/vr/ - Retro Games

[Anonymous No.1040067]

So Im curious to try out some Ultima but Im not exactly sure where to start.

I have played pieces of a few of the titles and it never clicked with me, however these experiences were 10+ years ago. The most of any of the titles I have played was Ultima Underworld which I recall liking quite a bit.

Researching seems to imply that VII was the best of the series but is there any reason to go farther back than that? I dont really care if there is story to learn, I can read lore separately if I need to fill in the gaps. What I really want to know is if they are actually, yknow, fun? Id much rather have a better gameplay experience than slogging through rightly outdated mechanics to force myself through the story. I did try Ultima 1 but concepts like needing food to constantly stay alive made me balk at the idea of continuing.

If all the games are like that is there any other pc rpg from that era that is removed from that? I have tried stuff like Baldurs Gate and never got into it. But I do love the old Fallouts and Planescape.

[Anonymous No.1040107]

>>1040067
Watch Spoony's Ultima marathon to get a taste of what the older ones were like.

Honestly, don't even bother with the first 5 Ultima games. They were ok 30 years ago, but you probably wouldn't enjoy them nowadays unless you actually played them back then and are in for a bottle of nostalgia.

[Anonymous No.1040118]

VII is overrated and poor point to jump in since it builds upon the previous parts. Reading the lore books won't tell you what it means to be the Avatar. Start with 3 or 4.

Most Ultima games have food as a resource, though it won't trickle down as fast as in the first games.
The games aren't perfect, they all got some flaw but they make up for it with charm and lead the way for the rest of the genre.

[Anonymous No.1040130]

>>1040107
Don't listen to this. Those videos are crap and Ultima 5 is among the best of the series.

[Anonymous No.1040123]

>>1040107
I hate reading complete nonsense like this on a retro board. what the fuck you people

[Anonymous No.1040139]

>>1040123
>>1040130
>hurr u suck

Wow, it's like I'm on /v/.

The older games were shit, no matter how much you sugarcoat it. Try playing Ultima 1 and see if you can bear it longer than 10 minutes. Every step drains your food like it's pouring out of your fucking pockets, the monsters don't make any sense and are way off-balanced, and the graphics are so bad, you might've been better of just playing a text-adventure game.

Sigh, remember when people didn't go buttmad the second someone's critizing something and responde with nothing but ad hominem shitposting? Fuck this board and fuck people like you.

[Anonymous No.1040153]

A lot of people really love 3, can't say im one of em. 4 and 5 are awesome, but involve a lot of dungeon crawling, which i never cared for in the ultima series. 4 is also very easy, while 5 is hard.

6 is very playable, with decently modern graphics, an awesome story & characters. would play again

7 & 7.5 is more of the same, in a more polished, streamlined engine. Not much of a real plot in 7, but to me the story is in the characters in this one. 7.5 might be the best one. The second half is conspicuously and sadly brief though, due to rushed schedules.

tl;dr I would start with 4. but use walkthroughs on the dungeons.

[Anonymous No.1040150]

>>1040067
4 through 7+Expansion is where it's at. Maybe 8 if you just want to run through a similar world.
Many people consider 5 the peak of the series. Some think 6 was better than 7.
1 through 3 can be skipped.

[Anonymous No.1040151]

>>1040139
oh, it's alright.
we heard your opinion, it's wrong, now shut up you crybaby.

[Anonymous No.1040161]

>>1040139
>The older games were shit
The first ones were. 4 and particularly 5 were not in any way shit. If the closest you got to them was watching some online videos you shouldn't really comment.

[Anonymous No.1040181]

>>1040153
I can't call the VII engine streamlined. The engine of VI worked fine aside from lacking drag&drop (which nuvie adds) while VII introduced all sorts of problems in environment and inventory.

[Princess Sevenshit !!4kgug9zbIJb No.1040180]

>>1040139
Die soon

[Anonymous No.1040183]

>>1040150
>>1040153

I'd agree with these. Here's what happened for me: I played a bit of 6 and loved it though I didn't know anything about the story, so I played 4 and 5 and ended up liking them a lot even though they looked kinda crappy to begin with. Then I moved on, finished 6 (which is probably my favorite, for weird reasons) and then 7 which was also amazing.

I think the rest of the series is pretty much only worth it for novelty. I kinda enjoyed 9 because i have a thing for shitty open-world ish games like that.

Martian Dreams/Savage Empire aren't to be missed either. And of course Ultima Underworld, just keep in mind that story-wise you can play UU1 whenever but it's better to have played 7 before UU2

[Anonymous No.1040191]

Weird question: can you bake bread in Ultima VII?

Another weird question: has anyone set up Ultima Online and just played it by themselves? Is it playable? Is it fun?

[Anonymous No.1040195]

>>1040139
If you're grouping 4 and 5 with the first three you're either legitimately an idiot or didn't play them

[Anonymous No.1040202]

>>1040191
>can you bake bread in Ultima VII?
Yes.

[Anonymous No.1040205]

>>1040191
>can you bake bread in Ultima VII?
Yes.

[Anonymous No.1040215]

>>1040067
Start with Ultima 4, and play until it starts boring you or getting too tedious. At that point, stop and jump into Ultima 5. This is mainly to acclimatize yourself with the recurrent game world and what the series is mainly known for.

[Anonymous No.1040221]

>>1040161
4 is pretty shit although I'll agree that 5 is rather good.

[Anonymous No.1040224]

>>1040161
If he followed those videos he's think that 5 was the peak and the series went downhill after that. But it's basically a video of a guy watching gameplay videos and failing at the basics whenever he tries to play himself.

I don't think 1 is shit, it's just very different from the later games.
2 unfortunately is shit.
3 is the link between them and the later games and similar to 4 in many regards but lacking the crucial elements that defined the series afterwards.

[Anonymous No.1040227]

>>1040139
5 is remarkably similar to 6, what are you on about

[Anonymous No.1040236]

>>1040191
You can feed a child bread made from his fathers blood.
If this isn't reason enough to play U7, I don't know what is.

[Anonymous No.1040258]

>>1040227
5 was the last multi-scale Ultima, still had a party inventory and companions went silent after they joined. It was also the last Ultima on the Apple II.

[Anonymous No.1040292]

Hey OP here. Based on what Im hearing I guess Ill try out 4 first since that seems to be the one that kinda kicks off whole legend and is still playable.

I may watch youtube videos just to look at 2 and 3 but normally I hate lets play videos of any kind.

So my next question is what kind of other materials do I need? Can I just get by with a map and the manual or do I absolutely need a walkthrough? Im still kind of a novice to rpgs but I dislike most jrpgs cause they feel designed to have a walkthrough instead of through intuitive design and flow.

[Anonymous No.1040307]

>>1040202
>>1040205
>>1040236

Rad.
I remember playing a game called Cythera for the mac which was basically a huge Ultima VII ripoff, though I didn't find that out until way, way later. For some reason I though that baking bread in that game was like the pinnacle of cool stuff you could do in an RPG so I was wondering if that was ripped off too.

Anyway, what about the UO thing?

[Anonymous No.1040309]

I think a good jumping off point would be Martian Dreams, it's got all the stuff I love about the series but it's mostly a stand alone story.

[Anonymous No.1040308]

>>1040139
>Try playing Ultima 1 and see if you can bear it longer than 10 minutes
Nigger, what are you on about? I'm playing the Ultima 1 as my first Ultima right now and I'm having mad fun. Pic related, just got done doing a quest for Lord British.

I'm only a few hours in and I'm already overflowing with food, cash and health. Whoever thought this game was hard to get into clearly fails at RPGs on all levels. It gets even easier once you find out how to quickly increase your stats. It may or may not spike in difficulty later on though, since I haven't played that into it far yet.

Graphics are primitive, but do have a certain charm to them. I really like them. The only thing I'm disappointed about is the lack of music, but I don't think many games even had that at the time of its original release. All in all, it's very novel in that it's a barebones game that manages to get all its core elements intact and provides more freedom to fuck around in than your average corridor crawler to boot. Screw anyone saying it's unplayable.

[Anonymous No.1040320]

3 is a decent, I don't know what you're talking about

[Anonymous No.1040327]

>>1040292
What? JRPGs are some of the most linear, hand-holding games in existence. Unless you mean if you want to get every item or something.

[Anonymous No.1040335]

>>1040308
It's not hard to get into, it's just that there's nothing to the game. It's primitive, it's shallow, and good luck actually finishing the game without a guide.

[Anonymous No.1040336]

>>1040327

Pretty much. I meant more in the sense of getting essential gear or even characters. Sometimes stuff is hidden in such a way that it would be impossible to know it was there unless you had a guide telling you it was there. Its not something I usually see in western RPGS but then again I havent played many.

The actual stories I agree are mostly just one path. The only real experimentation comes in dealing with boss encounters to figure out the best way to beat them. Which is annoying cause a lot of games dont let you save before the boss encounter (fucking Phantasy Star IV)

[Anonymous No.1040343]

>>1040292
Taking notes is absolutely mandatory in Ultima. The games are tough to beat even with them - it's very easy to get lost in what the hell were you supposed to be doing, and then the only thing that can save you is a walkthrough.

[Anonymous No.1040349]

>>1040336
>I meant more in the sense of getting essential gear or even characters.
A big part of Ultima's appeal is exploration, so you're prompted to find that shit out by yourself.

[Anonymous No.1040356]

>>1040335
I've already explored all the landmass you can reach on foot, which I assumed was the whole game because of memory limitations, and I've just discovered there are a multitude of them. I consider that pretty exciting, even though I know most of the towns, castles and dungeons will still be largely copy-pasted. There's nothing shallow about that.

And I think you're confusing Ultima 1 and 2. I've heard many complaints about 2 being impossible without a guide, but in Ultima 1, Varg the tavernkeeper is more than willing to explain the game's objectives to you and give you hints. Although that could've been handled a bit better by not having to make me talk to him a million times to get a bunch of obscure information.

[Anonymous No.1040371]

>>1040356
> I consider that pretty exciting, even though I know most of the towns, castles and dungeons will still be largely copy-pasted. There's nothing shallow about that.
They are indeed copypasted. That's the problem.
>And I think you're confusing Ultima 1 and 2
Ultima 1 hits this point too. Don't remember what the tavernkeeper was saying, but I highly doubt that that stuff is all you will need.

[Anonymous No.1041250]

>>1040292
Get the fan patches and engine rebuilds. The common DOS versions aren't the best option, in particular for the 80s games.

[Anonymous No.1041265]

>>1040308
Play the FM Towns version if you want music, it's the most advanced port for the first two games.

[Anonymous No.1041317]

>>1040343
I recommend checking a walkthrough before entering the final dungeon to prevent wasting hours in it only to realize you lack a crucial component.
Ultima V has some tricky items.