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Yeah, I hate this type of party combat. Tbh, I hate RtwP but at least you can pause. No! I want full tactical combat with many options in the interactive battlefield. I want to grab a rat dipped in explosive powder and shove it down an orcs throat and detonate it. I want to point blank a magic missile through a goblins skull and watch it pop. Mostly, I want to sit back and contemplate the battle at leisure. Toss in a Quick combat like goldbox or even a battle fast solution like wizard's crown if I really don't care to fight trash mobs.
And yeah, don't over complicate storage too damn much and have hot keys and shortcuts and macros available.
I'm glad there are projects still being done for the ultimas but I hope they pot in some QOL and maybe construction sets.
IIRC there's an egg (the games equivalent to a trigger) at the door where the murder scene is and if anyone goes over it before the Avatar, the murder scene will not trigger. Exult fixes this though.
As the most interesting things about the game were related to the writing, I only marked deep endgame things as spoilers.
The game was made on the same engine as The Black Gate - as expected, the inventory is similarly frustrating, the combat didn't get better, and generally the same things as before are permitted (except for exploration), while adding some curious mechanics (like extreme temperatures and some techniques of coping with them).
Completely unlike The Black Gate and earlier Ultimas, linearity in this game was so aggressive I expected it to beat me up. For example:
-> To get to the goblin lair, I need to discover a traitor first and get the key from his dead body.
-> The entire Moonshade plot revolves around waiting for things to happen - first a banquet, then kidnapping, then the interaction with Erstam, then getting the spellbook, then the fiery romance, then getting sent to the Mountains of Freedom. Maybe the worst part was Pothos' secret - I couldn't ask him about the Mad Mage until I learned from some lady that he bears a resemblance to him - even though
, and I knew he needed Blood Moss badly. Moreover, some parts of the critical path already seemed to be bugged there - I could not report to Gustacio about storms (something he asked me about); I had to move the plot forward by talking with someone else, seemingly skipping some part of the plot.
-> The most maddening example for me is the Hound of Doskar. It's aim? To give away someone's location. But if you won't use it for finding Cantra, the door to the keep she lies in will be blocked indefinitely. Fair enough, I was told to use it anyway. But, moving further, I needed to summon Hound to search for Batlin. To unlock some doors? No, to unlock the dialogue option with Gwani allowing me to pass through the mountain AFTER I did a job for them, already knowing where Batlin is (he told me, so did Harnna).
-> Even though almost every old mage was supposed to keep a tooth from the jawbone (I can use them for teleportation, not them), they were only made available after the encounter at the Wall of Lights by the end of the game (in the most explicit way possible - placing
in their apartments). It's nonsense. I have Columna's Comb, the centerpiece of her very existence, allowing her to look youthful. I know
. Why can't I ask her about a swap? One can say - oh, her reputation was already tarnished - but not even her sister acknowledged the change.
Interestingly, the game opened up after a certain point, roughly at the start of the last third of the game - I could go anywhere, I had no explicitly specified aim, and my game got
Apparently, I was expected to restore the Serpent of Chaos - but I didn't do it, and no one mentioned it besides the ghost in the burning building somewhere
. The game overflowed with oddities (like guards telling me not to incite trouble at the entrance to a dead city or generally people not acknowledging bloodbath around them) and bewildering bugs (Ducio could not give me an appropriate gem - unless I talked to him while he was standing to the right of a firepit; when I went to the Gwani village after Hazards' visit, certain Gwani woman was talking as if nothing happened; when I left her and came back, she was dead - and theoretically she died in the attack).
Gameplay reinforced the linearity - interesting doors were usually impossible to pick or bomb. Oftentimes, doors were opened not by a key but by plot progress (like Frigidazzi's or Hazard's), which isn't fun if I already sought that key for some time. Some means of transportation (Mark & Recall, carpet, proper ship) were removed.
Was the plot worth all that hassle with gating the world? It did give more insight on companions; it showed people who exiled themselves from Britannia seemingly escaping from Lord British's tyrannical rule, really not being able to live up to his principles (like Moonshadian mages striving for truth, where using blood spawn was considered problematic, yet half of mages had ritual bloodletting devices; Monitorian pikemen indulding in generalized skullduggery between clans; or the vanity of Fawn citizens). But even at the start, there were some hiccups - for example, every dialogue, essentially everything that happened in Fawn was fundamentally meaningless - in the end, you go to a trial, you find the levers and kill a guy pulling the levers, and that's all there is to a city with tons of dialogues that ultimately turned out to be pretty much meaningless. And why create a game focused on the plot if you can't deliver the ending? Everything after the Gorlab Swamp seemed unfinished. While the idea of apocalypse was unorthodox and somewhat interesting (and was not idiotic, since there was not much of a connection between the Avatar and the environment - he was merely a guest), the writing became a comedy by the end. Take
At some point of the game, Xenka tells the player (out of nowhere) that the imbalance grows stronger and sacrifice will be needed:
Five minutes later, Dupre inflames his heart - and lungs, and liver, and so on.
The unceremonious character of this conversation, leading to the death of a companion from five games only for Xenka to give me a sword to kill the main protagonist and finish the game, is insane (although apparently I should have used his ashes to restore the Serpent of Chaos - but no one told me during the game).
for example.
Despite that, I enjoyed a lot of things related to the mixed bag of the story - for example, Mountains of Freedom - why did Avatar manage to escape the dungeon unlike anyone else? Well, it was inevitable since he was effectively immortal. I exploited this fact by getting into a fight with an automaton, dying repeatedly only to be resurrected again until the poor robot fell (I could use the ring of invisibility and escape instead, but my way was funnier and probably more immersive anyway). The reverse item search (having someone's item already and wanting to get your own as a reward) was a nice idea, and it would be nicer if it would work - I could never exchange ice wine, for example, and the breastplate dialogue with Kylista only worked if I didn't ask the innkeeper about this cuirass before. It was somewhat romantic to see a dying race pondering its downfall (Gwani).
This time around, the game featured far more dungeon crawling than before. The puzzles within dungeons were mostly mechanical - find a key, find a button, find a lever, hug a wall, double click on a wall, or place an item on the altar. This time, however, there was much more of it. I detest this type of puzzles - what's the fun in applying the same technique to each place? It wouldn't be such a problem if the game was a tad shorter, or the respawns were nonexistent (it's not that they are hard; it's that they slow down movement even when ignoring them), or if it allowed me to solve problems in multiple ways - which it usually didn't. Seemingly most interesting spells for penetrating such places either had some limitations (Fetch was unable to pick items like skeletons, for instance) or weren't usable often (Serpent's Bond was useful only in a few places). Only Dispel Field allowed me to circumvent stuff in a few places.
One of the things I hated the most were dungeons (or, more generally, constrained locations) not telegraphing explicitly that I needed an item from somewhere else. Two examples were:
1) Dream in Gorlab's Swamp - how to know whether artifacts are a puzzle within the dream or artifacts from the external world?
2) Isle of Crypts and the Blackrock Serpent of Balance - What do those
indicate? When should I stop trying to find an appropriate tool in the dungeon and seek ?something? somewhere else? Was I supposed to guess that I need a particular item here (already knowing I'll need it in the later area, the Temple of Balance)?
I don't think they would be so infuriating if not for how painstakingly slow the dungeon exploration was once I hit an obstacle.
The economy got broken even quicker than in The Black Gate (an impressive feat given linearity of the game) with not many things to buy (mainly spells and reagents - but you could get them by theft or exploration), thanks to the value of gems (in Moonshade, the first city I thoroughly explored), along with their popularity (most trolls seemed to carry 4). It got so bad I avoided collecting gold since around midgame.
I liked the items added in the expansion. The mystic technology of keyrings dissipated the dread of getting keys from an NPC, while the Ring of Shal removed the reagent constraints from casting spells - something I wanted to see at some point in Ultima games since earlier I only cast spells when in dire need. Three of the Silver Seed's dungeons could be far better without the aforementioned mechanics of the game making them more cumbersome than they should be, I believe.
The people weren't acting like material beings generally act, probably so as not to break the game - some NPCs won't move to their house (unlocking the door); they'll just stand there until they're out of sight, then teleport to where they're supposed to be. If the monks are not in a chapel, leave and enter again, and they'll probably be there en masse. My favourite instance of this problem was Beryl - once I asked her about something and went to the mines, she nagged me about certain plant - and, since she spawned close to me every time she got out of the field of view, she asked this question constantly, every 5 seconds, no matter how quickly I moved through the mine (on a side note, she was one silly lady - at some point, she asked me to use arrows from her room if I don't have any - but when I took them, she called me a thief and attacked). It's not a huge issue for me, but it surprises me since they probably aimed at making an immersive game.
There were some other minor things I liked - like people being telling me to bugger off until I became a mage or a pikeman; I saw a person's name when clicking on him, similarly to The False Prophet, unlike The Black Gate. One thing I didn't notice in the earlier game is that going to sleep without companions disallows waking up at a specified time. The lack of proper sidequest made sense given the apocalyptic plot (tying Avatar to these people wouldn't make sense), the usual mundane character progression, and the general lack of interesting rewards (with two exceptions I can think of - the Everlasting Goblet and Magic Harp, technically rewards for activities connected to the main story). I could check the time or access inventory of each character much quicker than before with new keyboard shortcuts. Even though most of the soundtrack was recycled, the new tracks were good.
There were also minor things I disliked - the introduction felt cheap, as if setting me up for a disappointment (given the series' great production values and general quality up until now). A ledger in the monks' chapel described extraordinarily dangerous ruins in the north. The ruins? You guessed it, two skeletons, and that's it. Finding tools for teleportation is generally a nice way in which games reward exploration - but here, they are given in batches, in places tied to the plot, and only in a way so as not to break the precious linearity of the game (that is, I only get teleports to plot-related places or places I should have already been to). The teleporting storms had no unscripted gameplay implications - probably for the better, but still, it gave me a sense of detachment between the world and the gameplay.
And there were yet another exhilarating ?bug? - I tried to talk to a monk, but a lady next to him told me, "He cannot speak!". A moment later, he went to the candle, unlit it, and remarked, "Much better!".
Summarizing, The Serpent Isle went away from the open-world exploration of previous Ultimas in favor of a more focused story. Despite this, the plot wasn't that good, with a game seemingly being slashed at some point and remaining in a mostly unfinished state with bugs going as far as to influence the parts of the plot that are available. Even the finished parts of the story had some hiccups; even the good parts were soured with badly scripted dialogues. There were some neat things in the expansion; outside of that, I didn't have much fun with this mess of a game.
-----
As a side note, the game highlights a few problems with picking dialogue options rather than typing them explicitly - it allows writers to make nonsensical leaps of logic (see: asking Yenani for an entrance to the Skullcrusher after invoking the Hound) and disallows players to infer some things independently of what writers want him to know (see: Pothos' Blood Moss and Mad Mage connection, Columna's Comb). Generalizing, it assumes the playing character knows what the developer wants him to know rather than what the player knows.
The problem wasn't as visible in the Black Gate - quests within microcosms (cities) were optional, only a single questline (Time Lord's) was necessary to properly finish the game, and very few things were gated in some fashion.
If a game still wants to use some scripted interactions, it could highlight the keywords it considers "unlocked" (by other conversations, for example) and allow to unlock other topics by typing them explicitly, which should relax the linearity of the game.
Note that here, limited options during dialogues helped the developers set up this exercise in linearity.
I've finished Black Gate but never managed to force myself through the whole Serpent Isle story. I usually just stop playing after spending a good number of hours with the first three towns and surrounding area. I agree that the new items are a nice addition, and I like the graphic/interface improvements, too. But yes, in the end the linearity will get you, although not before you've gotten up to some trouble and thoroughly enjoyed your stay.
And there were yet another exhilarating ?bug? - I tried to talk to a monk, but a lady next to him told me, "He cannot speak!". A moment later, he went to the candle, unlit it, and remarked, "Much better!".
Ok, there's that new Ultima 7 project going on and there is the U6 to u7 project (not sure if the new u7 is compatible with the u6 one) and that makes me ponder if Worlds will get the treatment. Actually, is there an engine everyone would prefer or features changed? Any older games or maybe even u8 & 9 tossed into the new u7 engine?
Btw, The Dark Unknown end game has been finished by the creator of it. I saw that on FB. So, the testing up to endgame is possible. I imagine more needs to be done.
Pagan. This Ultima was completely different than most earlier Ultimas.
In the world full of post-apocalyptic games, Pagan is a game where the world feels as if the apocalypse was in the making (small spoiler: it pretty much is). The only real aim of the game is to escape this land bathed in darkness, dominated by titans who took it over after a bloody war - a product of the Guardian's scheming. There is barely anything positive going on around the land - and the soundtrack with only one somewhat optimistic track (in the Birthplace of Moriens) does capture the gloomy atmosphere better than pretty much any I've ever heard. Take the
It starts cozily only to turn into ominousness, reflecting the story of a somewhat idyllic village of healers getting doomed by the player's pursuit of the gateway to another world.
or
The point of the ceremony was, as you may guess, sacrificial death.
for example. I could count better or equal RPG soundtracks I know on a woodcutter's hand.
Accordingly, the world was rather empty, with only around thirty NPCs (~7 times less than The Black Gate), who did speak more concisely and to the point than in both earlier entries. One thing that visibly changed from the Serpent Isle was that the Avatar used full dialogue lines rather than single words without changing other parts of the dialogue (that is, the dialogue was still based on keywords they said), giving him a propensity to speak
at times.
This time, in-game books played a much bigger role in the game, to some extent substituting for the lack of NPCs, allowing players to infer how to get artifacts and what they do (individuating the magical weaponry), briefly describing the setting (like the guards' notebook with hour names or the notes about the war), and even giving away the solution to the plot.
The game was to some extent linear (there were a few events that gated the world - getting the Open Ground spell, getting the Scion's key, and filling the lake), though it was far less aggravating than in the Serpent Isle. Despite this, the main quest was only scarcely hinted at until the very end of the game, as the plot was not less enigmatic than the Warriors - I had to figure out what can be done after changing the state of the world or getting each new shiny key - but there were no dramatic leaps of logic.
The world of Pagan lacked companions - with the seminal implication of not having proper pack mules. Thankfully, the inventory got an overhaul, this time memorizing the coordinates at which I left an item in a container while still using the Ultima VII-style display. Keyring was available since the very early part of the game. I could carry arbitrarily many bags in the backpack. This is something I believe Ultima VII should have implemented, as this part of the experience ceased to be cumbersome - I could address any problem related to the inventory by storing items in the appropriate part of the backpack or container inside.
The game lacked a lot of features of earlier Ultimas - light wasn't a concern anymore (in a world of darkness, no less). Despite the game featuring a lot of different types of food, the Avatar couldn't experience hunger - or any other status, including poisoning. I think the statuses were cut, as the game even featured a book on de-venoming the kith, and that there was not much fluff information in this game. Alas, the world ceased to be continuous, turning into a set of connected maps.
The combat worked in real time, with three moves available to Avatar. With clunky controls, I oftentimes had problems with targeting an enemy, continuing the tradition of infuriating combat in earlier titles. Progression was based on using a skill rather than training or leveling. It mattered a little bit more than earlier, since I had one character, and his maximal carrying capacity and physical suffering capacity were determined by his strength, but I maxed this stat very early in the game. The bestiary was limited to a mere dozen of adversaries, but this time, they got individuated, with skeletons resurrecting themselves, demons being prone to banishment, or invisible schmucks that needed to be traced by their flickering eyes.
Just like in the previous entry, dungeon crawling took more time than any other activity - and it still relied on finding stuff. This time, it was mostly keys (just as unpleasant to search for as earlier) and switches rather than random entrances - not a monumental incline. Instead of invisible passages, this time oftentimes I had to walk through places with a view obstructed by walls (the visibility problem was an offspring of isometric perspective) - which is absurd since those places should be visible to Avatar, but not to the player, and a misstep could be lethal (for example, when falling over the verge into water). The game also happened to have outlandish platforming sections, at times disastrous given the unwieldy controls, albeit usually short. The addition of jumping was a logical step for enhancing interactivity, as it allowed movement in one more dimension, but coupling it with isometric perspective was a wild decision (also note that in this view I couldn't always establish the height at which platforms are located, leading to a subsequent and frequent demise). Fortunately, it did contribute to having more alternative paths to the goal than its predecessors. Other examples include summoning a golem, which allowed to open a lot of plot-related doors without finding a proper key; some items could be carried with Aerial Servant (but not all plot-related items, unfortunately - Bentic's Research, for example); Endure Heat allowed me to circumvent some boring puzzle in the fire plane at the end of the game.
Speaking of spells, this time there are four schools of magic, each operating on a different basis and obtainable at different stages of the game. Necromancy works similarly to spellcasting in Warriors of Destiny (mixing arbitrarily many spells at once manually); Thaumaturgy worked on principles of later Ultimas; Theurgy is a standard mana-based system; and Sorcery is unique as far as RPGs are concerned, I believe - one needed to position reagents and candles on the right spots of the pentagram to get a token with a spell having limited use. Also, figuring out how the pentagram works was a very nice
one could use the fact that both important Acolytes in Demons' Crag had the pentagram set to Summon Demon spell
. All in all, the game contained less than forty spells, but almost half of them were useful at some point - something unheard of since Quest of the Avatar. Two of them even gave the player effective invulnerability, as if to alleviate the fact that Avatar is, this time, mortal. One thing that disappointed me was the inability to use spells when there should be an option to use them - for example, Hear Truth was not always usable for obtaining some information I desired, even though it probably should be. Also, the only real use of money in this game was buying spells - and those available to buy were pretty much useless (except for a single one available at the very end of the game).
As expected from a game that is unfinished (though it did hide its shortcomings far better than the Serpent Isle), it had plenty of questionable design choices:
1) Disciples at the Crag with identical dialogue lines (except for their name).
2) During the quest for the stolen focus, I could not ask Torwin about the focus (having a tool allowing one to extract truth from people). He disappeared right at the moment when I asked another fellow, "Where is Torwin" - then, he appeared in a different spot on the map. It's as if the game expected me to conduct the entire investigation, not allowing me to stumble upon him under any circumstances.
or odd bugs:
1) In a dungeon between the Plateau and Tenebrae, there is a lever puzzle. I went there, couldn't solve it (the intended solution is idiotic, by the way), went back, and could not solve it. The external solution also did not work (and I think I tested it earlier too). What did work was reverting the levers to the initial state. I suspect the lever state resets after getting out of the dungeons, but their position (visual) does not. One thing I hated about this particular cave is that after setting levers, I heard cracking sounds randomly and didn't know what their connection to the solution was (there wasn't any, apparently).
2) I could not give Vividos a dagger until I removed a lot of items from my backpack (moving them to a container within a backpack also worked).
3) After entering the Birthplace of Moriens for the first time, I either had a monumental lag, or the interiors didn't load at all (I only saw the ceiling).
All in all, I enjoyed this short game. I found it much better than the Serpent Isle. There are very few RPGs that match the atmosphere of Pagan. The spellcasting system was better than those before, and removing the party paved a way for a few movement spells (though those options could be added even in a party-based RPG - see Original Sin). Optionality in dungeons improved compared to Ultima VIIs, just like the inventory. One thing I disliked about this game that other games in the series got right was the gating of some areas - this time, however, the plot rewarded me with a functional ending.
isn't exactly a great game. Thankfully, it can be finished in less than a dozen hours, and it's way easier to play than any other Ultima I finished.
The game had tons of dungeons, but they all seemed to be procedurally generated. There was nothing interesting there except for common enemies one needed to murder to progress the plot - it was enough to go through a single one of them. Similarly, cities and castles had copy-pasted layouts between the continents. The game did reward me for exploring the map several times, but there was no challenge to exploration at all after getting something to travel on. As expected from the Age of Darkness, the game featured spaceships, futuristic weaponry, and even hovercrafts.
The maps worked almost like in Quest of the Avatar, with the difference that town and castle views were more
this time.
The game did allow me to customize the character at the start, but the only real form of development was getting health from dungeons, paying for health, or visiting curious places (which one could repeat ad nauseam). Combat consisted mostly of mashing the 'a' button. Two things were worthy of note: the differentiation of some enemies, like gremlins stealing food supplies or gelatinous cubes damaging armor (the armor did not work in dungeons anyway); and the enemies being able to attack me from the back or the side, but the game did not communicate from where - so I had to remember the outlook of a dungeon and its passages. Or use Up / Down spells; the crawl did not matter anyway.
There was a minigame of quality that parallels the persuasion wheel in Oblivion - taking control of the starship and having to shoot down a certain amount of enemy ships in real time. It plays the way it sounds.
Except for the dungeons, the graphics were better (though very similar) to those of Ultima IV - which isn't a surprise, since I played the 1986 version.
Also, I liked the fact that both benevolent Lord British and Shamino had some princesses enslaved in their castles. The plot of the game could fit in two sentences; no notes were needed. All in all, barring the visuals, it seemed more like a predecessor to The Elder Scrolls rather than later Ultimas.
Her other games are SHMUPS. (Shootem ups). Which look pretty good. If you love that c64 sid sound and look (and her art is pretty damn good on all of these) then maybe you'd like to try them.
I had forgotten I owned the first Briley. Then again, seems like i collect more than play.
Exodus already had elements of a data crawl - most NPCs had something relevant to say, though
one line of dialogue each
. Most subplots leading to the ending were pretty shallow - you get a set of tips without any questions asked, which you use to resolve a subplot, be it finding Dawn, Exotics, or Cards. The complexity shifted instead to executing custom commands those creatures talked about. Unlike some later titles, the sources of information were more diversified, as dungeons sometimes also contained data (in the dungeon on the isle and the dungeon of Time). One thing that didn't make sense to me was paying large sums for information - after all, why wouldn't I reload after getting tips from the Oracle? The difference between paying or not paying is one trip to a dungeon, after all - and Garriott did remove such institutions in later titles. All but one of the tips were useless if one was careful when documenting the world - though it did add redundancy, which I think is preferable in a game that relies on the player figuring things out.
I had to build a party of four characters with different classes, each having some advantages - some offering the ability to disarm traps, some clerical, sorcerous spells, or both (at the cost of constraints on mana points), and limiting the best conventional equipment available. This game had two vehicles for character progression: experience for getting health points and gold for upgrading the other stats, available in the later parts of the game. The stats had a dramatic influence on the game - dexterity determined chance to hit and thieving skills, strength allowed one to one-shot most enemies, and wisdom and intelligence influenced the amount of mana points (note that the initial stats distribution disallowed most spells, as the amount of mana a character can have isn't sufficient). The experience was rather easy to get (and capped long before the game's end), while gold could be subjected to relatively easy retrieval from the dungeon once you had created their maps. All in all, it had everything later Ultimas didn't have: a relatively grindless game with meaningful character creation, character development, and party composition. The one thing I disliked was that no one mentioned how to raise attributes, and those upgrades were bound to a single specific place - consequently I only got to them at the very end of the game.
Most of the game took place in dungeons, and they were pretty good. Garriott successfully tried to do
yellow - chests, blue - gremlins, red - wind, violet - trap
with four main building blocks (traps, food-stealing gremlins, torch-blowing winds, and chests) on 8*7 15x15 maps (technically 16x16, but their cyclical nature wasn't used often), sprinkled with some fountains and marks. I liked how marks had an amorphous (different marks did different things) influence on the gameplay outside of the endgame, allowing me to visit some previously unavailable locations or get some health. The game
, and it was a relatively simple task with ladders moving the party into corresponding points on subsequent floors and with no teleporting traps. There were no fixed encounters, the enemy type was only a function of a level number, and each encounter environment was exactly the same - the encounter design was pretty much nonexistent sans the final castle. The encounters were sparser than in Quest and quicker than in Warriors, a change I obviously enjoyed. For me, the main challenge the dungeons presented was knowing when to come back to the health fountain or the surface - simplistic, albeit serviceable. The one thing I kind of disliked about them was the lack of a leading theme - you could swap levels between dungeons, and the only noticeable difference would be the locations of ladders (their individuation occurred in Warriors).
Surprisingly, the game did contain rewards (in chests) other than gold - armour and weaponry. However, the game wasn't really good when it came to itemization: first, armour had minuscule influence on the game (15 percentage points difference in evasion between being naked and wearing a supreme outfit, to be exact). Secondly, the best weapons and armour available in shops are only usable by specific classes, present only in the hidden city, and horribly expensive. In the same city, you get information on how to get superior equipment, in unlimited numbers, usable by everyone, a stone's throw away, with the only handicap of not being ranged. The economy did keep me on my toes for the game (since the game has a money sink - stats), but I guess Garriott could've given me the ability to keep more than 9999 gold pieces - or at least communicate this limitation.
This game employed an uncanny save system: one can save anywhere on the overworld map, but not in the cities and not in the dungeons. Also, if one of your characters dies, then the game gets saved. The same happens when entering/exiting a city. This has a few implications; one is that if you want to quit in the dungeon, and you are far from the surface, you can lead to the demise of a member of your party - at the expected cost of ~700? gold pieces (I don't know the probability of Resurrection failure); the other is that quitting the game midway through an encounter (before the character's demise) allowed one to avoid death. I don't get the purpose of this system. If they want to punish me for my errors, why not make a standard roguelike saving the game state at each step? Why did they allow custom saves at all if they're barely applicable? Does it even make sense to employ such odd saving mechanics in a game where the success of the operation relied on having proper information, where dungeons and other places don't need to be conquered but simply documented?
In the end, this entry was one of the better Ultimas. It already had a focus on gathering information; it had intricate dungeons, a fast-paced combat system, proper character creation, and meaningful progression while lacking the slow grind of Warriors, and it didn't drag on. Also, the search for Dawn might be the highlight of the entire series.
=====
The disappearance of custom commands in later Ultimas surprises me - it effectively gave Exodus an infinite amount of possible actions in connection to the world (rather than within a dialogue). It's quite unique that, when doing something, I have to know exactly what to do rather than simply <use> some item. There are a few other interesting differences between III and IV I didn't mention; for example, the entire world is mappable in Exodus, while Quest made it huge, offsetting it with the addition of a sextant. Adding the complexity to the dialogue system and creating hidden passages in cities in IV came along with making overland castles and towns smaller (from 63x63 to 32x32), simplifying the search for NPCs.
There's a patch for the DOS version of Exodus that runs it in EGA and clocks the speed. Also, in the other commands you can "bribe" guards for 300 gold, but you can also pay them to "dance" for a mere 100. The Amiga version of the game looks nice, but it runs pretty crappy. An interesting, but pointless note regarding the Amiga ports of Ultima III and IV is that both were done by Bob "Banjo" Hardy who's other major claim to fame was creating the incredibly difficult (and bad) Fountain of Dreams, a spiritual successor to Wasteland.
Yeah, THE EXODUS PROJECT even has a map swap to play in the Lands of Lord British from Ultima I if you want. Dungeons are still u3 dungeons, as are towns and castles. You'd have to try the APPLEII extra module projects to try a few other variants of ultima 3. The FM-Towns has gfx for each mob so zombies, skeletons, ghouls look different etc etc. There is also some other mega demon mob I forget the name.
I really wanted to try both MAC u3s but damn my emulation skills. Take all the versions and combine into one ULTIMATE version. I miss my Pa's version on FRUA.
