/vr/ - Retro Games

>>3070015

>Akalabeth, First Age of Darkness and Revenge of the Enchantress

Extremely dated. These games are essentially on par with any community game designed for a TI calculator. The only reason you should play any of these is if you have a perverse curiosity about the origins of computer role-playing games.

>Exodus

Now we're talking. Exodus lets you construct a party of adventures from a number of different race / class combinations, then thrusts you in an open world to gather several key items. The computer versions might be a bit sluggish to control due to every inventory requiring you to look up key mappings, but the NES port is much more playable.

>Quest of the Avatar

Completely disregards the elements of Exodus, doing away with character races altogether and radically changing the layout of the game world. Instead of generating a party, you generate a single character and gather a party of NPCs as you go along.

The game may be impossible to complete without a guide, as the NPCs don't actually hint at the locations of every key item you need to assemble, such as the stones. Some are placed in completely inexplicable spots, like random grass tiles in villages that you'd never think to examine.

From this point, the series veers off into some really butchered writing.

>Ultima V and onward

Most everything that follows Quest of the Avatar rehashes the same setting, characters and themes. Unless you absolutely loved Ultima IV and can say to yourself, "Wow, that sure was fun! Now I want to experience the exact same game a dozen more times!" then you probably shouldn't bother.

>>3047201

The early series was a pretty big deal in its time, but the series overall didn't keep up with innovations and trends put forth by other series. Each new Ultima game was pretty much a rehash of the last.

I still play Ultima III with the DOS enhancement patch, but that's it. I really hated how Ultima IV and onward dropped the class and race-based mechanics. The only character whose class you were able to choose was the Avatar's.

Although I really enjoyed Ultima III, I don't understand the love for the series as a whole. After 3, the series dropped race and class mechanics, and the world was filled with generic human companions each tied to a specific role. I understand why the plot justifies this, but it nonetheless seems like it's too regressive of a change.

One thing I like U3 is its virtually infinite replay value. You could always try to beat the game with different party compositions, and thanks to the character roster, you could even swap out multiple parties during the course of one playthrough.