Ultima V: Final Rating

If you don't have Lord British's sandalwood box, your characters end up just wandering around his chamber. Forever. Thankfully, we have plenty of food, and the male/female ratio is about equal.

Looking through several walkthroughs for Ultima V, I realized there were a few things that I missed. First, some of the surlier characters in the game, including a mage named Flain in Skara Brae (who was a pain in the neck to get to), the characters at Windmere (which I talked about a few postings ago), and the corrupt Judge Dryden in Yew, were members of "The Oppression," a society dedicated to helping Blackthorn. This didn't provide an alternate ending to the game, but I could have tried to infiltrate them and obtain their "black badge," which apparently would have made Blackthorn and his guards friendly. An interesting side quest.

The second thing was that I completely overlooked mystics! I guess I could have gotten both mystic swords and mystic armor from a volcano in the underworld. I do vaguely remember a clue of that nature, but I neglected to follow up on it. It didn't hurt me any, but this makes the second game in a row in which I ignored the fabled mystics. The third overlooked item were the plans for the HMS Cape, which were hidden in the shipwright's in Britain. I remember an NPC telling me that the master had lost them, but it didn't occur to me to just search his house. The plans would have made my frigates faster and probably cut down on some of the sea battles.

If I had to not be paying attention to something, I suppose it was a good thing it was this and not the sandalwood box.

In looking over these spoilers, I learned a little about Ultima V: Lazarus, a 2005 remake using the Dungeon Siege engine. Apparently, it greatly expands the dialogue and back stories, and includes extra quests, including more on the Oppression. I had told one commenter that I would check it out while playing Ultima V, but it seems like a game worthy of its own entries, so I've added it to my game list for that year.

On to my GIMLET. I would note, incidentally, that my blog is the third entry if you search for "gimlet" on Google. The second entry, a Wikipedia page, notes that the term, in addition to the drink, describes a tool, an unincorporated town in Kentucky, a surface-to-air missile, a rocket, a fantasy character, a tree, and a Transformers character. It's a diverse term. Oh, and it was director Ed Wood's favorite cocktail.

1. Game World. Large, open, and interesting. The back story of the game is compelling and well-narrated, and the world itself is full of interesting terrain, cities, towns, keeps, lighthouses, dungeons, and other places to explore. Origin's manuals continue to top the competition in their history and description of the land and its people. It's one of the few games of any era in which the entire world--rather than just discrete pieces of it--is explorable from the outset. I went into this thinking that I needed to exceed my score for Ultima IV by at least one, but I think I rated Ultima IV too high (8). Ultima V's world is fantastic, to be sure, but the game lacks one of my key elements here: "decisions and actions measurably affect the game world." I was a bit disappointed that no one--not even Blackthorn--bothered to notice when I killed the Shadowlords. I have to save perfect scores for games like Morrowind that not only have a large, interesting world but lots of little diversions and a sense of adaptation to my actions. Score: 8.

The Book of Lore is well-written and sets the back story nicely.

2. Character creation and development. The character creation process is essentially the same as Ultima IV, but the consequences are less noticeable, since no matter what virtues you choose, you end up in the "Avatar" class (which is an adaptation of only three classes: bard, fighter, and mage) and you start the game in the same location. While basing characters on virtue is an interesting concept, the rest of the character development system is a bit of a let down. You can progress through eight levels, but you really have to grind to get past six. You only have three ability scores, and a few limited means to raise them. Tying spell levels to character levels does make development a bit more necessary, and the "karma" system is unique for the era. Overall, though, I would have liked to see more options here. Score: 4.

The paltry selection of character attributes.

3. NPC Interaction. The Ultima series continues to blow its rivals out of the water with the number of NPCs and the depth of interaction with them. The dialogue system is almost unique to the series, and talking with NPCs is absolutely essential for both advancing the plot and proving your virtue. The game goes beyond Ultima IV in offering more than just dialogue options during NPC interaction--you follow around suspicious characters, avoid guards, free prisoners from jail, among other things. Certain NPCs join you--Origin was the first for this in IV, I think, and in this game they have another first in that there are more NPCs who will join than you can accomodate, allowing you to choose based on value to the party. Finally, the daily activity cycle kept by the NPCs is a first in this game, and doesn't recur even in a lot of modern games. The only thing it lacks is true "dialogue options." Score: 8.


 
4. Encounters and foes. There are a handful of memorable encounters in the game, with Blackthorn, the daemon guarding Stonegate, and a few others in which you have some role-playing options. Your enemies in the game are well-described in the manual, and they all distinguished by their methods of attack: wisps possess you, daemons summon comrades, squids shoot poison, reapers try to put you to sleep, orcs just charge. I like that they flee when they get to "critical" levels, too. Each type of foe carries a different volume of treasure, and I got a real tingle when I found myself facing reapers or dragons (if I knew I could beat them!). Monsters respawn constantly in the world, leaving plenty of opportunities for grinding. But the most original thing about this game is the different types of dungeon rooms, each of which requires a different strategy to defeat and navigate. Score: 7.

5. Magic and combat. The Ultima series, while never perfect in either aspect, continues to get better. I covered both magic and combat extensively in related postings. The game added a lot of variety to combat, with multiple attacks, attacks that go astray, the ability to target anywhere on the screen, lots of items to use, and weapons that attack at varying ranges. There were a lot of tactics associated with different terrains and party formation. I still never found it really fun in the way that Pool of Radiance was, but I can't say that it bored me like Ultima IV did, and it was a lot more dangerous. The magic system, with its requirements to mix reagents and its syllable-based spells, is, as I covered, very original and yet almost wholly unnecessary. I wish there had been more mass effect spells at lower levels and buffing spells to increase characters' ability scores. Score: 6.

Another member of the Oppression falls.

6. Equipment. A huge leap over IV. Instead of just a few weapons and armor, you have a large variety of ranged and missile weapons, helms, armor, shields, boots, rings, amulets, potions, and scrolls. Described well by the merchants, they are ordered in your inventory according to power, so you never doubt which is the best. In addition to the standard combat items, gems, keys, and torches are important for exploration, and there are a host of special items--grapple, sextant, spyglass, pocketwatch, amulet, crown, and scepter--each of which has a special purpose. I also liked that you could find equipment on slain foes; it wasn't just a matter of purchasing it. When every other combat seems to provide something new to don, wield, or use, I have a lot of fun with the game. My only quibble is that every character could wield every weapon and armor; I think some class restrictions would have made it more interesting. Score: 7.

Regrettably, I went right to magic axes.

7. Economy. For about 8/10 of the game, the economy is perfect. You almost always have an economic goal: buy a skiff, buy a frigate, outfit the party with magic axes, buy magic shields, stock up on reagents, max out on gems, and so on. The game also offers other ways to spend money by donating at shrines (if you need the karma), paying for information from some NPCs, donating to beggars, and purchasing healing. The only downside is that towards the end of the game, you have far too much money, but this does tend to happen very late. All in all, one of the best systems of the era. Score: 8.

8. Quests. Like IV before it, Ultima V has a very compelling main quest that, again, does not involve the traditional "slay the wizard" trope. Instead, you have to assemble some items and proceed through various challenges to rescue Lord British from the Underworld. It isn't quite as groundbreaking as the Quest of the Avatar, but it's up there. There are some quasi-side-quests, such as joining the Oppression and finding the hidden reagents, but these barely qualify. Score: 7.

9. Graphics, sound, and inputs. I loved the graphics in this game: the way the dungeon walls had their own textures, the furnishings and decorations in the buildings, the animated icons for the enemies. There were cute little touches, like the way you were reflected in mirrors and could "sit down" on chairs and harpsichord benches. I'm not claiming the graphics stand up to modern games, but all they have to be is "good enough" to get the maximum score, and these are definitely good enough. On the sound...well, Origin is trying. They were just a bit above painful, and it was cute how they made the clocks chime and the waterfalls ripple and the harpsichords actually play--even if the sound quality, on DOS machines of the era, is a bit poor (and, yes, I know it was probably better on other platforms; I have to rate what I played). The controls are near-perfect: Mastery is almost instantaneous, with each letter standing for a sensible action, and inventories simply controlled by the arrows. The best controls are the ones you never have to think about, and Ultima V exemplifies that. Score: 6.

10. Gameplay. V continues IV's tradition of nonlinearity. Yes, you have to achieve certain things to win the game, but you can achieve them in almost any order, and the sense of openness is very satisfying--witness the way I decided to follow Lord British into the Underworld when my characters were still low levels. The difficulty and pacing are both almost pitch-perfect. I thought it was a little too easy in the final dungeon, but beyond that, it was both challenging (as the number of full-party deaths I experienced can attest) and continually enjoyable. I wouldn't have minded a couple more dungeons, even. It is, alas, not very replayable, unless you want to try different challenges, like completing the game with a single PC. Score: 8.

I confess that my final rating of 69 is a bit of a surprise. This makes Ultima V the highest-rated game in my blog so far, beating Pool of Radiance by 4 points and its predecessor by 14 points. Truth be told, I think I enjoyed Pool of Radiance slightly more, but the difference isn't notable enough to revise the GIMLET, and I might have mentally ranked Ultima V higher if I didn't have to take such a long time-out in August. I might also have mentally ranked it higher if it had a better ending--I almost want to subtract points for that. Why do I keep helping Lord British if he's just going to boot me out of Britannia the moment he's done with me?

I have seen Ultima V described as the best CRPG of all time. I think you could make a strong argument that it is, at least, the best CRPG of the 1980s. I still like the plot of IV better, but the gameplay experience is far better in V. This makes it all the more surprising that Scorpia gave the game such a lukewarm review in the May 1988 issue of Computer Gaming World [large file]. While noting the graphics and object-interaction innovations, she bemoans the fewer characters found in V--I didn't notice this and don't actually believe it--and the lack of new monster types, which I also disagree with. She calls the combat system "irritating" and a "long drawn-out affair," and she spends a long time complaining about trivial omissions from the manual. Nonetheless, her "bottom line" is that the game is "not to be missed!" so I guess there's that.

Moving on, I think I'm going to take a quick "special topics" diversion on a little parody called Ultima IV Part 2 before checking out Visions of the Aftermath.