The Ultima Thread

[Ze_ro]

The Ultima franchise is easily my favorite set of RPG's ever. I know Ultima VII usually gets credited as the best, but I always preferred Ultima IV myself. I know my brother was really into Ultima V, but I always got frustrated by it's high difficulty.

What do you think of these games? Which was your favorite?

Which style of dungeons do you prefer? Ultima VI was the first to stop using 3D-first-person dungeons, which I have mixed feelings about.

Do you think moving to real-time combat was a good idea? Or was the turn-based combat more fun?

--Zero

[Phosphor Dot Fossils]

I got started with Ultima III, and utterly consumed by Ultima IV. Ultima V I played plenty, but I could never crack it - darn Shadow Lords! :evil:

I was a bit of an uptight kid when U4 came out precisely because of the way it at least tried to incorporate personal accountability. What a great little game that was.

Also, does anyone remember "Sosaria," the U3 construction kit, which would allow you to change every map in the game, from the world map down to the cities, and even edit what people would say in the cities? I had a lot of fun with that one, but to a certain degree it took the mystery out of it.

After U5, the series changed so much that I couldn't be bothered with it anymore. I've gone back and tried again, and y'know what? I still don't like anything past U5.

[IntvGene]

I got into really playing Ultima, with number III: Exodus. It didn't get great reviews at the time, but I liked it a lot. 4 players in your party, a pretty big world for the time, not much of a story, but I realized something pretty quickly... that monsters couldn't go through the chests that were left after a battle. Soon enough, I had built a safe passage between cities by leaving chests in rows. By the end, I had the entire map laid out with "roads" between them. I never beat it though... I think that my semi-legal copy had a bug in it.

Ultima IV was where the story kicked in and it was such an awesome game.. I loved collecting your party and building up your character to full avatarhood.

Ultima V was also great. It made me go over to the C64 because the Atari 8-bit didn't get the port. The Shadowlords were indeed scary, and this was a fitting sequel to IV. I love both of them so much that it's hard to pick a clear winner.

What happened after that? Pure garbage... the rest of the true Ultimas were terrible. They took out the whole avatarhood, and now you could do what your wanted, beat up peasants, who cares... The 3-D sucked, as did the story, and VI was so boring, possibly having a total of twelve battles in the entire game. VII and VIII made some minor strides in the right direction, but it was still nothing like the first games. I never liked the combat system in the new ones either.

There was however, Ultima Underworld... now that was another great game, and one of the first 3-d games that actually made you feel like you were part of the world. Sure, it was a dungeon hack, but it was a great one.

I had never heard of that Sosaria editor... what computers did it come out for?

[Phosphor Dot Fossils]

I had the Exodus editor on the Apple II. I don't know that it was available for any other platforms.

[Ze_ro]

I'm probably one of the only ones who will admit this, but I actually enjoyed Ultima VI quite a bit. The whole "helping the gargoyles" thing seemed a little preachy... but the quests (pirate's map, broken tablet, etc) were interesting. Having "life size" towns is sort of a mixed blessing, since it made things a lot harder to find (and Ultima VII only made things worse, since it was sometimes hard to tell where one city ended and the next began). I really liked the inventory system in VI... and I really disliked the nasty inventory system in VII... it just seemed so cumbersome.

Strangely, I never cared much for VII part 1.... the whole "murder mystery" thing that you had to follow seemed boring to me. VII part 2 was much better though. I actually went through and beat that one.

I don't think anyone liked Ultima VIII. I especially disliked the magic system there (it was innovative, but not very convenient), and the jumping was so "un-ultima".

I still haven't played Ultima IX yet.

--Zero

[IntvGene]

I still haven't played Ultima IX yet.


I think that's the best approach to take for everyone involved.

Well, I think VI destined to suck because after IV and V, I just expected them to get better and better. I know the quests were kinda interesting in VI, but how about the Skull of Mondain? That was cool.. nuking everyone and having a pissed off Lord British left running around. :)

VII's story didn't save it that's for sure... I couldn't handle the jumping in VIII! That was the worst to me, save of course the summonings requiring every reagent to be in exact pixel coordination.. that was just genius. :roll:

[YoshiM]

I never really played ANY Ultimas until VII (The Black Gate, if I'm not mistaken). I read about it, saying how cutting edge it was with it's NPCs going about their daily business (baking, taking care of customers, doing chores, going to bed, etc.). I picked up the Origin's Classic version when I actually had enough machine to play it. I found it to be merely "okay". However I was in this "thieving" mode with my RPGs then (I blame Elder Scrolls: Arena) and as the wholesome Avatar I kept getting questioned about the virtue of me picking up everything that wasn't nailed down. Oh and the fact that most signs you could read were written in the game world's writing didn't help my outlook on the game either (especially since I kept misplacing my map and translator page from the on CD manual).

[Ze_ro]

I know the quests were kinda interesting in VI, but how about the Skull of Mondain? That was cool.. nuking everyone and having a pissed off Lord British left running around. :)

Heheh, if that kind of stuff appeals to you, then go find the Wisps in the forest west of Yew (you'll have to go at night), and talk to them. They'll teach you the Armageddon spell, which will kill everyone in Ultima VII.

It's a surprisingly simple spell! LOL


I couldn't handle the jumping in VIII!

You might already know this, but there was a patch released for Ultima VIII that let you do point-and-click jumping... it makes the jumping puzzles much less frustrating, although the whole idea of jumping is still out of place in the series.


Oh and the fact that most signs you could read were written in the game world's writing didn't help my outlook on the game either

Heheh, I actually taught myself the Brittanian alphabet so thoroughly that I was able to read the signs without any problems at all. In fact, I probably still know enough to get by in the game without looking at the manual. I'm such a dork.

I really liked the first Ultima Underworld game (although I was rather dismayed that they were so quick to sentance the Avatar to the Abyss, and I never got terribly far in the game)... but for some reason, I didn't care for the second one. I'm not sure why, but it just didn't feel right somehow.

By the way, are there any decent console ports of any of the Ultima games? I know Ultima III, IV, and V are available on the NES, VI and VII on the SNES, and IV again on the SMS... Did anyone actually play enough of these to say if they're worthy ports? I put some work into Ultima VI on the SNES once, and it was better than I expected. It has a lame Final Fantasy-like interface taped onto it though which sort of ruins that Ultima feeling of the game. The graphics and sound were nice though.

I also have Ultima: Runes of Virtue II on the Gameboy, and it's quite fun... it's not really much like the other games though, since there's much more focus on solving dungeon puzzles rather than questing and such... but it's a worth play if you can find it. There's also a "Runes of Virtue" game on the SNES if I remember correctly.

--Zero

[IntvGene]

Don't forget that there is the Ultima IV Full Version for the DC that's available for free! http://homebrew.dcemulation.com/ultima4.shtml

Ultima Underworld II was ok.. but was a bit rushed and didn't have the same effect as the first one. I was a little suspect about the Avatar being tossed in the Abyss too. :hmm: The game was so good that I quickly forgot about it anyway.

[Ze_ro]

Have you tried the Ultima IV port on the Dreamcast? I'd heard of it before, but never bothered for a number of reasons (the main one being that to actually use my Dreamcast keyboard, I have to push my PC's keyboard out of the way... so I might as well just load up VICE instead).

Also, I'm fairly certain that the game is based on xu4 (http://xu4.sourceforge.net/), which really hasn't been quite complete until recently (It looks like the game only became start-to-end finishable on the 24th of this month!). I definitely remember them saying previously that (amung other things) you couldn't buy reagents properly, and a lot of the combat data (damage levels, hitpoints, resistances, etc) was just guessed by the author, since he had no reference. I imagine these problems are probably still present in the Dreamcast version, which means you can't actually finish the game.

Also in case anyone here didn't already know, there's another program out there called Exult (http://exult.sourceforge.net/) that is an open-source remake of the Ultima VII games... you need the original data files, but you no longer have to grapple with the horrible voodoo memory manager that the original game used. It'll work nicely in Windows XP, Linux, OS X, and maybe even on an Amiga if you have a fast one.

There are some other open-source remakes in the works too... Nuvie (http://nuvie.sourceforge.net/) will eventually play Ultima VI and the two "Worlds of Ultima" games (Savage Empire and Martian Dreams)... nu5 (http://nu5.sourceforge.net/) (enormous image warning!) will eventually play Ultima V... and there are a number of attempts to remake the engine used by Ultima Underworlds (and System Shock, incidentally) including Underworld Adventures (http://uwadv.sourceforge.net/), Labyrinth of Worlds (http://low.sourceforge.net/), and The System Shock Hack Project (http://tsshp.sourceforge.net/).

Unfortunately, with the exception of xu4 and Exult, the rest of these are still in very early stages, and probably won't give you a playable game (In fact, it seems nu5 was only started last October, and has nothing available for download at all yet).

--Zero

[mezrabad]

Great thread.

Ultima 2nd Trilogy boxed set was my first pc gaming purchase. Ultima 1st Trilogy soon followed (had to play them in order). This is the series I will always credit as hooking me on PC gaming for life. I really enjoyed them all, though some more than others (Ultima V was my favorite. Ultima VIII my least, but I still liked it. I got a big kick out of Savage Empire and Martian Dreams, too. Just wish I'd kept the boxes.)

I still haven't finished Ultima IX, mostly out of fear and dread, partially out of hardware requirements and also not wanting to see the series end.

Did anyone here participiate in the Alpha testing for Ultima Online? It was really exciting, because at the time (1996? April?) the whole MMORPG thing was a complete unknown. I can't spend the time needed on the genre now, but it was great to live in even a small area of Britannia for the few days that testing ran. I couldn't take the game after it went live, mostly because I kept getting PK'd. heh.

Great du jour subject!

[IntvGene]

Have you tried the Ultima IV port on the Dreamcast? I'd heard of it before, but never bothered for a number of reasons (the main one being that to actually use my Dreamcast keyboard, I have to push my PC's keyboard out of the way... so I might as well just load up VICE instead).

Also, I'm fairly certain that the game is based on xu4 (http://xu4.sourceforge.net/), which really hasn't been quite complete until recently (It looks like the game only became start-to-end finishable on the 24th of this month!). I definitely remember them saying previously that (amung other things) you couldn't buy reagents properly, and a lot of the combat data (damage levels, hitpoints, resistances, etc) was just guessed by the author, since he had no reference. I imagine these problems are probably still present in the Dreamcast version, which means you can't actually finish the game.

Well, I got it working, but that was about six months ago. I haven't tried since, and my DC isn't with me now. But, I remember some things were a little messed up, like you said. It's a shame when something gets to a 95% complete state, and not finished. :(

I'd love to see that (nu5) Ultima V homebrew re-make.

[calthaer]

IMO the only Ultima that really sucked badly was U8 (thank you, EA). U7 was the first one I played, too, although I enjoyed the previous ones when I got the Ultima Collection. Ultima Underworld 1 & 2 just plain rocked.

Ultima IX isn't all that GREAT, but it's a far cry better than U8. The dungeons in U9 are reminiscent of Zelda in a big way. The game itself has some bugs (nowhere near as many now as it had when it was first released - thank you again EA), but it isn't half bad. It's just not as glorious as the Ultimas pre-EA takeover.

[ianoid]

I was way into the Ultima hacks, although they were seldom necessary. I did some Sosaria, but I spent alot of time with Ultima II copying pirate ships.

Any of you remember that glitch where once you board a ship another appears next to it- Mutiny! I would fill oceans with ships and create bridges between continents. I would use a pencil jammed into the keyboard to hold the spacebar down to << PASS >> for hours and come back and just fire away at the endless stream of monsters that had spawned, claiming their booty. No need to cheat!

Still, I cheated, if just for the THRILL of using a sector editor and finding and mapping the characters attributes.

When I get my game room up and running, I'm probably going to go for more disk games (copies, originals) or a network with images for Apple 2, Commodore and Atari 8-bit. All of these systems have hard drive conversion kits, yes?

[Cantaloup]

I also played the Ultima series when it first came out in the early 80's. I really loved I-III, but like most of you I thought IV was just amazing. One of my greatest gaming achievements is beating it with no hints or help. III was good but IV was a step up in every way. The NPC interaction was no longer canned one-line responses, you could now have conversations. Spells were more varied and had to be prepared in advance. You could have a larger party and the world was huge, filled with castles, towns, secret walls, and dungeons. And, of course, the whole avatar thing was the lynch-pin.

Like some of you, I never really got into any of the Ultimas after V. Not really sure why, but maybe it's the interface. In case you weren't aware of it, there was an Ultima Collection CD released for the PC several years back. It has Ultima I-VIII and Akalabeth and you can probably find it pretty cheap (I think I paid $10 for it). The requirements are pretty low, so you may be able to run it in an emulator. In fact, I may try it in dosbox right now...

[calthaer]

The Ultima Collection is actually worth quite a bit of money if you still have the box and / or manual (and sometimes even without it). I've seen it go for $100-150. I would make copies of the CD and play with those :)

[Jorpho]

I'm told there are numerous fanmade patches for Ultima IX which enhance the experience considerably.

I also once found a guide that spoke of how to build bridges between islands using large quantities of bread, poles, and open books. It was crazy.

[kainemaxwell]

I could never get into any the Ultima games myself. Not sure why really...

[Azazel]

I've generally always have liked the Ultima series.

I think Quest of the Avatar was my favorites. I think that was part 4 if I remember right.

I think I perfer the old 3d first dungeons. Although I also do have fond memories of Ultima 6 and Ultima Underworld.

I did play Ultima 3 on the NES. The version looked and played alright from what I remember although I've never played the PC version, samething with Quest of the Avatar on the NES

[Cantaloup]

The Ultima Collection is actually worth quite a bit of money if you still have the box and / or manual (and sometimes even without it). I've seen it go for $100-150. I would make copies of the CD and play with those :)

Really? Because of this thread, I had gotten out the CD to try out some of the games and I noticed for the first time that the CD and jewel case had some non-English writing in addition to English. I guess I had always thought it was some Ultima language and didn't pay much attention, but on further inspection the CD itself says "Thailand Edition". x_x The box I have seems totally normal and in English, but I didn't get a manual with it (the documentation is on the CD itself).

Anyone have any idea about this? I guess the $100-150 just went down to about 27 cents. O_O

[Ze_ro]

The Ultima Collection is actually worth quite a bit of money if you still have the box and / or manual (and sometimes even without it). I've seen it go for $100-150.

What is that you say????? @_@

I managed to get a new copy of this a long time ago as part of a package deal (It came dirt cheap with a bunch of other garbage games that I've long since forgotten). My copy never came with any paper manuals or anything like that though... didn't even get a bloody jewel case with it.

Is it seriously worth that much? Just to make sure, we're talking about the disc that has a picture of the Avatar with long blond hair, and huge square jaw, wearing white armor/robes with a yellow ankh, holding a shield and sword, and with his foot on top of a fallen gargoyle.. right? Because I'm fairly certain there were later Ultima collections that also included the 7's, 8, and the Underworlds which were more common.

--Zero

[calthaer]

I'm talking about the Ultima Collection found here:

http://www.gamespot.com/pc/rpg/ultimacollection/review.html

It contains Ultima I-VIII including VII parts I and II and all the expansion packs plus the Akalabeth game. It does NOT include the Ultima Underworld games and the Worlds of Ultima games.

This is not the one with the avatar on the CD. The one your describing contains only IV, V, and VI, I believe, and came packaged with one of the games (the same way that Might & Magic VI: The Mandate of Heaven Special Edition had all previous Might & Magic games with it). The CD for the Ultima Collection is yellow and has the squiggly serpent on it.

OK - so the ones on eBay are only going for around $40-50 - it must be the ones I've seen on Amazon.com that are advertised (and that I've seen go for) $100-150. Of course, the ones on eBay are not mint, complete, and / or sealed, it doesn't look like. $50 is still a lot for a used item I know I paid $10 for brand new at EB. One eBay auction is:

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&category=4315&item=3091569202&rd=1

You can clearly see the CD in the picture.

[Ze_ro]

Mine has Ultima 1 through 6 as well as Akalabeth... I have the two Ultima 7's on a seperate disc, another with the two Underworld games, and yet another with Ultima 8... Are there any compilations that include the two Worlds of Ultima games?

--Zero

[scooterb23]

The Ultima Collection is actually worth quite a bit of money if you still have the box and / or manual (and sometimes even without it). I've seen it go for $100-150. I would make copies of the CD and play with those

:eek 2:

I just saw a stack of these a couple weeks ago.

Sealed.

$10

:eek 2:

I've never played an Ultima game...not much into RPGs...may have to finally break down and try one though.

[Nature Boy]

I actually just checked out Ultima I recently for the first time. My dad was the one 'acquiring' games for us back in the 8bit hey day and he never liked the RPG genre so he never picked it up.

All I can say is Thank Goodness for Gamefaqs.com - it's so much easier knowing what the commands are (and having them handy on screen when I'm using an emulator) then just pressing buttons. I did that in town and got assaulted by the guards for arming a weapon :D

I keep hearing such good things about the later games but I think I'm gonna stick with the 1st and move up...

[mezrabad]

Hey, dunno if anyone cares:

Ultima VI (as well as Underworld) was released in Japan for the FM-Towns PC.

The interesting and cool thing about this version of Ultima VI is the fact that it can be played completely in English, and Voiced. Lots of Voice. I'm not going to say Full Voice, because I haven't played it all, but it sounds like everyone over at Origin was involved in some aspect of recording voice for this thing. And if you're so inclined, you can also play it in Japanese, also with Japanese Voices.

Anyway, apparently tracking this piece of software down is hard and expensive, even more difficult than tracking down the hardware to play it on.

Well, fyi, FM-Towns has an emulator for it and you can get english information on how to use it here:

http://www.jcec.co.uk/fmtown_emu.html

and I noticed that the FM-Towns version of Ultima VI is torrented on suprnova(dot)org recently, under Games - Other. It's about 428 MB so if you're not a full-on Ultima freak, you may not be interested in getting it just to hear the voice acting.

Regardless, one has to wonder why the heck was this version (minus the Japanese) never released over here for the PC?

[Jorpho]

You could ask the same question about the famous Zak McKraken port. It seems likely that the North American market moved on by the time the game was finished. (It is a bit odd that they went through all that trouble to to English voice acting for a Japanese game, though.)

[vespertillio]

Though The Temple of Apshai games got me started in gaming, it was the Ultima series that cemented my love for this hobby. I started with II and went on thru to complete VI. I was even nerdy enough to preorder the Ultima VI signed edition. Came signed by Lord British (Richard GArriott) and came with a tape of him talking about the series. Funny this thread came up; my wife was going thru tapes last month and I told her to look for that one. Lo and behold she found it. I may have to pop it in sometime. I have never finished 7-9, but I did finish the first 6 (with only minor cheating I might add :D ) Great thread.

V

[calthaer]

Hey, do you think there's any way you could get that tape onto an MP3 and pass it around? That is a piece of gaming history that sounds supremely interesting. Garriott is one of the best designers of the early game industry.

[skoldpadda]

Like many on here, Ultima IV was the first one for me... I still get a thrill remembering finishing in the wee hours of some morning when I was about 14..."report thy feat to Lord British" tee hee

Remember the WTF thought you had about fighting your own party (I think on level 9 of the last dungeon)?

[mezrabad]

Remember the WTF thought you had about fighting your own party (I think on level 9 of the last dungeon)?

YES! That was great! "Oh no! Dopplegangers!"

Ultima IV was such a leap forward. There's a bunch of fan-made upgrades out there now that give it 256 colors and music, but when I play it again, I think I have to play it in it's original form.

I just said this in another forum, but I need to say it again here:

God damn, I miss looking forward to the next game from Origin. :(

[tyranthraxus]

Ultima VI was the only one I really played. In defence of its small play area
remember at the time most CRPGs typically had a small corner of the screen
dedicated to graphics and the rest was party lists or game text. It was a
pretty amazing step up in the series and RPGs in general at the time and
a title to show off to people who wondered why you played games on a
386 (Wing Commander being the other show off title) instead of a SNES or
Genny.

The deluxe packaging has made them fun to collect I've managed to get
them all boxed except for parts 1,2 and 8 and the two Worlds spinoffs.

But this thread has got me interested in playing Ultima IV. So which
computer had the best version? Last year I delved into Bards Tale and I
think it would fun to try out another vintage RPG.

[Aswald]

Classic Ultima games good.

[Cantaloup]

But this thread has got me interested in playing Ultima IV. So which
computer had the best version? Last year I delved into Bards Tale and I
think it would fun to try out another vintage RPG.

I'm guessing either the Amiga or Atari ST versions are probably best, though I haven't played either myself. The DOS release is kind of disappointing, as it doesn't even have music or decent sound as far as I can tell (I guess it's from the days before SoundBlaster). However, there is a freeware re-make of Ultima IV called xu4 (http://xu4.sourceforge.net/). It uses files from the DOS version of Ultima IV, which Origin has apparently made freely available. Additionally, there is a patch which adds 256 color and MIDI support (http://www.moongates.com/u4/upgrade/Upgrade.htm) to the DOS version. I just tried out the latest version of xu4 on my Mac, and the graphics and sounds are excellent, so maybe that patch is included in xu4 already. I'd recommend starting with xu4.