Ultima IV: Battle and Exploration

Is there any CRPG that doesn't have orcs?

Since I last wrote, I have visited the cities of Skara Brae, Trinisc, and Paws, collecting clues and hints. My to do list has already grown fairly long. I've organized it by town when I knew the town:

• JHELOM: doors to jimmy, ask in pub of sextants
• LORD BRITISH CASTLE: Find secret entrance to dungeons, jimmy
• MINOC: Ask Zircon about mystic arms
• SKARA BRAE: Return with keys to jimmy doors
• TRINSIC: Ask of the white stone at the tap, return with dispel field spell
• VESPER: Ask barkeep about nightshade
• Ask at the Folley Tavern of mandrake
• Ask Hermit Sloven near Lock Lake of white stone
• Calumny: Ask about Mandrake
• Lock Lake, reachable only by ship: ask Mentorian of gate travel spell

I also fought my first Ultima IV battle, against four orcs. Fortunately, I had picked up Shamino in Skara Brae, so I wasn't alone. Shamino and I survived and, just as importantly, so did two of the orcs. In this game, you allow fleeing enemies to get away, thus satisfying the dictates of honor. This battle was followed by a few fights against trolls, who attacked when I crossed their bridges. I had forgotten about that. Standing on bridges and hitting the spacebar (pass) provides nearly endless troll fights. Chests, unfortunately, are almost always trapped, and with no thief class in Ultima IV, I can't open them safely until I mix up a number of open chest spells.

Battle in Ultima IV is basically identical to Ultima III. When you switch to a battle screen, you control each of your companions individually in turn. They can attack, maneuver about, used ranged weapons, and cast spells (if you have any prepared). One new feature in Ultima IV is how the battle landscape changes depending on the terrain you were on when battle is initiated. The type of terrain can offer advantages and disadvantages. For instance, moutainous terrain, shown below, provides obstacles that prevent multiple enemies from attacking at once.

The game manual notes helpfully: "a few valiant fighters strategically placed in a narrow rocky pass can stand off an army numbered in the thousands."

With Shamino plus the game map, I figured I had enough role-playing cause to make my way to Lord British's castle. I forgot how tough it is to find your way around this game at the beginning stages. The moongates take you near towns, but Skara Brae, Jhelom, Moonglow, and Magincia are all on islands, and the moongate near Minoc is surrounded by poisonous swamp. Finally, through trial and error I found myself near Trinsic and managed to make my way up the coast to Britain and the castle.

After briefly exploring the castle, I visited the throne room, bribed Lord British for hit points, killed his jester, and looted his treasury. No! Those are the other Ultima games. Instead, I had a very civil conversation with him. He clarified that my quest involves becoming an earthly manifestation of each of the eight virutes, and clued me in (if I didn't know already) about the associations of the towns to the classes to the virtues. Once I become an Avatar, he says, I can brave the Great Stygian Abyss and view the Codex of Ultimate Wisdom. This bears repeating: the final goal of the game is not to kill an evil wizard, overthrow a tyrant, or retrieve a magic amulet, but to read a book of wisdom.

Lord British is helpful for once.

I talked in my last post about the symmetry in this game, and it manifests in a few ways that I forgot. First, the eight virtues derive from three principles of virtue--truth, love, and courage--in various combinations. Valor is pure courage, but honor is a combination of truth and courage, for instance. The Venn diagram below shows the relationships. More on humility in a second.

 

Each principle of courage has primary color associated with it, and the combinations of colors determine the color of the stone (which I have to find in the dungeons) associated with each virtue. Red (pure courage) is the stone of valor, and blue (pure truth) is the stone of honesty, so purple (truth + courage) must be the stone of honor.

The number eight also appears in other ways: since there are eight virtues and eight associated classes, your party can have a maximum of eight characters. Each character can reach a maximum of level 8. There are eight spell reagents, eight phases of the moon, eight types of armor to wear...oh, and probably a dozen more incarnations that I haven't spotted yet. But the symmetry is even more notable for the fact that things don't really occur in series of eight: they occur in seven plus one. What I mean by this is that for every group of eight, there's always an odd one out: something that's not like the others. The virtue of humility, for instance, does not derive from the principles of virtue; it exists outside of them. Its associated class, a shepherd, is almost worthless as an adventurer and makes you wonder why the class exists. Humilty's town, Magincia, is unique among the towns as not being really about the virtue of humility; instead, it was founded on pride (not a virtue) but then destroyed by demons. There are eight dungeons, but one of them is the Great Stygian Abyss, which is fairly unique. Most of the stones are found in dungeon altar rooms but one, of them, the white stone of spirituality, is missing. Nightshade is unique among reagents in that it can only be found in a single place, and one of the eight types of armor you have to find through a quest. This is a meticulously planned game.

Again, thanks to the Internet, I've found something I never knew about Ultima IV. The creators include NPCs named after familiar famous philosophers and writers, which was obvious. But I didn't realize until I did a little Googling that they used those individuals' actual quotes in the dialog. For instance, a philosopher in Skara Brae named "Buddha" says that, "if one speaks or acts with pure thought, happiness will follow like a shadow that never leaves," a quote actually attibuted to Buddha. A ranger named Michaelangelo says, "May thou always desire more than thou can accomplish!," a paraphrase of a real Michaelangelo quote: "Lord, grant that I may always desire more than I can accomplish." The game seamlessly works these adages in to the dialog so that the casual gamer is none the wiser.

Now here's a riddle for all of you who have played Ultima IV before: when exploring Lord British's castle, I came across a mage named Joshua who asked, "If the eight philosophies of avatarhood combine into and are made from truth, love, and courage, what one thing creates and is created by all truths, all love, and all courage?" I have no idea what he's talking about, and any potential answer I could think to give returned a "that I cannot help thee with." I don't remember this guy at all from my previous Ultima IV adventures. Any idea what he's going on about? If you do, give me a hint--not the answer!

My plan right now is to make my way around the continent, visiting the towns and keeps on the Britannian mainland, fighting creatures when I encounter them, until I can either commandeer or afford a ship. I will then visit the cities and towns in order and obtain the runes and mantras for each virtue. Before my next posting, I'll see if I can afford a few reagents so I can talk about the magic system.

Game 10: AutoDuel (1985)

 

AutoDuel

United States

Origin Systems (developer and publisher)

Released 1985 for Apple II, Commodore 64, and Atari 8-bit; 1987 for DOS and Atari ST; 1988 for Amiga and Macintosh
Date Started: 12 March 2010      

   
I was really excited when I saw AutoDuel coming up on the list. I remembered playing it on my Commodore 64 over 20 years ago. I was looking forward to the ultra-tactical combat involving dozens of vehicles, in which you would pull your 24-person bus alongside the outlaw gang's tractor trailer unit, unload a volley of rifles, and then board it. Meanwhile, you'd accelerate your reinforced pickup truck to ramming speed and plow down the enemy's motorcycles. Good times.

Except, I realized soon after loading the game, that wasn't AutoDuel. That was Roadwar 2000. And come to think of it, it wasn't a CRPG anyway, so I don't know why I would have thought it was on the CRPG list. AutoDuel, it turns out, I've never seen.

The main splash screen nearly knocked me out of my chair. Lord British and Chuckles?! It turns out that AutoDuel is an Origin systems game, published sometime between Ultima III and Ultima IV. Based on a board game by Steve Jackson called Car Wars, it exists in a post-apocalyptic American northeast in which roving gangs of bandits prowl the highways in souped-up armed and armored vehicles. You start as an amateur car warrior buying and outfitting your first vehicle, and slowly improving your skills, fame, vehicles, and finances through random combat, arena duels, and courier missions.

   

The main character window

You begin in New York City. Like any good CRPG, there are a number of places to visit: a truck stop to buy armor and get a bus to another city, an assembly yard to buy and outfit your vehicle, a salvage yard to sell salvaged goods, a garage to repair and store your car, a weapons shop to buy weapon upgrades, a chapter of the American AutoDuel Association where you can get missions, Joe's Bar for drinks and rumors, the Gold Cross for healing and clone-making (more below), the FBI for God know's what, and an arena where you can fight duels.

The Big Apple is a little more compact than I remember

You start with hardly any cash, so generally you go to the arena where, on "amateur night," they will give you a car temporarily. Defeat four enemies and you win about $1500, enough when combined with your starting cash to buy your first vehicle.

Amateur night at the arena

Controls are with the mouse or keyboard. I found the keyboard counter-intuitive and the mouse only slightly less so. The main problem with AutoDuel is that the battles are frelling impossible. It took me four tries to win in the arena. Then I was killed almost immediately upon purchasing my first car.

Combat is based partly on statistics, including your scores for driving and marksmanship, but also partly on arcade-style hand dexterity. Unfortunately, I'm not very quick, apparently. But I don't think it's just me. The game screen isn't very big, and you don't really see enemy vehicles until you're practically on top of them. At that point, it's all too easy to accidentally run into them, destroying your armor and whatever weapon happens to be mounted at the impact point.

What makes the difficulty annoying is that AutoDuel is yet another game with permanent death. You can save your progress, but when it reloads it deletes your saved game. The only way around this is to visit the Gold Cross and purchase a clone who will take over for you if you happen to die. But they're awfully expensive.

When you defeat enemies, you can get out of your car and salvage stuff from theirs.

After dying probably 10 times I decided that the problem was I didn't have enough cash to outfit a good car. Prompted by a hint in the game manual, I took a bus to Atlantic City, where after playing blackjack for a good two hours of real time, I had about $16,000. (I was about to say that this qualifies as the first mini-game in a CRPG, but actually I suppose the Ultima TIE fighter battle takes that prize.) With this, I returned to NYC and outfitted a van with armor and several different weapons.

How much extra for some sudden, uncontrolled acceleration?

   

I had enough left to buy a clone but forgot to do so. I hit the open road, fought and won a couple of battles and then encountered a hotrod which in about two seconds obliterated my rear armor and killed me.

   

My six hours is up, and I'm tossing in the towel. I know I'm opening myself up to accusations of half-assing two games in a row, but AutoDuel was about the least fun I've ever had with a CRPG--and to be honest, I'd debate applying that label to this game. In any event, I can't find any evidence that there's a main quest or a way to "win" AutoDuel, so all it's doing is keeping me from The Bard's Tale. [Edit: As commenters have pointed out, there is a way to win. Later, I did.]

If you want another point of view, this YouTube poster has loaded a five minute video along with a couple of paragraphs of gushing commentary. The video shows him winning the first arena duel, buying his first car, and heading out on the open road. I sympathize with one of his commentors, who says, "i like it [but] 2 hours later i cant do anything but die & die again."

At least I got to hone my blackjack skills.

****

Further reading: Unsatisfied with this brief coverage? I don't blame you. It was early in my blog, and I didn't have much of a work ethic. Six years later, I revisited the game and won. Read my updated coverage.

Ultima III: Won!

   

Exodus: Ultima III

United States

ORIGIN Systems (developer and publisher)

Released in 1983 for Apple II, Atari 800, and Commodore 64; 1985 for DOS, Macintosh, PC-88, and PC-98; 1986 for FM-7, Amiga, and Atari ST; 1987 for NES; 1989 for Sharp X1

Date Started: 7 March 2010

Date Ended: 10 March 2010
Total Hours: 10
Difficulty: Easy-Moderate (2.5/5)
Final Rating: 51
Ranking at Time of Posting: 9/9 (100%)
Ranking at Game #420: 396/420 (94%)

     

Exodus has fallen. I won Ultima III in about 10 hours of total gameplay.

    

I should have been saying this all along in previous entries, but ***spoilers follow!*** If you're planning on playing Ultima III you might read my first entry on the game but leave this one until you finish.

   

Ultima III is not a terribly difficult game if you don't push your luck with the dungeons until you're ready. As I think I said in my first post, I don't believe in saving and reloading games just because you don't like a certain outcome, like a character dying during a battle. Instead, I force myself to haul my character to the healer and get him or her raised or resurrected. It makes the game more challenging. The only time I reload is when my entire party is wiped out. Even with this restriction, though, my characters only died a few times.

   

A commenter pointed out to me that another blogger has already done a fantastic job with the Ultima series: Zac Bond's "Blogging Ultima." Over a one-year period from 2007-2008, he played every Ultima game, including the little-known Escape from Mt. Drash and the Nintendo Gameboy Runes of Virtue. I'm trying to avoid spoilers, but I read his commentaries for I, II, and III. We had a lot of the same impressions--I even took the same "Copy Protect!" screen shot as him, and he also commented on the rampant evil of your character in Ultima II. Anyway, if you like my blog, his is definitely worth reading through (he still posts now and then with new material).

  

As far as I know, no one has blogged Wizardry, so I still have a corner on part of this market.

   

Although the gameplay was occasionally a little repetitious, I found Ultima III to be authentically fun. There are hints of the greatness that would soon follow in Ultima IV. The storyline is much more sensible than in previous Ultimas, the magic system much more developed, and the combat more tactical. If you're really interested in getting in to the Ultima series but don't want to slog through some of the nonsense in Ultima I and Ultima II, I recommend starting here.

The towns of Fawn and Monitor/Montor, first introduced in Ultima I, are here--I think for the last time until Ultima VII. You also run in to both Dupre and Shamino, soon to be your close companions in Ultima IV, in a couple of bars. As I said last time, Iolo and Gwenno are both in Lord British's castle. You practically have the whole gang here.

Finishing the game involves visiting every town and talking to each person to obtain a series of clues. By piecing these clues together, you discover that the main steps are:

• Visit the dungeons and find each of four "marks"--hot iron brands on the walls that I guess permanently imprint on your characters. The Mark of Kings allows you to advance to higher levels; the Mark of Fire allows you to cross lava without damage; the Mark of Force allows you to walk through force fields; and the Mark of Snakes allows you to bypass the silver snake guarding Exodus's castle.

The things I do for Sosaria...

• Take a ship through the whirlpool and into the land called Ambrosius. Within this land there are four shrines, and at each shrine you find a "card." The are called love, sol, moons, and death. You need these to defeat Exodus.
• Find exotic arms and armor, which are the only weapons and armor that work in Exodus's castle.
• Build up your characters until they're strong enough to make it through Exodus's castle.

Exodus's castle, beyond the silver snake. Anything to do with the later Serpent Isle?

Of these steps, the last is the most time-consuming. I discovered fairly early in the game that your spell points do not increase as you level up. They are dependent upon your ability scores and stay fixed based on those scores, so I realized if I was ever going to get my cleric to cast "greater heal" or "raise dead," I'd have to increase her wisdom. Fortunately, the shrines in Ambrosia that hold the cards also allow you to raise your stats--for a price of 100 gold per single stat increase.

For hours, therefore, I spelunked the dungeons, collecting both gold and experience, and made repeat trips to Ambrosia to increase my numbers, focusing on wisdom for my cleric and intelligence for my wizard. Some of the dungeons have fountains that heal you to your max hit points, and I found that a good strategy was to stand near one and wait until attacked, then heal after battle. I also found a town that contained a large cache of treasure chests I could plunder. They refreshed each time I left and re-entered, so it was an easy if time-consuming way to build up my gold.

This town made life a little easier.

The dungeons, I should mention, are a lot more interesting than in Ultima I or Ultima II. First, you have to use them--they're the only way to get marks. Second, they have a lot more perils, including traps, gremlins that steal your food (God, I hate those little buggers), strange winds that blow out your torches, fountains both foul and refreshing, and occasionally treasure rooms. You really do have to map them so you can avoid running in to the same traps over and over. Fortunately, you can buy gems that, when peered at, give you a map. I took screen shots of these maps and then annotated them in Word. Also, unlike previous Ultimas, in the Ultima III dungeons you can't see the monsters coming. One second you're walking down the hall and the next you're in battle.

This is for Gandalf!

Now, I did break my rule about saving and reloading once. Look, I'm not an evil man, but at least once every Ultima game, you simply have to try to kill Lord British. Well, it was surprisingly easy in this one. Lord British's castle holds a frigate which you can steal and use to blast guards, jesters, and other castle denizens--including our revered sovereign:

    

If you leave the castle and return, he's back on his throne, acting like nothing has happened. Still, I figured I'd better not press my luck and I reloaded.

When my characters all had 2150 hit points and reasonably high attributes, I decided to try my luck with Exodus. It was a little easier than I expected and I won on the first try. The monsters were fairly difficult, and just before the end you face a battle with--this is definitely an Ultima III original--the floor itself. Wave after wave of floor tiles, which you cannot see, attack you.

Ah, that dastardly floor! Quick, Ur-Emp, cast PINE-SOL!

After that, it's a simple matter of inserting the four cards in to Exodus, who seems to be a computer.

The heroes destroy Skynet...uh, Exodus

I recorded the ending as usual, including some audio this time. I'm going to see if I can find someone to whom to "report my feat." After that, it's on to Wizardry III if I can get it to work or Alternate Reality: the City if I can't.

  

****

    

Further reading: My posts on the entire Ultima series: Akalabeth (1980), Ultima (1981), Ultima II (1982), Ultima III (1983), Ultima IV (1985), Ultima V (1988), Ultima VI (1990), Ultima VII (1992), Ultima Underworld (1992), and somewhere in there we have the dreadful Ultima: Escape from Mount Drash (1983).

Game 8: Exodus: Ultima III (1983)

      

Exodus: Ultima III

United States

ORIGIN Systems (developer and publisher)

Released in 1983 for Apple II, Atari 800, and Commodore 64; 1985 for DOS, Macintosh, PC-88, and PC-98; 1986 for FM-7, Amiga, and Atari ST; 1987 for NES; 1989 for Sharp X1

Date Started: 7 March 2010

        

My first impressions of Ultima III are that it redeems Ultima II. It feels like a real game instead of Richard Garriott screwing around. It (at least so far) keeps the game grounded in more standard fantasy conventions without involving light swords and rocketships. Combat is more tactical and interesting (if longer), equipment and items are more varied, the magic system is more sophisticated, dungeons have a reason to exist, and the overall gameplay, to me, is a lot more satisfying. This is the first game from Origin Systems, Richard Garriott's company; his first two games were published by established game producers.

Ultima III was released in 1983 for the Apple II, the Atari, and the Commodore 64. I'm playing a DOS port from two years later. In fairness, I should mention that I also downloaded and installed a graphics and sound upgrade package designed by some cool programmers over a decade ago. Compare the screen shot above to the original below, and you'll see why.

Ultima III begins an era of games in which it really pays to read the manually carefully first. The manual and its accoutrements are one of the things that Garriott and Origin really excelled at. Each game in the original series came with a hand-drawn cloth map (I read somewhere that it took Garriott a long time to find a publisher for Ultima II because he insisted that they produce the cloth map with every game) and an ornately-decorated, magniloquently-written game manual. Consider the opening paragraphs of the manual:

Welcome back, oh illustrious adventurers! Long has been thy sojourn in this strange realm, though 'tis a fitting respite for great heroes. Glorious are the names of those adventurers who slew the mighty Wizard Mondain and his evil consort Minax. Lord British's minstrels still sing thy praises for the epic battles waged in the overthrowing of those two crimson necromancers. The chronicles of Ultima I and Ultima II bear witness to thine effects on behalf of the good subjects of the realm of Sosaria.

"The time of thy rest is now o'er. Thou wouldst not be here if thou hadst not heard the distant braying of the war horns, or felt in thy blood the cry of kinsmen in dire peril. Thou art Called, and from such a Calling none of the People may turn aside. It is thy duty and thy destiny.

Aside from the fact that Ultima II has nothing to do with Sosaria, it's beautiful prose. Sometimes, they go a bit campy with their metaphors. Nothing beats: "With the fall of Mondain and Minax, peace had flowed like molten honey around all of Sosaria." Yes, there's nothing like the molten honey of peace.

The basic setup is that a new evil, called Exodus, the "child" (either metaphorically or actually) of Mondain and Minax has appeared on an island of lava in the middle of the ocean. None know whether Exodus is "man, monster, or daemon." The only way we know its name is that the word "EXODUS" was found written in blood on the deck of a ship from which all crew had vanished, "as if plucked by some evil force." Also, a "shattered man found wandering the groves" outside Lord British's castle had this to say: "from the depths of Hell, he comes for vengeance." I tell you, I just eat this stuff up. In a modern game, this would all be handled with a cut scene, but I almost find the manual more fun.

Nothing compares to the spell manuals, though. Ultima III follows Wizardry's (and, for that matter, Dungeons & Dragons's) example of dividing spells into priest spells and wizard spells (or holy magic and arcane magic, if you prefer). In-game, you cast a spell by specifying the character and the spell letter. There are 16 spells on each side, each with a letter from A to P. Cleric A is turn undead while wizard C is light. But, God, how the spell book describes them!

I didn't put this much effort into my wedding vows.

To cast a light spell--or "Lorum," as the book has it--you don't just type (c)ast and "c": you chant "obrey uricum obla sum" while casting into the air a small portion of lorum dust, collected from "a spider's bath, which has been warmed by strong sun for many hours." This is art, people. I almost feel bad that I created a little text file as a reference. There are a couple wizard spells so thickly described that I still have no idea what they actually do.

Ultima III is the first game in the series to allow multiple party members, and the classes and races have been expanded to include some that will not only never occur in any other Ultima game but as far as I can tell never occur in any game. For instance, one race is a "fuzzy"--literally little furry creatures--that I suppose could become the emps of Ultima VII but are never a player race again. In addition to fighters, thieves, wizards, and clerics, classes include paladins, barbarians, larks (basically a synonym for bard), illusionists, druids, alchemists, and rangers. Each has a different combination of combat and magic skills, so you have to choose carefully.

Gameplay is in some ways very similar to the previous Ultimas, with a top-down perspective and with actions tied to single keyboard letters. There is more depth to the game world, though, including an early type of "fog of war": you can't see around corners or through dense wooded areas or across mountains. There's also a mysterious (o)ther action command that allows you to do special things you have to discover along the way.

Combat is what makes this Ultima stand out from the others. During the main part of the game, your party of four is represented by a single icon, but when you enter combat, you become four distinct party members, each of which performs an action in turn, including fighting or casting. There are both ranged and melee weapons, plus a wide variety of offensive and defensive spells (although limited spell points), so battle is far more tactical than in many other games of the era. One annoying thing is that monsters can attack diagonally but you cannot. Different icons represent different character types so it's easy to figure out whose turn it is. I'm pretty sure this style of combat remains all the way through Ultima V.

As with previous Ultimas, dungeons are first-person, although a little more interesting in color and items. But the series continues its obsession with food, and keeping from starving is just as difficult as it was in Ultima II--more so, in some cases, because in the dungeons you keep running into gremlins which steal it.

Hit points are dependent upon leveling, not upon bribing the nearest sovereign. You increase in levels by visiting Lord British, who as usual provides no helpful information. I note that Iolo, Gwino, and--making an appearance for the first time--Chuckles are all found in Lord British's castle, and it doesn't look like I'm going to have to kill them this time.

You're not going to demand a tribute from me?

In the early stages of the game, I've been exploring and mapping Sosaria--which isn't all that large--visiting towns, and getting clues from the locals. As with Ultima II, each person gives you exactly one line of dialog and most of them offer stock responds (although not as dumb or annoying as in Ultima II). From those that have something original to say, I've learned that Exodus lies beyond the silver snake, and I'll need to find exotic arms to defeat him, as only they will protect me from great evil. Other clues--and I'm not sure how they relate yet--tell me to seek a place called Ambrosia, seek the Shrines of Truth, journey through a whirlpool (I have a feeling these are all related), seek the jester in the Castle of Fire, and to find "marks" and "cards." There are apparently four of the latter, and I need to use the command to stick them into panels somewhere.

I haven't gotten a ship yet, and I can see towns and dungeons off shore, so I need to find a frigate next.

One word on the mapping: the game isn't conducive to graph paper, so I imported the cloth map as a raster image into a geographic information system (GIS) program called MapInfo Professional. I then created a vector layer to draw on top of the map, so I can note the locations of towns and their names. Overkill? Perhaps. But fun.

Game 7: Ultima II: Revenge of the Enchantress (1982)

     

Ultima II: Revenge of the Enchantress

United States

Independently developed; Sierra Online (publisher)

Released in 1982 for Apple II; 1983 for Atari 800, Commodore 64, and DOS; 1985 for Macintosh, FM-7, PC-88, and PC-98; 1989 for MSX

Date Started: 6 March 2010

Date Ended: 6 March 2010
Total Hours: 8
Difficulty: Easy-Moderate (2.5/5)
Final Rating: 21
Ranking at Game #413: 141/413 (34%)

      

Ultima II is the story of a interplanetary thief, prison-breaker, and unrepentant mass murderer who slaughters villagers, fools, and police officers in a quest to help a money-grubbing tyrant rid a world that isn't even his own of a harmless young woman who lives millions of years before he was born.

Ultima II makes me wish I had spent more time on Telengard. I thought the first Ultima was a quaint little lark whose air cars and tie fighters and jestercide were, if occasionally silly, still part of its charm. Ultima II, on the other hand, is a senseless travesty of a game that improves nothing on its predecessor and in fact makes things a great deal worse. How is this only two steps away from the awesome Ultima IV? (Please, please don't tell me that Ultima IV isn't as awesome as I remember.)

Let's start with the basic premise. Mondain has been defeated, the game manual tells us, but he left behind an apprentice: Minax, a powerful enchantress whose vengeance brought, in 2111, a (presumably nuclear) apocalypse across the face of the Earth. Through time doors, fortunately, the inhabitants of that grisly future were able to escape back . . .

Wait. What? Earth? Yep. The game takes place mostly on Earth in five different time periods, each accessible to each other through a series of "time gates." The time zones are "Panagea," or two million years before the present, when all the Earth's continents were fused; the medieval ages, the year 1990, the post-apocalyptic year 2112, and the "Age of Legends," or the beginning of time, where Minax has her castle. The entire world is the game map. After you create your character, you are dumped unceremoniously into a washed-out and barren landscape with no goals and a limited quantity of food. I started exploring, and in far less time than makes any sense, I had hiked from Tierra del Fuego to the tip of Italy, crossing the Bering Land Bridge on the way. Right.

Look, I know it's early in the development of CRPGs. The existence of "experience points" that do absolutely nothing for you doesn't bother me. The limited character development doesn't bother me. The existence of only six spells doesn't bother me. But could the story at least make some modicum of sense? Could the manual not talk up Lord British as a benevolent sovereign and then introduce me to a man who requires that I give him money for hit points? Could the game not involve shuttle missions to Jupiter, which the game manual helpfully indicates is covered with "water and grass"?!

Not water and grass.

Creating a character in Ultima II is a process of building your attributes from a pool of points and then choosing your race, class, and name. The sex, race, and class choices affect your starting attributes and nothing else. [Ed. This isn't true. Class matters because only wizards and priests can cast spells, but spells only work in dungeons, which are not strictly necessary.]

The gameplay is similar to Ultima I. Dungeons and towers are first-person, but outdoors and town areas are top-down. You control your character with keyboard commands--every letter of the alphabet seems to do something, from (A)ttack to (Z)tats. Many of the commands only work in certain circumstances, like (H)yper, (L)aunch, and (N)egate time.

The game manual spends a lot of time describing each monster in lurid detail, but when the monsters attack you in the game world, the game doesn't even bother to tell you what they are. Combat consists of pounding (A)ttack repeatedly until they die. A little disappointing after the complexity of Wizardry.

Our hero is attacked by orcs. Or bears.

Unlike Ultima I, in this game you can talk to all of the characters, and each gives you a couple of words of dialog. Most of them have nothing particularly interesting to say. All the clerics say, "Believe!" and fighters say, "Ugh. Me tough!" The merchants say, "Will you buy my apples?" while the guards say, "Pay your taxes!" Wizards are most annoying: "Hex-e-poo-hex-on-you!" When the game diverts from these stock responses, it's usually to introduce some kind of in-joke.

Helpful. Thanks.

I know many readers are looking forward to post after post on Ultima II, so I hate to disappoint you, but I went ahead and won it in a single day. This is a day in which I also played four hours of Telengard, wrote 12 pages for a report due at work next week, and read three chapters in a book about inferential statistics. Ultima II is not a demanding game, except perhaps on your tolerance for its idiocies.

I was unreasonably proud of my boat bridge from France to Greenland.

Winning the game requires the following:

1. Visiting towns in four of the five eras and speaking to everyone so that you get the few hints that you need from the few people who don't spout nonsense.

2. Acquiring a stock of items: brass buttons and skull keys to fly planes, blue tassels to commandeer ships, trilithiums to engage the hyperspace drives on rockets, and so on. Thieves carry these items, and so you have to kill a lot of thieves.

3. Building up massive amounts of gold so you can buy enough hit points to survive the final encounter, increase your statistics, and buy the weapons and armor you need. This by far is the longest part of the game. Fairly early, you can commandeer a frigate in each time period and you spend most of the game sailing around in your frigate and firing cannon volleys at hapless monsters that literally line up to be gunned down. You are in no danger of death during this process. If the game had consisted solely of the player typing the letter "F" 7,500 times in a Notepad file, it wouldn't be any more boring.

This screen shot didn't change for almost two hours.

4. Bribing the desk clerk at the Hotel California in New San Antonio (and yes, the desk clerk even "welcomes" you) in 1990 to raise your agility, strength, and other statistics so that, among other things, you can wield the Minax-slaying weapon and wear the space armor.

5. Bribing Lord British to get your max hit point total.

Tribute?! You arrogant bastard, you brought me here!

6. Slaying a couple of benighted guards to acquire their keys--the only items you can't get from thieves--so you can break into the prison in New San Antonio and bribe a prisoner to give you the Quicksword "Enilno," which you need to kill Minax. "Enilno" is, of course, "online" backwards. But what I want to know is what did "online" even mean in 1982?

7. Buying some "power armor" which lets you survive in space.

8. Journeying to Moscow in 2112--complete with "Da Red Skwere" and "Da KGB"--to steal first a bi-plane, which requires murdering the owner of the airfield. You then fly the bi-plane to another part of the same town to steal a rocketship to journey to Planet X, upon which there is a castle in which a guy named Father Antos gives you his blessing, allowing you to return to Earth to meet Brother Antos and get from him a ring that protects you from the magic barriers in Minax's castle. I really, really don't blame you if you stopped reading somewhere in there.

What significance that Earth's coordinates are 6-6-6?

9. Going to Minax's castle in the Time of Legends, avoiding her guards, and killing her with the Quicksword. This involves finding her throne room, enduring her magic missile blasts, and hitting her once, at which point she disappears and reappears in another room at the other end of the castle. You then have to journey there and hit her again, only to have her disappear again and return to the first room. Repeat six or seven times.

I like to imagine she was speaking German here.

If all that didn't sound stupid enough, here are some other points:

• Spells only work in dungeons, and since there's absolutely no reason to go in the dungeons (you don't get hit points for it like you do in Ultima I), there's no reason to be a wizard or priest.

I only went in here to take this screen shot

• As with Ultima I, you start the game starving and have to keep buying food. Unlike Ultima I, though, you don't amass gold quickly enough to keep up with your food use. So you basically have to steal it. Fortunately, there's a fish & chips place in what I guess is Namibia where you can steal food all day long and run away as soon as the guards come after you, then re-enter the town and repeat.
• A druid in one town says, "Anol nathrac uth das bessod dien doch dientes." If you're going to pay homage to Excalibur, at least get it right: "An-al nathrach, urth vas bethud, doch-hiel dienve."
• You can travel to each of the nine planets in our solar system (Pluto was still considered a planet in 1982), land your space shuttle, walk around, and encounter orcs and thieves and pirate ships. In fact, most of the planets re-use the same maps as Earth, including its towns and changes you've made to the physical world, such as acquiring frigates and bi-planes. The one and only difference is you can't save on them.
• One of the planets--Uranus or Neptune--has a castle consisting only of jesters who surround you and force you to kill them to escape.
• The game is full of really, really dumb inside jokes and pop-culture references.

You're making a pop culture reference to Warren Beatty? Really?

The thing that made Ultima I the most fun is how you encountered people and places that reoccur in later Ultimas: Montor, Paws, Shamino, the White Dragon's Castle. None of that for Ultima II. As far as I can tell (and I admit I didn't keep a careful log), the only recurring characters are Lord British, Iolo, and Gwenno. The latter two are encased in a grassy area in...I don't know. One of the towns. Remembering how I killed Gwenno for her key in Ultima I and having by now fully internalized my role as a serial killer, I landed a bi-plane in the grassy area and hacked them both to death.

One day, I shall return as the Avatar and we will be best friends. Today is not that day.

Even if you're an Ultima fan--hell, especially if you're an Ultima fan--I encourage you not to play this game. I've played many games with boring gameplay and many games with idiotic plots. It is a rare to find one that combines both.

Here are the end game screen shots so I can prove I really won. I wasn't inspired enough to screen record it.

 Does anyone know what the ]II[ - P is referring to?

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Further reading: My posts on the entire Ultima series: Akalabeth (1980), Ultima (1981), Ultima II (1982), Ultima III (1983), Ultima IV (1985), Ultima V (1988), Ultima VI (1990), Ultima VII (1992), Ultima Underworld (1992), and somewhere in there we have the dreadful Ultima: Escape from Mount Drash (1983). For a British copy of the original Ultima, see The Ring of Darkness (1982).