Runes of Virtue, Day 4

Well, strictly speaking my 4th day of Runes of Virtue was sometime at the beginning of this past week, but somehow I have not gotten around to blogging about it until today. A large part of the reason is, of course, that there's so little to say. The Isle of the Avatar's Stygian Abyss is, as one would expect, chock full of crazy traps and creative puzzles. Some of them, for example, require you to push rocks around and create passages in walls with them using a lever that makes walls vanish and reappear (it's difficult to explain...), and on more than one occasion you must take advantage of your enemies' capacity to kill each other and/or destroy spider webs. My least favorite puzzles, however, are the big rooms full of blinking teleport arrows. You must use them to move to the exit, but the fact that a screen full of dozens of blinking arrows gives me a headache added to the challenge significantly! There's some magic armor in the abyss and it was, to my surprise, not very difficult to get to. The endgame, as one might expect from the Game Boy, is relatively anti-climactic. You disappear from the dungeon where you got the rune of humility, and appear kneeling before Lord British. The end.

OTHER UNINSPIRING ULTIMA ENDINGS
-Ultima II, which gives you an ad for another game in the Sierra version (anyone recall which game? I can't get my Sierra copy to work)
-Escape from Mt. Drash where you are told in block text on a mold-green background you achieved the title of "Questor." Woo hoo.
-Ultima IX, where that idiot Raven and Lord British look up to see that for some reason you have exploded and have turned into an ankh made out of stars in the sky.

I was tempted not to include Ultima II because of my fondness of the "ALL HER WORKS SHALL DIE!" message that you receive upon Minax's death.

Back to the issue at hand--Runes of Virtue. Overall, and amusing diversion. THe only serious flaws of the game are the irrelevance of the premise (retrieving runes related to virtues) to the dungeons (which have nothing to do with the virtues) and the odd game mechanics (pushing levers and eating mushrooms seem to have about the same effect, and how does a rope build a bridge?). Beyond that, the game is not overly challenging, and the ability to restart over and over makes up for its lack of a save feature (though in a world of emulators, who cares about poor save features anymore?) I would not suggest the game, however, for an actual Game Boy due to its length and the repetitive nature of gameplay when you cannot save. As a final note--I still think those wizards look like vampires! Look at the big black cape with high collar and the pointy teeth!

One could argue that the game is canonical--After all, it appears to take place sometime following Ultima VI, and the goal is to rescue the Runes and become knighted, and a certain drunken paladin has just recently been knighted as of Ultima VII. Never mind that he was apparently a "Sir" long before that. And even if he wasn't, Lord British has some pretty stringent requirements for becoming a knight if it takes, what, 300 years of continuous service?

Expect a slower rate of updates for the next two games--Underworld II and Serpent Isle. The reason is simply that playing them is less fun because it's only been a little over a year since last played the games, and Ultima is more fun when you've forgotten a large portion of the game. On the other hand, it's been about 7 and 12 years since I played Ultima VIII and Ultima IX, so those will be a lot more fun for me. Plus, those two games are not particularly good, and it's a lot easier to write criticism than praise :-) I remember when I started the blog I speculated that it might take a year to do--but I kept up a pretty intense pace back when I was unemployed, and it seems like I'll probably be done before Christmas as I result, despite my much slower-goings lately.

I also need to take some time at some point and reply to comments and other feedback again. Maybe during my Underworld II blogging!

Runes of Virtue, Day 3

My third day of adventure in Britannia, or in some domain that has a certain amount of resemblance to Britannia, I retrieved the rune of honor and the rune of humility. After the last rune, I took an underground passageway to an island that presumably represents the Isle of the Avatar, and where Beh Lem allows me to borrow his boat. And look, he has wings now!










The game is somewhat devoid of plot, so there's not much to comment on. I guess I can talk some about the various items and creatures you encounter. A lot of the Ultima denizens we know and love are there, including reapers (which are stationary and shoot laser bolts), trolls, various forms of rats, skeletons, and the now-violent-again wisps, which teleport around and zap you. Less tied to the computer games are the vampire, the rolling-boulder-thing-with-a-face, tigers, and unfriendly giant heads a la the Olmec. The hardest monster is the black shadow guy, which I don't recognize. Most of them are easy to avoid, though sometimes they hit you just by going past you.


As far as player characters go, you choose between Iolo, Shamino, Dupre and Jaana. Iolo is fast and has a bow, Shamino starts with a magic axe, Dupre starts with armor, and Jaana...I don't know what she does. The game claims she can wield powerful magic weapons, but i already am using a magic sword as Shamino. The world itself resembles Britannia, but islands are much farther away from one another, and the main continent seems to have been chopped into a couple of pieces. The towns and castles just have one or two characters, who also oddly are wandering in the dungeons as well, offering advice and/or sarcastic comments. Among others, we get to see Ultima 6 characters including Dr. Cat, Sherry the mouse, Chuckles, Ariana, that horse seller who wants to sleep with you in Trinsic, Beh Lem, Finn, Kilp/Klop the two headed horse, and Budo, the pudgy armorer from Yew. Wait, that's not Budo...Budo was the fat theive's guild man. What was the fat armorer's name? Anyway...


In the game, you can use soup to raise your health and panpipes to freeze your enemies. I am not very inspired by the controls, because they make it difficult to attack in a direction without also walking in that direction--there is no "turn around" button, just a "walk in this direction" button. Sometimes I can get it to work, and I can move left and right while firing downward at something, but often I walk forward right into someone's fireball!

The game is nearly finished after a good five to six hours. One more hour will probably wrap it up, once I complete the abyss. It might be amusing to go back and play as Jaana, to figure out what exactly she can do that Shamino cannot.

Runes of Virtue, Days 1 and 2

Ah, it's nice to have a PC again, although it is sad to see the skeletal remains of the old one, after I yanked out all the cards and drives. It was surprisingly hard to find a motherboard with floppy support for my 5 1/4 drive! Oh well













Runes of Virtue was an Nintendo Game Boy adventure game released sometime around 1992, either before or after Ultima VII, and I suspect after. It features Birtannia, approximately, and various characters you might recall from Ultima VI, including Dr. Cat, Sherry, Finn, Lord British, and some woman I don't remember. The basic premise is that someone has pilfered all of the Rune of Virtue, and you have to go on a quest to retrieve them, with British telling you where to go, although strictly speaking in some cases you can ignore the guy. They are hidden in caves, with the caves full of traps, mazes, and assorted monsters, including wisps, slimes, trolls, blob things, gremlins, vampires, and even the seahorse, not seen since Ultima V! There are also some shops scattered about


Each dungeon tends to have one or two items, sometimes a weapon and often some sort of useful device. For example, one has a fire wand to burn dark spider webs, one has a lightning wand to zap knights, and one has a rope to cross water (No, this doesn't make sense). The game's something like a combination of Zelda and Lolo, with the puzzle-solving and such of the latter with the wandering enemies of the former. The graphics are pretty good, but I miss the blurriness of the LCD display, which an emulator just doesn't give you!





You choose Iolo, Shamino, Dupre or Jaana; I chose Shamino, who has a magic axe and a transparent face(!). When you find a rune, incidentally, you look JUST like Link in the original Zelda, when he lifts up a piece of the triforce. Thus far, I've gotten through 6 of the dungeons, many of which have been renamed for the ignorant among us--Hatred, Cowardice, Selfishness, Pride, etc. No more Covetous. The game's non-canonical, but nonetheless an amusing diversion from the much longer, hardcore games I will be playing soon! Four hours has gotten me this far, and I have to say...thank goodness for save states, or the game would probably become outrageously repetitive.

Hiatus

For those who are curious where I went...My computer, at long last, has totally kicked the bucket. It powers on, and the fans work, but there's no video output, no beeps, no POST, nothing; after a minute or so it just turns off again. I will either be buying a new one today or orderig a new one, not sure which route to go. But it will probably be awhile longer before I am back to blogging...of course, since you are all subscribed to my RSS feed, there's no need to keep checking here, right? :-P

Ultima VII, Day 13

To my surprise, finishing this game took almost two hours, although the eventual ending is a pretty sudden one. There's a lot about the final dungeon at the Isle of the Avatar that makes it appealing though, the most notable aspect being the Thrones of Changes and of Virtue, the former of which teleports you without providing any immediately obvious indication in your surroundings--it would have been much harder if I were not able to see the rooms around the throne room!

Another memorable aspect of the game is the large blank maze, which is just black space between rooms with a candle. As it turns off, i never had any reason to use it, because I ventured across a liche and some explosions without noticing the dark path, and only later realizing it existed when I happened to bump into its other side. The Isle is also quite notable for the presence of the Armageddon spell, which I have not used but which kills everything in the game in a manner that prevents you, sadly, from inspecting their inventories.

I'm not sure what final thoughts to add about Ultima VII, except that when I first played it years ago, perhaps a year or so after it came out, it was a revelation to someone raised mostly on console RPG's. I played Ultima VI before Ultima VII (my brother brought his computer home and I played it during Christmas break; we had no PC at the time), but Ultima VII was the first time I had a game "all to myself," so to speak. The game has a huge degree of open-endedness, with only a few areas inacessible at the beginning of the game, and there's just such an immense amount of stuff to do without even really paying attention to the plot.

Its only significant downside, in my opinion, is the somewhat weak plot. There's an element of veiled menace inherent in the Fellowship throughout the game, but it doesn't really build to a climax, it simply seems as if everything is simultaneously revealed. You don't build a significant chain of evidence implicating the Fellowship in dastardly deeds; rather, you pretty much get told about it by a gypsy. That undercuts the suspense a little bit, but the existence of the Guardian was a surprise and very weird.

Incidentally, this game has my favorite introductory sequence, with you actually somehow playing Ultima VII, and the recognizable map from Ultima VI in the background.

With that in mind, I will next embark on a total side project--Ultima: Runes of Virtue, an action/puzzle spin-off that was produced for the Game Boy around the same time that Ultima VII came out. It was more related in plot and presentation to Ultima VI than Ultima VII, but I have chosen to follow a more or less chronological sequence in playing the games.

I'm not sure of my total time playing Ultima VII. I would like to estimate it at approximately 26 hours, perhaps, maybe a little less? I am expecting Runes of Virtue to go rather quickly by comparison!

Ultima VII, Day 12

It would seem one more day will be required to completely finish Ultima VII, at least in terms of plot! My most recent adventure was entirely centered around Buccaneer's Den, where I encountered the great-great-grandson of the fat Budo of Ultima VI, as well as a pair of sentimental pirate buddies whom the Fellowship had driven apart. The cube proved useful in getting me access to Hook's chambers, where I found a sweet Juggernaut hammer, the first one I have found so far (save for the one in the weapons chamber of Serpent's Hold). I also found a dead Alligator, for some reason, in an otherwise inaccessible room. It occurs to me that I might have been able to get into Hook's lair with the use of a simple Telekenesis spell in the Fellowship hall, opening a secret passage in the back room! In this respect, Ultima VII suffers from the fact that it has no way of obfuscating the areas behind doors the way earlier games did.

In those secret passages I met a relatively unfriendly torturing troll, a dragon trap, and some magic weapons which I didn't pick up because I am so completely overloaded with magic stuff at present. I also spent a bit of time relaxing at the baths in the city, although without female (or for that matter, male) companionship because I don't find the portraits very attractive. I was able to get into the building, again, through the secret doors. I contemplated some gambling, but I am so close to the end of the game, it doesn't matter. I just remember my strategy in the past was to play Virtue Roulette, and simply open my inventory and place my bet while the wheel is paused, just before the final click that decides the winning color. In that manner I experienced the collapse of the universe described elsewhere, when wall start spontaneously vanishing.

After that I headed to the Shrine of the Codex, which for some reason Shamino insists is the Shrine of Humility, and also beat up on a group of pirates nearby, finding a whole suit of magic armor in the process. Those magic gorgets are hard to come by! I seem to remember the game has something like 8 complete suits of magic armor scattered around Britannia, except lacking one helmet, or maybe it was lacking one gorget. I'm not sure. I quit playing after about two hours, standing around beside the throne of the Guardian on the Isle of the Avatar.

In other news, I had a very brief conversation with a reader who reminded me that the Ultima IV on the Sega Master System is very good, and that it takes the unusual step of featuring 2D dungeons.

Finally, have I already mentioned the strange partially obfuscated backpack in Vesper, which is totally inacessible without cheating? It's positioned such that its straps are visible in a window in the Provisioner's shop, I think, but it cannot be manipulated. I wonder if I should include a list of the things you can do in Ultima VII that I neglected to do...Well, here's a few:

-Visit the lost cave where a note from a despairing fellow can be found
-Find a field of sleep-inducing flowers with the only love arrows in the game
-Find all the randoms tuff in the great forest, including a pirate hangout and a soldier encampment.

Ultima VII, Day 11

Sometimes Blogger annoys me by failing to display the "new post" link when I would like it to, meaning I have to navigate back to the home page and log in through there. Aie yie yie. Is that how that is spelled? On to the gaming...

Today was all about exploration as I tried to hit some of the highlights of Ultima VII's game world. First, let's start with Zac's Island Adventure. Actually, it wasn't much of an adventure, but I did visit about 7 or 8 islands scattered about the coast of Britannia: Near Serpent's Hold, Destard, ad Jhelom. The highlight of the first set was an amusing mountain-top lodge with a pirate and a mage that I killed, plus a cool suspended patio with stairs leading to it. Unfortunately, the barely-hidden bag in the corner contained items that my companions didn't like me stealing. Idiots. The next isle of interest was a small hole in one of those same islands, where you can find a big stack of gold bars and a dead pirate. I blieve this is the same spot you get told about if you whack a parrot on the head. Near Jhelom, the most interesting island is certainly the one which has a hidden passage to a pirate headquarters with some crazy old ship deeds to ships made over 250 years ago. I'm not sure how this compars to dates given in Ultima VI, or if any of the names match up to Ultima V or VI. The final isle of interest contains a very useful item--it is a small shack full of dead chickens just near Destard, and on the ground is a big yellow key that serves as a skeleton key, and it will unlock or lock any pick-able chest! Wow!

Next up was Zac's Dungeon Adventure in the dungeons of Destard and Wrong. Destard, as usual, is packed to the brim with unfriendly dragons, but also has a lot of gold bars and such. Too bad I have plenty of gold bars! The dragons are much easier to kill now, with the black sword and some other powerful weapons, though to my great annoyance the Avatar is never willing to kill anyting; he attacks until the enemy is weakened and then just quits. That gets frustrating. Destard, or near Destard, is also the home of the unicorn Dasher, who I am happy to pet because I am apparently a virgin, as I regained my virginity by stepping through a moongate (having previously somehow lost it in college in spite of my computer engineering major and fascination with old video games). This leads to some unfriendly comments by my Companions...Also in the dungeon is this weird human-gargoyle bonded pair that raised my eyebrows, and a fool who wants to prove his virginity so that a barmaid will marry him.

Of less interest was my trip to Wrong, a series of three jail-themed dyngeons, complete with a wizard, some torture devices, a liche, and a real life guard who will talk to you, but who is killed if you go int combat mode. He called me an idiot for asking his job. :-( The place also has a lot of mid level monsters, and very little in the way of treasure besides a little gold and some potions. I actually got a bit bored wandering around--even the mage and liche have no treasure to speak of when you kill them! Gone are the days when the hardest monsters left the best treasure...Hmm...

In Ultima I harder monsters gave more HP; in II, they gave different magic items. In III and IV they were all the same; in V hard monsters had better stuff, but in VI and beyond few monsters had anything good. So when I say "the days when the hardest monsters left the best treasure" I pretty much mean "Ultima V."

After that (and after a quick trip to the now swamp-infested Stonegate, where I found another Magebane sword) I began Zac's Jungle Adventure and headed to that most famous of locations, the big black X near the desert to the east, where the Guardian intones a mysterious backwards phrase! I remember this fondly, how back in the day I had to use a tape recorder to save the sound, then record it in Windows 3.1's sound tool, then reverse it, then play it back. With DOSBox, it's easy just to save the sound to a WAV and reverse it with my audio program. Still amusing after all these years. Finally, here's the issue of the big box full o'trash that sits atop the X. Inside it is a mysterious key. What does it go to? I knew once...I think it turns out to go to the chest in Serpent's Hold, in the big meeting room, that you cannot seem to open. I might try it out next time and see if my ancient memory is correct. I seem to also recall that chest held nothing useful.

Well, I think the time for ending Ultima VII is fast approaching. I've baked bread, hit most of the dungeons, found a big X, talked to naked beekeepers, and even killed Lord British (and then reloaded). There is plenty more to see and do in this game, but after a month I think it's about time to move on. Perhaps the next blog will take us straight to Buccaneer's Den and then to the end of the game!

PS: I added all the missing screenshots
PPS: Yes, I know British gave me a boat. It's more fun to buy one.