At the end of part 2, I was well on my way to avatarhood although still falling short on some virtues. Attaining the rest of these proved to be easier than expected with the only time consuming part being walking to and fro between the healers and LB donating blood. Once I became a full Avatar there was a very welcome bonus in this version of granting me a maximum 99 magic points even though I was playing a fighter. I took the chance at this point to drop Iolo from the party and spent all the money from his gear on reagents.

Next job was to get the exotic armour and weapons from Empath Abbey and the Lycaeum. This was just a case of climbing a tower in each and speaking to the guy who must have been sat around years waiting for me so he would let me in. The new armour dropped damage to about a third of chain mail and the sword killed every enemy in the game after this (except in one dungeon room) in a single kill. The only time I was ever really vulnerable in the game after this was in rooms with a lot of enemies which could cast sleep.

I still needed to collect all the stones from the dungeons which took most of yesterday night. I based myself in Hythloth which gave me easy access to all the dungeons from the altar rooms in level 8 with the added benefit that if I died off, I turned up in LB’s castle again and could go straight back down and pick up where I left off. The only penalty for death that I spotted was my gold resetting to 400 which was no big deal.

The dungeons are a reasonably close facsimile of those on the PC. There was more repetition of rooms than I remember but there are hidden doors all over the place, panels to step on in some of the rooms to open up walls, etc.. With the aid of maps, my one man party found these reasonably easy to get through and if you took the time to build up a 4 person level 8 party the dungeons would be a breeze.

One novelty with this version is that the stones are all located in their own rooms and there is a virtue question to be answered before you can gain access. Most of these made sense but a couple had to be answered incorrectly. I think the correct answer to “Would you withhold the gift of thy own blood from a dying companion?” was Yes… Each of these rooms has a nifty quick getaway stairway at the back allowing you to go all the way out of the dungeon but I didn’t use these and headed back down instead to the altar room to swap dungeon.

Two of the stones had to be collected elsewhere exactly as normal with the hot-air balloon to access the white stone being located at the exit of Hythloth.

With the stones gathered I placed them all on their appropriate altars in Hythloth, grabbed the three keys then equipped myself as well as I could to head for The Stygian Abyss. Shortly after, I realised I hadn’t retrieved the candle of love with turned out to be in a hidden room in Cove. Cove was only accessible either by sailing into a whirlpool or using the hot air balloon which was why I’d missed it previously.

Fully equipped this time, I gained entry to the abyss using the bell, book and candle as ever.

The abyss proved to be not significantly harder than any other dungeon. At the end of each level I’m presented with what appears to be a cheap sports trophy and asked a virtue question. Since these come in the same order as the multiple choice answer on each level I can’t imagine many people got them wrong.

The abyss is more complex than the other dungeons however, with plenty of unique rooms including the famous one at the end where you have to fight your own party as such. These guys weren’t as tough as their real counterparts or I wouldn’t have survived but they were the only monsters who didn’t die from a single sword hit.

I’m sure I recognised some of the room arrangements from the real game with complex paths having to be weaved between some of them to find the exit, often needing to locate secret panels to open walls up. The dungeons were definitely the best aspect of this port.

With all 8 stones placed in their respective trophies, I’m rewarded with a bit of a cutscene to finish off which takes a departure from the PC version. There is some dodgy translation to start with as the ankh spokes. Using my keys, I then gain the codex and walk up a giant stairway to get a congratulatory ceremony from Lord British with each of my companions chipping in one by one.

I have to say that I enjoyed the later stages of this game more than the earlier ones, which is the exact opposite of the PC version. As such this port did grow on me to an extent but if this had been the only version of Ultima 4, I doubt many people would remember the game all these years later.

The main drag is the incessant combat. Stand still for 10-15 seconds at any time and you will be in a fight. I couldn’t even complete the ceremony fast enough at the abyss entrance to get through it in one go. I much prefer being able to see and avoid the enemies on the main map. This tactic did have to be taken to extremes on the seas since pirate ships are the only enemies visible on the map. I could barely move without seeing one. Whenever I play a game like with this much combat it always feels like a short game is being deliberately dragged out.

The other major problem is the reduction to the conversations and towns. Ultima 4 isn’t a game that needed any simplification as it was already fairly bare bones being made for a 1985 Apple II. This simplification more or less ruined my favourite part of the PC version.

It’s a lot more faithful than I expected having said all that and still engaging provided you have the patience to get through the tedium of the early stages. I do think the Sega Master System version looks like far more fun even if it does have 2D dungeons. I’ll have to try that one another time but not today. I ought to give Wing Commander 3 on the 3DO a try next as I’ve had the console and joystick sat there waiting for me to play it for months now.

I’ll end with a quick mention that <A HREF=”http://www.gog.com”>GOG</A> are about to release System Shock 2 tomorrow which has been their most requested game ever since they started taking requests in the first place. It’s a game that has stood the test of time exceptionally well and is a must-buy if you’ve not had the opportunity to play it.

I had concerns that playing Ultima 4 on the NES might prove to be slow going after the last post and having spent half of Sunday on it this has certainly proved to be the case. I am catching up on podcasts while I’m at it though and progress in the game is steady if unspectacular.

I made it to Buccaneer’s Den where I found the price of keys to be an eye-watering 2000gp. I decided at this point to ditch all but Iolo out of my party, gathering and selling the equipment belonging to everyone else. I equipped both of us as well as possible with the money buying a crossbow for Iolo and this has helped to speed things up a little with smaller monster parties to fight and fewer people to keep battle ready. I would have left Iolo behind as well but since I’m playing a fighter I need a rudimentary spellcaster occasionally.

Monster encounters are far more frequent than I would like on the surface but my first thought was still to try out a dungeon. Visually these are bland but don’t look too bad, a definite improvement over the PC version anyway. Again, there is no sign of monsters walking about and it’s simply random encounters but there are pre-designed rooms to work through some of which have secret walls. This part of the game feels much more like the PC port and looks to be where the game will come to life. It’s no bad thing since as far as I can tell there is no down/up spell in this version so I’m going to have to do these dungeons the hard way.

Much like above ground, the dungeons proved to be comparatively tame. They weren’t exactly piled with gold but I did come across the occasional cache and slowly grew my hoard. It’s hard to build up large quantities of gold in this game as chests never have anything except money. Selling armour in other Ultima games has always been the better source of income.

When I finally had the 2000gp the key proved to be a better deal than I’d feared as it can be used over and over for every door in the game. I spent the rest of the day gathering runes, grinding virtue stats and trying to attain avatarhood.

The virtue statistics are more simplistic than in the original due to the curtailed towns and conversations which was a real detriment to this section of the game. I’d swear some of the questions have the answers the wrong way around also which can make them trial and error. It didn’t take all that long to locate all the runes though and I now have 5 out of 8 partial avatarhoods.

Playing the game so far has been more than a little tedious with the incessant random encounters occurring far too often for my liking. If I’d been on an emulator it would be been on 500% speed long before now but I’ve not got that option open to me this time. These encounters are more or less the same thing over and over and it’s all just grinding that can be done on autopilot (hence the podcasts). The monsters in the NES version hardly vary in strength taking either one or two decent hits to kill. With two party members with decent bows, they rarely make it to point blank range and it’s all too easy and very monotonous. Ultima 3 was far more of a challenge and had more of a clear role for the different characters which varied depending on monster and character level.

I’m still looking forward to properly exploring the dungeons which was much more entertaining from the little I saw but I want to gain avatarhood first as in this version it apparently allows me to climb towers in two of the keeps to get the best weapons and armour. I tried climbing these anyway to see what happened but it proved to be an endless set of staircases with no top. I expect I’ve got several hours ahead of me before I’m able to get either of these so the next post may be several days as I fit it in around everything else. I might take a look at the Ultima Online Collector’s Guide in the meanwhile as that finally arrived in the post on Friday.

I’ll veer off topic to end this post as one of the coolest things to ever make its way through my letter box arrived yesterday. Despite the Origin blog, my gaming genre of choice is without a doubt adventure games and as a huge and long time Gabriel Knight fan one of the Kickstarters I’m most keenly awaiting to see reach completion is Jane Jensen’s Pinkerton Road. The rewards in that Kickstarter included 50 pencil sketches of Gabriel Knight design artwork. These were all rescued out of a dumpster years back by a fan who generously donated them to the cause. Anyone who backed enough got to pick their top 10 favourites and some maths was done from that to decide who got which one. I was a little tactical in my choices spurning the more obvious picks and was fortunate enough to get my number 1 choice which is now framed and stuck on the wall:-

This is a concept sketch for the end of the game with Gabriel and Grace overlooking the ruins of a voodoo hounfour which was hidden underneath New Orleans. This scene has always been a personal favourite which is why I picked it, I love the dialog, music and the slightly downbeat tone struck and it’s easily one of my favourite game endings of all time. I’m over the moon to have got this and it’s a proud addition to the growing set of gaming memorabilia covering the walls on my 3rd floor.

From one adventure Kickstarter to another, the long anticipated Dreamfall Chapters surfaced a couple of days back. This will be the third in the Longest Journey series and is a game I’ve been eagerly awaiting for years. It’s still got nearly a month to run and anyone who enjoys adventure games should be backing this one as far as I’m concerned.

Ultima 4 was released somewhat belatedly for the NES in 1989 having being developed by Pony Canyon. It’s a game I’ve been curious about trying out for a while as I love the original version but the console ports tend to be different enough to be worth a look in their own right. This time I get to play au-natural as such meaning, you may be relieved to hear, that I recently bought a NES and it’s now region-unlocked and ready to play my Ultima 4 cartridge:-

The snag with having the real hardware of course is that decent screenshots are out of the question and I’m just pointing my phone at the TV instead. Ultima 3 on the NES turned out to be a decent and reasonably faithful port which was something of a pleasant surprise back when I played it last year. My concern (which is probably justified from what I’ve heard) is that each of these games is going to be slightly worse than it’s predecessor as the scope grows further beyond what a console of the time was capable of.

There is some evidence of this right from the beginning with the famous introduction to Ultima 4 reduced to a simplified version of the virtue questions + a speech from Lord British about how he knows I will become the Avatar. One of the great aspects of Ultima 4 was that you didn’t know your quest right from the start, and even when you found out you were just one of many in Britannia with the same goal. It suggests before the game has even begun that this is going to be a simplified world and this proves to very much be the case.

It has to be said that the graphics do look quite nice for their time. This could easily be a Final Fantasy game at a cursory glance and it’s about as good as it got on the NES. I cannot say the same for the soundtrack. A portion of it can be said to be tolerable, other parts made me wonder if the sound chip on my NES was faulty. Why the original score wasn’t used over this I have no idea.

The interface has of course been hugely simplified and works well within the limitation of a two button pad. It’s menu based with the most commonly used verbs quickly accessible and the lesser on a second screen. Combat is handled a little like Ultima 5 with a target crosshair for attacking which allows arrows to be shot in more than straight lines in this version although I still can’t attack on diagonal lines with a sword. Another tweak is the ability to ready both a bow and a sword simultaneously with the bow not able to be used at point blank range.

The combat has been unbelievably easy so far and I don’t remember finding it such a walk in the park in these early stages on the PC version. I have never been in any real danger in the 90 minutes I’ve played, although I haven’t been fool enough to seek out a dungeon at this point. There is an impression still that this has been aimed at a younger audience.

The aspect of Ultima 4 that was the biggest leap forward from Ultima 3 to me was the conversation system. This added an adventure gaming element where you had to figure out who to ask what, making notes as you talked to everyone in each town. This is the part of playing Ultimas that probably holds the most appeal to me. I expected this to be simplified for the NES port but I honestly thought there would still be more to it than there is. We are almost back in Ultima 3 territory with most NPC’s reduced to a single paragraph of text. There are exceptions in the case of Hawkwind and Lord British, a rare few have a second alternative line of text when talked to again + there is the odd Yes/No choice to make but that’s it. To add insult to injury the towns themselves are simpler with far fewer inhabitants. From what I have seen, there is hardly any exploring to be done and it’s a definite loss.

I played for about 90 minutes and managed to get myself a full party (only 3 companions), explore a couple of towns, found a rune or two and that’s it so far. Everything is Britannia is where I would expect it on the main map, which is a definite plus point. There aren’t any monsters walking around on that map and it’s just random encounters ala Final Fantasy which is a point against. The combat gets a little slow with a full size party + the number of monsters increases. There is a definite temptation to drop my party down in size and speed things up, not sure if that is viable or not and if anyone has any advice I’d be glad of it.

Saving is now only possible in inns which would be an irritation if the combat wasn’t so easy. One odd thing I spotted was that in Yew in the original you were asked something along the lines of whether you were guilty of any crime. You were supposed to answer that you were, spend a night in the cells as punishment and find the rune. Here you have to give the opposite answer to prove yourself worthy to be told the location of the rune and then break into the prison to retrieve it. This isn’t a change for the better.

So overall first impressions are, it’s OK, not great but OK. It’s not exactly Ultima 4 any more and seems to have lost much of what made it such a classic. This plays like a Final Fantasy/Ultima hybrid not quite living up the standards of either from what I’ve seen but after 90 minutes I haven’t seen that much. I’ll play it until I’ve got partial avatarhood in a few virtues and done some dungeon delving before I come back for part 2. I’d just got a ship when I stopped so I’m planning to head to Buccaneer’s Den to buy the tools to open all the locked doors I’ve been running into.

While I’m posting, I noticed a copy of Origin’s second game Caverns Of Callisto on Ebay which may interest one or two readers. I know all too well that you don’t see boxed copies of this coming up all that often although the asking price with a day to go is already reflecting that and then some.

Also, there was a curious Google+ post from Richard Garriott yesterday “Working hard on our next FRPG! Getting back to me roots! More info to follow!”. He confirmed that the F stands for Fantasy and not Facebook but basically no more info has followed at least yet. Whether he’s referring to Ultimate RPG I’m not sure. The concept art I saw wouldn’t really have put it in the fantasy realm so possibly not unless it’s had a change of direction. I’d love to see a new single player game but I think I’ll just wait and see rather than speculate.