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.