As the Ultima series continued to evolve, the complexity of the game, world and storyline also increased. Ultima 6 for me is by far my favorite Ultima in the series. At this point, the game was far ahead of everything in the market when it came to RPG style world building and you felt that the land was alive in handling various environmental conditions. I am jumping ahead of Ultima 5, but I may cover that in a later review.
For me at least growing up in an era starting from the Atari 2600 with block styled graphics for games, Ultima 6 was a monstrous step forward in taking ones imagination and realizing it on screen. Having tried to create my own world with just paper and pencil styled games, I truly appreciated the vivacious atmosphere Origin would create in this undertaking. The game was created using an isomorphic viewpoint. Objects were very complex in terms of shapes and there was a sense of scale that previous Ultimas did not have. Also, outside of going between floors, the game was continuous when entering and exiting regions, which enhanced the immersion experience.
Since Ultima 4, the now famous tarot reading choice for character creation is how you will enter the game. Whichever virtue you choose though will not have any bearing on your class as you strictly are defined as an avatar. The only bearing you have through the tarot reading is the emphasis on starting attributes. But those aren’t as critical compared to previous games. Also, since Ultima 4, you only can create a single character but obtain more members of your party through getting NPCs to join your crusade. You will start off with Dupre, Iolo and Shamino though who are your three muskateers until Ultima 8.
Your other party members will only be one of three class types in the bard, ranger or fighter. Sorely missing are wizards and you cannot recruit Mariah any longer. Only the avatar will be able to possess the most spell points in the game while bards and rangers have that equal to their intellect. Naturally, fighters do not have any magic ability but you truly only need a single character with high end spells to complete the game.
Like Ultima 4, combat isn’t emphasized that much, which means (for me at least) the game feels far more relaxed. There are times when you’ll encounter a being like a daemon, dragon or gargoyle who can still decimate you. But it’s nowhere near as hopeless as say Ultima 3 or 5. Good gear in this game starts to drive a lot of that and levels are important mostly to give you an edge on attributes and hit points for survival.
The main plot is to once again save Britannia, this time from the supposed evil clutches of these mysterious gargoyles who are plaguing the shrines for no apparent reason. As you travel through the world and improve your character, you’ll eventually need to get on the main quest to solve this issue. But there is no time commitment here and the game is completely non-linear with hundreds of side quests to distract you constantly.
Really the thing for me about this game wasn’t the plot but the world around me. In this version of Ultima, the world becomes this highly interactive thing where almost every object has some purpose at some level or at least can be manipulated. Some objects might be pointless like mugs, but they do serve the purpose of adding more flavor and detail and can be moved around if one desires. Food no longer is a simple abstract attribute but comes in a non-generic variety. I think one of the most fascinating parts of the game is being able to make certain foods like cheese, butter, bread and cake. There’s a few quests that even involve making food and acting as a merchant between towns. You can easily see how this aspect planted the seeds for professions in how they would be implemented.
One thing that I read from Richard Garriott in an interview for this game was how a player could avoid all combat entirely and just make gold by baking. There’s other quests like this where you could gather up the materials from one area or person then move to another region to sell or trade those items and have them converted into something else. It’s pretty impressive because it’s almost like a World of Warcraft daily quest in the structure.
Using some ideas from Ultima 5, the world continues to have life. For instance, NPCs have schedules based on the time of day. They actually sleep or perform actions at a certain set time. Night time brings the fog of war, which can be annoying given that the tiny screen space only permits a certain amount of visuals. Still it gives you a sense of urgency to complete certain tasks, even talking to shopkeepers.
Virtue remains paramount and you still need to follow the eight. The only way to level is by reclaiming the shrines from the gargoyles, which can involve some hard hitting fights. And you still need to know the mantras for each shrine to unlock the protected stones as well as being in possession of the corresponding rune. If you played the previous games, you’ll be in luck since the mantras have remained consistent. But once you unlock a shrine, the gargoyles no longer will be able to harass you in that area and you can return to improve yourself.
The combat in this game has evolved but it’s actually less tactical compared to previous versions. You can put your NPCs into an auto combat mode, which may or may not be a headache. Also, I think you can switch from a turn based mode into more real time. Now, depending on the fight, you can use either to your advantage. A fight with a superior foe like dragons will probably require you to micro manage your guys. But fighting snakes and rats are better off handled by auto combat as opposed to dealing with 8 potential characters.
I believe I finished this game only once. But in all honesty, I never play this game for plot. The game to me is all about interacting with this huge world and just mucking around. Probably, the best feature ever in a game involved the spam-spam-spam-humbug Iolo cheat. Basically, it’s a simplified game editor where you can modify party statistics or create any item in the game. Not just weapons or armor but walls and volcanoes as well. My favorite thing to do was surround Chuckles the Jester with tons of powdered kegs and placing an active volcano right next to them. You’d watch as the helpless Jester took a nasty explosion. But served him right considering how he’d always harass you with stupid riddles whenever you entered Lord British’s castle!
Some people would complain about the hideous inventory management. It didn’t bother me as much as others, but by today’s standards, you were forced to micro management everything. Your only real limit was your strength allowance, but almost every object could be picked up. Now, the annoyance came whenever you beat a monster and were forced through their loot. For instance, if you killed a troll, you might find 10 spears, 10 axes and some gold buried at the bottom. Rather than having a stack of 10 spears, you had to pick up each individual spear. That would clutter your inventory to the point where finding something was impossible.
Ultima 6 would be the last of the series to use the free form text input. By this point, the flavor text included keywords highlighted in red for you to enter. That would save some time as opposed to constantly guess which word from the NPC’s dialog you needed to type in order to trigger the next point in a conversation. But I suppose that the team realized text bubbles with multiple choice answers would be the way to go in order to box in progress as well as eliminating all the permutations of answers that a person might present. It’s sad because the future removal definitely had made the game too linear in some respects.
The only other negative aspect about this game was the sheer number of bugs. Some were beneficial while others just made no sense. I had a very early version of the game and found some of the weirdest bugs. For instance, there were those roper/tree monsters. They weren’t supposed to move at all. But I recall being in certain dungeons where they would chase you! Also, leaving a piece of inventory on the ground was a sure way of losing a critical piece of the game. Areas would reset so if you left a quest item lying around, there would be a high chance you’d never see it again unless you knew about the Iolo cheat.
But by far my most memorable bug was the stupid NPC trick. There were numerous ways to make an NPC go brain dead but my version would allow you to shove an NPC into a container like a box. In one case, there was the irritating beggar calling himself “Lord British” who would ambush you (meaning initiate a dialog automatically) every time you neared Lord British’s castle. So one day I just about had enough with this guy and threw down a chest, moved him inside then went to another area. When I returned, the chest was still there but the NPC didn’t respawn. Curiously, I opened up the chest and I saw 1 beggar. I tried talking to him only receiving a “Funny, no response” reply. So I saved the game and assaulted him which resulted in a “beggar broken!” reply. WTF!?!?!! The guy didn’t actually die but he was broken as if you had tossed him on the ground like a piece of glass. There was no way to revive his AI either beyond restarting before that point so in truth the NPC was permanently dead in effect.
I think these elements really won me over. I really enjoyed just jumping in from time to time to wander around, killing monsters here and there, making a bit of progress on various quests lines and interacting with this immense world. I really wish that more game companies would work on the interactive elements of a world rather than just the graphics and combat. Many MMORPGs never feel alive to me because the world itself is stale with only graphics to compensate. An IRC interface doesn’t replace true game immersion where a world feels like a world.