The Ultima discussion

[stika]

Originally, I was going to make an Ultima IX discussion thread, but I thought, why limit ourselves to one game? There's a lot of good discussions to be had with this series, so I'll start by posting a link to Spoony's videos, which are as good of an introduction as you're going to get to the series if you've never heard of it, followed by my thoughts on each game.

The first game in the Ultima retrospective by Spoony, the rest of the videos should be in the related videos section

Akalabeth: Never dedicated too much time to the series, it was definately before my time and though I own it on the Ultima collection, I just never played it too much

Ultimas 1-5: I feel these games have aged rather poorly, no music, terrible graphics, confusing interfaces, cryptic hints at where you need to go or what you need to do, some of them even punish you for levelling up *coughs*Ultima IV*coughs*

Ultima 6: Haven't played it in way too long, can't really comment on them

Ultima 7: Awesome amazing game!

Ultima 8: Great story, fun at first, gets a bit boring and repetitive towards the end

Ultima Underworld 1-2: The best games in the series imo

And finally, Ultima 9

I know Ultima 9 gets a lot of hate for being the game that killed Ultima, but while I don't think the game is by any means "great" I do think it's a decent/good-ish game.

It had without a shadow of a doubt the best OST in ANY Ultima game, just listen to this marvelous piece of gaming music. Another thing I feel the game did right was the immersiveness of the game world, every NPC had its daily chores, they went on with their lives and at night went to bed, back in the day this was damn impressive and it's something that to this day a lot of RPGs still don't do.

The game's controls are simple, easy to use, anyone can pick the game up and the tutorial eases you into it, you can praise the older ultima games all you like, but the control layout was atrocius, every key did a single action that could've easilly been mapped to the same key, if I'm not mistaken in the older ultima games, going down stairs or going up actually required 2 different keys.

The character models might have been ugly, but the world of Britannia was beautiful to look at with its lush green forests, caves, murky swamps, etc. I absolutely adored it.

One of the game's biggest complaints are the immense bugs it suffers from, luckilly, these have been fixed today through the use of community patches. Now you might think using community patches is "unfair" in a discussion but to that I'd like to point out that Vampire the Masquerade: Bloodlines was unplayable in its original state and was fixed due to the community's efforts, thanks to this it's often viewed as one of the best RPGs of its day

[GrahamRocks!]

I will give Ultima IX credit for a couple things.

I agree with you that the music is BEAUTIFUL!

And I also agree with you that the environments were also quite beautiful too!

*sigh* I just wish the story (especially all those continuity plotholes) and acting were fixed, because if GOG fixed all those bugs (like they did with Quest for Glory to my relief!), then we might have had a much better game on our hands.

As funny as "What's a Paladin?" is, the Hero really shouldn't need to ask that at all. Unless, they did it like how Quest for Glory did it, like an imported character wouldn't have to ask that (as he/she would already know this and that), while a non imported character would have to.

Maybe someone should remake it and make it better? Someone did it with Ultima... 5? I believe? So, surely someone could remake it in a similar engine and fix some things.

5 didn't have any music? Really?

Then what's this then?:

[stika]

*sigh* I just wish the story (especially all those continuity plotholes) and acting were fixed, because if GOG fixed all those bugs (like they did with Quest for Glory to my relief!), then we might have had a much better game on our hands
As funny as "What's a Paladin?" is, the Hero really shouldn't need to ask that at all. Unless, they did it like how Quest for Glory did it, like an imported character wouldn't have to ask that (as he/she would already know this and that), while a non imported character would have to. .

As I said, the bugs were fixed even before GOG got their hands on it, in fact there was a mod out there that turned Ultima IX into one of the best RPGs I've ever played, but I won't get into that.

Ultima 9 was meant to introduce new fans into a series that was struggling, truth be told the Ultima games were loosing popularity left and right, the gaps between them were getting bigger and Ultima 8 sure didn't win any new followers. So while I agree that the story was pretty bad, i think the game itself was pretty fun, which ultimately is what I value the most

Maybe someone should remake it and make it better? Someone did it with Ultima... 5? I believe? So, surely someone could remake it in a similar engine and fix some things.

5 didn't have any music? Really?

Then what's this then?:

There's a remake of Ultima 5 using the Dungeon Siege engine, I never tried it but I heard it was good.
As for the soundtrack that was the apple 2 version, the PC versions had absolutely no sound until the sixth game.

If you want sound in Ultima 5 you either have to own a computer from the time (like an amiga, atari or Apple 2) or you have to set up an emulator, which for me, it kind of kills it.

If you go to GOG.com and try to play Ultima 5 it will have no sound, everytime you see the Pc version with any music, it means they installed the ultima 5 midi mod pack.

and again, I feel from a gameplay perspective, the early games in the series have aged pretty poorly :\

[Numbers]

I've never played Ultima 9, and I hope I don't have to play it somewhere down the line, but I'm not just going off of what Spoony said about it. I'm going off of what everyone else said about it, which is that it's a bad way to end a long-running series. (Incidentally, depending on who you ask, KQ7, MoE, or TSL are bad ways to end the King's Quest series, based on what that person considers canon or not. Some like at least one of them, while some hate all three.)

The thing is, the dumb dialogue about the Avatar not knowing what the Codex of Ultimate Wisdom was--among other things--could have been completely avoided if the writers had just rephrased it with "as you know..." type dialogue.

[stika]

I can definately agree with that, numbers, with that said, I think Ultima 9 is worth at least a look, the gameplay is far from perfect, but it is still a very fun game with a great sense of exploration

[GrahamRocks!]

Come to think of it, wasn't "As you know..." what they did with the other games anyway? So, what changed?

[stika]

Not really, the dialogs weren't handled like that, the Avatar would ask about certain topics and the NPCs would respond to said topic, often they even sounded like encyclopedias.

An example:

Avatar chooses "Codex of Ultimate Wisdom Topic"

NPC's answer: It incorporates all knowledge that exists

so yeah, the dialog often wasn't the most engaging at times

[Numbers]

Was there ever a time when the dialog was engaging?

[LadyTerra]

Well, you did have to pay some attention to the conversation to know what word to type to continue it.

[Neonivek]

Honestly when I first saw Ultima 9 here were my exact thoughts.

"That is odd, the Avatar doesn't know anything about himself or his previous battles... and the real world and the world of Sisaria are both messed up. Something is rather unusual...

Wait I know! Clearly this isn't the real Avatar but rather a fake created by Guardian for entertainment and this entire world is fake based off the false and fragmented memories and knowledge the guardian had for the world. Hence why Lord British is a bumbling old man and Lord Blackthorn is an evil pirate."

But I was wrong... but really the game could have worked in two ways.

1) The Avatar fought the guardian as the Titan of Ether but his experiences in Ultima 8 corrupted him to the point where he couldn't kill the guardian. So, while the guardian is rebuilding himself from the butt kicking the Avatar has all his memories and experiences removed from him so he could build his virtue from the ground up.
-THIS would have needed a lot of changing but could have kept the Avatar as he was.

2) The Avatar is a fake avatar created after the mass destruction of Sisaria and made to entertain the Guardian. Even the world is fake. The event of this game would have taken place during AVATAR's treck to Sisaria.
-This would have needed the least work.

But really Ultima 9 "not being that bad" assumes it is a stand alone game. Like Diablo 3 most of what is wrong about the game is how it contradicts and belittles the series that came before.

Heck Kings Quest 8 also did a lot of rewrites to the plot and is generally thought of as non-canon for it (Mind you... that game was outright horrible even if its name was Fantastic Journey of a Banana Merchant 2)

[stika]

I agree Ultima 9 is a disapointing ultima title, but on its own it's a fair game I think

Well, you did have to pay some attention to the conversation to know what word to type to continue it.

Hehe yeah, you always need to keep a physical journal with you if you wanted to play the old Ultima games

[Sslaxx]

Lazarus (the Dungeon Siege Ultima V remake) is excellent. Buy DS I (physical copies only unfortunately). Install it. Play it. That is all.