Title: Ultima VI: The False Prophet
Release Date: 04/03/1992
Developer: Infinity
Publisher: Pony Canyon/FCI Plus
Here we have another CRPG being translated to the SNES, and from a venerable series as well. I will be upfront with saying that my experience with Ultima as a series is incredibly limited. I have played maybe one hour of Ultima Online and perhaps 30 minutes of a 3D Ultima game that I played on a computer while my being babysat as a kid. CRPGs, in general, are a genre that I am relatively new to, but starting to explore more as I am getting older. As I am new to the genre and still learning some of the basics like how to navigate the menus and execute actions, these entries on this blog are ones that become very tiresome to sit through. NES and SNES translations of CRPGs usually are not known for their ease of use (see Drakkhen as that is a game that should have been on the PC over a SNES game), and they often implement the CRPG UIs and controls in an inelegant manner.
This all being the case, I will be honest that I only played a little bit of this game. I found it very frustrating and was not having fun, and seeing as how this game takes around 20 hours to complete, I didn't find it worth seeing it through to the end.
Background
Ultima is a series that broke ground in the RPG genre in general, translating the trends for RPGs as a tabletop game to a new genre for video games. As such, Ultima is one of the primary pillars of the CRPG genre. It was developed by Origin Studios, and was the brainchild of Richard "Lord British" Garriott. Lord British is also a self-insert character in the games as well, as the benevolent god-wizard-king who rules over the world of the game.
The series takes place in the world of Britannia, and the character, since Ultima IV, has always been known as the Avatar. In VI, the Avatar is captured by this race of gargoyles, and starts the game on an altar about to be sacrificed to their sinister gods. They are rescued by their companions, and they are tasked by Lord British with repelling an invasion of these gargoyles. Over the course of the game, you learn that the gargoyles view you as harmful and instigating party, and the goal of the game, in an interesting twist, becomes making peace with the gargoyles.
Gameplay
The player views the world from a birdseye view. The player's avatar and companions all navigate the map on a grid. As a visual aesthetic, I find this really unpleasant. It is hard to distinguish doors, characters, enemies, or items from one another. Seeing NPCs move in this view is also strange too, as the animation is very simple and lacking frames, which gives everything this SimAnt style movement. Very unpleasant overall.
For the player, though, everything moves at a crawl. Everything is chosen off a menu of verbs: attacking, talking, using, interacting. I just wish something was simplified; as a boy spoiled on a mechanically simple by comparison RPG series, Final Fantasy, I was harshly missing moving as one character (instead of a horde of a party) and pressing an "interact" button instead of having to pick it off a menu.
I also had that feeling while playing of being unsure of what I was doing, as a player, had any affect in battle or gaming scenarios. Like, the game opens with a battle against the gargoyles in Lord Britain's throne room. By the time I figured out who I was controlling and having them attack who I thought was a gargoyle (again its hard to tell), the battle had already been won by my companions. Just very frustrating overall.
Music
Ads
Final Result
I know I really didn't give this game a fair shake, but I am very greedy with my video gaming time, and this game really just wasn't enjoyable for me. Honestly, I would try to play this again, but on my PC rather than as an SNES title.
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