Well, Ultima VI is finished. The final esctions of the game are some of my favorites in any of the Ultimas, really--You visit the catacombs and are a bit shocked to have some chats with Mondain, Minax and Exodus! I especially enjoyed the references to the details of the earlier games, especially how the intro to Minax mentions that you "destroyed her castle and all her works," which mirrors the endgame text from Ultima II. I also appreciate how the three dungeons for the Gargoyle virtues of Control, Passion and Diligence relate to their theme. Control is all about pulling levers to open eight gates and two force fields (!!), but many of the levers do the same thing. Diligence was the one that gave me the most trouble when I played the game back in grade school--4th grade, to be exact. It's one big grid of dungeon rooms with monsters hanging out, and it took ages for me to find the secret door that leads up to Exodus. Of course, this means that puzzle has no replay value! In any case, it was cool to see high-res portraits of my enemies from the first few games, since the original artwork, shall we say, left a bit to be desired (In the original game, Minax was exactly the same as mondain but with two fewer pixels on her hips...)
There's not much else to say about the game I guess--finishing it is very straightforward, involving going to the Codex and doing what it says. This leads me back to one of the first posts, where a comment mentioned how it was possible to beat the game while killing only three things. I propose that the game can be defeated without killing anything. Here is my brief hypothetical walkthrough--the only question is where to get a few invisibility rings to avoid the few combat areas, and where to get some fast gold. I am not sure if certain things trigger game flags or not, so I wrote this under the assumption that no conversations trigger game flags at all. If they do, then you have to talk to more people...But here it is anyway:-Talk to LB, learn tu use the orb, get spellbook/gold/reagents, have Sherry joing you, then go get rune of Compassion and a cauldron
-Teleport to Yew, get rune of Justice, a log, and buy Unlock Magic, Dispel Field, and Telekenesis from Nicodemus [unless he doesn't have them, I don't remember], and buy 40 spider silk
-Take the road East of Yew, take the skiff to Stonegate and get the Vortex Cube, have Dupre carry the skiff
-Teleport to Jhelom, get the rune of Valor, have Sherry leave
-Teleport to Gargoye Land near Hythloth, talk to Captain John, get the vocab, and have Beh Lem join.
-Surrendur, get the broken lens, have it repaired
-Teleport to Moonglow, get the key and the rune of Honesty and get the Britannian lens
-Teleport to New Magincia and get the rune of Humility.
-Sail south to Sutek's castle and get the balloon plans
-Teleport to Minoc, make a board, get the panpipes, get the rune of Sacrifice, have a basket made
-Teleport to Trinsic, get the rune of Honor and walk to Paws, get the silk thread made.
-Teleport to New Magincia, get the bag made.
-Teleport to gargoyle land, near shrine; visit shrine, talk to it twice and say the mantra to get a sacred quest.
-Teleport to all the shrines in turn and liberate them, gathering the moonstone
-Teleport to the Codex and end the game.
I think this should do it. The only monster of note is the hydra in Sutek's castle, but you can justwalk around it to the secret door. I believe you can win without killing a thing!Speaking of Sutek, Paulon makes an argument for the logic of the Pushme Pullyu, and I think he is right--as long as you know that the opposite head is talking, it doesn't really matter which is qhich. The problem I saw was that the heads themselves introduce the puzzle, and I can get boh sides to make the claim that "Pullu always lies," and they can't both say that without breaking the game I think it would be better if the claim about who lies and who tells the truth were made elsewhere.
I also must correct my "most useless spell" claim, since evidently you can make spikes vanish with vanish. I think I will give the award to...Eclipse! I can't think of how an eclipse does you much good, besides looking cool. Which reminds me, I didn't see any eclipses this game, but I saw them sometimes when I played my first time...
Some final thoughts on Ultima VI...It was less fun than I expected, but that's only because I played it through last year, and most of the puzzles were still fresh in my mind. Given other couple of years, I'm sure I will forget a lot and it will be enjoyable again! One of the disadvantages of playing the game with foreknowledge is that I didn't make any of the random discoveries I did in Ultima V, such as finding the mystic armor in the middle of nowhere without even knowing it was in the game! Equivalent events in Ultima VI the first time I played included finding lots of map pieces by accident, and...Actually. I guess it was mostly limited to finding random map pieces! I also failed to experiment with the enchant spell, which can be used to enhant magic staves. I can't remember how that works--I think the staff can be used to cast another spell of your choosing? overall, though, I think I squeezed out mostof what the game has to offer. I even sold some grain to the miller in Paws!
One og the mos important additions Ultima VI had was the character portraits. it's hard to overestimate how much value this adds to the game, simply because it's far easier for me to associate people's faces with their names. In Ultima V I had to remember "the guy that hangs around the orchard is Terence," whereas in Ultima VI I can simply recall the face and look around. Also, seeing the face allows my imagination to picture this specific person talking, and it also serves as a visual clue to previous conversations. One of the unhappy parts of Ultima VII was the way in which these portraits are dramatically smaller! The new, more colorful tileset brings the world to life in a way that was not the case with the previous games--as did the presence of lots of random creatures, like rabbits bouncing around, birds surrounding you in the moongate locations, and deer dashing through the woods. There was a much stronger sense of the world's continuity, overall--The "set piece" battles on the road were particularly fun, like meeting (and killing) another party of dventurers (and a party of headlesses and trolls) on the way to Skara Brae; the fact that you meet the same thing in the same place later only detracts a little bit from the suspension of disbelief.
I had more fun playing it than Ultima V, but the familiarty was a bit of a downer. I'm glad it's been years since I played Ultima VII and the rest of the games (Except Serpent Isle and Underworld 2)! Even Ultima IX, I have not played since 2000, and am likely to find it to be a new experience. As for Savage Empire, well, well that will be almost an entirely new experience!
Speaking of Savage Empire--when I hit journey onward I am dumped back to a DOS prompt. I have to use game.exe to play. Anyone else have this issue?
9 comments:
I think this should do it. The only monster of note is the hydra in Sutek's castle, but you can justwalk around it to the secret door. I believe you can win without killing a thing!
I think you may be right there...that method you propose might just work. In fact, I've attempted it in part before -- skipping Hythloth and visiting the Gargoyles without ever doing the pirate cave.
It does have one unpredictable side effect, I've noted, although this may just be a game bug. Although initially the Gargoyles will not attack you when you submit to Draxinosum, I've found that after a while the drones become hostile again.
I'd be curious to see if it was possible to pass Ultima 6 entirely (i.e. completing all the side quests as well) with no creature kills, and I may devote some time to the study of this when I have a few hours to spare.
The "set piece" battles on the road were particularly fun, like meeting (and killing) another party of dventurers (and a party of headlesses and trolls) on the way to Skara Brae; the fact that you meet the same thing in the same place later only detracts a little bit from the suspension of disbelief.
Ironically, it is much more rewarding to kill the other party.
More loot and more gold which at an early state in the game is something you can really need.
What is more, normally there is a similar battle in Black Gate, but only for the first time you walk from Britain to Yew.
That is where my party used to get the first sets of armour, from the hopefully fallen paladin(s).
In case they didnt fall themselves, they got helped along a bit.
I also failed to experiment with the enchant spell, which can be used to enhant magic staves.
Yes, indeed, but the staff only has one charge, so it is really among the more useless spells.
I think in theory, it is meant to have your party members carry additional firepower in the form of fireballs or something like that, but in my experience, it was always much faster just to begin combat and wait.
Let me start out by saying thank you for this blog. This really took me down memory lane. Like you, I was in 4th grade (maybe 3rd) when I first came across this game. I had a Tandy computer and my dad picked the game up. I never really got too far in to the game but I sure did appreciate this. One thing I don't recall seeing anywhere in your posts (forgive me if you did) is the ship. I distinctly remember romping around in a ship. I don't remember where you get it, all I know is that I probably stole it. I didn't get too far in the plot due to all the dicking around you can do. I usually just wound up getting killed by the guards or thrown in prison for stealing something or murdering townsfolk. Again, thank you!
An interesting walkthrough might be how to pass this game without the use of any boat -- I believe that Ophidian mentioned the use of a skiff at several points.
I imagine it's impossible, though -- I think there would be a couple of impassible water obstacles in a dungeon somewhere. But assuming we can circumvent the pirate cave entirely, and assuming that one went through the sewers of Britain, one could theoretically reach Buccaneer's Den, and the Orb can get you everywhere else.
I wonder, then, if it's possible to pass U6 without ever using a boat on the surface map.
Unlikely. You need the balloon plans from under Blackthorn's castle, which can't be reached other than by ship. You can get the plans other ways by cheating, but...
I've been messing with Savage Empire, which I find a little less clean than Martian Dreams. I've encountered various odd game-crashing bugs, mostly inventory-related (move something into a container, suddenly you are frozen...) or crashing the game when my character dies. It does seem less forgiving. Hit point totals are much lower, and you're much less likely to get much of a boost from level increases. I've been using DosBox with a frontend the name of which I can't remember. Haven't had the specific bug you describe.
Mmm...right, forgot about how isolated Sutek's castle was/is.
"I also failed to experiment with the enchant spell, which can be used to enchant magic staves."
The enchant spell can be useful for leveling up other party members by killing silver serpents with a fully loaded stave of death wind or mass death. The cool thing is, you don't need to be at level 8 to use the lvl 7 enchant spell to cast mass death. That was the best way for my party to get leveled up once the Avatar is at lvl 7.
I'm not sure where this slots into your minimalist walkthrough, but one thing I noticed back when I played the game for the first time was that -- entirely by accident -- I short-circuited a good chunk of the game by discovering that it's possible to use the balloon to slip past that last force field blocking the way to the area where the Codex is kept, by approaching it on a diagonal.
Surely the most useless spell in the game is Armageddon! You cast it, and the game instantly becomes unwinnable. I kind of suspect that it was included in the game with the idea that people who had gone through the moongates to the Gargoyle world would think it was in a different universe and cast Armageddon to kill all the gargoyles and win the war, only to go home and discover to their shock that they had killed everyone there too. But really, by the time you can do that, you've probably seen enough of the world to know better.
Unrelatedly, I remember using the balloon to fly off the edge of the world into the starry void. It's a kind of neat experience, but it was kind of disappointing that there wasn't anything out there. You just wrap around after a little while. Well, at least you can shorten some journeys that way.
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