I don't know for certain if this is a flaw of the original or if this version is simply bugged, but there's no good reason to not fix these flaws if they were a holdover, or at least warn players that the bard and ranger classes are worthless. Many of the classes are redundant or overlap in some fashion or another. The instruction manual that shipped with the game is bare bones, telling you little to nothing about what the different classes are and do, or what the implications of choosing one race over another are. Like a lot of RPGs of it's era, this game is ludicrously difficult at times and is horribly unbalanced. This stands in especially appalling contrast to the superb musical score. Looking at it, you can just tell they didn't spend a dime more than they had to to get the graphics finished. Graphics may not be everything, but this is a third/fourth generation game, released in Japan in 1987. The characters have about as much definition and charm as a smudge, and not the kind that you can see the Virgin Mary in. ![]() Even the stick figure graphics of the Apple II version hold up better than this mess. Less text, fewer commands, etc.įirst of all, no way around it, this game is ugly. The other nice thing I can say about this port is that it's fairly faithful to the original game in terms of the game structure, though it has all of the obligatory limitations of a port to a console. ![]() It starts with a low hum, then grows into a discordant, running harmony, interrupted with the occasional off key effect. Particularly haunting is the opening theme. Fans eventually created a MIDI patch to add music to the game, but even those songs don't compare to Pony Canyon's musical offerings. The original computer versions of this game were old enough that the most you had to look forward to were the standard blips, bleeps, and blorps of the PC speaker. The absolute best thing about this port is the music. This installment introduces separate combat screens where player-controlled party fights multiple monsters in a turn-based tile-based system. Like in earlier Ultima games, exploration is divided between top-down overworld locations and first-person 3D dungeons. The game has larger and more detailed towns, populated by NPCs the protagonist can converse with to obtain clues. The party is created at the beginning of the game by assigning various class combinations and determining the characters' attributes. ![]() The third title in the Ultima series was the first to feature a party of adventurers instead of a single player character. Obviously, it falls upon the hero from Earth to find and stop him. Now that child has become an adult with the power to avenge the death of his parents. Times passes and eventually geological disruptions and a resurgence of the monster populace occur, and it is soon learned that Mondain and Minax had conceived a child named Exodus before their death. After the defeat of the evil wizard Mondain and his mistress Minax in the previous two Ultimas, peace has returned to the land of Sorsaria.
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