Ultima I

The Good

Ultima 1 is a product of the stone age of computer gaming, back in the day when your typical game developer was usually some kid or early 20-something who was writing a game for the fun of it and maybe to share it with a few friends. The industry was so primitive that when Richard Garriott finished this game, he sold them in ziplock bags and with a cheaply printed manual, in a computer store where he worked and was reliant entirely on word-of-mouth to boost his sales.

I don't think he expected it to be nearly as successful as it was, hence explaining the somewhat bizaare setting. Anyways, enough of this meandering! On to the review!

Sosaria is under the evil control of the wizard Mondain, a man so evil that no one in Sosaria can beat him, so they call forth some dude from Austin, Texas known only as the Weirdo in an attempt that maybe he might go Cowboy on his heiny. OK, so it wasn't exactly established at that time, but it laid some great foundation work so that the 'Stranger from another world' became the Avatar from Earth in later games. I always found concepts like that intriguing because it easly allowed the player to 'become' the hero and envision themselves as the ones who were called to this world to save it.

The game itself, like many games from the 80's, required a lot of imagination from the player. The isn't particularly long or demanding on the player, especially if they know how to to raise their statistics and get the most powerful weapons in the game... all of which can be done almost at the beginning of the game, allowing for a super powered player to plow through the enemies. Performing quests for the kings in the game in hopes of getting the important items to finish the game can range from the fairly silly to the mundane, and doesn't do much in terms of advancing the plot, but it does allow for some excuse to explore the dungeons in the world, which would otherwise be fairly unnecessary.

There is something else about this game that sets it apart from most other RPG series (save for perhaps the Might and Magic series) was it's combination of pure sci-fi and fantasy. While the world appears to be your standard fantasy setting, there are actually space shuttles and flying cars available, and the most powerful weapons in the game are blasters and phaser pistols! Also there's a part of the game that involves you going into outspace to shoot down TIE-fighters from Star Wars (though later retcon made it clear that they're actually Kilrathi from the Wing Commander series). You need to do this because a princess tells you she won't help you unless you're a space ace!

Just imagine if Ultima was a movie, and up to that point, it had been a generic fantasy movie... until someone says that you need to suit up, fly a space fighter, and blow up star destroyers. The sheer awesomeness of that would explode the heads of anyone in the auidence! The best part of it is, there's no segue between the fantasy and sci-fi, they just exist side to side as if there's nothing wrong or off with that. This fact does set Ultima apart from any other game even today, which you'd think had been surpassed by now, but hasn't, save for the Might and Magic series.

The Bad
So what's wrong with this game? Well, there is one minorly wrong thing with it... you're supposed to be a hero, but at the same time, you're required to do things that are very decidedly unheroic things, like murdering jesters for keys to liberate princesses, and then killing the guards who come after you at that point. While almost every RPG game today has a morality system, it just seems off that this game requires you to be decidedly evil when you're supposed to be a good guy.

The towns and castles could have used more interactivity with the ordinary people, but other than that, the game really didn't have much flaws as compared to the following game in the series

The Bottom Line
The Ultima series, along with Origin systems games and Sierra Online games, basically represent the birth and evolution of PC games, and for anyone who wants to see that history in action should play this game the other games in the series.

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 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.