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[Seth]

I was reading this blog post and it got me a little interested in the Ultima series.  I've never played them and I was wondering what people here thought about the games.  Are they worth getting into nowadays for anything other than curiosity's sake?  I heard good things about Ultima 7 but should I just jump in and try Ultima IV?

[Brother Android]

That series is very close to my heart. If you only play one of them, play Ultima VII; it is one of the best RPGs ever made, and has a deeper world and characters than many modern RPGs (plus some fun glitches if that's your scene). Great storyline, great party dynamics, great realism, great graphics, great exploration. The earlier installments have less broad appeal, since they still retain text-based elements, but I think they are good too. V and VI are probably more accessible than the predecessors, although I guess if you are a player of roguelikes the first few installments will be pretty comfortable to you. Ultima VIII is interesting; I like it better than a lot of people. Ultima IX I think most people, including me, would prefer to forget about.

Also, that article was interesting. It made me think about games as compared to literature - old works of literature just can't be approached from a modern standpoint if one is to correctly understand them, which is why we teach classes on them, ideally - equipping people to understand them. I guess I grew up with Ultima and games that in general are pretty abstruse in their workings, but someone growing up in the last couple of console generations probably would find them puzzling, because they sort of assume the player is coming from the gaming context of 1988, just like Dante assumed his readers were coming from the context of 14th century Italy or whatever.

[KM]

I liked Ultima IV better than VII, but my brother really like VII.

[Cthulhu32]

Ultima for the Gameboy is all you need - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dHQSpYYU2OQ

The series lacks a lot, but it is still in a lot of peoples hearts when they went online with it in 1997.

[adam_smasher]

I've tried to play through Ultima IV maybe four or five times...the first few times I found it just as frustrating as the students in the blog post did. By now I've got a fairly good handle on the experience, but it still hasn't aged well - combat, in particular, is just too time-consuming and tedious as your party starts filling up (but it's never challenging, which only makes it more irritating). Jumping around through moongates and solving puzzles and cross-referencing the "feelies" is still really fun, and on a purely conceptual/narrative level it's surely one of the boldest and bravest and most worthwhile games ever...but man is it a slog.

[KM]

I figured out how to autogrind in Ultima IV NES. Find a place to stand, and then tape down the A button. Come back and check every once in a while as you will die. This worked really well for me until one day a mod caught and banned me.

[adam_smasher]

Haha, what?

I don't know about the NES Ultima IV, but in the computer version, grinding was entirely besides the point. You could very quickly and naturally max out your combat strength. In fact, a trick like that would be disastrous in the "real" U4, because you'd be accidentally slaughtering innocent creatures, causing your virtue to plummet. Combat is also more involved than just pressing A, because you need to position yourself, aim your weapons, chase after fleeing monsters... it's like an ultra-simplified Final Fantasy Tactics, or something.

[KM]

The NES version had an autobattle button. That pretty much did it all. :D

[Brother Android]

I've tried to play through Ultima IV maybe four or five times...the first few times I found it just as frustrating as the students in the blog post did. By now I've got a fairly good handle on the experience, but it still hasn't aged well - combat, in particular, is just too time-consuming and tedious as your party starts filling up (but it's never challenging, which only makes it more irritating). Jumping around through moongates and solving puzzles and cross-referencing the "feelies" is still really fun, and on a purely conceptual/narrative level it's surely one of the boldest and bravest and most worthwhile games ever...but man is it a slog.

I'd say Ultima VII does not suffer from this. With the exception of the pretty frustrating inventory system and the fact that it doesn't inform you very well about how close your characters are to death and things like that, it's aged really well and could even be vaguely compared to Bioware RPGs of the last dozen years. Also, the health/stat related issues are dealt with if you use the Exult version, which is a pretty stable Windows/Linux/Mac port of the original DOS game (which is too finicky to run in DOSBox, at least as far as I've been able to work out).

You can get them all at Abandonia, in any case, so it can't hurt to give them a try.

[Balrog]

I have fond memories of staying up late as a kid playing Ultima Exodus on my NES. I found out recently that there is a Japanese remix album that has some slammin' tracks on it. You can download it here: http://www.ultima.rabbitslair.de/ultima3_mix.htm

[KM]

We actually have a type of oil at my jorb that's called 'Ultima 100'. 

[C.A. Silbereisen]

Dated interface aside, Ultima Underworld is also worth giving a try. It's still incredibly immersive and pretty much the direct precursor to a lot of modern-day WRPGs, most notably Elder Scrolls.

[Katsew]

Although it's often looked down upon, I really liked Ultima VIII. The magic systems are really clever and if you don't want to follow the quest, you can treat it like a GTA style sandbox.

If you just want to try the series, a lot of people consider Ultima VII and VII part 2 (Serpent Isle) the pinacle. They're very good games and you can (pretty much) run them on a modern system easily using Exult: http://exult.sourceforge.net/

It's worth trying the older ones even if just out of curiousity. A lot of the things you'd expect in a modern game just aren't there - no hand holding at all. They also have an unusual mix of magic and tech from what I remember.

[adam_smasher]

Only the first two, really - they featured a spaceships, time machines, and completely incongruous Star Trek/Star Wars references (if I recall correctly).

But the first three Ultima games are pretty much curios these days - hugely influential, but simplistic, hollow, and quite poorly designed - a lot like the early Final Fantasies, actually. IV is where the series really came into its own, developed its sense of style and personality, and began having something to say.

The more I think about it, the more I'd like to see an only slightly modernized version of Ultima IV; even an auto battle feature or something would help it immensely.

[KM]

IV had an auto-battle feature in the NES version. o_O

[C.A. Silbereisen]

The NES version has totally crippled dialog options though.

[KM]

Like DQ?

[PsySal]

My vote is actuall for Ultima VI, which is maybe my favorite game of all time. Ultima VII is also fantastic but I think VI is larger, more interesting, and more cohesive. Both are great however and are in many ways similar. I don't know about Ultima IV or V as I haven't played them.

What made Ultima VI so interesting to me was just the sheer scale of it. You really cannot imagine how large and full of things the world is, quests often have you trekking to distant islands to search for things based on very specific clues, and there are just so many secret passages/dungeons hidden in interesting places that every time you visit a place you can find something new.

Ultima VII is basically a "zoomed in" Ultima VI and in some ways has a better object system (it's on a true isometric 3D grid, whereas U6 is on a 2D grid drawn isometrically.) But in zooming in they lost a lof the sense of scale of U6.

Man I love that game! Okay I'm done my geekout freakout...

[klabelkholosh]

Don't forget the Ultima Worlds of Adventure series, basically two games: Martian Dreams and Savage Empire... they ran on the Ultima VI engine. I remember at the time really enjoying Martian Dreams for being Victorian, steampunk and set on Mars. Really fun and well written games!

[PsySal]

Yeah, the Ultima Worlds of Adventure games were really cool too. It was good to see them use the engine for more than just Ultima VI, too. I played Martian Dreams semi-recently but couldn't figure out what to do! But the intro in that game is just amazing...