Exodus: Ultima III

The Good
I'm pretty sure I stumbled upon the Ultima: Exodus NES game cartridge by accident as nobody else I knew at the time was playing it. In fact, in my little world, I seemed to be the only one who liked RPGs - everyone else was into the 'shoot-em-ups'! And this was the best of the role-playing genre that I'd seen back then (circa 1990 and it came out in 1987). I loved the story line and the huge number of Spells available to use, and the fact that you were in charge of a 4-character team which you could change up every time you went back in to play. I loved the separate battlefield screens and fighting all those different, very scary-looking monsters with the cool names!

The Bad
Maybe it was just the contrast on our TV set but the whole land of Sosaria seemed extremely 'dark' and foreboding to me (and not just the dungeons and Ambrosia, either!). Of course, this was perfectly suited to the game storyline and everything (and I'm not complaining!); I just hadn't seen anything that looked like it before, graphically. It seemed like a very complex and 'more adult' game to me at the time. Some of the game play and controls (Commands and Spell casting) seemed a little cumbersome but, then again, there was a lot of things you could do in this game, compared to the relative simplicity of other RPGs that were around.

The Bottom Line
I found it to be utterly absorbing, and I'd spend hours and hours at it! Once my character party finally had everything it needed in order to go up against Exodus, I remember delaying doing so for quite a while, just so that the game wouldn't be over!! You'd better have a lot of time on your hands as it is a pretty long game. It takes a lot of time to build up your money and hit points. I would highly recommend it even today, as it is. The days and nights I spent playing it is a great gaming memory for me and I wouldn't change a thing!

The Good
A good storyline with great places to explore.....when I first bought the game way back in the mid 80's I had no idea who the enemy was etc. but the game unravels its storyline as you play. Excellent design and a cool soundtrack (Commodore and Apple only I believe). My first Ultima and I will always have a soft spot for it....:)

The Bad
Well I remember when I first played it way back I had no idea what to do after a while since clues were hard to piece together etc. These days you can find tons of spoilers and walkthroughs though. I won't put down the graphics or other in-game limitations because nothing else featured these innovations in 1983.

The Bottom Line
A foundation for the Ultima series and for many games thereafter. Its a classic RPG which is not too complex since it came out so long ago. It is quite addictive and the music featured (on non-DOS machines) is really catchy.

The Good
This is actually the first CRPG I ever played, so admittedly I may be biased. But I think it was a lot of people's introduction to the world of computer role-playing.

The tile based maps were large, and with towns and an alternate world to explore (Ambrosia) there was a real sense of scope to this thing.

This was the first Ultima game to introduce multiple characters in the party, and combat screens.

There were dozens of character class and race combinations and the spell books were thick and very descriptively written.

The Bad
Character conversations were EXTREMELY limited. In fact, you didn't "talk" with characters, but "transacted" with them - and they replied with a single sentence. The truly frustrating aspect of this game for me was that since EVERY character in the game (except Lord British) only says one thing to you, and once you've heard it there's no need to talk to them again, I assumed Lord British was the same. Of course, transacting with him is the only way to increase your characters' hit points. I had a 63rd level Fuzzy Mage before I found out I could up his stats by talking to the king!

Also, the trouble of travelling to Ambrosia to increase characters' other stats meant that I only made the trip four times, once to increase each of my characters stats in their prime requisites.

And, through no fault of the programmers (but rather the hardware) the IBM version featured none of the glorious music that made the Commodore version (where I first played it) so much fun to listen to.

The Bottom Line
An extremely good RPG for its day, and a true piece of computer gaming history.