Art thou an Ultima fan?

coltyhuxx

coltyhuxx

CAGiversary!
Curious as to what your series favorites were?

I grew up playing Ultima 1 - had a lot of fun trying to kill the king, get the key and rescue the princess. Also, stealing for weapons was pretty epic too. Never got far in that game.

I never played Ultima 2. I hear it had some sort of bizarre space theme?

Ultima 3 was pretty amazing for the time. The first time I saw a moongate was pretty impressive. It also came with a ton of packaged materials (which I still have).

Ultima 4 was outstanding but I still heap the majority of my praise toward Ultima 5(V). Simply, the largest and most deep RPG I had played at that time. In some ways it still holds that title. The little skiffs you could launch from your main ship for lakeside and river exploration (or hasty retreat should your ship be downed). Sailing through the vast oceans, just to see the distant beam of a lighthouse. The magic carpet casually sitting on Lord Britishs' floor. Learning all of the runic alphabet to translate gravestones and random signs. The first time running into a Shadowlord who had taken the town under his influence. The critical importance of learning the passwords for the Resistance and Opression. Being captured by Blackthorn and refusing to give-in (pretty gnarly). And especially following Lord British's doomed voyage in the Underworld, while reading their journal on my lap.

And finally, casting In Vas Gav Corp.

I played six - which was pretty cool - but the graphics were starting to look a little garish (to me) at the point - I prefered the clean look. And then my interest started petering out. Never tried Ultima online or Ascension... although I still would like to try a copy of the latter. Wonder if it works better now that system requirements shouldn't be such an (infamous) issue.
 
I have a great deal of appreciation for the series as well, though I am not as well versed in it as a lot of fans.

Ultima IV
I spent countless hours in this one and believe it deserves all the praise it has earned over the years. And frankly, I have a strong suspicion Squaresoft, at least someone there, was playing Ultima in the early to mid 80s. Because the general gameplay of their early FF games, especially the way the world map, and towns work... is very similar.

Ultima VII
I had a great deal of fun just wandering around doing whatever I wanted when I first got this game, years ago. I especially remember killing off entire towns, even the children! (RARE in games) Once I became bored with that I started playing it for real and liked this one nearly as much as Ultima IV

Ultima VIII
A lot of people dislike this one, out of all the games... and I certainly understand. The gameplay was terribly dumbed down, but aside from all it's negatives - I really liked the atmosphere, story and characters. Oh, and the MUSIC in this one was very good at times. Not as consistently good as the prior games... but definitely some nice stuff.

UO
Uh, yeah... I got it the first week it came out and played it for about 3 years. I went back to it around 2002ish but by then it had been greatly altered, and frankly destroyed with the exit of Origin from it's reins. But at least it did teach me, hehe, eventually how to play MMOs in moderation. Not the easiest of skills, surprisingly.
Oh, and it was really halfass in owing up to the previous games atmosphere and just general feel. But if you just went with it, and filled in the blanks of this MMO with the knowledge from previous games... then it DID feel like you were questing around Brittania.

The rest of the games I have played, but probably only around 10 hours a piece. I really wish playing older PC games wasn't so inconsistent (even with DOSBox running perfectly). It'd be awesome just to pop them into my PC and play them like I would a 20+ year old NES cart. And yeah, there ARE console ports of a lot of these... but... ugh, they're just terrible IMO. Not to even speak of their censorship.
 
I never got a chance to play any of the other Ultima games, I started with UO and was hooked for about 2 years before I ditched it to go play Everquest.

I have actually been thinking recently of picking up UO again, because I have yet to play another game with player housing that awesome :D
 
Yes! I loved the Ultima series! It's pretty much my personal definition of what an RPG is, which makes it hard for me to play any JRPGs. I've played Ultima IV-VII and the Worlds of Ultima, and I briefly touched Ultima VIII. I've never beat most of the later, better graphics Ultimas though because I have a stupid phobia of one of the enemies you often fight.

Ultima IV - First Ultima I ever played. I was really young when I played this, so I had no idea what was really going on, but I still played it a lot. I restarted this game a lot because I wanted to try the different virtues and I had a short attention span. Never sat down long enough to actually beat it.

Ultima V - I played this after the later ones, so I was pretty meh on this one since it was so old by the time I played it.

Ultima VI - Loved the new graphics and loved how large the world seem. I loved that all the characters from the previous Ultimas came back and had faces to them. I played this until I got stuck at a dungeon.

Worlds of Ultima - I think the only games I actually beat :p I loved both Savage Empire and Martian Dreams and the weird spin on the Ultima universe and characters.

Ultima VII (both parts) - This game blew my mind. I loved the new detailed graphics (for its time), how huge the world is, and how you can interact with pretty much anything. The game seemed so open. I also dug the stories. I never beat this game, even though I had a friend help me with a dungeon. (One of the keys to open a door at the end of the dungeon somehow disappeared :( )

Edited to add: btw, I played all these on PC.
 
ive never really played any ultima games..although i just an Ultima game on the NES in a recent auction i won. what should i expect from playing this game.
 
When I was a kid I always wanted to play Ultima IV for the NES. It looked cool.

But my first Ultima was Ultima VII. My brother and I had a lot of trouble reading the map and we couldn't figure out the copy protection to get out of Trinsic, I even bought the hint book in hopes it would help =)

Maybe a year or two later, we finally figured it out and I was addicted. I'd spend entire afternoons baking bread, joining up with people, exploring the towns, doing the mini-quests. I struggled with the main quest though, I had a hard time finding the spellbook.

And then a year or two after that, I got smart enough to actually go through and play the game, only I didn't get the good ending because I didn't figure out that you were supposed to destroy the Black Gate, not walk through it =)

VII part 2 was great as well. I think I got to the last last part but I forgot a piece of equipment somewhere and didn't beat it =) both VII and VII.2 are perfect foils of each other; one free-roaming, one completely linear, both really fun.

VIII was huge disappointment in comparison. On my own I got as far as starting the Necromancer's quest but it was so confusing. I did eventually beat it with a helping hand from a strategy guide.

UO was next. I played in the beta and I just wanted to be a humble old blacksmith. Well, the line for the forge was mega long and it took an hour just to get from the front door to the forge. When I played the real game, people kept killing my donkey so I just quit.

I played VI, couldn't really get into it, I just kept dying. Couldn't get into V at all. IV, I eventually beat on the NES although I feel the PC version is soooo much better. Couldn't get into III, II seemed way too hard. But I did beat U1 =)
 
the NES games are very censored from what I understand so i wouldn't expect as good of quality as if you played it on the pc.

my father played these while I was growing up .. I am fairly certain that he enjoyed 7 or 8 the best .. some of the best RPGs of all time according to him (he plays all the PC RPGs.. his next favorites are the Baldur's gate/neverwinter nights games)
 
It's a terrible shame that Tabula Rasa could stand up to the tradition of other Richard Garriott classics (namely Ultima). I had such wonderful hopes for that one. :(
 
[quote name='kainzero']I'd spend entire afternoons baking bread,[/QUOTE]Hah, me too! I also enjoyed changing diapers and tossing used diapers at my party!
 
[quote name='judyjudyjudy']Hah, me too! I also enjoyed changing diapers and tossing used diapers at my party![/quote]
I cooked so much bread at one point that the game crashed when I tried to sell it to the baker =)

My older brother, well, he was different. He killed the baker, then baked enough bread to cover the entire store and the baker's body with it.

I think at one point I tried to use the used diapers as a real weapon but it didn't really work out. By the time I caught up to the fleeing enemies they would just turn around and hit me back.

I also loved Drake / Dragon hunting in Destard and bringing back loads of gems for tons of money...
 
Well the only Ultima's I've played are
Akalabeth - When I tried playing it too fast (I didn't use SlowMo)
Ultima IV - Same as above, only tried it because it was free on a disc I got with a mag.
Ultima VII - I got the combo pack (the classic collection that EA put out) and played it to death, though I don't think I ever got far in the story.
Ultima VIII - I liked this. Sure it was dumbed down a bit, but I thought it was fun.
Ultima Online - I got it not long after it came out and quit after the first expansion came out. Then I started playing again after the samurai expansion came out, and quit after the next expansion came out (the one that added different types of wood). I absolutely loved this game, the time I spent playing the first time was probably the most fun I've ever had gaming. I was Provis (and Daelin, Dracula, Magwitch, and another (maybe Casper (I kept him a ghost and ran around exploring) on the Atlantic server and was a member of the Trinsic Adventurers (TrA)/Atlantic Association of Adventurers (AAA) guild. I think I spent the majority of my time chopping wood.
Ultima IX - Is this the bastard child of Ultima or something... no one even mentioned it. This (and UO2/UWO:O and Garriott's project "X" (not to be confused with Ultima X:Odyssey) were major let downs (IX because it didn't live up to the hype (thanks a lot EA for rushing it) and UO2/UWO:O and project "X" because they never came out), though I did enjoy playing this. Though if you got Humility as your virtue at the start you got a staff that was uber powerful. I end up killing Iolo in like 4 hits, before he could come to his senses. And somehow this ran decent on my system, maybe because I had a Voodoo 5500 at the time and the glide version of the game ran best.

And of course
Ultima Underworld - Loved it.
Ultima Underworld II - For some reason I never got around to playing this... though I have a copy (I got the release with both UUI and UUII on it)
 
Some of my earliest videogame memories were of playing Ultima III and IV on my family's Apple IIe. My Dad had bought them at some point and actually had pages and pages of notes, maps and passwords for the games. I accidently erased his Ultima IV save and rather than get mad at me, he simply hid the game from me... for years. One year for my birthday I received the Ultima Trilogy (I,II,III) and got to play the first two. Ultima I was pretty easy but II was, as far I can tell, impossible.

Nowadays I still have a copy of the Ultima Collection hanging around that I can play on my fiancee's crappy, old laptop. I need to work on Ultima V, everything I've heard about it has been stellar.
 
Loved Ultima but I don't really remember which ones I beat and which ones I haven't. Probably didn't beat most seeing as I was really young when I played the later ones. Then I went back and played the earlier ones eventually and have been trying to get ahold of a cheap, mint copy of Ultima Collection to try and run sometime without having to pirate it.

Played Ultima Online for around four years though and had a blast. It did destroy a bit of my life until I figured out major addictions are a very bad thing. Even was on the bounty boards for a little while on my server Chesapeake when I turned "Anti-asshole" and then my kills just seemed to rack up from just defending myself once I accidently went red. Remember the early days when everyone thought high speed internet made you a god in the game as you didn't lag and was a PvP godsend to us 56k modem users. Good times.


Also remember quite well when Ultima IX released. It was pretty much like this (...Kinda):

"Hey man, I can't run Ultima IX! This sucks."

"Ouch, maybe I can run it seeing as I just got a new computer!"

"What's your graphics card?"

"Voodoo 3!"

"Hot damn man, you've got sweet computer! I wish I had something as slick as a voodoo 3."

"Yeah, voodoo is awesome."


[quote name='LordFungus']Ultima V running on a dungeon siege 1 engin
http://lazarus.planetdungeonsiege.gamespy.com/[/quote]

Here's the official website link (Granted that one pretty much works too):

http://www.u5lazarus.com/

And also Ultima VI is being redone in the Dungeon Siege 1 engine too:

http://www.u6project.com/
 
I am, but only from a music stand point.... never played a single game.

This fat cat USED to have MP3 samples comparing the oldschool Ad Lib PC sound vs the "hotness" of the day.... Roland wave table: Sound Canvas.

You can still check out his site... I couldn't find an email addressing asking him if he'd ever re-host the music.... and yes... it was a true treat hearing the Roland versions of the songs :)

http://www.dor-lomin.com/archive/ultima/musicarchive/
 
Big Ultima fan. I'm lucky enough to have a mint boxed copy of Ultima Collection (which is now fairly valuable) that I got for my birthday, gosh, a decade ago.

All great games. I'm actually a big fan of Ultima VIII. The dumbing-down didn't bother me; it was just a different kind of Ultima game. And indeed, it had by far the best atmosphere of any game in the series...really, really eerie, in a terrific way.

Too bad EA is probably never going to do anything with the series again...
 
[quote name='CoffeeEdge']Big Ultima fan. I'm lucky enough to have a mint boxed copy of Ultima Collection (which is now fairly valuable) that I got for my birthday, gosh, a decade ago.

All great games. I'm actually a big fan of Ultima VIII. The dumbing-down didn't bother me; it was just a different kind of Ultima game. And indeed, it had by far the best atmosphere of any game in the series...really, really eerie, in a terrific way.

Too bad EA is probably never going to do anything with the series again...[/quote]
I say good thing EA isn't doing anything with the brand... I believe EA ruined the series.

I say too bad Garrett doesn't do something similar.
 
[quote name='mguiddy']I say good thing EA isn't doing anything with the brand... I believe EA ruined the series.[/quote]
I don't even know how EA can sell Ultima 7 with pride, a huge theme of the game is about how EA sucks.

[quote name='Wikipedia']Elements of Ultima VII are inspired by game creator Origin Systems' conflicts with competitor (and later owner) Electronic Arts. Origin Systems' corporate slogan was 'We Create Worlds', while the main antagonist of the story - The Guardian - is presented as a 'Destroyer of Worlds'. The three evil 'Generators' created by The Guardian in the game took the physical shapes of the contemporary Electronic Arts Logo: a cube, a sphere, and a tetrahedron. Elizabeth and Abraham, two apparently benevolent characters who later turn out to be murderers, have the initials "E" and "A".[5][/quote]

I actually like the "Scientology sucks" theme more =)
 
[quote name='kainzero']I don't even know how EA can sell Ultima 7 with pride, a huge theme of the game is about how EA sucks.



I actually like the "Scientology sucks" theme more =)[/quote]
That's awesome... I never noticed that.
 
yea if i could only find my old Ultima collection disk (i own the old version also) and install it on my old Pentium 2 which is use for classic pc gaming

As for RG now, PAUL SAGE u just plain Killed the game TR since all you did was go back to the drawing board redo all the classes instead of adding in the elder game and new crafting system u promised
 
[quote name='kainzero']i started playing u6 again. i wanna see if i can beat it =)

oh man.

name?
job?
rune?
mant?[/quote]


Good Lord. Too much nostalgia. :)

Even after all these years, I still remember the sea captain (pirate-like fellow) in U6 telling me that the girl's name was "Marney...it means 'the breeze before the storm.'" Nifty.

And after a huge meal, I still like to parrot the party members after eating in U7:
*belch*
Ahh...very tasty
I shall soon be plump.
 
Played IV my freshman year in college on my C64.
4 single-sided floppy disks if I remember right.

Never did beat it. Could Legally by Beer @ 18 back then. :)
 
Played Ultima Online for 4+ years on the Sonoma Shard as Kefka. Never played much of the single player games.

Good times, as that was the first real MMORPG, and everything was great before the patchs.
 
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