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[TheChosen]

Head thee avatar, thy epic journey has begun...

Sorry, no pictures. Didnt take any, apart for the ending. Go to a Youtube if you want to see anything.

So it all started when I decided to take a break on playing Fallout 3 and try something else. Something that I havent had change to play that much or only "tried" so far. After bit of thinking I redownloaded the first Ultima trilogy from GOG which I had purchased last December during the Christmas sales.

Everyone knows that Ultima is one of the fathers of all computer role-playing. Its been around since 1981 all the way to the late 90's with Ultima 9 being the last official game. Along the way there have been ports, spin-offs, re-releases and so on. To my record, it has made big influence to the genre at least 4 times (Ultima 3 gave birth to JRPG's along with Wizardry, Ultima 4 took steps towards actual roleplaying rather than basic hack n' slash, Ultima Underworld made roleplaying popular in first-person perspective and Ultima Online was the first big and popular MMORPG and is still running).

However, do people actually know about the first two games? Before I did, I just assumed they were standard dungeon crawling: Go in caves, kill monsters, collect some sort of macguffins and then beat the badguy. Well, I was sort of right but it was actually more....different. Thanks to Spoony's great video retrospective on this game (and the whole series) I learned that it wasnt your average take on dungeons and dragons. It was all batshit insanity.


In this review, Im gonna talk about the game mechanics and such. I will not spoil anything at first, but in the latter part of this review (and Spoony's retrospective, which I really recommend watching)I will talk about all the crazy stuff I had to go through.

The story itself is very simple: you are a brave adventure who has been summoned to Sosaria. Your job is to defeat the evil wizard Mondain, who's managed to create a gem that makes him immortal.

And thats pretty much all the manual tells you. No more leads. Game starts right off the land of Sosaria, outside castle Britannia.

RPG mechanics are quite simple. Slay something and you'll get money and XP. With money, you can buy variety of weapons, armor, spells and food, which is necessary for survival (every step you take on the map spends your food). Although there are four classes, they only seem to give bonuses to certain stat. There are no equipment restrictions and you can easily be a spell-throwing warrior or a wizard who acts like Arnold Schwarzenegger's Conan. Only difference seems to be thieves, who are bit more successful in stealing stuff.

You can also visit the pubs, where you can learn some valuable information while having a nice cold ale, and buy ships and horses. Inside the castles you can visit the king for simple quests and healing or try to steal from the storages (This is actually good way to get some of the most powerful weapons, but if you get caught...). There are four continents in this game and each have 2 castles. One castle has a killing job and other has a bit more easier "go to a specific place" mission.

There's your basic overworld map where you move from town to castle to dungeon etcetera and get in the fights. If you get killed anywhere, you will simply restart back from the overworld (around the same island, but at random location near where you died). You will lose all your money and your weapon, but get to keep your XP, stats, item and armor, for some reason. Your health and food will go down to 99.

And finally, there's dungeons which are in semi-3d-kind-of-perspective. You go in there to kill creatures and collect some loot. Go down deeper to face more dangerous challenges. Its all made of vector graphics and since its mostly just basic labyrinths, it can be very confusing. It doesnt help that dungeons dont really have much purpose other than grinding your XP and money, and occasionally you have to go deeper and kill a specific monster. Hell, they're not even that different, so you can do all the killing quests on one dungeon!

The game also has a weird mechanic were, depending on how much you kill, you get HP whenever you leave the dungeon. While bit illogical, its actually a good mechanic and makes the game more enjoyable.

And that the thing with this game. While I dont call it bad, its old. Really old. One thing about old RPG's is that they dont age well thanks to their old fashioned gameplay mechanics. Im more or less okay with old mechanics as well as new and there wasnt any really awful one's, but its bit monotonous and can get quite boring. After all, its just kill things.

Still though, if you think you can handle it, then I recommend giving it a try. Its 5,99 on GOG and you'll get 2 and 3 along with it. Although I said the basic hack n slash might get boring, some of its more interesting elements might make up for it. Just be warned: This is not like Ultima 3 or any other later games in the series.

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And now, I'll talk about what happened in the game. Spoilers ahoy.

So I started playing the game, TODAY, on 15:23 and, belive it or not, finished around 23:08 (14:23 and 22:08 according to chatbox). And yes, this is the first time I've actually properly played this game. Previous attempts were just bit of trying, where I got frustrated after dying for the first time and gave up already. Im kind of glad that I didnt gave up this time because oh boy, this game is more than meets the eye. Spoony's video spoiled me a bit of them, but seeing them personally is still worth it.

So at first, I was bit surprised that there was a Finnish reference in the game! The town near Castle Britannia has a food shop named Li'l Karelia's Finnish Grocery. I did recall Richard Garriott had a Finnish friend (there even was a party member based on her in the later games, Jaana), but I never thought there would be more Finnish references. More in the later games? We'll see.

So its all basic dungeon crawling at first. I start to get handle of it and begin grinding for money and xp. I get a quest from a king to kill a Gelatinous Cube and after doing it I get a gem. Which apparently I have to use to activate a time machine.

You see, its too late to stop Mondain. The gem has granted him immortality. Its game over. Only way to stop him is to find 4 gems which activate the time machine, go back 1000 years in the past and kill Mondain before he creates the gem and becomes immortal. Okay...

Next up I decide to take a drink at the tavern and hear that I have to destroy 20 enemy fighters to become a space ace. Wait. I have to go to space? Yes. In fact, for over 1000 gold pieces, you can buy a freaking space shuttle in certain towns. Even better, for 900 gold pieces you can buy an aircar. Screw horses and ships, this one flies and shoots lasers, pretty much making overworld grinding much easier!

And then I start to wear spacesuits as an armor (or at least I think its an space suit) and find weapons like "Light sword" and "Space blaster". And slowly I started to realizing the plot and what I have to do.

First, I need to gather the four gems, simply by doing the quest for the kings. However, the quest monster gets harder and harder and slaughtering through the dungeon floors starts of easy, but from 3 to below its quickly gets difficult, and there arent any healing spells or potions in this game! Then I figured out that I can rely on ladder spells to quickly jump through the required floor.

However, then I have to go to space, so I can become a space ace so I can meet up the princess...or something like that. Game was bit vague on that, but at least I know I have to become the Space ace. So after bit more grinding, I purchase a shuttle and get probably one of the weirdest quotes in videogames:

"Thou hast lifted off"

I can only imagine the shuttle was crafted by a medieval blacksmith.

In space, its all different mechanic. I had to move around and dock in a space station and pick up a fighter. Then I had to use hyperdrive to move around the galaxy and get in combat with ships that vaguely look like Tie Fighters. Best part about this? Apparently in Ultima 7 it was retconned that these aliens were the Kilrathi from Wing Commander series. Cross-continuity ahoy!

The space combat was very annoying. The enemy ship appears on the screen, moving slowly towards the edge of my view and when it disappears, it pops up again, usually on the opposite corner. I have to move the cursor on it and try to shoot it down with lasers, which is harder depending on how close the enemy is. If it gets closer, it starts to shoot at you and of course it can destroy you.

And I had to keep my eye on fuel too. Yeah, medieval spaceship runs on gas. Everything you do, even moving the cursor, spends fuel. You can dock in on space stations for repairs and refuels, but of course thats gonna cost. Run out of fuel and you'll be drifting in space forever. Fun.

So after winning over 20 battles I become the space ace. Now I get to meet the princess. The only question is, where is she?

And this was the only real part where I had to look up from a walkthrough (the other was little bit of info about the spaceship which Tracker got me and another part was about the quest monsters and on which floor do they appear in the dungeons), and it goes like this: Apparently the princess is that tiny characters that sits in castle prison. That means I have to rescue her. How? With a key of course. Who has the key? The jester.

And that was probably the most cryptic part of the game. I dont know If I would have heard about it from any of the pubs (I should have tried more drinking). Granted, the jesters actually talk about having a key, but I had no idea where that key would go. Not to mention, it had to be a specific castle. And it doesnt help that when you kill the jester, you earn the wrath of town guards who while arent that deadly, are big meatshields who require lot of hits.

So I rescue the princess. She wont tell her name, but she gladly reveals the location of the time machine. I go gather up the last gem (Lord Shamino also let me freely pick items from castle storage) and stock up on magic missile spells. Then thanks to my flying car Im there ASAP.

And you know what? I pretented that the damn thing was a TARDIS. If were gonna have spaceships, futuristic weapons and flying cars, it might as well be a TARDIS. Its certainly not DeLorean that runs on gems.

Anyway, the TARDIS takes me to the final area, where I confort the evil sorcerer. He's quite though and does both melee and spell attacks. He eventually ran out of spells and transforms into a bat. I had to chase him around a bit until I finally took him down.

Then he gets back up. I put him down again and give him a good beating.

And he gets back up again.

Then I figured out: there's a glowing gem in the room. Could that be the source of his powers. I get near it and press g (which is get command. Funnily enough, this and the time I collected items from Lord Shamino's castle were only times I had to use that key) and it shatters! I administer another beating and bam, Mondain dies. Sosaria is saved. And all I get is a basic text congratulation.

So, a medieval fantasy RPG with spaceships and timetravel. It was quite fun. And really, there was only one time where I used a walkthough. I dont know if the game is really that easy, or am I really that good. Im glad though that I finally gave it a change and even beat it. This is probably the fastest time I've ever finished an RPG.

Comments? Questions? Im planning on playing Ultima 2 soon and from what I recall, things get even more sillier.

EDIT: Now I remember: One of the weapons I found in the game was called "triangle". Any idea what that would be? There are no weapon lists in the manual, but as far as I know its not a musical instrument (besides, it apparently is stronger than a great sword).

EDIT: Screencaps of the ending in case someone's interested