This months article was to feature my plodding (and hopefully, exhaustive) journey through the first three Ultima games, which are generally referred to as "The Age of Darkness."  But you know what?  Despite my undaunted love for sometimes crusty, old-school RPG games, I find the older Ultima games intimidating and unapproachable, so much so that I had this puppy on the back burner for nearly a year.  Well, now is the time for action, I say.  So with fully configured and patched downloads from GoG imported into DBGL on my MacBook, I pushed forth to see just what all the hubbub is about. 



So here's the deal.  I've read and watched a ton of articles and videos regarding this series over the decades, pretty much since the information became available (and I got the Internet).  I feel that I know pretty much all the salient points about these titles. Blahblah rocketships, blahblah Time Lord, blahblah Lord British.  Between all the retrospectives and insult/swearing/worship videos and articles, I'm pretty sure I've heard it all.  But at some point I started to think, knowing all that I know, just how easily could I expect to play through these games?  Now, I'm a huge fan of "retro" and "abstract" RPG games, but I've yet to play any of these games (despite my earlier beliefs to the contrary). Since I now own all of them legally, why not plug through some of them?  You never know, might be a laugh or perhaps I might even enjoy one or two of them.

I don't want to this article to be a exhaustive set of reviews.  There is certainly enough of those.  Rather, I would like this to become a collection of thoughts regarding my travels, hopefully with a bit 'o humor in it.  But, I want to stress that I'm not quite sure how this will turn out.

November 1st and here we go.


I feel the need to preface this with a little caveat.  The GoG release of Ultima I does not have the proper instructions necessary to play the game, a fact I learned after about five minutes of play.  Another five minutes with Google, and we are back in business.

In a strange twist, Ultima I has almost none of the usual tropes that now exist within the RPG genre space that it had a hand in creating.  In fact, it can be really hard to see just exactly what it contributed outside of the overworld map and transition to towns.  Ultima I has stats, which don't amount for much, it has experience points, which have zip to do with leveling, and it has NPC characters, which don't have a thing to say.  Yet, playing it I feel that I can see the foundations upon which the genre would eventually be built.  It has a large overworld, consisting of four continents with several islands, travel by several vehicles, from a raft to a hovercraft and spaceship.  However, not all is well in the house of Ultima I..  There are also some very strange and interesting design choices here, which pretty much all ended up as evolutionary dead ends.  I can say that pretty much none of them survived to Ultima IV.

Out of all the oddities, there are two things I'd like to share with you all that stand out the most, especially to those that never wandered into those ground-breaking early days of RPG games, when everything was new and strange.  The first is the use of the keyboard.  Pretty much every button on the keyboard does something, with no redundancy to speak of.  You move around with the arrow keys, but to actually enter a town you have to press the "e" key (for "e"nter). To attack you press "a" (for "a"ttack), then a direction to attack.  You can "s"teal from store counters and even "t"ransact with those same merchants, but my two personal favorites are "o"pen and "u"nlock.  If you come across a treasure chest while trolling around a dungeon (for hitpoints) you would naturally press 'o", after which the game will snootily inform you that there are no coffins to open.  What?  Pressing "u" will attempt a pick/force the chest, which will usually result in damage before finally yielding a pittance of copper.  Oh, I was so ignorant once, when I thought of the first Final Fantasy as primitive.  For the love of a context button, people.

Now let's talk about the way hit points are handled.  Basically throw out every conception of hit point regeneration that you have ever known.  Even understanding the wackiness as demonstrated in the early Action RPG, Dragon Slayer, didn't prepare me for the horror that Lord British had unleashed upon the masses.  To my understanding there are only two ways to gain back lost hit points: bribing a king or visiting dungeons, with the latter way being the most ridiculous sounding yet the best way to both regain lost HP and also stock up for future usage.  Yep, this is also how you "level up" your hit points in preparation for later battles.  You do not gain back any HP after each battle, rather you get back a certain amount that you lost plus extra when you exit a dungeon.  I would walk into a dungeon, kill the weak enemies on the first floor, and exit every now and then to see what had been gained and to save.  Re-enter and all the baddies have re-spawned and you can rinse and repeat to your hearts content, at times gaining massive amounts of HP.  Within a scant few minutes you can bank hundreds of HP, regardless of experience or level.  I had thousands of HP after 30 minutes, which was more than enough for the rest of the game.  Oh, Ultima I, you are such a scamp.

My time spent with Ultima I was about ten hours, a pittance in the eyes of modern RPG games.  I enjoyed not only its old school graphics, but its plodding and grindy gameplay.  I learned, once again, that I do love to watch numbers increase, something that I thought I had grown out of.  Will this translate to the next few games?  We will find out shortly.


Being a lover of the abstract in my RPGs, it would seem hypocritical to complain about the  graphics of a game, but for some reason the purple hued CGA graphics on the PC version of Ultima II really frosts my cookies.  Much like the common aversion to the (perceived) soap-like taste of fresh cilantro, I find the graphics of this game difficult to deal with.  This is because the first Ultima was actually released on PC five years after Ultima II, which puts it square in EGA territory.  But since the Apple II original is too far out of my reach both in terms of price, availability, and reliability, I will simply apply the PC Update patch to my version and mosh on.  *Rant over*

Ultima II is the most polarizing game in the series without a doubt, with opinions split right down the middle.  Watch The Spoony One's retrospective on Ultima II and you'd think the game was just like your wacky cousin, who can't seem to stop talking about Time Bandits, jesters, and his own private, personal in-jokes.  If you only read the opinion of the CRPG Addict, you would check your wallet every time Ultima II walked into the room, positive it was about to roll you for your valuables and use the proceeds to buy crack.  Me, despite the massive amount of in-jokes (which is a huge turn-off for me), I find the game pretty enjoyable, if a bit weird.  You are still the character from the first game, but now you are also a time traveler and on Earth.  There are also multiple planets to travel to and explore.  And you can be something called a Bobbit.  Weird, I tell you. 

Coming straight off of the first Ultima onto the sequel must have been quite a shock for the gamer of the 80's, as it is worlds different (pardon the pun) than the first game.  The graphics (for the Apple II and the PC EGA patched version that I used) were a definite step up, and there is a semblance of a story within the game instead of exclusively within the manual.  Mechanics-wise, it is a big jump over the first game, as both race and profession actually make a difference this time in stat boosts.  Being able to actually gain levels feels quite nice, though once again, levels don't appear to actually do anything.  Stats don't increase with your level (again), instead you must seek out a desk attendant at the Hotel California and pay him.  You can also talk to everyone and they all have a response this time, though they all have just one line each.  Guards will advise you to pay your taxes, every time.  Annoyingly enough you can only regain HP by bribing Lord British, which one would think would make a longer game, but it turns out that is not necessarily true; one could spend ten hours on it, or thirty if you aren't very lucky. I spent about twenty hours on the game, which seems to be about nine hours more than the average (as reported by http://howlongtobeat.com).  I blame it on my own ignorance, as somewhere I adopted the "fact" that certain items only randomly dropped, when you can also pick them up from within dungeons.  Oh, and the dungeons are the worst.  Still the same as in the first Ultima, though now the gremlin makes an appearance, which upon engaging you will steal pretty much all of your food, which in certain circumstances leads to your death and reloading.

Still, historically speaking, the game was groundbreaking and helped define copycat games for a decade on a number of platforms.  Regardless, for a fun-loving, free-wheeling, computer-gaming kid of the the early eighties it must have been quite the wild ride.


I would have loved to have played the first three Ultima games fresh, with no preconceptions or foreknowledge of any of the plot points, cheats, or general game foibles.  To be there at the defining moments of the genre, playing the games on their native platform (the Apple II) would have been wonderful, I imagine.  The original Ultima was the first of its kind, showing us a brand new type of game that was fun and engaging, if a little confusing at times.  The second game literally opened up brand new worlds to us, letting us travel to planets as easily as we previously traveled between continents, rounded off with a lot of silly references and characters.  What would the third game have to offer?

Boom.  That is how I felt after playing the first ten minutes of Exodus: Ultima III.  What a massive step up in terms of features and quality, and in only a single year (on the Apple II).  First, the game ditches the sci-fi angle, which is kind of a bummer, but considering what this meant for the series in the long run doesn't amount to much, in my opinion.  Plus, other game series did it better while being more subtle, like the Might & Magic games for example.  And the time traveling part from Ultima II was just confusing.

So now the game is set more in a Tolkien/D&D fantasy environment, though there are still many Ultima touches from the earlier games, such as the limited weapons and armor (sans phazors this time) and steadily decreasing food supply.  The game still isn't very user friendly, as you will need to consult the manual to know that you need to press "l" to pick a lock, or "w" for a wizard, but it at least is a start down a familiar road. I went with the classic two fighters, one healer, and one wizard in the end and did fine with the game.  Oh, and the game is just as short as Ultima I, despite the amount of perceived extra content, such as making you go into dungeons this time.  Speaking of dungeons, they are still in 3-D, but they now have splashes of color and more substance to them.  Nothing special, but it was a nice surprise when I stumbled across my first dungeon.  Granted, you must have the upgrade patch installed, or the maze walls are nothing but gray lines; or you could just play the Apple version.

Let's see.  Oh, now there is also a sub-screen for battles!  Another first.  As you roam about the overworld maps you see your foes as before, but this time touching them brings you to another screen for the battle.  The battles themselves are still largely unsatisfying (and sadly won't get better for the next game either), but moving your party members in a more tactical manner does make the battles more enjoyable, or less routine, than in the other games.  Still it's not really fun I guess, but it's a pretty big step forward for the genre.

I think the biggest problem I had with Ultima III is the amount of opportunity to get all kill crazy with innocent NPC characters, especially since they respawn once you exit and enter the town, with the guards magically forgetting you ever did anything.  Heck, it almost seems like the game was meant to specifically accommodate this type of gaming, as a great way to build up quick experience and gold is to ransack towns with no guards.  Oh, and the non-context buttons got really annoying in this game, since to speak to someone you first had to press "t", then the number that correspond with whom in the party you want to speak to them with (1-4 on the keyboard), then the direction you want that party member speaking.  Maybe this is why the NPC characters still aren't worth talking to, as they are nothing more than potential grind fodder for when you need more money to upgrade your stats at the Hotel California.

So here we are at the end.  I wasn't sure this would be fun when I started, but it turned out to be quite a ball in the end.  While I feel that after forty-five hours of eye-opening retro RPG gameplay I need a serious break, at the same time, I still have great interest in this forgotten branch of gaming.  While I don't ever think I want to slog through Ultima IV again, I think I will want to tackle the other games in the series that I haven't played (V through VIII).  As silly as it sounds, I want to thank you, the assumed reader.  Without you I don't think I would have progressed this project past the outline phase.

The easiest way to find these Ultima games is on GoG, where they are normally $5.99 USD (or local equivalent).  However, if you wait a bit, the whole series will go on sale for between $9.50 and around $13 USD.  Also, if you are a Mac user, Lairware has created a unique port of Ultima III that contains MIDI tunes as well as twelve graphical options from Apple II Composite, to VGA, to NES, and all for only $5 USD.  It is a Universal app, so it's playtime for both PowerPC and Intel!

Thanks for reading, everyone!

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