Quest for Glory I!

PeterLI wrote:

Quest for Glory I!

EGA or VGA?

I loved U7 and it's expansion, but one thing to remember about these old RPG's: one wrong move and you can't win the game. U7 is king amongst this design style. You do something wrong near the start and 25 hours of gameplay later you find you can't continue because of cause and effect. You killed a character, missed finding an item, or did something in the wrong order, and it prevents you from doing a required quest way down the line. The only option is to figure out what you did and start the game over and avoid screwing up again.

I don't mind that at all as that's the way I was brought into the world of computer RPG's. I just wanted to point out ahead of time, that the old method is very unforgiving and seems to draw lots of ire from new players who have never played those old games.

The Ultima series is pretty heavily biased towards this system. You may have to spend 100+ hours to beat a game that only has 30 or so hours of gameplay just because of a mistake causing you to start over.

It's worth it for Ultima 1-7. Ultimate 8 is one of the worst games ever. The controls are retarded, and the story makes no sense. All of the Ultima game have a massive story arc, and 8 just shit's all over it. I don't mean to suggest I don't like it's story. I mean it does amazingly stupid things like destroying continuity from the rest of the series. Major characters that were killed off for a reason are all of a sudden back and for no reason. The Avatar is quite clearly not the same one from the rest of the series (that's the character that represents you the player). Nothing about 8 makes any sense, and it's almost impossible to play due to poor controls. In fact, it's so bad that it single handedly killed a franchise that was at its pinnacle. There has not been another Ultima since.

I recommend avoiding it at all costs. I still want my money back from over 20 years ago.

Kodai wrote:

I loved U7 and it's expansion, but one thing to remember about these old RPG's: one wrong move and you can't win the game. U7 is […]
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I loved U7 and it's expansion, but one thing to remember about these old RPG's: one wrong move and you can't win the game. U7 is king amongst this design style. You do something wrong near the start and 25 hours of gameplay later you find you can't continue because of cause and effect. You killed a character, missed finding an item, or did something in the wrong order, and it prevents you from doing a required quest way down the line. The only option is to figure out what you did and start the game over and avoid screwing up again.

I don't mind that at all as that's the way I was brought into the world of computer RPG's. I just wanted to point out ahead of time, that the old method is very unforgiving and seems to draw lots of ire from new players who have never played those old games.

The Ultima series is pretty heavily biased towards this system. You may have to spend 100+ hours to beat a game that only has 30 or so hours of gameplay just because of a mistake causing you to start over.

It's worth it for Ultima 1-7. Ultimate 8 is one of the worst games ever. The controls are retarded, and the story makes no sense. All of the Ultima game have a massive story arc, and 8 just shit's all over it. I don't mean to suggest I don't like it's story. I mean it does amazingly stupid things like destroying continuity from the rest of the series. Major characters that were killed off for a reason are all of a sudden back and for no reason. The Avatar is quite clearly not the same one from the rest of the series (that's the character that represents you the player). Nothing about 8 makes any sense, and it's almost impossible to play due to poor controls. In fact, it's so bad that it single handedly killed a franchise that was at its pinnacle. There has not been another Ultima since.

I recommend avoiding it at all costs. I still want my money back from over 20 years ago.

I think maybe you're forgetting Ultima 9: Ascension 😀
But that was buggy as heck too when it came out. So for all practical purposes, the Ultima series ended (for me) with 7 and its expansions.

It would be interesting to see what a version of 8 or 9 where the design wasn't completely FUBAR would have been like.

Kodai wrote:

Ultimate 8 is one of the worst games ever.

I recommend avoiding it at all costs. I still want my money back from over 20 years ago.

+1,000,000
I beat U7 Pt1 already back in the day, so that one is off the table, but U7 Pt2 might be fun. I remember Pt1 being so long (because of all the backtracking you mention), that I was burned out on it and never could get into Pt2. U8 was...(I just threw up a little in my mouth). Nevermind.

I've been watching a Let's Play on UU1 by Kikoskia, and I'm really thinking this is the one I want to play next. It has a relatively short playtime according to howlongtobeat.com (30ish hours), compared to the other ones I'm considering which range from 40-100 hours. Considering I have about 10 hours a week of potential game playing time, I'd like to get through some of the shorter ones first before getting into a game that could take me months to finish.

snorg, you are correct. I forgot 9. I was so disappointed with 8, I gave up on the single player game and moved onto the MMO and skipped 9 altogether.

clueless1, UU1 is classic and well worth the time and effort you will put into it. UU2 was OK, but seemed like a slightly polished version of 1 and didn't really grab me the way the first one did. Almost like an expansion but at full price of the game. Both are worth a run through, but the first can be replayed many times over the years. It just has good staying power. Enjoy!

It's true Ultima 8 and 9 were completely horrible and as buggy as all hell. Such a disappointment after the power house that was Ultima 7. I'll never understand why the lead designers/programmers/team leaders/R.Garriott went in that direction - It's like they sucked all the life out of the Ultima and removed anything of value from the originals.

Not a DOS game but Ultima Online back in 1997 was amazing.

I think that Garriott and team were way too focused on Ultima online and the single player game was just in their way, so they farmed it out to lower echelon staff. I was in the beta for UO and it was a madhouse for the year I was in it. There is simply no way that Garriott could have managed the single player games and UO at the same time and UO took years to get out the door. I think he is listed as a producer because he just tossed some cash at 8 and 9, and signed off on a few things. I'd be willing to bet he didn't really have anything to do with either of the games.

When UO first launched, it was a great game. It had a dated graphics engine as almost all the artwork was taken from Ultima 7, but it had fantastic music if you used midi. It's performance was pretty craptastic as most people used 33.6k dialup connections, and the game did require a bit of a powerful machine to run correctly. The network code was far from efficient, as there really was no roadmap to follow for tripple "A" MMO's because it was the first. Yeah, there were a few other MMO's before, but not major commercial titles. It took a good two years to work out all the bugs and adjust the math in the game for it to become a great game. By then, Evercrack, Asheron's Call were out and kicking ass. Anarchy Online was getting ready to launch and host of other MMO's were being teased in massive add campaigns. UO managed to keep a respectable number of players, and is still running today. It just was not able to recapture the major loss of its player base from the first two years of running with all its issues. It just wasn't polished enough on release.

I admit that I jumped ship for other MMO's and spent way to much time in Anarchy Online on its release. I didn't go back to UO for almost a decade and wasn't really happy with what was left. Right now I'm too focused on Black Desert Online and Marvel Heroes, but in a few months I may go back to UO and check it out.

I still have my Ultima Online Beta CD. I stayed to the bitter end 😜 Loaded UO up last year sometime and put a few Balrons to the sword ... back in the hey day it was awesome

I agree with everything you've said Kodai!

Argh! Now I have to go search for my beta CD as well, 🤣. I remember having to fill out the NDA, and both fax it in and mail a copy. Then about two months later a hand burned CD came in the mail and a page of info on logging into the beta site for logging in problems we found. It was pretty cool for its time.

Origin always pushed the boundaries, and their games used a lot of expensive floppy disks.

I loved Ultima VII, VI was excellent too.

If you play Ultima VII using Exult, there's a smooth scrolling option. That's not using, DOS, of course.

Does Star Control II qualifies as an RPG? If so, that's my favourite one. 😀

I'm actually taking a look at Worlds of Ultima: Martian Dreams and Savage Empire too. Got them both from GOG and running on my DOS PC quite nicely. They seem to have shorter playtimes too, according to howlongtobeat.com. I remember getting them back in the day, but never playing them much more than a few hours each. Going to watch some Let's Plays on them to see if they'd tickle my fancy.

martian dreams + savage empire are super buggy. its weird that they came out after u6 but have way way way more bugs than u6. lack of testing and qa. savage empire is the more fun of the two but your not missing anything not playing them.

EGA of course.

BloodyCactus wrote:

martian dreams + savage empire are super buggy. its weird that they came out after u6 but have way way way more bugs than u6. lack of testing and qa. savage empire is the more fun of the two but your not missing anything not playing them.

This is the first I've heard about them being super buggy. What I've read on them so far has been very positive:
http://www.hardcoregaming101.net/ultima/ultima11.htm
http://bitscreed.com/gog-com-literally-giving … -savage-empire/
http://www.pcgamer.com/saturday-crapshoot-ult … martian-dreams/
Gog.com average ratings are 4.3/5 for Martian Dreams and 4.2/5 for Savage Empire.

In what ways did you find them buggy?

Snayperskaya wrote:

Does Star Control II qualifies as an RPG? If so, that's my favourite one. 😀

I think of it as an RPG, and it's my favorite PC title of all time. Unless you are planning to play it on vintage hardware though, stick with the 3DO to PC port called Ur-Quan Masters. It a 100% improvement to audio and video and is made to work on modern OS's. It also lets you find and install alternative soundtrack recordings in case you want to change things up, and there are a boatload of them to pick from. It's one of the best projects to ever hit SourceForge.

Last time I checked, there were also plans afoot to release an HD version of The Ur-Quan Masters, but I'm not sure if that ever got finished.

clueless1 wrote:

I'm actually taking a look at Worlds of Ultima: Martian Dreams and Savage Empire too. Got them both from GOG and running on my DOS PC quite nicely. They seem to have shorter playtimes too, according to howlongtobeat.com. I remember getting them back in the day, but never playing them much more than a few hours each. Going to watch some Let's Plays on them to see if they'd tickle my fancy.

I played Savage Empire thoroughly to completion as a kid. Loved every minute of it and the Sir Arthur Conan Doyle esk world. These days I struggle with that Ultima 6/Ultima Worlds engine 😜 (too spoilt)
I cant recall ever having any serious bug problems with the game itself though. I do recall those games were pretty picky about the Roland MT-32 interface and I never played more than 5 minutes of Martian Dreams.

I like Arena. I'd probably like Daggerfall too if I could survive long enough in the beginning to get into it. Never played any others.