special features, and contain at least a few distinctive characters. However, many of the towns are nonetheless superfluous to the game, as is the entire exterior solar system, which was one of the game's more interesting features! <br /><br />It's probably necessary to draw a distinction between the wide array of irrelevent side plots in, say, Ultima VII and the towns and planets of Ultima II which are simply devoid of interest. Since Ultima II does not take itself seriously, most of the excess towns are devoted to some pretty silly gags--whether it's the town of Le Jester, where you find it hard to get in and out because jesters crowd you to the point of being unable to move, or the town of Computer Camp, which is one big 1982 joke. I spent a couple of hours exploring all those places, but gained nothing of value from it--no special weapon or item or even any plot hints, as I recall. The dungeons were equally useless, and since magic was only used in dungeons, the whole magic system disappears from view! I'm not sure I even entered a dungeon. I know you could get fuel for your ship there, but why, just to visit the superfluous planets in the solar system? <br /><br />Another issue which isn't the game's fault is that Ultima I got remade sometime in the latter 80's, and it looks and plays like a vastly superior game as a result. So today, most people who play these games at all will end up playing the remake of Ultima I, and then move to Ultima II and wonder, "what the hell happened!?" because, as you would expect, the remake is so much more playable than Ultima II. But just to blast those illusions away, I will say that after struggling through hacking the code to play Ultima I, Ultima II is a dream! Some additonal changes--Ultima I had only one or two monster types (although the get various names), whereas II has something like eight; Ultima II's dungeons are not just clones of those of Akalabeth; Ultima II has bigger towns, distinctive conversations, some animated graphics, and other advantages over the first game in its original form. <br /><br />With Ultima I I talked about how the final fight with Mondain is a distinctive "moment" in the game, one which I found very interesting because all the hype is built up, but then we see an all-black room and a little man with his little gem causing all the world's havoc. Neat. In Ultima II, I think the only similar moment is when you arrive on Planet X and talk to Father Antos, and get his blessing; there is the sense that he's the only real character in the game, sticking out like a sore thumb from the insanity surrounding him out in space. Then there's that old man under the tree who gives (well, sells) you a ring. Pretty much inexplicable. I suppose I am projecting excessive significance on these figures, but I have to choose something! I also like the violent and abrupt endgame; "ALL HER WORKS SHALL DIE!"<br /><br />What else needs to be said? <br /><br />I can throw in a comment or two concerning Escape From Mount Drash, though it's not really worth the effort. It's just a bad, amateur maze game, almost unplayable, especially in the latter stages where you're not even allowed to see in front of you the keys you are looking for to escape the maze. Because of the time limit and the seemingly random nature of the combat, the game is just an exercise in repetition, hoping that with the next iteration chance will go you're way and you will succeed. It's worse than Akalabeth, because you can take advantage of that games silliness, whereas here, it just gets in the way and makes playing tedious. <br /><br />That's all I have to say. I'll talk about III and why I enjoy it in a few weeks or months or years! :-DCageBloggerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12053920092747626561noreply@blogger.com11tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5541174503724500787.post-72080493478549305142008-05-05T17:02:00.000-07:002008-05-05T17:31:45.541-07:001!Today is a day of finally accomplishing things--I set up an appointment for an eye doctor after about three years, and now I'll talk about Ultima and Ultima II after about three weeks of nothing!<br /><br />Of the first group of "learning" games I think Ultima I (technically the name of the game is Ultima, but that will just get everyone confused, so I'll stick with Ultima I) is the most successful. The game has essentially three components: Dungeoneering in the depths of various continents to solve quests, exploring the continents to solve quests, and flying into space to shoot down aliens! The dungeon section seems like it was ripped directly from Akalabeth, but with the addition of a few monsters, and a significant improvement of the gameplay and interface. The exterior world is a tremendous improvement, abandoning the goofy vector-drawn huge squares of the first game for a much zoomed-out view of the world, with distinctive albeit repetitive towns and castles. <br /><br />The new graphics and the carefully sculpted world abandon the absurd randomization of Akalabeth and make the game world seem larger. In fact, that's the main advantage of the multi-scale game world that persisted from Ultima I to Ultima V, in that the world feels gigantic even if the size is essentially illusory (as it is, for that matter, in the single scale games...but we'll talk about that later). Ultima I also strives for a grandiose time scale, where as game turns proceed, new weapons, armor and modes of transport become available, beginning with horses and ending with air cars and rocket ships. Technologically, the game is almost impossible to play today without substantial hacking. On an Apple II emulator, it runs abysmally slow or incomprehensibly fast--I'm not sure how it behaved on a real system--and is prone to game-stopping bugs if you die or go into outer space. It's no wonder it was remade later into the game most people have played! <br /><br />Bugs aside, the game is really quite attractive for its time; I especially appreciated the speed of the outer space sequences, which utilize a few assembly routines as compared to the shockingly slow BASIC of the rest of the game. I enjoy how Lord British crammed so much into this game at the very beginning of the series. All of the early games up to and including Ultima IV barely have a plot in the sense of a storyline that grows as you learn more; in Ultima I, what you know in the beginning is the back story (Mondain is evil, kill him) and this doesn't change at all. That's the main reason the early games get to feel so open-ended. <br /><br />There are two really interesting moments in Ultima I, in my opinion. First there is the insanity of the princesses trapped in jail cells in the castles of the land. The requirements to beat the game are truly strange--you must kill a clown, rescue the princess (presumably the king's daughter, in spite of the total lack of queens), she tells you where a time machine is located (in plain sight, but apparently invisible before) and you go back in time to kill Mondain. Of course, the princess only does this...if you've shot down twenty ships in space! I think this is one of the more oddball quest sequences in any of the games, but yet there's something charming about it.<br /><br />The second favorite moment is that final confrontation with Mondain. I guess a lot of people would view it as a total letdown, because his domain is just one big square with Mondain and a vaguely diamond-shaped gem in the center. Yet there are also random blasts of multicolored lightning about, and I enjoy imagining what the primitive graphics might represent. I prefer to take it very literally--an empty void of space, with nothing but you, Mondain, and a gem surrounded by nothingness. No doubt a contemporary version would render the final chamber as some cliché evil fiend's domain with blood here and there, some tasteful torture implements, maybe a skull...So for that reason I enjoy the Ultima I ending quite a bit! It's almost as mysterious a chamber as the one which Lord British resides in at the end of Ultima V...<br /><br />I think Ultima I is clearly superior to Akalabeth as it contains all its predecessor's major features, and Ultima I feels like a much more complete game than Ultima II. In spite of the strangeness of some of the game elements like space tracel and time machines, it doesn't feel like one gigantic joke the way Ultima II does, and the game play and the path to victory while strange are not as counterintuitive as those of Akalabeth, and there's a much stronger sense of accomplishment once you finish the game.<br /><br />I should get back to work on that port of the original version of the game. The remake borrows far too much from later games in the series and loses the sense of excitement Lord British obviously felt as he tossed all these interesting game elements into one big soup. It's not great game that stands the test of time, but it was a very successful experiment, so it would be nice to bring the original version back to life in a playable form.CageBloggerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12053920092747626561noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5541174503724500787.post-80734813560705978662008-04-16T19:30:00.000-07:002008-04-16T20:00:46.048-07:00Yes, I am lazyWell, it's been a month since I posted a note about what I would do during the subsequent week! But I'm still alive, I have merely suffered from writer's block. I can think of a fair amount of things to say about Ultima 1 & 2 and the other early games, but I have not had the patience to put it into some kind of cohesive statement. As an alternative, perhaps I will just ad-hoc write about each of the games, and call that a review overview. <br /><br />But for today I want to fill in a loose end, concerning Lord British's reward. Turns out I was merely impatient because a few days ago an attractive medieval crossbow arrived in the mail. I had forgotten that David Watson aka Iolo actually builds crossbows in real life! Here's some free advertising:<br />http://www.crossbows.net/<br /><br />I have not *yet* shot any holes in my walls, but I've come close. I should probably find an archery range. I also got a nice certificate, which at some point I'll scan. <br /><br />Well...I guess I'm here and I'm writing, aren't I? Might as well write about Akalabeth.<br /><br />Ah...The World of Doom. Originally sold in a ziploc baggy in a local store, then eventually picked up by California Pacific. It's hard to think of much to say about Akalabeth for several reasons...First, it's so old and simple that it's almost like writing an in-depth discussion of Pong. Second, it was (and feels like) an experiment in game making; it does not have the feel of a game that was well-tested or which was designed with much game balance in mind. Finally, the game is pretty much entirely subsumed into Ultima I, which has much of the same dungeon interface, and the dungeons serve more or less the same purpose. <br /><br />In fact, Dragon Magazine (not sure if they are still around--they're an RPG magazine) has a review of Akalabeth in one of their 1982 issues! They were pretty down on the game, complaining of its bad graphics and dubious game mechanics, and reading it I had to wonder whether to take them seriously, considering the fact that it was a couple of years old when it was reviewed and games on home computers were pretty much in their infancy. <br /><br />In any case, in Akalabeth you see a fair number of seeds of the later series, especially of the first five games; there's some tile graphics in the outer world (albeit with gigantic tiles), and maybe you could even argue that the presence of irrelevant tree tiles is a premonition of not-plot-essential locations that show up in later games!<br /><br />Or not. <br /><br />One of the things that distinguishes Akalabeth from a random assortment of similarly-old games I've played is the sense that you can actually finish it. I've always found classic arcade games, for example, rather depressing because often they are just endless swarms of enemies that will eventually kill you, no matter how long or hard you try, and even the greatest has nothing left in the end besides a trio of letters and a number stamped on an electronic gravestone that will be erased as soon as someone pulls the plug. So they are ultimately an exercise in futility. However, you can eventually win Akalabeth, even if the game encourages you to keep playing. <br /><br />The biggest problems with the game lies in its bizarre game mechanics, where absurdities abound--the most inane being the fact that thieves regularly steal weapons right out of your hand! This is enormously counter-intuitive. In the same ballpark is the shockingly enormous quantities of food that gremlins can eat, or the fact that dungeons are infinite. Winning the game then entails immersing yourself into the bizarre structure of the game, repeatedly following the exact same steps to acquire gold and weapons, and eventually you realize the game probably can't be won in your natural state, then note that becoming a lizardman makes you close to invincible, and boom! It's all over. <br /><br />Akalabeth tosses you into an insane randomly-generated world, with the utterly primitive graphics accentuating the atmosphere, and the only way to survive is to take advantage of the way the world is rigged against you, and turn the mechanics to your advantage. When you win, in a bit of unintentional silliness, you are invited to call a disconnected phone number to report your deeds to a vanished company. In short, its charm today is as an amusing diversion, and much of the charm rests on the artifacts of its age. <br /><br />Next time I'm home I'll dig up that Dragon magazine article and try and post some quotes. They also had reviews of Ultimas III, IV, VI, and VII I think. I seem to recall they were unusual in panning IV.CageBloggerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12053920092747626561noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5541174503724500787.post-44129243273506332472008-03-12T16:43:00.000-07:002008-03-12T17:08:22.285-07:00Review Overview!Well, first some notes. I haven't posted in about a month. My original plan was to make a post about a curious surprise that a certain Lord British mentioned he'd send after I did as suggested by comments and informed him of my feat! However, he may have forgotten about it since nothing arrived, and if I wait too long to make a new post, it's possible no one will be reading, lol. So my plan is to make a few posts. One today will wrap up some responses to comments. <br /><br />Then I'll write some summary posts going over each group of games. I figure overall they can be divided into several groups. The first is the earliest games, which were more experiments in programming and not anywhere near as cohesive (or worth playing) as the later games. The second is the sequence Ultima III, Ultima IV, and Ultima V, which to my mind seem like very similar games, although the late rone is far more sophisticated. I mean they seem to be evolving in one direction. I think there's a bit of a change in focus in VI, VII and Serpent Isle, as the style of gameplay changes significantly between V and VI and then massively between VI in VII. I'll also slide in three other discussions of the place of the spin-off games. I'll talk about how the Worlds of Ultima games in some ways were better than Ultima VI, the immersing gameplay of the Underworlds, and...um...I guess I'll talk about the Runes of Virtue games at some point. I'll wrap things up on a sour note by talking about why I think VIII and IX were failures. <br /><br />The more I think about it, the more it seems to me my best Ultima experiences were in VI, Serpent Isle, and Underworld II. There are moments throughout the series that I think are highlights or just interesting to think about, and these three games had more than their fair share. Thinking about Underworld II also leads reminds me of how unrelentingly depressing that game is. <br /><br />But some comments! First, I probably won't review any remakes. I've never been a big fan of remakes unless they are intended as ports or something sort of like ports (eg, Exult). To me, Ultima V isn't just a story about a kidnapped king, but it's also a spellcasting system and a combat system and a collection of tile graphics and some music, etc. That's not to say remakes aren't cool, but only that I probably won't feel the urge to play them as a part of this blog. <br /><br />I was also asked about blogging other games...Probably not, lol. The most ridiculous thing about me blogging a year of video games is that I'm not actually much of a video game fan. I play Ultima. I also sometimes play Age of Empires online with a friend. That's pretty much it for me and games, besides the occasional NES jaunt (love that Solstice and Battle of Olympus). My next blog is most likely going to be on some other form of entertainment, e.g. a TV show, or maybe literature (but so many people know so much more than me about the latter). I've also contemplated going to every restaurant (alphabetically, via the phone book) in Lexington and discussing my thoughts on each of them. But for that I'd need a date or, possibly for some places, a bodyguard. <br /><br />We'll see. But I'll make a note here on the off chance anyone is interested.CageBloggerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12053920092747626561noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5541174503724500787.post-66523047723256270482008-02-10T19:03:00.000-08:002008-02-10T19:39:54.486-08:00Ultima IX, Day 10Time to begin the last post for the last game!<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://bp2.blogger.com/_3WacBST0pXU/R6_C-65C88I/AAAAAAAAA-M/1CuqdgTxemk/s1600-h/Terfin_Fishies.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="http://bp2.blogger.com/_3WacBST0pXU/R6_C-65C88I/AAAAAAAAA-M/1CuqdgTxemk/s320/Terfin_Fishies.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5165561683833451458" border="0" /></a>Before heading off to Terfin to confront the Guardian, I had a brief chat with my Companions in castle British. This part of the game was notably more lame than I'd expected--a few made dubious claims about their past help to me (Mariah didn't do jack fighting Batlin...), but most just told me to keep in mind whatever virtue they represent.<br /><br />From there, I hit Terfin. I was hoping to avoid a cheesy conversation with Raven, but it turns out her telling you about a secret cave causes a giant rock to move out from in front of said cave. From there it was into the dungeon! And what an amazingly longer-than-expected dungeon it was. This time I had to find a big stack of power cubes, as well as kill off a lot of monsters. The gargoyles towards the beginning were the hardest because they did a huge amount of damage with each hit. Later on, it was just endless Wyrmguard that get sliced down in one or two hits from my lightning sword.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://bp0.blogger.com/_3WacBST0pXU/R6_C_a5C89I/AAAAAAAAA-U/_LTkNUK0sQg/s1600-h/Terfin_Girly.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="http://bp0.blogger.com/_3WacBST0pXU/R6_C_a5C89I/AAAAAAAAA-U/_LTkNUK0sQg/s320/Terfin_Girly.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5165561692423386066" border="0" /></a>I encountered three other people. One was a girl who was searching for treasure and asking for help finding the key to the treasure room. Of course, she never goes anywhere or does anything with the key. Another was an insane guy in blue who thinks I caused the Guardian to turn away from him. He tried to punch me but died rapidly. The third was a woman who was poisoned by some gargoyles in a torture chamber, and demands that I kill her; I politely refuse and tell her "just go cast cure." Well, it didn't give me the option of doing that, but that's what I imagined!<br /><br />There weren't that many exciting sights in this place. There was a room full of aquariums that was kind of cool, and some severed heads, but for the most part it felt like a barracks, with weapons around and books you can't read. Eventually, I finally made it to the Guardian's entirely black chamber. I put the sigils around on some highly convenient pedestals, causing him to pop through the nearby black gate. Here he is! Boy, he might actually be a little shorter than me. And he does look like a muppet. The Guardian was much more threatening in Ultima VII, somehow, particularly because he puts his dukes up like a boxer when you attack him. Yeesh. In the end, I create a "barrier of life" and then cast Armageddon, destroying the Guardian and myself, and making an ankh appear in the sky. The end!<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://bp0.blogger.com/_3WacBST0pXU/R6_DAa5C8_I/AAAAAAAAA-k/to322-Ym_oQ/s1600-h/Terfin_Heads.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="http://bp0.blogger.com/_3WacBST0pXU/R6_DAa5C8_I/AAAAAAAAA-k/to322-Ym_oQ/s320/Terfin_Heads.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5165561709603255282" border="0" /></a>Well, that's it for 20 years or so worth of gaming. Ultima IX was not as terrible as I remember it, but it was just as disappointing in terms of what I would have expected from an epic conclusion to the series. The failure to emphasize the cool characters the series had developed is a prime reason for complaint, as well as the poor manner in which the various set pieces, mostly designed for an unrelated plot, were all tied together haphazardly with the modified game. I tend to think the complaint voiced in comments about the bad dialog is related to this. I understand the difficulty here--it is very easy to fall into a trap where every conversation is "insider" stuff, that only the guys who've played all the games will get. Ultima IX went the opposite way and we we end up with "What are gargoyles?" and other idiocy from the Avatar.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://bp2.blogger.com/_3WacBST0pXU/R6_C_65C8-I/AAAAAAAAA-c/uuKXIYeDXEY/s1600-h/Terfin_GuardianTalk.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="http://bp2.blogger.com/_3WacBST0pXU/R6_C_65C8-I/AAAAAAAAA-c/uuKXIYeDXEY/s320/Terfin_GuardianTalk.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5165561701013320674" border="0" /></a>Still, it's clear that they had a pretty cool world-building tool to play with in creating the Ultima IX we have now. My thinking is that if they'd stopped development on the engine and spent, say, 6 mos or a year creating a world and filling it with people and stories, we would have had a much better game. However, it's unlikely this could have happened without budget being slashed or people yet again being pulled away to work on the internet version of Ultima.<br /><br />Note my weird phrasing--I've discovered that if I say the actual name of that not-off-line version of the game, I get piles of stupid spam comments. So I'll resist. I particpated in both the pre-alpha and beta test of that game, and got the "charter edition," and you can even find Ophidian Dragon mentioned in the original version of the hint book! But I really didn't like the game at all, or any MMORPGs for that matter, so I've ignored it here.<br /><br />Did Ultima IX invite you to kill children? A missing feature!<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://bp1.blogger.com/_3WacBST0pXU/R6_DGq5C9AI/AAAAAAAAA-s/ocGVbkSqZjg/s1600-h/Terfi_ENDGAME.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="http://bp1.blogger.com/_3WacBST0pXU/R6_DGq5C9AI/AAAAAAAAA-s/ocGVbkSqZjg/s320/Terfi_ENDGAME.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5165561816977437698" border="0" /></a><br />One fun thing to waste more blogging time might be to reflect back on all the games, and see if I can decide my final "ranking" of the various games. I am pretty sure the main canon would fall in the order of (worst to best) 2-1-9-8-3-4-5-6-7, but working the spin offs in would be hard. Except for Drash, we all know where it ends up!<br /><br />Well, thanks for reading. Maybe someday I will have UW2 screenshots posted! The person I thought was interested in the giant screenshot collection was actually interested in pirated games, so no, I won't be providing those. I own all the games I played, save Drash and Akalabeth; if you really want to grab them illegally, Google makes it easy enough.<br /><br />If you haven't gotten enough Ultima over the past year, someone else is running a similar blog, in a somewhat less purist manner (I think it's called "My Ultima Journey"). And if you like video game blogs generally, check out Blogging Zelda and Blogging Final Fantasy and other similar blogs; I don't read them (not being into those games or, frankly, any non-Ultima RPG) but it's cool to have started something of a blogging trend. Actually, probably someone did this before me, so I'll rephrase and say it's cool to think I began a trend I may not have actually begun!<br /><br />If you just dig me, I'm probably going to begin some other totally unrelated blog project soon. My CageBlog was cool, and I learned rapidly how to (not) write a topical blog; I wish I had not finished it so soon. Blogging Ultima has been a big improvement over that project. I'm glad it took a year to complete; I almost wish I had dragged out the earlier games a bit longer, in fact! Hopefully the next one will be even better. It's been a blast especially due to the quality & quantity of comments I get, so thanks to everyone who contributed in that way!<br /><br />I also encourage you to start your own blog on whatever peculiar topic interests you, since there's always a few other people out there. And if you're a nerd like me, nothing attracts dates and money like a giant video game blog. Just kidding. But it's fun anyway.<br /><br />Go in Virtue!<br /><br />-ZacCageBloggerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12053920092747626561noreply@blogger.com34tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5541174503724500787.post-85398362803163237952008-02-09T17:42:00.000-08:002008-02-10T15:17:38.907-08:00Ultima IX, Days 8 and 9Well, the Stygian Abyss proved to be pretty hard! Well, some parts of it did, anyway. Getting there has to be the least coherent part of the game by a mile--you summon Pyros--PYROS--from a different planet (also, I thought he was dead), and he opens the Abyss for you.<br /><br />Hey, wait, this is Day 9. I need to discuss Day 8. Let's backtrack...<br /><br />In order to get to the Abyss, the final dungeon you have to clear, it is necessary to visit the now-destroyed (again?) city of Skara Brae. There, I spoke again to a statue of Shamino, who told me I needed to fetch the Bell, Book, and Candle and bring them back here, put them around him and use them to bring him back into this world. He also suggested that I fetch the Ankh of spirituality and visit the nearby Temple of Souls, a nice reference to the Well of Souls from Ultima VII. In order...<br /><br />Book: Easy. I visited the oracle in the Lycaeum. It asked me who was to blame for Britannia's Guardian woes. I said the Guardian. The oracle told me to piss off. I reloaded the game, said it was me, and I got the book. Yay!<br /><br />Candle: Off to the ruins of Empath Abbey, where a monk spouts platitudes and a dragon stands around on an ice floe about 50 feet away. A few ignite spells later, I have the candle, and swim back to Yew.<br /><br />Bell: This proved more complicated. The ruins of Serpents Hold are, well, sparse. And much of it appears to be underwater. I swam through a force field (it took me forever to realize I needed to try this--I assumed I needed to do something to make the field go away), and faced an evil arch mage! He killed me rapidly with fireballs, and I tried again several times but could not reach his platform. Then I realized it was actually the swampy goo UNDER the platform he stoof on that was causing me such harm. From there I stepped outside the doorway and shot a dozen arrows into his head until he died. A lady who apparently never needs to go to the bathroom opened a wall she was hiding behind and gave me the bell.<br /><br />Ankh: Ah, memories of Ultima V. The sandlewood resides on Lord British's desk in his bedroom. The king had since vanished to face off against Blackthorn, and I learned I needed to follow him. The box vanished after some harpsichord-ed Stones, and I got the ankh!<br /><br />Back to Skara Brae, where I put the items around the statue of Shamino, and nothing happened. Hmm. Eventually I realized when Shamino says "bring them here and put them around me" he meant where he actually was, not where his voice came from. I leapt into the well of souls, chatted with some fairly cool characters about truth, love, and courage (though I never found the baby...) while in the background was some garbled, echo-drenched words similar to Robert Ashley's "Automatic Writing." I found Shamino in trance, then woke him as instructed.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://bp1.blogger.com/_3WacBST0pXU/R6-F1q5C85I/AAAAAAAAA90/hRdNYZuDiPU/s1600-h/Abyss_Malchir.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer;" src="http://bp1.blogger.com/_3WacBST0pXU/R6-F1q5C85I/AAAAAAAAA90/hRdNYZuDiPU/s320/Abyss_Malchir.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5165494454710367122" border="0" /></a>The next part is, as I said in the beginning, totally off the wall. Shamino brings up Malchir for no reason (I think I missed a line of dialog somewhere), and I nearly scare him away. Shamino tells him his pain after death is a consequence of the hatred he holds for me after I caused Pyros to destroy him. I do not get the chance to say, "SHAMINO, YOU MORON, PYROS DIDN'T KILL HIM, I DID BECAUSE THE JERK ATTACKED ME!" From there it's off to the Isle of the Avatar, and the beginning of this post, summoning Pyros with a very conveniently placed demon skull on an equally convenient pentagram...<br /><br />The Abyss itself consists of a long vertical drop, and four levels corresponding to the elements of earth, air, fire and water, bringing to mind Pagan. It would be cool if someone were to design a game based on our modern understanding of elements, with levels devoted to Hydrogen, Helium, Nitrogen, Boron, Lithium, and all the other hundred-something. I guess that would be a lot of work. In any case, you beat each of those levels, and teleport to some lands where you fight each of the elements to subdue them.<br /><br />Air: Lots of floating pillars and a dragon. This one was tedious because it's easy to fall off the floating platforms, but the dragon is weak.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://bp0.blogger.com/_3WacBST0pXU/R6-F1a5C84I/AAAAAAAAA9s/vemqF4bFR-w/s1600-h/Abyss_Demon.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer;" src="http://bp0.blogger.com/_3WacBST0pXU/R6-F1a5C84I/AAAAAAAAA9s/vemqF4bFR-w/s320/Abyss_Demon.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5165494450415399810" border="0" /></a>Fire: Hard! There's lots of daemons and even more lava. At the end, I faced a gigantic demon I must have hit with my lightning sword 100 times before he finally expired. I'm not sure what the issue was there; I may have needed to killed him inside the pentagram on which he appeared, because the final blow took place when he walked back in.<br /><br />Earth: This was pretty easy. The big earth golem crumbled under my attack. I also picked up some nice armor.<br /><br />Water: The plane of water was very attractive, with waterfalls everywhere, and raindrops splashing. The bad guy there was a big sea serpent, who flopped around a whole lot when I whacked him, but who died rapidly.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://bp2.blogger.com/_3WacBST0pXU/R6-F165C87I/AAAAAAAAA-E/rycvnb4Kcjw/s1600-h/AByss_TenOfYou.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer;" src="http://bp2.blogger.com/_3WacBST0pXU/R6-F165C87I/AAAAAAAAA-E/rycvnb4Kcjw/s320/AByss_TenOfYou.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5165494459005334450" border="0" /></a>From there it was a quick walk to watch the extremely crash-prone sequence where British battles Blackthorn. I watched it about 9 times before I finally got through it without crashing, and the crashes dramatically lowered the drama. I found it amusing that Blacky's last words were, "Why won't you die!?" which is a question I think we've all asked about Lord British once or twice! I headed back to Raven, who took me to the Castle, and British sent me off to cleanse the shrine of spirituality.<br /><br />So I guess this last dungeon was something of a Pagan homage. It seems like a lot of the Ultima games get a mention or two, or at least an homage, at some point during Ultima IX, from cleansing the shrines, the (granted, TOTALLY misused) gargoyle prophecies, Malchir, the well of souls, the sandlewood box, words of power, the bell, book and candle ritual, and even, dubiously, the city of Dawn. Too bad the spin-offs and earlier games don't get very much, especially U1 and U2. I was grateful to have an Ultima that finally acknowledge U2 took place on Earth, though!<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://bp1.blogger.com/_3WacBST0pXU/R6-F1q5C86I/AAAAAAAAA98/kSJ-yq0hxvs/s1600-h/Abyss_Spirituality.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer;" src="http://bp1.blogger.com/_3WacBST0pXU/R6-F1q5C86I/AAAAAAAAA98/kSJ-yq0hxvs/s320/Abyss_Spirituality.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5165494454710367138" border="0" /></a>To a commenter--no, I won't be listing all the pages dealing with a particular game on the right-hand side; it's easy enough to look at the archive listing below that. I just thought having the games by title or group rather than chronologically would make it easier to find the beginning of the posts dealing with each game.<br /><br />Tomorrow, I will narrate the final visit to Terfin and the defeat of the Guardian. That, I guess, will end the blog. I'm not sure what I might do here after that...I could play the SNES Ultima VII at some point, but there's not much else. Sort of melancholy weekend I guess. For what it's worth, Ultima IX is not a 10-day game, unless you play an excessive amount during those 10 days. I estimate Ultima IX all in all took me 36 hours, basically as much time as Serpent Isle, which stretched out to 17 days. Take that how you will!CageBloggerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12053920092747626561noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5541174503724500787.post-48934573361144239152008-02-08T22:45:00.001-08:002008-02-08T22:45:59.489-08:00Oh yeah...So I noticed a very old comment where I said, "maybe I'll add a list of links to each game on the right side of the page." Well--there it is! Enjoy.CageBloggerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12053920092747626561noreply@blogger.com1