Zerth
Arbiter
- Joined
- Feb 18, 2016
- Messages
- 407
The opening of Avatar's epic journey doesn't really start after game's intro, but actually by reading the lorebook; where you found out that britannia's antagonist isn't a major evil that you have to wipe out or seal away as you might anticipate.Is more insidious and intangible: Lord British fears that unsubstantial lives will eventually doom their people, and thus He's seeking someone to become a symbol of inspiration known as "Avatar" of virtues. Fortunately for him, there are means in form of dungeons and puzzles that will help guide any contender towards enlightement. Several others, perhaps mightier warriors, have already tried unsuccessfully, unable to become an embodiment of the 8 virtues or understand their combination with the three fundamental principles.
In any case, you're pretty much thrown into a giant puzzle of a map and have total freedom to seamlessly explore it. No sooner I realized that the included Britannia Map already harness powerful knowledge to use early on than feeling overwhelmed by the lack of an ingame journal and the limited awareness of the surroundings the small display screen provides. In map the location of townes and moongates are clearly depicted; with this information, alongside meeting Lord British, I had fair enough leads to know what to do next.And from there, It was just a matter of consistently explore, peer at gems and speak with everyone and his horse then take notes about any key info to eventually pave my way towards avatarhood.
Most stuff learned from Ultima IV can be readily applied to Ultima V: mantras, futhark, dungeon locations,etc. The runic alphabet is used extensively, and thus you'll find several opportunities to translate sentences (although there's a patch that already translates every runic symbol in game, but IMO It kinda spoils the fun). The main difference is that now you have to fight against a tangible major evil; each embodiment of hatred, cowardice and falsehood AKA shadowlords.
Such a wasted opportunity in Ultima V, the warping of virtues's meaning is totally caused by shadowlords coercion. Would have been more interesting if it was caused by the good intentions of Lord blackthorn, in such way He would have not really understood the virtues and principles, and in turn, would greatly contribute to strengthen the Shadowlords presence on Britannia, because there isn't anything more dangerous than unintended evil. Instead, what we really had is a wizard breaking Mondain McGuffin that freed the shadowlords, kidnapped Lord British and made Lord Blackthorn practically their puppet. Nevertheless, the fact Shadowlords are roaming around spreading torment instead of just being throne's potatoes awaiting the hero's arrival for a final battle is very interesting.
Yet, a regime of virtues as draconian laws inevitably brings moral dilemmas for thought. Previously, you were donating blood and giving out money to any beggar you find around, never running away from any battle, never lying, never refusing to help, never showing vain pride... The avatar's way may feel intransigent but it is indeed a chosen path, something reached by learning each virtues's teaching, not a code of conduct you are forced to obey under threat of death penalty or imprisonment.
Unlike exploring around Ultima IV, I spent most of my playthrough underground than on surface. The underworld is one of the most compelling endgame zones I've saw on a rpg, never got tired of the overworld theme and the setting: a massive heterogeneous joint of rocky peaks with sprawling rivers and treacherous waterfalls, home place of all evil creatures. Venturing there without a trace of direction is a guaranteed way to spend the next hours climbing and chanting "In Por" towards nowhere though.
A lot of Underworld's combat encounters are far tougher than anything I went against during my Ultima IV playthrough. Many times I had to run away or climb elsewhere in order to avoid the swarm of mongbats (the same Lord British's party stumbled across) relentless pummeling, or a gang of dragons spawning daemons as if they were Oblivion gates, but far more threatening. It's a wonder to behold that those dauntingly strong encounters can be hard countered by spells from higher circles (>6), as Ultima V offers an amusing repertoire of useful spells.It was quite fun to either summon or charm daemons and then clone 'em galore.
The dungeons, albeit of a more intricate design, were less tedious than their Ultima IV versions. Instead through altar chambers, many dungeons were interconnected through the underworld, such way that there are several paths to get access to certain areas in there. Ultima V is perhaps one of the earliest RPG sandboxes that added several elements that nowadays are recurring stuff in modern open world games: you can lock doors, play the harpsichord, push powder cannons and blast foes or gates with 'em, a Day/Night cycle with NPCs now following up schedules, etc. I believe this game still is holding up well nowadays, despite the lack of mouse support, given what we've seen in regards of open world sandbox genre until now.
The main complaint I have is that leveling up is annoying, good thing I imported my Avatar character from Ultima IV and had his stats greatly increased further by grace of the shrines, otherwise He would have been as underwhelming in battle as the rest of the companions. Melee combat was improved with the addition of diagonal hit boxes, however, character still miss often, with DEX or STR (for weapons such as morning star and blunt) below 25. For convenience's sake, the best companions are, without a doubt, the mages, since you don't have to worry too much about their stats given they already start with high INT, and several succesful In Zu/An Xen Ex or Quas An Wis do more harm than just hit them.
Since leveling up with desired stats is a pain in the ass, raising companions as effective frontliners is, in my opinion, not worth the trouble. You can readily achieve maxed stats on avatar for less effort, thus He already has the best of both worlds, and with a team of companions backing him up with spells, you have enough with him being the only one whacking monsters in close combat if desired.-Or just stick with magic axes for simplicity sake, but I think the mystic sword is a fitting weapon for the avatar and also darn effective too-. Also there's actually a possibility to lose a companion permanently out of reckless exploration, I lost the good ol' shamino that way, at least He had a quick death.
Ultima VI, enhanced further the overall sandbox aspect from the previous two games; but also brought some noticeable changes and additions that left me with mixed feelings. You start the game right away with an object called orb of the moons, which greatly streamlines moongate travels; with it, you don't need to wait until midnight or worry about moon phases anymore. The compendium explains which tile you should put the orb in order to match certain moonphase and teleport to the desired towne or shrine anytime of the day. You can also recover the moonstones and bury them back to use them as in the previous games, but why bother? These rocks became obsolete with the addition of the orb,and now are sadly unpractical, only useful as mere plot items.
In regards of combat encounters, hostiles don't randomly appear and chase down your party anymore, triggering a scene swap into combat mode. Now these are persistent spawns in the map and just attack on sight, also you have the ability of toggling on and off combat stance whenever desired, alternatively, you can let the AI control your companions, pretty convenient when the only thing they're doing in battle is just attacking nearby foes with melee or range. Magic is now instantly cast as any traditional rpg, by equipping a spellbook, so no more chanting "An Nox" every 5 minutes.
This change particularly benefited world's reactivity and magic system. You can find creatures of different alignment fighting each other as part of the local ecosystem, i.e. snakes hitting mice or an ambush of mongbats hurling axes to a party of warriors and swashbucklers. Unlike previous games, you can cast spells anytime, and the huge variety of magic spells allow greater leeway for creative strategies and interactions with objects, hell I think even a peaceful play through is pretty doable, something that wasn't possible in Ultima IV and seemingly impractical in Ultima V.
However, this change has its set of drawbacks; naval fights now are limited to shoot cannonballs, you can't engage enemies with ur party from the ship's deck anymore. Every action from any battle nearby is also registered on the text window, It's so annoying when you has no business with anything being hit off screen and then wait until the system finish spamming "Z is X wounded" several times in a row before processing your next action. Furthermore, the enemies respawn as soon as you move few tiles away from their current position, not even by exiting the area. Below a pretty tame example.
Dungeon crawling doesn't have the same old first person perspective, instead is top-down as everything else. Surely because of the removal of transition scenes for combat encounters. Frankly, I didn't mind much this change, nevertheless, I can't overlook that many dungeons are homogeneous in most parts, unlike the previous two, where hidden passages and puzzle rooms were more prevalent, albeit skippable and somewhat arbitrary. However, plenty of them are optional content and you really don't have to explore these dungeons (wrong,destard,covetous,hythloth,etc.), as the hints you find in these are part of a quest that only sets you towards the right direction that you prolly may not need if you end up discovering the key plot parts beforehand .
(light chart map quest spoilers ahead)
This quest was quite fun tho. And even if you already collected the 8 map pieces before talking to Homer, it's still pretty vague without knowing the key reference in order to identify the depicted islands
In terms of writing, Ultima VI did a great job as final chapter of the age of enlightenment. Turns out, causing the collapse of both stygian abyss and Underworld actually brought long term consequences: now Britannia is flat and exploring the corners of the overworld map by ship brings you to the edge of the world. And as things couldn't be more bizarre, a civilization of pissed off gargoyles from another expanse, waged war against Britannia, as its Avatar is the main cause of their suffering.
It doesn't take too long to find out that is a conflict arisen by a misunderstanding, thus is the avatar's task to amend the mistake of removing magical artifacts from their rightful place, with the joint aid of British and the gargoyles. Of course, the quest also involves learning the ways of the gargoyle community, these people worship three pinciples: diligence, control and passion, which derive a set of virtues and are part of a never ending cycle called the singularity.
I liked that, after learning some basic vocabulary, all gargoyles dialogue sentences reflected the rough gargish language's comprehension of the avatar.
Beating the entire trilogy was a experience worth playing. Now I'm going to start the first Ultima Underworld, Ascendant's fiasco actually arose my interest in playing the first two games.
In any case, you're pretty much thrown into a giant puzzle of a map and have total freedom to seamlessly explore it. No sooner I realized that the included Britannia Map already harness powerful knowledge to use early on than feeling overwhelmed by the lack of an ingame journal and the limited awareness of the surroundings the small display screen provides. In map the location of townes and moongates are clearly depicted; with this information, alongside meeting Lord British, I had fair enough leads to know what to do next.And from there, It was just a matter of consistently explore, peer at gems and speak with everyone and his horse then take notes about any key info to eventually pave my way towards avatarhood.
Most stuff learned from Ultima IV can be readily applied to Ultima V: mantras, futhark, dungeon locations,etc. The runic alphabet is used extensively, and thus you'll find several opportunities to translate sentences (although there's a patch that already translates every runic symbol in game, but IMO It kinda spoils the fun). The main difference is that now you have to fight against a tangible major evil; each embodiment of hatred, cowardice and falsehood AKA shadowlords.
Such a wasted opportunity in Ultima V, the warping of virtues's meaning is totally caused by shadowlords coercion. Would have been more interesting if it was caused by the good intentions of Lord blackthorn, in such way He would have not really understood the virtues and principles, and in turn, would greatly contribute to strengthen the Shadowlords presence on Britannia, because there isn't anything more dangerous than unintended evil. Instead, what we really had is a wizard breaking Mondain McGuffin that freed the shadowlords, kidnapped Lord British and made Lord Blackthorn practically their puppet. Nevertheless, the fact Shadowlords are roaming around spreading torment instead of just being throne's potatoes awaiting the hero's arrival for a final battle is very interesting.
Yet, a regime of virtues as draconian laws inevitably brings moral dilemmas for thought. Previously, you were donating blood and giving out money to any beggar you find around, never running away from any battle, never lying, never refusing to help, never showing vain pride... The avatar's way may feel intransigent but it is indeed a chosen path, something reached by learning each virtues's teaching, not a code of conduct you are forced to obey under threat of death penalty or imprisonment.
Unlike exploring around Ultima IV, I spent most of my playthrough underground than on surface. The underworld is one of the most compelling endgame zones I've saw on a rpg, never got tired of the overworld theme and the setting: a massive heterogeneous joint of rocky peaks with sprawling rivers and treacherous waterfalls, home place of all evil creatures. Venturing there without a trace of direction is a guaranteed way to spend the next hours climbing and chanting "In Por" towards nowhere though.
A lot of Underworld's combat encounters are far tougher than anything I went against during my Ultima IV playthrough. Many times I had to run away or climb elsewhere in order to avoid the swarm of mongbats (the same Lord British's party stumbled across) relentless pummeling, or a gang of dragons spawning daemons as if they were Oblivion gates, but far more threatening. It's a wonder to behold that those dauntingly strong encounters can be hard countered by spells from higher circles (>6), as Ultima V offers an amusing repertoire of useful spells.It was quite fun to either summon or charm daemons and then clone 'em galore.
The dungeons, albeit of a more intricate design, were less tedious than their Ultima IV versions. Instead through altar chambers, many dungeons were interconnected through the underworld, such way that there are several paths to get access to certain areas in there. Ultima V is perhaps one of the earliest RPG sandboxes that added several elements that nowadays are recurring stuff in modern open world games: you can lock doors, play the harpsichord, push powder cannons and blast foes or gates with 'em, a Day/Night cycle with NPCs now following up schedules, etc. I believe this game still is holding up well nowadays, despite the lack of mouse support, given what we've seen in regards of open world sandbox genre until now.
The main complaint I have is that leveling up is annoying, good thing I imported my Avatar character from Ultima IV and had his stats greatly increased further by grace of the shrines, otherwise He would have been as underwhelming in battle as the rest of the companions. Melee combat was improved with the addition of diagonal hit boxes, however, character still miss often, with DEX or STR (for weapons such as morning star and blunt) below 25. For convenience's sake, the best companions are, without a doubt, the mages, since you don't have to worry too much about their stats given they already start with high INT, and several succesful In Zu/An Xen Ex or Quas An Wis do more harm than just hit them.
Since leveling up with desired stats is a pain in the ass, raising companions as effective frontliners is, in my opinion, not worth the trouble. You can readily achieve maxed stats on avatar for less effort, thus He already has the best of both worlds, and with a team of companions backing him up with spells, you have enough with him being the only one whacking monsters in close combat if desired.-Or just stick with magic axes for simplicity sake, but I think the mystic sword is a fitting weapon for the avatar and also darn effective too-. Also there's actually a possibility to lose a companion permanently out of reckless exploration, I lost the good ol' shamino that way, at least He had a quick death.
Ultima VI, enhanced further the overall sandbox aspect from the previous two games; but also brought some noticeable changes and additions that left me with mixed feelings. You start the game right away with an object called orb of the moons, which greatly streamlines moongate travels; with it, you don't need to wait until midnight or worry about moon phases anymore. The compendium explains which tile you should put the orb in order to match certain moonphase and teleport to the desired towne or shrine anytime of the day. You can also recover the moonstones and bury them back to use them as in the previous games, but why bother? These rocks became obsolete with the addition of the orb,and now are sadly unpractical, only useful as mere plot items.
In regards of combat encounters, hostiles don't randomly appear and chase down your party anymore, triggering a scene swap into combat mode. Now these are persistent spawns in the map and just attack on sight, also you have the ability of toggling on and off combat stance whenever desired, alternatively, you can let the AI control your companions, pretty convenient when the only thing they're doing in battle is just attacking nearby foes with melee or range. Magic is now instantly cast as any traditional rpg, by equipping a spellbook, so no more chanting "An Nox" every 5 minutes.
This change particularly benefited world's reactivity and magic system. You can find creatures of different alignment fighting each other as part of the local ecosystem, i.e. snakes hitting mice or an ambush of mongbats hurling axes to a party of warriors and swashbucklers. Unlike previous games, you can cast spells anytime, and the huge variety of magic spells allow greater leeway for creative strategies and interactions with objects, hell I think even a peaceful play through is pretty doable, something that wasn't possible in Ultima IV and seemingly impractical in Ultima V.
However, this change has its set of drawbacks; naval fights now are limited to shoot cannonballs, you can't engage enemies with ur party from the ship's deck anymore. Every action from any battle nearby is also registered on the text window, It's so annoying when you has no business with anything being hit off screen and then wait until the system finish spamming "Z is X wounded" several times in a row before processing your next action. Furthermore, the enemies respawn as soon as you move few tiles away from their current position, not even by exiting the area. Below a pretty tame example.
Dungeon crawling doesn't have the same old first person perspective, instead is top-down as everything else. Surely because of the removal of transition scenes for combat encounters. Frankly, I didn't mind much this change, nevertheless, I can't overlook that many dungeons are homogeneous in most parts, unlike the previous two, where hidden passages and puzzle rooms were more prevalent, albeit skippable and somewhat arbitrary. However, plenty of them are optional content and you really don't have to explore these dungeons (wrong,destard,covetous,hythloth,etc.), as the hints you find in these are part of a quest that only sets you towards the right direction that you prolly may not need if you end up discovering the key plot parts beforehand .
(light chart map quest spoilers ahead)
This quest was quite fun tho. And even if you already collected the 8 map pieces before talking to Homer, it's still pretty vague without knowing the key reference in order to identify the depicted islands
In terms of writing, Ultima VI did a great job as final chapter of the age of enlightenment. Turns out, causing the collapse of both stygian abyss and Underworld actually brought long term consequences: now Britannia is flat and exploring the corners of the overworld map by ship brings you to the edge of the world. And as things couldn't be more bizarre, a civilization of pissed off gargoyles from another expanse, waged war against Britannia, as its Avatar is the main cause of their suffering.
It doesn't take too long to find out that is a conflict arisen by a misunderstanding, thus is the avatar's task to amend the mistake of removing magical artifacts from their rightful place, with the joint aid of British and the gargoyles. Of course, the quest also involves learning the ways of the gargoyle community, these people worship three pinciples: diligence, control and passion, which derive a set of virtues and are part of a never ending cycle called the singularity.
I liked that, after learning some basic vocabulary, all gargoyles dialogue sentences reflected the rough gargish language's comprehension of the avatar.
Beating the entire trilogy was a experience worth playing. Now I'm going to start the first Ultima Underworld, Ascendant's fiasco actually arose my interest in playing the first two games.
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