I totally forgor to post this yesterday. I hope all my fellow Americans had a good Thanksgiving holiday weekend. I watched plenty of football and played some Binding of Isaac and Command and Conquer on the side. Have a good week everyone

  • SorosFootSoldier [he/him, they/them]
    ·
    2 days ago

    I started Ultima, the very first, the OG, to see where the series started. It's a good game for 1985 but for 2024 it really doesn't pass the sniff test. Namely to even really begin and set forth on the adventure to kill the evil wizard you need to grind, and a lot, to get max level and hit points. Then there's like 4 real "quests" (go to a dungeon, any dungeon, reach floor x and kill y creature) you do to get the key items to progress and face the final boss. Do that, reach space, time travel, and fight the baddie and you win.

    I had much the same problem with Wizardry 1, in that there's no real meat on the bone in the game once you know you can power level on floor one then warp to the end and kill the final boss in a few hits.

    Like I said I can see how this would have been groundbreaking in 1985 but I'm spoiled in 2024.

      • SorosFootSoldier [he/him, they/them]
        ·
        10 hours ago

        Indeed, FF DQ all took heavy inspiration from Ultima. Now that I've cleared the opening slog of the game it gets more fun when you get a boat (or spaceship, this fantasy game has space travel, foreshadowing Richard Garriott's astronaut forays).

        It's too bad there's no real depth to the gameplay though in this first installment. There's races and classes but they're all essentially the same and you can max your stats out anyway pretty easily. I'm hoping by Ultima 4 there's some more variation in these classes since the D&D staples are all here (fighter, cleric, magic user).