Ultima I

The Good
Ultima was the first Ultima game I played, even though that was admittedly in early 2007, some 25 years after its initial release. Since then I've also tried some of the newer incarnations, but this is the only one I actually bothered to finish from start till end. That doesn't mean its the best one of the series however. Perhaps merely that it's the shortest? Or perhaps it felt like an achievement.

The whole game took me only about one and a half day to finish.

The game actually features three types of environments, an over-world, cities and castles, and Dungeons. The dungeons are some kind of 3D mazes displayed in vector graphics which is actually rather interesting to got through. even if all the random encounters are exactly the same. The rest is top down 2D goodness.

Quests come in two types, visiting a signpost or killing a certain monster. Neither are particularly challenging. Visiting a signpost actually means exploring the land and looking at a signpost when you see one, which lacks any skill whatsoever. Killing a monster requires more thought from the player as you have to go in a dungeon and actually find such a monster and kill it. The dungeons can be quite the mazes, so you best keep a map on paper. (real paper, not ingame) And buy enough level up spells to get out of the dungeon quickly. Interestingly you get HP when you kill a monster, so usually I had more hit-points when I left the dungeon than when I went in. Weird. There is also no HP ceiling so you can acquire quasi-infinite HP (until the game crashes because it runs out of memory probably).

The Bad
The interface of Ultima is absolutely horrendous. The field of interface design apparently wasn't in existence back in the early eighties, so each action in the game has its own button on the keyboard. Meaning that there are few buttons on your keyboard that you will not use during the course of the game. Each action in the game is bound to the first letter of the action on the keyboard (such as A for attack, C for cast spell and O for open), which is supposed to make memorizing them easier. But in reality this just makes the controls harder, because they are scattered randomly over the keyboard. And it also means that some actions had to be given arbitrary names so not to use the same letter twice (boarding a horse? klimbing a rope?), which makes it still just as difficult to remember. Usually your action will have to be followed with a direction key, so that the game knows in what direction you want to perform this action. Needless to say it is all more complex than it should be.

Like any self-respecting fantasy hero you can also rescue princesses, there's one in every castle. And the jester has the key. So you kill the jester, but unfortunately there's only 50% chance that it is the right key. Boring? Yes Futile? Definitely!

The Bottom Line
My game started rather awkwardly and left me rather confused for the duration of the game. I thought that the game would be a fantasy game, but the first thing my Dwarven Fighter did was steal from Lord British treasury. Which made him the proud owner of a blaster rifle, a light sword and vacuum suit. I then started grinding loot until I could buy an Aircar and fulfilled my Luke Skywalker fantasies. Later came the space shuttle and fighting sequences with TIE-Fighters, which added to the confusion.

All in all Ultima is quite fun to play, but don't expect anything from it story-wise. Don't expect any challenge either, the game is ridiculously easy, even the final boss is dead before you know it. Just make sure you visited all the signposts and did your share of grinding for all the sci-fi gear. Only play it if you're really interested in seeing the roots of this series. Or wonder what it would be like if Dungeons & Dragons, Lord of the Rings and Star Wars somehow collided to form some kind of Geek Super World.

The Good
This is simple and cute RPG released in prehistoric era of computers. Ultima use all resources available at a time to its limits and wants even more. Unlike Wizardry, there are world that you can see (sketchy, but still) and travel in any direction. The world consists of four islands filled with castles, towns, dungeons and monuments that increase player's stats. There are lots of options you can do like buying a mount (flyer and space shuttle is available!), saving the princess, questing for kings and others. If you want, you can just drink in the bar. The game is not looped to stats, classes and dungeon crawling. Instead it's more adventurous game and fighting is easy and simple.
Also I find saving system is simple and very handy.

The Bad
Some design choices are very odd. Most of the castles and dungeons are useless. There is no point to visit them all.
Space section of the game is kind of ridiculous. It's doesn't fit into fantasy world and looks very starwarsy (it's 1980, I can understand that) Gameplay in space is more spacesim rather than RPG, you have to scan space sectors and fight enemies from first person view. Well, at least they dropped space after second Ultima.

The Bottom Line
Good casual RPG. Oblivion of 1981. (Although I played 1987 version, but they should be almost the same) Works perfectly with DosBox.

The Good
This was Richard Garriott's first attempt at a commercial game and the start of the epic series of Ultima games. The game incorporates a slightly enhanced version of the Akalabeth 3D dungeons with allegedly the worlds first tile graphics to create the outside world and towns.

The world is quite a decent size for such an old game, with four lands to explore. Each land has several towns and a couple of castles. The kings in each castle give you quests to either kill a creature ala Akalabeth, or to find a particular signpost on the map. This means you usually know what you are trying to achieve throughout the game.

The game isn't in a typical fantasy setting and the technology gets more advanced as you progress. Later in the game there is a space combat section where you get to shoot down little tie fighters which adds a bit of variety.

The Bad
I'm not sure all the technology and space section fit into a fantasy rpg although it does give it an epic feel.

Like most RPG's of the time, you spend most of the game raising stats and money. Raising your experience points fighting doesn't raise your stats however. Instead when you visit signposts on a map, your experience in a particular area is raised. You have to visit a different signpost and come back to raise the same stat again, but this means you just travel back and forwards between pairs of posts and raise your stats in no time. This is a bit strange and not my idea of role-playing.

There is no plot to the game and the towns are little more than a series of shops. There is no one to talk to in these towns beyond the storekeepers.

The final battle with Mondain is a bit of an anti-climax. It takes place on a mostly black screen and ends up with you chasing Mondain all over the screen until he stops moving long enough for you to hit him.

The Bottom Line
This was a worthy role playing game for the time. I still enjoyed playing it in 2008, but would have gotten frustrated had it taken longer than a couple of hours to get through the whole thing.