Ultima 6, The False Prophet, for SNES

Rating: 7.7/10; Good

Recommended for rpg fans, but the game is too tedious to play without maps and walkthrough

Ultima 6 is a top down rpg with tactical turn based combat. The SNES version is more streamlined than the PC, removing some unnecessary features. The 1 thing removed that I would have liked is the character creation questionnaire. Rather, your character starts off with fixed attributes that increase upon leveling up, just like all other party members. Leveling up involves going to 1 of the 8 virtue shrines, and the attribute gain depends on which you use. Not all virtues are equal though; Spirituality gives +1 to all while the basic virtues of Valor, Honesty and Compassion give +3 to a single stat. The other virtues only give +1 to two stats and Humility gives nothing! This is a pretty severe oversight; why would you ever level up at the inferior shrines? They should have the other virtues give +2 and +1 to make them mathematically equal, and do something useful with Humility.

Before you can even level up though you will have to liberate the shrines from enemies, and get past the battle at the beginning. There is no separate battle screen; you fight directly in the world. Characters and enemies take turns with the order possibly determined by dexterity. You usually have to input commands for 2 or 3 characters at a time, and they will execute their orders without being able to adjust for changing conditions, so they will miss an enemy that moves out of attack range and do nothing if their target is slain. This is some NES era nonsense, but it is not a big deal. On a turn a character can: attack, use an item, cast a spell or move 1 space. Yes, unlike in most games where you can actually move a fair distance, this game only allows you to do the equivalent of a 5 foot step per round, and without also being able to attack. Now I wonder if the gravity on Britannia is significantly higher than on Earth for everything to move so ponderously. And with such poor mobility, ranged weapons are king. Even polearms, which let you attack 2 spaces away, are infinitely better than the basic sword. The best strategy is to give everyone a bow, crossbow or magic wand, and stock up on ammo. Keep some melee weapons on hand to use if the enemies get close, and take advantage of being able to freely access the inventory to swap weapons and trade between the characters. Other than the thing about a few characters taking turns at the same time, you could technically play hot potato by having multiple characters attack using the same weapon. The combat is overall very good and highly tactical. There are AI and auto battle features that can expedite the process, but characters with ranged weapons do not understand the concept of line of sight. There also seems to be a bug where combat will end if the enemy is in an awkward position. I'm not sure exactly what causes it but expect to take some cheap shots to the face if the enemy can cast spells, and to open the inventory too many times as you mash the menu button to try and attack manually. That latter bit is because the developers, in their infinite wisdom, decided not to bother using most of the buttons on the controller to instead rely on choosing commands from a menu.

You start off with a party of 4 and can recruit 2 others from a sizable cast. Unfortunately only the avatar has a unique sprite, and it can be very confusing telling apart characters that look identical. I had a hard enough time telling apart Iolo and Shamino at first, and they don't even look alike! Magic seems to be pretty much reserved for the avatar though, because no one else has an even halfway decent amount of mana, if any at all. Some spells can be found from enemies while most must be purchased, and all require reagents that must also be purchased. The reagents are annoying on their own but the worst part is not every shop sells every reagent. Magic includes useful support and environmental spells, like healing, unlock and dispel magic traps, as well as combat nukes. The best spell in the game is called "help", which costs nothing to use and teleports you back to Lord British, fully restoring the characters and making it daytime. I abused it heavily. That last bit comes in very handy because the game features a day/night cycle that makes each npc change their location based on the time. A shopkeeper might spend the day at work, the evening at the tavern and the night at home sleeping. This means he is only useful to you during the daytime, so you are going to have to have to wait around, spend money to stay at the inn or spend food to camp. In other words, waste your time and resources. Night time shrinks the view to a small circle around your characters, making it that much harder to navigate. This also happens in dungeons where the only way to deal with it is with light magic, or torches that take up 1 hand.

1 spell shows a map, and there is a single use item that does the same, but the map only shows the area directly around you without being able to zoom out. There is no world map or dungeon overview to help find your way around, especially for the labyrinthine dungeons. Using a walkthrough map is pretty much mandatory. The map has basic color coding for terrain, hazards and other points of interest, but no key to decipher them. The fast travel system is also difficult to decipher. The moon orb you start with can teleport you to a number of locations depending on where you use it relative to the avatar's position. Again a guide is pretty much mandatory, unless you feel like experimenting and writing down the results. Maybe some of this is in the manual but that is no excuse for not having it in the game. Getting around the samey looking overworld, towns and dungeons is a chore. Finding out what exactly you are supposed to do is also difficult to figure out. The beginning is not bad with the straightforward objective of liberating the 8 shrines, though how to get the required runes can sometimes be a little obtuse. After that, the plot expects you to find a traveling gypsy, who never showed up in the places listed in the walkthrough. I had to skip ahead to the next step, which thankfully worked. That kind of design is far too tedious and player unfriendly; I have better things to do than spend hours looking for an npc! The rest of the game is not absolutely terrible in terms of direction, but you will probably get stuck and need a walkthrough at some point.

Ultima 6 is an immersive game with excellent dialogue and pen and paper style npc descriptions. It has solid combat, but getting around and figuring out what to do is more tedious than it needs to be. The game is best experienced while following a walkthrough.

Pro

• Tactical combat
• Auto battle
• Excellent immersive dialogue and npc descriptions
• Good setting and story
• Good inventory system

Con

• No wait/skip turn command in battle
• Can’t both move and attack in one combat turn
• Everything can only move a single space per combat turn
• Characters waste turns if their target moves out of range or dies
• Ranged/magic characters and enemies will shoot if an obstacle blocks the shot
• Battles seen to randomly end if the enemy is too far or can’t target the Avatar
• No way to retrieve arrows or thrown weapons, making them too expensive to throw!
• Xp only given to the character that lands the killing blow
• Enemies can suddenly spawn close enough to start combat, or in previously cleared areas
• Plenty of useless items that cannot be sold (like boots)
• Does not make use of most controller buttons
• Day/night cycle wastes the player’s time
• Can be difficult finding a place where the game will let you camp
• Some quest and basic npc interactions only occur at specific times
• Quest direction is poor
• Fast travel system is a puzzle
• Lousy map with no zoom out that costs resources to view
• All dungeons appear on the same map, so you can see places you could never get to without significant overworld travel
• Most environments look the same, making navigation tedious
• Dungeons are way too big
• Some party members look the same
• No mage type party members
• Some shrines are inferior for leveling up