Ultima II: The Revenge of the Enchantress (1982): Initial Impressions

I have been a fan of the Ultima series since I played Ultima Exodus on the NES.  Once I learned that it was actually a port of a computer game (and there were two games before it even!) I was desperate for more Ultima. Luckily, Ultima Quest of the Avatar came out shortly on the NES, and then I found a copy of Ultima VI: The False Prophet for my C64.  It probably goes without saying that that horrible port soured me on Ultima for a while.

Once I got a PC I eventually got back into the series with Ultima VI: The False Prophet, Ultima Underworld, and Ultima VII: The Black Gate.

I also eventually got the awesome Ultima Collection on PC, and finally decided to give the older games a try.

I started with Ultima I, and was surprised by how much I enjoyed it, playing it to the end.  I even did it the old fashioned way, jotting notes on the world maps and mapping out dungeons on graph paper.  With evil wizard Mondain defeated, I was excited, then, to move on to Ultima II.

Ultima II begins with a painstakingly detailed—nay, photorealistic—depiction of a happy dragon.  You start by creating a character, selecting from several races and classes and boom there are you just standing there in some field.

It is immediately obvious that Ultima II is a classic top-down RPG, and you know you are gonna spend the next few hours at least smiting foes and devouring their delicious experience points, exploring the land, and chatting with townspeople for clues.

However, there are some unique things about Ultima II. It is played in pseudo realtime.  The game is turn based, but if you do nothing after a period of time you will automatically end your turn and the game will update one step.

Also unique: the game takes place on planet Earth and you start in the midwest USA in 1990.  There are time gates that appear from time to time to take you into the past and future (helpfully noted on the map that came with the game).  One of your earliest tasks therefore is to get an idea of how the time gates function.

Once you get a good understanding of that, it's time to gather information—but before you can think of doing that, you need to establish a safe "system" for survival.  You have two stats to monitor: your HPs, and your food.  HPs work like every other RPG, while food constantly depletes and if it reaches 0 you are gone.  Your character must have some kind of condition, because he is constantly eating.  Just walking from the town gate to the local McDonalds (for real) and back will consume several units of food.  I like to imagine the hero as this Conan looking warrior, his pockets full of trail mix and jerky, his cheeks stuffed full like a chipmunk.

What this means is that you need to find a reliable location where you can purchase food and healing easily.  Once you get to this point, you get excited to go figure out what to do... but this game is nuts.  Instead of useful hints, townspeople are all 100% insane and just babble nonsense at you.  I'm not talking about "Welcome to South Town! It is south town." stuff.  I am talking about "UGH ME STRONG" and stuff like that.

So this is gonna be one of those games where you blindly stumble around until by luck you find something I guess.  There are dungeons and towers all over to explore, but somewhat infamously, you never have to even set foot in one to complete the game.


The early game is therefore pretty much awful.  Until you get a good survival route in place, you have zero leeway to actually explore.  I had the benefit of having played this a bit on the C64 previously, so I knew pretty much where to go immediately to at least be able to survive.  Then, you need to get a somewhat rare item that is randomly dropped by a certain monster, so that you can get a ship and have a bit more freedom in exploring.  How anyone could have had the patience to figure this out back then, I will never know.  Incidentally, most walkthroughs (even the "official" one) recommend that you just steal everything to skip the tedious first few hours of the game.

From what I remember, once you get the ship the game is pretty much won.  You are basically invincible on your ship so you are free to massacre monsters and gain gold and items with impunity.  From there it's just a matter of getting a bunch of other items that are randomly dropped, then uncovering all these items hidden in ridiculous areas no one would ever be able to figure out without a hint guide or just dumb luck.

I'm going to try to enjoy it though as I would have as a kid... which means I will be exploring the dungeons and yes the other planets—all of which are 100% meaningless and pretty much empty.  Sometimes being overwhelmed by a giant computer game can be fun, and I think that is the best attitude to have when playing this one.

The Legend of Kyrandia (1992): Final Thoughts

I was perhaps a little hasty in singing the praises of The Legend of Kyrandia.

Although the first half of game (with the exception of the senseless gem puzzle) was just as fun as I remembered it, the second half takes a very noticeable dive in quality.  The difference in quality is so great that I wouldn't be surprised if two completely different teams were in charge of them.

While none of the puzzles in the first half are particularly clever (the maze puzzle comes close in how you have to figure its rules out through experimentation, then apply those rules to safely get through the maze [instead of just save-reloading your way through it]), the game is good looking (and sounding) enough that simply exploring the world and seeing what comes next is enjoyable.

Sometimes in a game you get stuck and no matter what you try you can't figure it out and have to look the solution up online (or, 20+ years ago, you asked your friends if they had any ideas [or maybe dialed into Prodigy]).  You can tell a great puzzle from a poor one by how you feel after reading the solution.  With a great puzzle you will think, "why didn't I think of that?!" and you respect the designers and promise to yourself that you will think harder next time.  With a poor puzzle you think, "huh" or "..." or "what?"  It makes the rest of the game seem worse and you lose motivation to solve anything on your own.

Sadly, the second half of Kyrandia is like that.  I would say that there are four major puzzles in the game.  The first is the awful gem puzzle (in hindsight not so bad... more later), followed by the decent maze.  That is the first half.  The final two are a totally ridiculous alchemy puzzle and the final area (which is one large multistep puzzle).

The alchemy puzzle is just bullshit.  The only hint you get is "get me a blueberry" then the hint giver disappears. 

I remembered the solution vaguely from playing through as a kid, so I checked online figuring, there has got to be something in the game somewhere that at least gives you an idea.  Maybe some book or note I missed.  Nope.  The lady is gone for good, and you are supposed to figure out that you need to mix several potions, then combine those potions to make new ones, in order to solve a couple of puzzles.  You can place literally anything in the cauldron, and of the things you actually have to mix, half of them randomly generate way back at the beginning of the game.  After mixing them you then have to travel to yet another location to the place to mix the potions into new potions. 

Come on.  Left to your own devices, how long would you have to spend going back and forth and back and forth—literally across the entire game at this point—and figuring this out purely through trial and error?  The worst thing about the puzzle is the total lack of feedback.  You do get a different effect if you mix the wrong thing vs. the right thing, but nothing more.  There is no thread connecting the puzzles you need to solve with the potions you need to make.

This could have been a GREAT puzzle.  Make the player go have to find pages from an alchemy book listing potions, ingredients, and effects.  Hell, even put it in the manual as a form of copy protection.  You could read the effects, and it would make your imagination run wild as you consider all the stuff you haven't figured out and how the potions would fit in to it all.

To be honest, this potion puzzle completely demotivated me.  I got sick of fooling around and wasting my time trying to mix potions completely randomly to create some unknown effect that I could somehow use on something, so I just looked it up and got on with the game.

But it doesn't end there.  The final area looks great, and could have been great.  It's a giant puzzle basically, and while some parts of it are really cool, others are just pixel hunting for junk you don't even know you need.

I really hate to say it, but Kyrandia is just not a good game.  The atmosphere is great and the graphics are wonderful, and I even liked most of the characters and generic fairytale feel.  But the actual game—exploring and puzzles—is a total letdown for at least half of the game.

The Legend of Kyrandia (1992): Initial Impressions

The Legend of Kyrandia (or, as the cover would suggest Fables & Fiends The Legend of Kyrandia Book One) has a very special place in my heart.

Growing up, I was a Commodore 64 kid.  I have tons of great memories playing a lot of great games on that machine.  Pool of Radiance, Questron II, and Demon's Winter are just a few examples, though there were plenty of others.  I never saw the C64 as a computer... more like just another video game console that played much more complex games; the RPGs on the C64 were obviously much more complex than anything on the NES for instance.  Even though the C64 was an excellent platform for action games, I eventually settled into a groove of playing action games on the NES and RPGs on the C64.

At some point my mom ended up getting me an IBM PS/2 computer, likely to replace the old unreliable word processor I had been using throughout middle school.  I just saw it as another game machine though, and just kept on using that word processor.

Once I got my hands on a PC the poor C64 went in the closet, and I went shopping for games.  I remember my first few PC games very clearly: The Legend of Kyrandia, Quest for Glory III, and Ultima VII.  Used to simply booting games from the floppy with my C64, I had a LOT to learn...

Kyrandia starts with a beautiful title screen which seamlessly transitions to the introduction story.  The animation in this introduction simply blew my mind.  I was used to stuff like the admittedly impressive cinemas in Ninja Gaiden, and while the C64 version of Ultima VI was a great attempt, nothing until then could even come close to what 13 year old me was seeing here.

This part is particularly impressive.  As he writes the "camera" focuses on his (animated) hand while the rest of the scene is slightly out of focus.  Noticing something is awry, he stops writing, and the "camera" focuses on his face, putting his hand slightly out of focus.  The "camera" then focuses on the window in the back.  Even now this attention to detail is impressive.

After the amazing introduction the game starts proper.  So what is Kyrandia?  It's a pretty typical point-and-click adventure game, where you explore a "3D" screen space, collect items, and solve puzzles that generally come down to using the right item in the right place.  It is very similar to the games Sierra was doing at the time.

In fact Kyrandia is very similar to Sierra's King's Quest in that both games/series feature a somewhat fairy tale-like spin on the fantasy genre.  There are dragons and wizards and jesters, and both series are overall innocent enough to be enjoyed by pretty much anyone.

The first thing you notice is how beautiful this game looks.  The game was developed by Westwood, which was well-known for its extremely detailed and colorful house style of graphics.  There is not a single boring scene in this game.  I went mad with power as I took screenshots and I could post pretty much any shot I took and it would look great.  In fact, the screenshots are definitely what convinced me to buy the game in the first place.

The second thing you notice is how great the music is.  Coming from the C64, which is legendary for the quality of the music it can put out, I have to admit that my SoundBlaster clone at the time was a bit of a let down when it came to music.  Kyrandia though, whether due to its excellent compositions or clever music programming, sounded amazing.  I am playing it now with a Roland CM-500 synthesizer (the game was composed on a Roland synthesizer) and the quality of the music is simply unbelievable for 1992.

So is this game perfect or what?  Although I really like it, there are some things that aren't great.  The main character, Brandon, is pretty boring (though I have to admit that the voice acting in the CD-ROM version for the character helps to make him a lot more likable), for instance.

More importantly, there are some illogical puzzles that end up just being trial and error.  Shortly into the game you need to combine some gems in the correct order, and you are given a clue saying you should start with "summer" then go in order by birthstone.  Since the character made a point of saying "summer" and there are four slots, I figured there would one for each season in order... so, summer, fall, winter, spring.  I looked up birthstones, went through the gems I had collected, and everything I did was wrong.  Turns out you need to find a "sunstone" in a very unfair location and start with that, then just save the game and restore as you work through all your gems.  This made me feel ridiculous for overthinking the problem, but also annoyed that the clue—though very useful—hinged upon finding an item in a pretty unlikely location.

On the other hand I loved the mapping puzzle that came shortly after that.  The Internet hates this part, complaining that it requires trial and error and slows the game down to a halt.  I disagree.  Mapping puzzles have been a tradition in these kinds of games from way back, and as long as you are mapping the game (though the game doesn't really require it except for this part, it's a good habit to keep with these kinds of games anyway) there is no problem at all getting through this part.  Note though that this hardly qualifies as trial and error if you map it—there is one part early on where you need to decide between two choices and the wrong one kills you, but after that the rest is a purely logical mapping puzzle.  This is no different from any other game where death is a possibility... just save before you make your choice.

This is what happens if you make that wrong choice, by the way:

I am cheating a bit with this one, as I finished Kyrandia back around when it was released.  However, it's been 24 years or so and I have forgotten much of it, so here we are.  Kyrandia is a beautiful looking and sounding game, and is a lot of fun to play.  It's not afraid to kill you when you make a mistake, and the limited inventory means you can't just pick everything up without thinking of it.  And the bad guy is a cool villain (moreso in the CD-ROM version thanks to some great voice acting).  I'm really enjoying my second play of this, and will definitely see it to the end.

Anvil of Dawn (1995): Initial Impressions

Here's an interesting one I've heard some great things about in certain circles (i.e. reading posts on www.rpgcodex.net/).  I have very little history with Anvil of Dawn.  I remember back in high school reading a review of it in an issue of Computer Gaming World, and while it reviewed well and I remember being impressed with the screenshots, at the time I was just getting into what was "cutting edge" in PC games at the time (Mechwarrior 2, probably Quake) and I guess even if I did run into this game on the shelf somewhere I would have probably passed it up.

Which is a shame because Anvil of Dawn has a lot to offer and I would probably have enjoyed it a lot back then... though I would have been missing an important component necessary for enjoying the game to its fullest (more on that later).

Anvil of Dawn is a first-person, single-character dungeon exploration role-playing game.  Movement is step-based, though combat is real-time (of course, like most games of this type, combat basically works in "turns" as enemies tend to have wait times in between attack animations).  And—again, like most games of this type—much of the game involves exploring dungeons, combat, and light puzzles (in that order).

The game begins with a CG rendered cinema to set the story up and before you know it you are in the game.  I like that it hardly wastes your time.  Right off the bat, I liked the atmosphere—the world the game takes place in is definitely a dark one compared with many other RPGs at the time.

Prior to starting the game though you need to pick a character.  The game system is extremely simple, and you are basically choosing between a magic guy, a fast girl, a strong guy, a healthy girl, or a guy that is just okay at everything.  You can then reallocate the stat points if you want.  I went with the magic guy, and rearranged his points to max out his magic to ensure the very best in magical hijinx.

The game starts immediately after and you are exploring some castle.  Compared with Lands of Lore, you immediately notice that the view takes up the whole screen.  It also scrolls smoothly as you walk, just like that other game.  Unfortunately, while the monsters and NPCs are gloriously hand-drawn, the dungeons were CG rendered.  Sometimes it looks fine—the starting area for instance is some castle so it makes sense that you would have these perfectly flat and clean walls/ceilings.  Unfortunately, it ends up looking way too clean when you get to dungeons and caves and such.  I would also have liked the scrolling to have been a bit more smooth (it seems to have been rendered at only a few frames per second), but I understand they needed to save space back then.

You run into your first enemy in this same area.  Screenshots don't do them any justice, but the enemies in this game are simply amazing.  Although they are extremely detailed, they are all fully animated—from their attack animations to their deaths.  They really blow the Lands of Lore monsters (which often have a single frame of animation for their attacks) away.

One standout feature of this game is the soundtrack.  Moody and touching, it makes backtracking through dungeons a pleasure.  This is definitely one thing modern games don't get.  You can forgive a lot of tedium if you have some great tunes to listen to.  The Anvil of Dawn soundtrack is not only extremely fitting and atmospheric... it's very catchy and I often put it on in the background when I am working.

Not that I would have realized this back then.  You see, like most games of this vintage Anvil of Dawn was composed on a Roland SC-55, then down-converted to play on Soundblaster/Adlib OPL soundcards.  Granted, great music will still sound great even on inferior hardware... but on a Roland device Anvil of Dawn really shines!  Nearly CD quality (the only MIDI soundtrack that compares in my opinion is Warcraft II [the redbook audio soundtrack is just a recording of the Roland music playing], Doom 2, and Duke Nukem 3D).  A good SC-55 soundfont loaded into BASSMIDI does a respectable job—certainly better than the default Windows MIDI synth—but does not come close to the actual hardware.

Here's another monster:

How does the game play?  Although it is quite typical, it's got some good and bad parts. First the good: the dungeons are lengthy enough to be interesting, and the automap is quite excellent.  Each enemy has its own patterns and you have to develop (shallow) strategies to deal with them.  I like the way you level up by developing skills through use.  Finding stuff in the first few hours feels awesome because actual upgrades are rare.

Bad? By its very nature as a single-character game it's shallow.  You only fight one enemy at a time (unless you are surrounded of course).  The strategies you eventually develop for each enemy basically come down to "how long do I have to wait/how many attacks can I get off before I step back to avoid the attack animation."  The game is extremely linear—although you can have a couple choices after the first dungeon, you really should go to the next dungeon in the plot for a challenge level that is much more fair.

The inventory is annoying, though nothing near as annoying as the one in Lands of Lore.  You've got a single inventory "box" on your character sheet where everything you pick up gets dropped.  You can sort with bags and stuff, but it's a pain.

A LOT of the "puzzles" involve dropping rocks on switches, and some switches can take 2-3 10 lb. rocks to switch.  When your carrying capacity is 40 lbs. this can really put a damper on your game (you can exceed your carrying capacity but doing so negatively affects your stats).

I feel that they could have done a little more with the area outside the dungeons.  When you leave a dungeon the game takes on a sort of MYST-like view, where you move around from hotspot to hotspot until you find your next dungeon.  I was hoping more for a step-based overworld like in Might and Magic.

As much as I like the "improve skills as you use them" system, I feel like there should be more.  Basically, your overall skill level (weapons or magic) only improves depending on how much damage you do with an applicable skill.  Once you reach the next level you can choose which skill to improve.  I gained a single spell level over the course of the entire first dungeon, and while it really seemed to affect my spell damage, it would have been nice to develop more hit points, speed, or something in addition to that.

Finally, as amazing as the enemy sprites are, I wish there were more of them.  You typically will run into anywhere from one to three different enemies in each dungeon.  It gets boring fighting the same monsters over an over—especially in the first dungeon which only has one monster (plus one unique guy you can fight).

Overall, Anvil of Dawn is a great game.  It's definitely shallow—this is definitely not a worthy successor to the seminal Dungeon Master—but it's got great atmosphere (especially that music!), imaginative monsters, relatively lengthy dungeons that are fun to explore, and is just a blast to play.  Definitely looking forward to more!