Ultima The Ultima Series Discussion Thread

[KeighnMcDeath]

Game shows his irl desires and practices.

 

[Gastrick]

And as a second line of money making, that junction outside of Skara Brae has mongbats and adventures fighting. They frequently have daggers, which are light and sells for 5 gold. Many, MANY daggers. And they spawn at the drop of a hat if you even move off screen. I once had to chase down the adventurer in a group, and by the time I got back to the junction to loot the corpses, another group was fighting already.

I was killing them as well for gold, until they never showed up again, which was after the third or fourth time. I could have encountered a bug, I know the game crashes on its own fairly frequently.

 

[Cael]

And as a second line of money making, that junction outside of Skara Brae has mongbats and adventures fighting. They frequently have daggers, which are light and sells for 5 gold. Many, MANY daggers. And they spawn at the drop of a hat if you even move off screen. I once had to chase down the adventurer in a group, and by the time I got back to the junction to loot the corpses, another group was fighting already.

I was killing them as well for gold, until they never showed up again, which was after the third or fourth time. I could have encountered a bug, I know the game crashes on its own fairly frequently.

I never had that happen. I made such a big killing there that I actually moved a ton of gear into a chest and pushed it all the way back to Britain to sell while all my guys were overloaded with gear. Man, to be that young and have that much time on my hands again...

 

[newtmonkey]

Ultima II: The Revenge of the Enchantress (Apple II)
I've completed Ultimas I, III, IV, and VII, and it always bothered me that I never completed this one. I gave it several attempts over the years but always ended up quitting due to too few enemies spawning early on (DOS port) or simply losing interest in the grind (C64 port). I decided on a lark, this time, to try the Apple II version from the "Ultima Trilogy I II III" pack (which includes optimized/rewritten versions of the first two games).

I'm glad to report that the Apple II version of Ultima II is much better balanced early on than the DOS port. Plenty of enemies spawn in the starting area, so you can gain a solid footing without having to resort to stealing food. It took a while to get pirate ships to spawn, but within an hour or so I had built up a good store of resources (HPs, food, items) and managed to take over a ship in Pangaea and in 1990 AD.

That means I've hit the dreaded grind; dungeons are still way too dangerous to explore and you often end up not making enough gold to make up for HP/food losses. So, the only option that makes sense is to sail around Pangaea to get a bunch of monsters to spawn all in one area, and take them out with my cannons. I've been spending 20 mins here and there as time permits on grinding up some gold to spend on HP, food, stat increases, and equipment, so I'm making decent progress.

I plan on buying one more round of stat increases, and then saving up for the Power Armor. From then, I might explore/map one of the dungeons just to experience it, and then will move on to the main quest.

 

[Gastrick]

Ultima II: The Revenge of the Enchantress (Apple II)
I've completed Ultimas I, III, IV, and VII, and it always bothered me that I never completed this one. I gave it several attempts over the years but always ended up quitting due to too few enemies spawning early on (DOS port) or simply losing interest in the grind (C64 port). I decided on a lark, this time, to try the Apple II version from the "Ultima Trilogy I II III" pack (which includes optimized/rewritten versions of the first two games).

I'm glad to report that the Apple II version of Ultima II is much better balanced early on than the DOS port. Plenty of enemies spawn in the starting area, so you can gain a solid footing without having to resort to stealing food. It took a while to get pirate ships to spawn, but within an hour or so I had built up a good store of resources (HPs, food, items) and managed to take over a ship in Pangaea and in 1990 AD.

That means I've hit the dreaded grind; dungeons are still way too dangerous to explore and you often end up not making enough gold to make up for HP/food losses. So, the only option that makes sense is to sail around Pangaea to get a bunch of monsters to spawn all in one area, and take them out with my cannons. I've been spending 20 mins here and there as time permits on grinding up some gold to spend on HP, food, stat increases, and equipment, so I'm making decent progress.

I plan on buying one more round of stat increases, and then saving up for the Power Armor. From then, I might explore/map one of the dungeons just to experience it, and then will move on to the main quest.

I stopped playing this one after all the graphics mods did not work and I was stuck with pink & light blue. Also that the only way to raise your stats is talking to some random guy, as levels do nothing.

 

[Ladonna]

Ultima II: The Revenge of the Enchantress (Apple II)
I've completed Ultimas I, III, IV, and VII, and it always bothered me that I never completed this one. I gave it several attempts over the years but always ended up quitting due to too few enemies spawning early on (DOS port) or simply losing interest in the grind (C64 port). I decided on a lark, this time, to try the Apple II version from the "Ultima Trilogy I II III" pack (which includes optimized/rewritten versions of the first two games).

I'm glad to report that the Apple II version of Ultima II is much better balanced early on than the DOS port. Plenty of enemies spawn in the starting area, so you can gain a solid footing without having to resort to stealing food. It took a while to get pirate ships to spawn, but within an hour or so I had built up a good store of resources (HPs, food, items) and managed to take over a ship in Pangaea and in 1990 AD.

That means I've hit the dreaded grind; dungeons are still way too dangerous to explore and you often end up not making enough gold to make up for HP/food losses. So, the only option that makes sense is to sail around Pangaea to get a bunch of monsters to spawn all in one area, and take them out with my cannons. I've been spending 20 mins here and there as time permits on grinding up some gold to spend on HP, food, stat increases, and equipment, so I'm making decent progress.

I plan on buying one more round of stat increases, and then saving up for the Power Armor. From then, I might explore/map one of the dungeons just to experience it, and then will move on to the main quest.

Only Ultima I have never finished (yeah, I finished IX lol).

 

[KeighnMcDeath]

I've only finished ultima II on c64, DOS, and FM-Towns trilogy. I dunno why I played each several times but I did finish with each class. There are minor differences. I never tried

• Atari 8-bit
• Apple II
• Atari ST
• FM-7
• Macintosh
• MSX
• PC-88
• PC-98
• Windows

I'm betting a few of these are close to fm-towns.

 

[newtmonkey]

Ladonna
UII is probably not worth finishing haha. I'll still complete it, but the game is a mess. It's too bad, because there's a good game beneath all the grind and junk. Simply removing food, or retaining the system from UI where killing dungeon enemies gives you HPs, probably would go a long ways toward making the game playable/enjoyable.

 

[Ladonna]

I've only finished ultima II on c64, DOS, and FM-Towns trilogy. I dunno why I played each several times but I did finish with each class. There are minor differences.

Yeah, it's funny how many of the different ports on the old machines had slight differences. The difficulties could also be radically different. I remember finishing Wizards Crown on the 64, all good. I tried the PC version years later, and the difficulty level was off the charts.

 

[Ladonna]

Ladonna
UII is probably not worth finishing haha. I'll still complete it, but the game is a mess. It's too bad, because there's a good game beneath all the grind and junk. Simply removing food, or retaining the system from UI where killing dungeon enemies gives you HPs, probably would go a long ways toward making the game playable/enjoyable.

At least it will be something to remember. I still remember chasing that damn bat around the tower in UI, with Benny Hill music playing in my mind.

 

[KeighnMcDeath]

Damn, no one did a video of that.

 

[newtmonkey]

Ultima II: Revenge of the Enchantress (Apple II)

Finally done with this!
It's a massive grind. 90% of my time playing this was sailing around Pangea firing on monsters. I explored the first six (of 16) floors of one of the dungeons, but torch consumption is insane; I was losing 5-6 torches on some levels due to traps and ghosts. I had plenty of rocket fuel dropped by monsters, so didn't really need to enter any of the dungeons anyway.

The main quest consists of basically three steps, though of course learning what to do (if played legitimately) would take tons and tons of exploration and information gathering, which would add hours and hours of more grinding.

Not gonna lie; I skipped all that and followed a walkthrough.

And that's a shame, because I think this would be sort of fun to play legitimately, if only the game wasn't such a grind. Although the quest seems completely bizarre and random, there are hints and clues all over the place, and it all fits together pretty well. I did enjoy figuring out the time gates, for instance.

---

How to fix this game:
- Force the player to explore dungeons to gain rocket fuel (this apparently is the case in the Japanese PC ports)
- Eliminate food completely. If you didn't need to pay attention to food, you could spend all of your gold during the first part of the game on HPs, so that you could explore and gather information without issue. Meanwhile, you'd be naturally building up a stock of useful items, so even if you broke even on HPs, you'd be making progress.
- Allow the player to buy some items in towns. It's nonsense that a fighter has to rely on random drops for torches and tools, without which dungeon exploration is simply impossible.

 

[Cael]

Ultima II: Revenge of the Enchantress (Apple II)

Finally done with this!
It's a massive grind. 90% of my time playing this was sailing around Pangea firing on monsters. I explored the first six (of 16 floors) of one of the dungeons, but torch consumption is insane; I was losing 5-6 torches on some levels due to traps and ghosts. I had plenty of rocket fuel (!) dropped by monsters (!), so didn't really need to enter any of the dungeons anyway.

The main quest consists of basically three steps, though of course learning what to do (if played legitimately) would take tons and tons of exploration and information gathering, which would add hours and hours of more grinding.

Not gonna lie; I skipped all that and followed a walkthrough.

And that's a shame, because I think this would be sort of fun to play legitimately, if only the game wasn't such a grind. Although the quest seems completely bizarre and random, there are hints and clues all over the place, and it all fits together pretty well. I did enjoy figuring out the time gates, for instance.

---

How to fix this game:
- Force the player to explore dungeons to gain rocket fuel (this apparently is the case in the Japanese PC ports)
- Eliminate food completely. If you didn't need to pay attention to food, you could spend all of your gold during the first part of the game on HPs, so that you could explore and gather information without issue. Meanwhile, you'd be naturally building up a stock of useful items, so even if you broke even on HPs, you'd be making progress.
- Allow the player to buy some items in towns. It's nonsense that a fighter has to rely on random drops for torches and tools, without which dungeon exploration is simply impossible.

Ultima 1, 2 and 3 have insane retarded food requirements. I gave up playing them because of it.

 

[samuraigaiden]

I just beat Ultima III!

Spoiler

This game is pretty damn cool.

 

[BruceVC]

I just beat Ultima III!

Spoiler

This game is pretty damn cool.

How many hours did it take you?

 

[samuraigaiden]

I just beat Ultima III!

Spoiler

This game is pretty damn cool.

How many hours did it take you?

I have absolutely no idea. I did all the dungeons and didn't use a walkthrough, so you can imagine it wasn't quick.

 

[Tweed]

Friendly reminder that (O)ther Command: DANCE only costs 100 gold vs the 300 for BRIBE.

 

[Viata]

It's a massive grind. 90% of my time playing this was sailing around Pangea firing on monsters.

This sums up my experience with the game. It also made me get stronger quite fast.

 

[Denim Destroyer]

The random Lord British encounters to level up in Ultima 5 has to be the worst leveling system I have yet to encounter in an RPG. It is not just the fact his visits are randomized but making which stat is increased random makes the whole system more frustrating. I have been trying to increase my front-line fighters strength but in this game it is unreasonably difficult to do when their intelligence and dexterity gets raised instead! For all of the games other faults Ultima 7 had the best leveling implementation where visiting trainers would increase skills.

 

[Grauken]

The random Lord British encounters to level up in Ultima 5 has to be the worst leveling system I have yet to encounter in an RPG. It is not just the fact his visits are randomized but making which stat is increased random makes the whole system more frustrating. I have been trying to increase my front-line fighters strength but in this game it is unreasonably difficult to do when their intelligence and dexterity gets raised instead! For all of the games other faults Ultima 7 had the best leveling implementation where visiting trainers would increase skills.

Ultima always had utter shit character progression and team-builds if you can even call it that. It's all about exploration

 

[FireKing]

I've only finished ultima II on c64, DOS, and FM-Towns trilogy. I dunno why I played each several times but I did finish with each class. There are minor differences. I never tried

• Atari 8-bit
• Apple II
• Atari ST
• FM-7
• Macintosh
• MSX
• PC-88
• PC-98
• Windows

I'm betting a few of these are close to fm-towns.

Personally, I think the FM Towns version of Ultima VI is by far the best version to play.

 

[KeighnMcDeath]

They say Nuvie is pretty good.

https://ultima.fandom.com/wiki/Nuvie

http://nuvie.sourceforge.net/

https://ultimacodex.com/2011/02/nuvie-updated-now-with-fm-towns-support/

 

[KeighnMcDeath]

The random Lord British encounters to level up in Ultima 5 has to be the worst leveling system I have yet to encounter in an RPG. It is not just the fact his visits are randomized but making which stat is increased random makes the whole system more frustrating. I have been trying to increase my front-line fighters strength but in this game it is unreasonably difficult to do when their intelligence and dexterity gets raised instead! For all of the games other faults Ultima 7 had the best leveling implementation where visiting trainers would increase skills.

Ultima always had utter shit character progression and team-builds if you can even call it that. It's all about exploration

Another reason I'd like to see a remake in just 1 engine Akalabeth - 9. Massive undertaking though. I'd prefer full 2D rather than FP or Iso that 6-8 had. TB, not some of that shit combat in early & late.

I still haven't tried that full palm os ultima 1-3. It uses an ultima 3 combat.

That said, I have updated Shroud of the Avatar and can play it offline, so I'll chuck that in there with the ultima Series even if it isn't technically part.

There will be ultima variants you'll never see again unless the code is pirated from EA or whereever stored. I'm mostly talking about phone games and sone onlinr games.

I do not know if someone took the entire Ultima Online and created an offline shard to play. That would be interesting imho. I'd grab that shit and get it running.

 

[KeighnMcDeath]

I just saw this posted on a few sites:



It links this ARCHIVE DL

 

[RaggleFraggle]

Why has Ultima never gotten remakes?

Starting out as fantasy then suddenly having spaceship combat would be novel even today