Since my thousandth post is coming up, I thought I might as well dedicate it to Ultima and write down a few impressions about U6, which I finished yesterday.
It has become really fun to return to the world that you know so well, with the familiar geography, the cities in the right spot, some old faces, some new, to check out what has changed over the years. You would think it would become boring, particularly in a game where exploration is so central, but it feels really nice, like being back in da hood.
My experience with the game has been pretty much like U4&5 even though it is a new engine, the design is still very similar. I did not find the UI as bad at first as some make it out to be but I started to grate on me over time, with all the clicking and the inventory management. You spend a lot of time moving stuff into inventories, to other people, into bags, out of bags, back to someone else. This is made particularly tedious by the weight limit and that selling stuff can become annoying real quick, since not every town has every kind of shop and the day/night cycle makes it so that you have to wait all the time. Its not a big deal at first but if you play such a game for weeks you really start wondering how much time you wasted on unnecessary shit like that. Pretty soon I just left stuff lying about and only bothered to pick shit up that I really needed. Thank the Codex of Ultimate Wisdom that Persistence is a virtue now.
Similarly, I did not find the viewport too small at first, when I was exploring Britannia for the first time. Only later it became clear that it was way too zoomed in to find anything, it makes it really hard to orient yourself in the world because you have almost no reference points in view and you never exactly know where you are in relation to everything else. This is a big problem in such an exploration focused game. Peering does not help a great deal either. At least the graphics are great and since it is zoomed in that much you can see every single detail.
What I notice with all these games is that my personal experience is always divided into three parts.
I am always very excited in the beginning, when I first start exploring Britannia. The conversation system is one of the highlights of the series so far and it has been expanded again in U6. It is just so much fun that, after reading through the wonderful fluffbooks, you can explore the whole world on your own, go to all the cities and get to know the people (all of them represented with their own portrait this time, which is very nice), look for interesting stuff in the towns and collect and write down notes that you gain through in-depth conversations. This time around there is also a bit of party banter or at least smaller interjections by them, which really adds to the immersion.
Alas, again one is fighting a bit against the engine. Scrolling through conversations is impossible so you often have start again if you can not keep all the keywords in mind and are to lazy to write them all down for every single conversation. Its also irritating that the music goes into full stop every time you start a conversation. This is doubly annoying because the music is absolutely wonderful (for a time, that is. After some weeks, you may still want to switch it off.)
The characters remain static and non-reactive however, which is understandable for a game at that time but it means, once you have visited every town and talked to everyone, a big (and probably the best) part of the game is just done. Its over. Nothing to do here anymore, nothing to see. The world is just empty and dead now. Please move on.
So once you thus explored everything, talked to everyone, collected all the clues and hopefully sort of figured out your goal, 'the slog' begins. Thats the middle part, where the cool stuff is over - exploring towns, talking to people, getting to know the world - and the boring stuff begins, teleporting around, collecting items, dungeon crawling etc. Thats usually where I burn out and have to take a break. U6 does a lot to actually cut down on the tedium of 'the slog'. It gives you an easy way to quickly travel the world with the moonstone (also you can take a skiff over the ocean now), the combat system is way faster and you have a clearer idea of where to go and what to do. Unfortunately, its still tedious. Traveling is easier but the zoomed in view still makes it annoying cause you get lost easily. Combat is less of a drag with the party AI but it is still far from fun.
The endgame then becomes fun again, when you assembled all the stuff that you need to wrap things up. In U6 it is particularly cool, because then the world of the Gargoyles opens up to you and you start to learn about their plight and to study how their own system of virtues is different. It gives you some good lessons and stuff to think about and thats what I love about this series. It just seems odd that the game offers this whole new perspective pretty much at the end. You'd think that the problem with the gargoyles and their opposing virtue system should be the center and focus of the plot but its really introduced right at the end. I know its supposed to be some kind of twist but the theme of the game should have really been more pervasive throughout. They should have done more with it and designed a larger part of the game around the Gargish society and studying those virtues. This is kind of a missed opportunity and since the considerations about virtue and morality for me are the heart of the Ultima experience, this is probably my biggest criticism. Nonetheless, what
is there is still pretty good.
I enjoy the magic system with its ton of utility spells that really can make your life easier or just help you to fuck around a bit in the sandbox. It was particularly fun to just switch to solo mode, drop an invisibility potion and walk past a truckload of dragons and loot their lair before their very eyes. It is also good that you have a magic book now, so you don't have to find a list first and type out the whole invocation. I guess some people would consider that decline already. Next thing up is that I will recommend getting rid of the fucking reagents.
Let me just quote
one thing of the Addicts review of U6:
It's a good main quest, with a fun plot twist in the middle of it, but why-oh-why can't the Ultima series get on board with side quests? You've got a big world and a great game engine--give us more to do with it!
I agree with this. U6 is the first game where the world is so big and lively and filled with so many interesting NPCs that the absence of side-quests is felt and its beginning to feel a little odd that everyone and everything just revolves around dropping clues for your main quest.
And in light of the age of the game I should perhaps not begin to complain about fetch quests .. but man, what the fuck was it with that fucking balloon quest? All the shitty steps in that quest felt almost satirical. Anyway.
All in all, I really enjoyed U6 a great deal and even though I am in the minority I think it is in most ways an improvement over its predecessors. They did away with a lot of tediousness from earlier games (e.g. by making traveling easier, making combat faster) while keeping the great stuff (philosophy, story, conversation system) and improving on it. They introduced a few new quirks in the process (this fucking viewport man, holy shit) but nothing that breaks the experience.
What makes Ultima really stand out to this day in my mind is not so much the simulationists aspects but moreso that it dares to offer thought-provoking ideas. Both elements are interconnected and U6 certainly delivers in both regards, even though I feel it could have done it a bit better with the latter this time.
