Happy Gaming, Jessica

IV was the last one I played full through, so I can’t comment on VII. The simple elegance of the ultima ‘engine’, particularly for IV in relation to previous outings, allowed all focus to be on the characters and story. The data-driven nature provided the flexibility to create unprecented expansiveness of the game world, both in physical size and scope of ambition. The open-endedness which is such a desireable marketroid bullet point nowadays was still fresh and fundamental to the experience.

The suspension of disbelief was almost complete. It was very easy to stand at the shore, a pixelated marionette dancing between green dots and blue squiggles, and feel the world around yourself. I’ve had this sensation reading good books, which places Ultima IV in a higher circle.

Similar to the author, I too remember countless days riding my bike home from school to power up my IBM 80286 with an EGA graphics card to play Ultima 4 endlessly… and the same with Ultima VII on an Epson 80386/16… ah those were the days.

However, I’m more partial to Ultima VII. I just found the whole world simulation of the game to be utterly engrossing. While Ultima IV was no doubt a spectacular game, I really hated all the micromanagement involved with spell casting… obtaining reagents, memorizing spell names etc…

Anyhow, both great games. Thanks for the write up!

I generally felt that U5 was more fun than U4, although the disk swapping was a pain, I thought the combat was an order of magnitude more fun. I also had this incredibly cathartic experience when I stole the crown from the top of Blackthorn’s castle and could start wailing on people with my 8th circle spells. I kind of went psycho throwing flaming cones of death everywhere.

Still, U5 loses because of that damn sandalwood box “puzzle”.

First: I was never able to get in to Ultima 5. This was because of a combination of too much real work, intrusive copy protection, and Origin’s inexplicable decision to ship a 4 disk game that required constant disk-swapping without code to recognize more than one disk drive on the Apple ][. Supposedly, the XU4 team is ramping up to provide Ultima 5 support. So maybe I’ll try it again then.

Regarding Wizardry: What I mean is that there were places (many places) in Wizardry where the dungeon would “spin” you around with absolutely no visual indicator, or teleport you with no indicator. The _only_ way to win the game was to have a paper map and to intuit that the teleport or rotation happened from that. By comparison, Ultima was just really really big. You’re right about the note-taking, but somehow that seems on a different level of irritation to me than drawing a precise square by square map on graph paper.

I do wonder why you’ve ruled out Wizardry for having to make maps, but not the Ultimas. I’m sure back home I have reams of paper for each Ultima recording what person X in Town 1 wanted me to say to Person Z in Town 7, what reagents make what spell, what the on-screen runes are translated to, or what latitude and longitude to sail to during a waning moon, or something silly like that. Things that belong in an in-game journal for any modern release. I don’t think I’d have the patience to replay an older Ultima, even if I did magically have the time.

Admittedly… without the patch there were some pretty serious bugs (pixel accurate spells, impossible jumping) but with the patch it’s one of the best RPGs ever made.

Ultima 9 was unfortunate. It had staggeringly high ambitions and just couldn’t achieve everything it had aimed for. Ended up feeling very disjointed and sadly quite buggy. Still quite good… but… not great.

The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past came out the year before Ultima VII. I personally believe this game has aged better than Ultima VII – which one may need to have played when it first came out to fully appreciate.

I’d like to try Ultima IV – the screenshot and theme really appeal! I don’t suppose anyone is emulating it to run on a console?