Ultima Underworld II, Day 2 and 3

Well, another four hours of Underworld II have passed me by! I can very quickly summarize what I did--in Killorn Keep, I explored and found very little worth having. Well,besides a gem, which I found by accident, and which was accompanied by a key that didn't seem to unlock anything. It is rather see the decrepit old Lord British clone named Lord Thribis. In the realm of the ice world, I was able to dig out the lost city of Anodolous and talk to an unhappy ghost. That city always struck me as weird, due to the mass of locked massive doors, and I can't remember if I ever found a key for them in previous playings of those games.

That city, however, features one of the best parts of the game--You find a crystal ball, and looking into it you see your past and future. Sadly, the game sometimes breaks, and the crystal ball doesn't work. I like it particularly because it's the only in-game reference I am aware of to Martian Dreams! In fact, the fact that the crystal ball did not work was sufficient to make me angry enough to quit playing for the evening.

The variety of environments in Underworld has been pretty exciting, but I have some quibbles. The main one is navigation--I am CONSTANTLY getting stuck on pointy walls. In some cases, like with sliding ice, I have had to re-load a saved game because i just couldn't move. I've also had some trouble keeping myself going in the intended direction. I should probably use the keyboard for combat, too, because nothing is more frustrating than accidentally clicking your compass instead of swinging your weapon!

I appreciate the small details though--the talbes and chairs, and the blood spatters on walls (though British really ought to have a throne). I also like the slow collapse of the ecosystem in the courtyard of the castle. Well...Slow is the wrong word, it's insanely fast. They shut off the fountain and an hour later plants start dying! Ah well.

The game's fun, though. I've picked up an array of magic items that I need to identify. I even found a mani runestone so that I can finally cast heal. Still, there is one unresolved question that is surely on everyone's mind:

Where's Shamino!?

Now, unresolved concerns from other blogs:

Screenshots: They will appear eventually. I feel less pressure to get them for the Underworlds, because they are almost always terrible--you see too little to have any clue what's going on. But they are there and I'll post them sometime.

Akalabeth phone number: For some reason, it doesn't work exactly as it is shown in the display. Try this: Search for (415) 569-9126, no quotes.

Ultima Underworld II, Day 1

Well, my sojourn into the gem-encrusted castle of Lord British over the past few days went well. What surprises me about Underworld II is how short it is--or rather, how the various worlds in the game vary so substantially in size. The best example is Lord British's castle where the sewers are full of details that you for the most part will never need to explore! In any case, I zipped down very quickly to the gem on the lowest level--This was mainly because it's easy to get there, and because even the relatively wimpy monsters kill you swiftly when you are a weakling level one chump! I found the lair of a gazer and of a reaper, both of which I will kill at some point.

I also believe I have completed the quests associated with the goblin tower, because I got a blackrock object of some form from a leader there. It's curious how cordial the goblins are in that tower, at least to me. Well, there's a trio that call me monkey boy (hey, morons, you're bipedal monkey-like things too, just green!).

Underworld II is very much like Underworld I. The only aspects that have changed are the size of the view window (a little bigger) and the graphics, which are also slightly improved. Oh yeah, there is also "digitized sound," which means that you hear some rather out of place splats and dings and so on when you fight monsters.

Back to the plot--My recollection is that there are eight worlds to explore, and the first, the goblin tower, is by far the easiest. There is a troll in a jail cell on an upper level, too, but I have forgotten how you get it open. There's a guy named Janar or some such who has the keys, but he's fairly friendly and I don't much want to slice him up. Moreover, being wimpy, I can't! I think the next order of business is to go to Syria and others in the castle and get them to train me so I can hold my own in a fight a bit better.

As a final note, I have heard that the castle caretaker Nanna has been grumbling about worker's rights, and soon I'll need to tell Lord British about it, an infamous source of bugginess in the game. I will actually need to consult a walkthrough to remind myself how to solve this quest exactly correctly and not cause a game-stopping bug. Finally, I will need to cheat--Stupidly, I misspelled my name and I will need to break out some save game editor to fix it. Actually, I might be able to simply open one of the files in a hex editor. We shall see.

I only did four entries in all of July! How sad. But then, that's what employment does for you I guess. Underworld II may go faster than I speculated, but I am taking it at such a snail's pace that it may be awhile before I am done!

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!