Ultima II: The Revenge of the Enchantress...

The Good
The manual was an interesting read. I liked the overall concept. Space and/or time travel could have been really cool if they pulled it off...

The Bad
It took me forever to get a complete copy of this game. And then to acquire the neccessary patches. When the game finally got running...I had all these expectations. And I was sourly let down. I could have endured this game...if the food management would have been more realistic and all the tiles for seperate time periods didn't look exactly the same. I guess there wasn't enough story in U2 to enthrall me.

The Bottom Line
If you're a die-hard Ultima afficionado, it's worth a look. A short one.

The Good
This game is… interesting, to say the least. The whole concept behind it is unique to this very day, and given this game came out in 1982, that’s saying a lot. Time travel combined with a villainess unleashing a horde of mythical monsters on the real world and throwing all the timelines of the world out of whack sounds like it has a lot of potential, and if this game were remade today it would probably kick ass.

On top of that, you’re not just restricted to our world, but can visit every single planet in our solar system, including the ex-planet Pluto and the mysterious planet X. Like I said, the concept behind this game is very imaginative, but that’s all that’s really good about it.

The Bad
The bad… Ok, this going to be a two parter, the first part being the first time I actually played and completed it, and the second time after I saw the movie that inspired it and the whole moongate concept: Time Bandits.

The game is very large, but also very confusing. There’s very little in terms of direction for the player, when I first played it way back in the day (back in 1998 when I first got the Ultima Collection CD), I had not the faintest idea what to do. Even after reading the manual (which was very, very well written and definitely thought provoking) I still found it very hard to navigate my way through the world and just survive, let alone follow the plot to complete the game.

Speaking of which, there just didn’t seem to be much of a plot as there was an objective to defeat Minax. The clues are far and few between amid the mindless one-liners of the denizens of the world, and most everything is based on luck instead of skill, such as the only person who can increase your stats, and he does this when given a large amount of gold. Speaking of gold, it seems that a majority of the game is focused on just that, getting money. Even the walkthrough on the Ultima collection CD outright says that 80% of the game is just gathering gold, so you’re going to spending a lot of time just attacking monsters to get some gold, and to try to get those items that you need in the game, which brings me to another negative point about it.

There’s no indication as to what the many items in the game are! And there’s a lot of them, coins, tassels, brass buttons, ankhs. Hell, I still don’t know what some of them do, and the manual doesn’t tell anything about them. I was a complete loss as to what they did until I went through the walkthrough on the CD and the guides online, and by then I was basically fed up with the game and on the verge of quitting, but being an Ultima fan, I felt the need to complete this game at least once.

The other problem is the massive dead space found in the game. It’s a big game, with many maps and many dungeons and towers, but most of them are useless. The only reason why they’re there is to provide the player with yet another way of gathering money, which can also be obtained in the outside world. It would have helped if perhaps some of those towers contained items at the end of them, like blue tassels or brass buttons or keys, but no, they’re just for decoration and needless busy work. The planets are also equally useless, as you only need to go on one planet in the entire game.

That’s the first part of my criticism, the game on its own. Now comes part 2. I heard that many concepts of this game were taken from the movie Time Bandits, a 1981 sci-fi movie. I watched it recently and it was a good movie, and it completely changed my perspective on Ultima 2. The game was always the odd one out since it involved such bizarre concepts as taking place on earth, landing on planets in our solar systems, and time travel to as far back as the dinosaur era.

I didn’t understand why, I don’t think anyone really would understand until you watch Time Bandits (seriously you should, if not only to put this game into context), and realize that this game was basically Time Bandit fanfiction with the whole Ultima angle tossed in because Richard Garriott wanted it to be a part of his game series. The game takes not only the concept of the time portals (which work the same in the movie as they do the game. Little black gates that pop in and out of existence and take people to a different time and place) but also the of the solar system map (featured prominently in the movie and in the game’s manual), and even the Time of Legends (where you defeat the evil Minax) is explicitly mentioned both in the movie and in the game. The game wasn’t so much Ultima as it was Time Bandits with a twist… you’re a time bandit running from a supreme being, but a time traveler using those moongates to defeat Evil… oops, I mean Minax (watch the movie, you’ll understand). The only thing that makes it from being a complete Time Bandits remix is that Lord British is in the game, and the manual explicitly states that Minax is Mondain’s ex-lover.

The Bottom Line
This game is the odd one out, it isn't the worst Ultima game (that dubious honor goes to Ultima 9) largely because because in 1982, the Ultima series had yet to find its direction and purpose (don't forget that Richard Garriott made Ultima 1 to 3 almost completely single handed, with Akalabeth programmed on a computer in Richard's high school for Pete's sake! This was the stone age of computer gaming and there was plenty of space of experimentation and trial and error.

That being said, should people play Ultima 2? I would say only if you consider yourself an Ultima fan, because there really isn't that much else to it, or if you've watched Time Bandits and you want to see how it might have been if it was turned into a game.

In fact, if you want to play this game, I would strongly recommend watching Time Bandits anyway, at least you'll be in the mindset as to where this game came from and the concept of the moongates which play such a vital role in the remainder of the series.

The Good
A lot of reviewers tend to look down on Ultima II as the black sheep of the series. But when you consider what was available at the time, its actually a pretty good advancement over the previous game. Improvements from the previous Ultima include :

Gigantic World - The game world is huge, the towns and dungeons are huge, and there are several time zones and planets to explore. Getting to those planets and some places in the time zones is a real challenge.

Faster Gameplay - Akalabeth and Ultima used Applesoft BASIC and Atari BASIC (for Ultima's 8-bit port to the Atari computers) for most, if not all of the games. Travel in Ultima was ridiculously slow, as you can literally see the screen refresh itself with every step. Dungeoneering is an exercise in frustration as the slow refresh rate leads to lost keystrokes and extra hits from the monsters. Everything feels faster.

More Detailed Graphics - While many of the tiles in this game were reused from the last one, the graphical level of quality has improved. Water is now animated, each character class has a unique icon, and overworld enemies have real shapes. Dungeon enemies now are shown in color instead of wireframe. The towns no longer are in a smaller perspective than the overworld.

A Sense of Direction - In the original Ultima, the player practically figure out what to do by spending hard earned gold at the taverns and figuring out to do quests from the Kings. The manual was very sparse, it did not even inform the player that there were multiple continents that needed to be explored. Nor did it identify that the object of the game was to defeat a bad guy. Ultima II gives the player a backstory and a cloth map with the time gates delineated.

More Lively World - In Ultima, you could only transact with Kings and Merchants. In Ultima II, you can actually talk to townspeople. While most can only spout a canned line, there are some in each town which can provide you a clue or some amusement. They also move around, except for guards (unless you kill someone in town).

Lack of Disk Swapping - In this game, you will not need to swap disks often. After the initial Program / Player swap, you will not swap again until you lift off from Earth.

Packaging - This is the first Ultima game to come in a box and a cloth map. The previous Ultima had come in a ziplock bag without a map. Unlike today's games which may include a cloth map, Ultima's maps are actually useful and necessary for gameplay.

The Bad
Bugs - This game has two very nasty bugs. One of which is that, in the original release versions for the Apple II, Atari 8-bit and IBM PC, it is impossible to raise your strength level. The second one is that your stats, like HP, Food and Gold, can "roll-over" if you earn more than 9999 in a stat. So if you have 9950 food and buy 50 more, you are dead.

Unforgiving Death - If you die in this game, the game will force you to restart. It writes your death to your player disk, forcing you to make another. You can die from lack of food, bad luck or failing to land your ship properly.

Lucky Items and Thieves - You can buy weapons and armor in this game, but all items, including useful ones, are randomly acquired upon defeating enemies in the overland. For example, one special item is a Blue Tassel, which you can use to board any pirate ship. You need to board pirate ships in this game. But if a thief randomly steals your Tassel, you cannot board another pirate ship unless you find one again.

Combat Inequality - It seems like, no matter what kind of weapons and armor you acquire, you can never really carve your way through even the weaker monsters like Orcs and Thieves.

Inability to Reset the Player Disk - On the Apple, Atari 8-bit and IBM versions, you had to create a new Player Disk each time you began a new game. There was no utility to reset the maps or the character, so if you mistakenly used your original Player Disk, you were out of luck if you saved to disk. The C64 version does include a reset utility.

The Bottom Line
Ultima II is quite an improvement over its predecessor, and it is only fair to judge the game against what else was available in 1982-1983 and its predecessor. To judge it against the Ultima I: The First Age of Darkness 1986 remake is not appropriate. It had little competition, as the second Wizardry scenario did not drastically improve on the first and the rest were Rogue-like games.