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Did anyone play these games?

If you don't know what the heck I'm even talking about, it's a pretty lengthy and varied series of roleplaying games from the 80s and 90s. I've been playing them since I was pretty young, though my attention was mostly focused on Ultima 7, which I finally beat yesterday for the first time in my life. It's a very large and deep game, where every person and object can somehow be interacted with and you can totally ignore the central plotline if you feel like. Sometimes it does a really awful job of giving the player necessary information, but I think it's still one of the greatest RPGs ever made, and modern ones can learn from it. For example, it doesn't just claim to have characters who have a "daily routine" of sitting in a bar for 12 hours and then sitting at home for 12 hours; characters work, make food, eat, and sleep while you're not even looking. The game world is even self-enclosed and circular, how cool is that? And it's got pretty cool party dynamics, too; you can have up to seven companions, and they all have to eat and stuff. It makes you feel like a real adventurer. Plus the dialogue is all quite well-written and funny, in authentic Elizabethan English to boot.

Anyway. Enough rambling. There are some other really good entries in the series, too... and here are some screenshots below in case names don't ring a bell but pictures do.

Ultima VII Part 2: Serpent's Isle
(http://pix.www.idnet.com/blogimages/si_345.png)

Ultima IV
(http://www.abandonia.com/files/games/25548/Ultima%20IV:%20Quest%20of%20the%20Avatar_5.png)

Ultima V
(http://www.abandonia.com/files/games/843/Ultima%20V%20-%20Warriors%20of%20Destiny_1.png)

Ultima VI
(http://www.abandonia.com/files/games/95/Ultima%206%20-%20The%20False%20Prophet_7.png)

Ultima VIII
(http://games.softpedia.com/screenshots/Ultima-8-Pagan-Windows-Patch_1.jpg)

So... did anyone play these games? Which was your favorite, if you did? Or did you hate them all? Stuff like that.

Oh, and if they look like something you might be into, they're all Abandonware (save the last, 3D installment, but it sort of blows anyway), and can be found here: http://www.abandonia.com/

Do Ultima Underworld games count? Because I played a lot of those.

Yeah, those count, though I've never actually played them myself.

Ultima underworld games are tits  :handthumbsupL: :beer:
                                                          \ /

Ultima Underworld is really interesting to play from a "historical" perspective. I knew about it for a long time, but only actually played it this summer, when I was on a DOSBox binge. Seeing how heavily it has influenced virtually every modern (western) RPG was really eye-opening. I had countless "so this is where they got that from" moments. For instance, the first two Elder Scrolls games are pretty much straight ripoffs, even to the point of using the exact same control scheme with the different "modes".

Interestingly enough, I didn't get that same feeling from Ultima VII. I guess UUW has aged better.  :shrug2:

Well, I played it quite a lot when I was young.

Also, personally I find The Elder Scrolls games to not be very enjoyable at all; hack and slash gets old, the environments are repetitive, and the story and writing are pretty god-awful. I'm not really an "RPG fan" outside of, like, Bioware RPGs, and I think those are sort of spiritual successors to Ultima IV-VII - party-based, story-heavy, yet not very linear.

I've only played Ultima VII, but remember really liking it.

And I just noticed your avatar is from Fate of Atlantis! Yay!

Well, Oblivion is pretty bland, but Daggerfall and Morrowind are ace. I've only played Arena for 15 minutes, so I can't really say an

I'm not a big fan of party-based RPGs. For instance I could never bring myself to enjoy Baldur's Gate 2 (despite trying numerous times). Micromanaging six characters and juggling equipment is tedious. Also, I'm an "atmosphere over story" sort of person and UO has that in buckets in spite of its age.

Probably has something to do with the fact that I grew up exclusively on consoles. My family didn't actually have a computer until something like 2001.

Probably. :D For me it's totally backwards; PC games were my main entertainment as a child (other than reading books and running around outside) so stuff like micromanaging characters with a mouse is second nature to me - even, I hate to say it, fun. :( I couldn't really tell you why.

But as for atmosphere, I think Baldur's Gate II and Ultima VII are both quite dense with it. And I'll admit to enjoying Morrowind somewhat, though the writing totally bites. :D I liked the exploration aspect, and the general drab, foggy feeling of the countryside... though the fogginess likely had more to do with rendering issues than a purposeful attempt by the developer to add atmosphere.

You must be a PC gamer too. :D You're the first to recognize it.

I remember playing Ultima for the NES.

These days, I tend to read a lot about them for the whole you-get-punished-for-doing-bad-things dilemma it added to video games.  Like, you could rob a guy by not paying for items, but then you wouldn't be able to finish the game...

Ultima VII (BG, not so much SI) was the greatest game ever conceived by man.
Best music, best graphics, everything just worked. Sure the party AI blew but once you got a bedroll and equipped everyone to the max, that's just a minor issue.
My biggest complaint was that using magic was too much of a pain. I still need to try to play through the game again as a mage though. It would be a nice challenge.

Finished Ultima Underworld II, played a lot of Ultima VII but I think I got hung up on some bug. There was a very nice discussion of the early Ultima games on the Quarter to Three podcast recently: http://www.quartertothree.com/fp/2009/12/02/qt3-games-podcast-gordon-cameron-and-the-ultima-series/

I remembered the magic being difficult to use too, but I played it through just a few days ago and found that that wasn't the case; it's just that the game doesn't explain your stats too clearly. If you play the Exult version, which is the new, Windows-compatible version that folks have been working on for a while, stats and stuff are a little clearer - you don't have to open up windows to find out how many hit points your characters have, and stuff like that.

And personally I found SI to be pretty awesome too. :/ My only complaint is it has fewer characters... it's still quite large and nonlinear, and the storyline is in my opinion easier to follow and a little bit cooler even. Or maybe it's just that I was thrilled to find out, like five years after getting into The Black Gate, that there was a whole other game for me to play. :D

Yeah, that's unfortunately the bane of the series; most of the installments are pretty glitchy. If you have a lot of saves, though, it's not too bad, except for the game-killing glitches. :)  Exult (http://exult.sourceforge.net/) fixes all of those, though... and replaces them with some new, mildly perplexing bugs that didn't exist in the original. But I'll take mildly perplexing over game-crashing.

Another thing I forgot to mention was that U7 had one of the coolest fonts ever. It added a lot to the atmosphere.

Ultima 8: Pagan, the story is awesomely handsome and badass.
And for a change, it doesn't happen in Britannia.

I loved that game when I was a kid (it came with my Sound Blaster 16 bundle), and I loved it as an adult (when I finally won the damn game)

Also it's the first with orthographic projection instead of isometric/top-down as previous Ultimas.

Regards

(http://games.softpedia.com/screenshots/Ultima-8-Pagan-Windows-Patch_1.jpg)
 :-*

I appreciate Ultima 8, only because it became the precursor to the Crusader games. Other than that,  :shrug2:

I dig that one. I never got very far, but I totally intend to play it through at some point.

I did miss the party aspect, though. A lot. But it's still a very good game. It's totally different from all the others. And definitely a more worthy finale than Ascension (which we're all pretending didn't exist, right? Or is that just me?).

I constantly keep hearing it's terrible but I never hear why.

Ascension? Where to begin? Buggy, horrible early-3D graphics, gameplay mechanics equal to early 3D platformers (scratch that, worse), etc... I actually shelled out for the Dragon edition (the only special edition game I bought) and could only play through the first 3 hours or so (until you meet that boy who threw fireballs) before giving up in disgust and disappointment.

On another note, I need learn to use less parentheses.

U6/7/8/9 all substantially drift away from the previous games by giving the world a much more detailed and concrete presentation, while simultaneously decreasing the perceived scope and openness. (I recall a UDIC thread - remember UDIC? - in which the physical size of the game world in each Ultima was estimated, with the conclusion being that the world was shrinking in each sequel.) In 8 this progression leads the game to become an action-oriented one with minimal stats and a more-or-less linear plot. 9 "improves" on this with badly-implemented 3D, among other things. The mythology of Ultima also got lost along the way.

I find 4 the easiest to play. 1-3 and 5 all slam you pretty hard if you don't know what you're doing, and from 6 on, all the detail and interactivity becomes a major distraction from feeling like I'm actually on a quest and progressing and having adventures - instead I'm baking bread, or searching dozens of identical houses to find somebody, or manipulating the world's physics so as to climb to inaccessible areas, or something else along those extremely unadventurous lines. It's my biggest complaint about most computer RPGs from that period to now - they became a mush of pointless, cumbersome interactivity that doesn't satisfy me at all. Games more like Darklands, where the gameplay is mostly streamlined, are my favorites, overall.

That said, I kind of like 6 because it sits uneasily on that borderline between the new style and the old style. 7 has good parts, too.

Hey, don't be hatin' on early 3D platformers. Mario 64 and Banjo-Kazooie are among my all-time faves.  ;)
But I see what you're getting at.  :lol:

Anyway, Ultima Online hasn't been discussed at all here. I knew someone who was obsessed with it (he was a dick) and even claimed to be earning money from items etc. He even gave "lent" me one of his multiple accounts so I could test the game, but I didn't enjoy it at all. I didn't really know what to do and there seemed to be a general lack of other "noobs". My general dislike for MMOs didn't help either I guess, even though at that time I was still trying to convince myself I liked them.  :lol:

Ascension also has really, really bad voice acting. And the glitches... oh, the glitches. I liked how the Avatar always gesticulated wildly, though.

@Triplefox - I... well, I don't understand. :D I think the feeling of being on an adventure is enhanced by, like, actual details, like feeding characters and graphics and things like that. I don't think it's reasonable to expect every game to be the same as the one before it... the ones you like still exist, but I think the series is great because it tried a ton of different things, and most of them worked pretty well.

And typing in keyboard commands isn't cumbersome? I mean, I like the early games, but I think you're doing the later ones a bit of a disservice. And besides, the interactivity lets you play the game in a lot of different ways. Sure, it's not "streamlined", but maybe that isn't the point of games like that? In fact, the main appeal of the Ultima series for me was that they were far from "streamlined", and were instead rich with detail. I like detail. I mean, streamlined is nice too, but that's not why I play the Ultima games, and I think one has to respect how rich and well-conceived the later installments are in terms of their level of detail. You can really get lost in them. I mean, yeah, the worlds got smaller... but I say a small world packed with detail is better than, or at least as good as, a massive, Elder-Scrolls-type word that's immense, yet immensely empty.

Oh, and please don't be afraid to tell me if I'm being a jackass. I'll gladly shut up if that's the case. :D I don't want to seem like I'm picking a fight.

Not a jackass at all.  :lol:

I think the reason why I don't think games like U7 and BG2 are "atmospheric" is their incredible stat-heaviness (this is true for Elder Scrolls I guess). I feel like the abundance of stats and numbers and the games' overly strict adherence to the set of rules that governs their gameplay (there are hardly any awesome "unique" events, monsters or items in Morrowind, for example) take away from the immersion. Instead of immersing yourself in the game's world, you immerse yourself in its rules and start playing in a horribly "rationalistic" way. That's my experience at least. If I feel like playing that way, I'd rather pick up a complex strategy game like Civilization, Settlers or Europa Universalis.

In terms of "immersive" RPGs, I prefer games like Gothic or The Witcher, where the stats add depth but ultimately take a backseat to the world and atmosphere.  :)

The story in U8 can be linear but if you're in the right place at the wrong time... you get little pieces of the story that you don't get if you mechanically follow "orders"
(Like watching sacrifices, hearing covenants...etc.)

Oh. I like strategy games. If I wanted to play a pure action game, I wouldn't play BG2. :D When I say I find it atmospheric, I mean the locales and stuff are atmospheric - the gameplay obviously isn't. I dunno. "Rationalism" in RPGs feels good to me; my favorite games in the genre all have elements of strategy.

Incidentally I'm better at them than any strategy games I've played, maybe because they engage me a lot more than RTSes. :lol:

Ah well, it's two different mindsets. We could discuss this endlessly.  :lol:

Actually, that is exactly what endears me to U7 so much. It's the fact that I have options in the game world besides moving into enemies to "attack" and endlessly clicking "advance" through dialogue trees. Ever use the spittoon in U7? Read some books? (although everyone does have the same books) I rather liked baking bread, and other things depending on what ingredients you used. In fact, I wished there were more things you could cook in the game.
Maybe I'm just sick, but I also really liked the free-form inventory system. I was thrilled when UO kept that, although the higher resolution made it more painful.
As far as stuff you need to actually do to progress through the game, like combat, I think U7 is far more streamlined than most RPGs. No transition to a different "battle mode" but a spontaneous melee that you can pause at any time if you like. Fleeing is as intuitive as it gets, and death generally isn't too much of a pain. The interface in general is pretty intuitive since you just drag and drop or double click stuff. I'm amazed they had that kind of interface down back in the time they did. There were some "hunt the pixel" puzzles but I didn't really find any of them that aggravating.
RPGs usually motivate me into finishing through increasingly elaborate loot and skills. On the other hand, you're likely to be fully equipped less than halfway through U7. The only things to look forward to "skill wise" would be spells, but I rarely even used them. Yet I was still compelled to finish, partly because of the story and partly because being in that representation of Britannia didn't seem so sterile to me, like a stage or movie set that only exists to fool the eye and provide nothing of substance.
For the record, I've played through Ultima 1-3 (after 7) and only because of a perverse sense of "duty". But just from playing the games I didn't really get any sense of story or adventure. Maybe I needed to have read the manuals beforehand. (I had the ultima collection so no manuals) More likely, I was probably spoiled. I couldn't stomach that kind of gameplay any more so I haven't played any more of the series past it.

How is U7 stat heavy? As far as I know there are only 6-7 stats total (including HP/MP). I barely paid attention to stats while playing the game. I don't know what goes on in the background code wise, but I never felt I had to juggle stats to enjoy or succeed.

Yeah, I didn't even know how the stats worked until this most recent runthrough. They're pretty well in the background.  :lol: Knowing how they work helps, though, so you can know when to train your guys and what to train them in, and stuff like that.

BG2 is admittedly stat heavy, though.

And yeah, I like those elements of U7 a lot too; they're my favorite parts of it. I even have become perversely fond of the "hunt the pixel" parts. :D

I'm not a common poster, but I had to. I absolutely love the Ultima games - the PC ones, that is, the console ports were mostly crap. Well, crap in the sense of not being Ultima-y enough. I should know, I think I have all Ultimas released for a Nintendo console. I'd say more, but I think people have already said what I would. Besides, my typing is loud enough to wake my sleeping roommate.
Although I do have fond memories of playing Ultima 1 and killing things with the cannons from my galleon... and then upgrading to a spaceship.
I learned to play them from my grandparents, the same people that taught me to play all my video games. But what I really enjoyed was both the utility aspect (how most things could be used, even is using them was useless) and the static world. The lore and map built upon itself. Playing just, say Ultima 6 won't do. You need to start with at least 4.

Say what? Your grandparents play Ultima? Can I meet your grandparents?

Ultima 1 was the best for that..  no story hints at all, unless you happened to give a really large tip to a barkeep, in which case there was a small chance that the barkeep would belch out a several-paragraph wall of text labelled "The Quest of Ultima", which basically told you the backstory and what you were supposed to be doing to win the game (in fact, it explicitly said that if you defeated the particular bad guy, you would complete the quest "and win the game".  Fourth wall?  What fourth wall?   :shrug2: )

Far more frequently, though, the barkeep would just say something brief and not particularly useful, such as "This is a great game!" or "You had best watch the wench".

On the other hand, how many fantasy RPGs are there where you can sneak behind a shop counter and steal a "phazor"?  

Pew pew!

Aren't all Might and Magic games like that? And Wizardry 6-8?

Unless I'm horribly mistaken about what a "phazor" might be, that is...

Erm... I think you should go and play the following games a bit as well:

Wizardry
Alternate Reality: The Dungeon
The Bard's Tale
Might & Magic
and most of all Dungeon Master

Those games, especially the last one, all preceeded Ultima Underworld and defined the western CRPGs more, imo.

PS. This is still how my old room at my parents house looks like:

(http://www.eobet.com/temp/ultimaiii_b.jpg)

DS. My dad completed Ultima IV and kept extensive notes about the entire progress... I was a bit too young at the time to finish it, but I made it more than halfway through. Still the one of the best games in existance. The amazing thing is that it's not about killing something, finding treasure or rescuing some princess. The goal is actually to read a book. And you have to use your brain to get to that point. Sadly unheard of these days.

I know all of these.  :lol:
What I meant with UUW was the immersive "world simulation" and sophisticated npc interaction (granted, U7 is probably older). Most modern RPGs are still almost the exact same in that respect.

Also, Richard Garriott is the ultimate nerd. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lIoGLAfqf6w (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lIoGLAfqf6w)

 :beer: :beer: :beer: :beer: :beer: :beer: :beer: :beer: :beer: :beer: :beer: :beer:

Congrats dude! My memory is playing tricks on me 'cause Ultima 7 seems now shorter than it was... probably just me. I remember a friend showing it to me back in the day, and I was all "do want" and rushing back to home to find fourteen 5.14 floppies... which was... like a lot. After that was pretty much going to ultima 7, serpent isle, underworld, U8, and U6. The 5 & 4, played them, dunno 5-6 years ago, after discovering the interwebs. Ahhh thanks for stirring pleasing memories  :gentleman:

Ultima VI is my personal favorite, but that's probably because the was the first Ultima I'd played besides the NES Ultima Exodus.  I loved the vast world and fleshed out characters.  Most of all I loved that you could pick up just about everything you could see and carry it off to your own secret base in the mountains!  Mine had walls made of treasure chests, floors tiled with flour sacks, and dozens of candelabras to keep it glowing 24/7!

Just last week I replayed Savage Empire, which takes place on a different world in the same Ultima universe and makes use of the U6 engine.  If you haven't already, check it out!  It's not nearly as in depth as U6 but that also means it's a lot more straightforward.  There's still lots to explore and discover, but you can beat it in a single day!

(http://img696.imageshack.us/img696/8968/savagebront.png)

(http://img138.imageshack.us/img138/2333/savagetyran.png)

Martian Dreams also uses the same U6 engine, but I never really played it.  Has anyone else?

Sadly I never made it all the way through U7 or SI, but I got pretty close on both of them.

I love Ultima: Exodus. It's pretty slow and archaic by today's standards but I think it has kind of a goofy charm.