Status Chovus Apr 3, 2025
Beat using a party of elf barbarian, human paladin, elf druid and elf wizard. I made elf thief, alchemist and lark but never used them. I did not understand character creation so the 1st order of business was looking up what each class and race did. Ok barbarian was fighter/thief, lark fighter/mage, alchemist thief/mage, illusionist thief/cleric, druid cleric/mage, ranger was …
Beat using a party of elf barbarian, human paladin, elf druid and elf wizard. I made elf thief, alchemist and lark but never used them. I did not understand character creation so the 1st order of business was looking up what each class and race did. Ok barbarian was fighter/thief, lark fighter/mage, alchemist thief/mage, illusionist thief/cleric, druid cleric/mage, ranger was a mix of all 4 base classes, and the others were obvious. I designed my party with a few key parameters; had to be a paladin, as many elves as possible, no midget races, and as balanced as possible. After beating the game I think the best possible party is human ranger, bobit paladin, bobit cleric, fuzzy wizard. I hated the race penalties and bonuses because they were huge and pigeon holed each race into certain classes. I really wanted an elf paladin but their max wisdom penalty would cut off access to some useful spells. As it was, my human paladin missed out on some spells that a bobit would get; mainly surface to get out of dungeons with 1 cast. I think spell access was more important than some extra attack damage. She mostly used cure and heal, and for some reason seemed to consistently fight better than the barbarian when they had the same str and dex. She started with 25 str and wisdom and I really felt that 0 dex for the early game. Never bothered to buy her armor and her final stats were 50 str, 75 dex, 70 wis, 0 int. The barbarian was intended to handle traps while also being a top tier warrior. In reality I had to save state scum constantly to avoid nasty traps, especially that stupid cold ailment that could not be fixed with magic. It was not so bad once my characters were higher level with access to cure poison though. He started with 25 str and dex, ending with 50 str and 99 dex. Since elves had such a penalty to wis and that druid used the higher of wis and int for all spell casting, this was the only viable way to make an elven white magic user. He could melee with a mace but was stuck with cloth armor. He mostly used the same spells as the paladin. The wizard up and down spells were cheaper than the cleric's, and he nuked with missile, flame and psi, but sucked that I never got any better white spells. He started with 25 dex and int, ending with 70 int. Lastly the wizard had a lot of useful spells; light, up and down, nukes, stop, but it took a long time to regen enough mp to use the good spells. It was very much like 8 bit theatre where black mage can only cast 1 huge nuke per day. He started same as druid and went all the way to 75 int.
I did my 1st battle on the overworld without weapons, and then immediately went to town to buy 2 slings, mace, dagger and leather armor for the barb. This game was very similar to Ultima 4. I did not like how only 1 weapon could be equipped and how melee weapons were useless compared to ranged, like so inferior and pointless that I wonder why they were even included in the game. Ranged was not quite as overpowered as in 4 though since characters could only shoot in the 4 cardinal directions instead of targeting whatever they wanted. This made combat far more tactical with focus on positioning and who tanks, but also made combat drag on and be more dangerous because it was difficult to focus fire. Characters and enemies could still only move 1 space or attack/cast each turn. There should have been ways to increase movement and allow move + attack, and some enemies that could also do that. The weakest enemies could be killed instantly with 0mp spells, like turning undead. This combined with overworld monsters becoming more powerful as the party leveled up led to the optimal way to play being to grind lots of xp and gold on those easy enemies without going to Lord British to level up. I did not do that, just played normally. I fought in the overworld a bit then went into the nearby dungeon of gold. I was not sure what to do to progress the game and was not yet ready to consult a walkthrough so I followed the dialog from someone in town mentioning the nearby dungeon. I did use online maps because to hell with mapping these dungeons on my own. It was sickening that viewing the map was done using a consumable item or with the map spell that only a pure cleric could get enough mp to cast. An infinite use map item or menu command should have been included, as least only showing explored areas. I used the online maps to bee line for chests and other things of interest. It took ridiculous amounts of save state scumming and RNG manipulation to make it through that entire dungeon without dying. The fountains were important for healing hp and poison. I could defeat golems, giants and titans but everything else was too difficult. I found that I could avoid traps and battles by moving differently and spinning in place, or even going up and down ladders. When it was done I made off with nearly 10k gold and everyone got a few levels up. The druid hogged most xp though since he had both spells for insta killing the weakest enemies. One thing that was better here than in Ultima 4 was enemy numbers were not always maxed out. Sometimes there were only a few or moderate number of them, which was easier, less tedious and more exciting.
With all this gold I visited every town looking for better weapons. I bought a few keys, 1 tent and 1 gem, which I used to show my position on the map before save loading to not lose the item. The tent seemed to only recover 100hp for everyone, so it seemed like a waste of money. Where the hell were the bows? Had to look up online how to get to the stupid hidden town that was only accessible at new moon. I get hiding silver bows there but why was the regular bow not sold in any other town? I got a silver bow for the barb then did cave of gold again to get another for the paladin. From then on the warriors by far got the most xp but it was obnoxious how often they missed. I did the cave of gold again then went exploring some of the other dungeons. I did not fool around with the moongates to get to 1 cave, and I did not bother with the 2 caves in the west as I was getting sick of it. In between I made 3 trips to ambrosia to improve stats: the 1st I upgraded dex on the warriors to 36 each, the 2nd I did the spell casting stats, and the 3rd and final trip I maxed out the warriors dex and spent the rest on str. For that last trip I farmed the 1st floor of Sol cave several times, which was simpler than doing whole dungeons. Around this time I also read a walkthrough to figure out every little thing that had to be done, and got the mystic weapons and armor, which allowed the spell casters to fight in melee. At the end I went into the final dungeon unprepared since I figured it would not be too difficult. My characters were around 50% hp and had only 100 food each. The final dungeon was full of the strongest monster types, but they appeared on the map instead of the random battles of the caves since it was top down view like the towns and overworld. Only mystic weapons could be used there so I would have the wizard cast kill to one shot while the other 3 closed into melee. This gave the 2nd enemy plenty of time to do 100s of damage though, and my heals could not keep up. Instead I used the stop spell, which froze both enemies long enough to melee both while taking 0 damage. The only problem was waiting for the wizard's mp to regen, so in between each battle was a few minutes of moving back and forth on turbo. I was worried that I would run out of food, but I made it to the end. I guess those invisible enemies count as the final boss despite being easier than the regular enemies. Too bad there was not a real boss. Final levels were barb 25, pal 21, druid 8, wizard 4. Levels only determined max hp though so that was actually very balanced.
This was a very tedious game that had a lot of annoying features. Sluggish movement during top down view, especially in the boat. Town NPCs moved around to much and far too quickly such that it was difficult to talk to them. I especially liked when shopkeepers had enough room behind their counters to not be within talking distance, forcing me to wait until they moved back. Like jesus buddy, do your stock or whatever after the important customers leave. There was no backing out of menus during combat so if you messed up it was a skipped turn. No way to escape combat. Combat was tedious and over valued ranged weapons. Magic users mp was too low and regened too slowly, but at least there were no reagents to buy. No quick way to heal to full in towns, forcing going into dungeons to find healing fountains. Dungeon navigation was unnecessarily tedious, forcing hand drawn maps, spending gold or mp just to view the map and see in the dark, and plenty of traps, including those that just stole food and turned off light. At least there were no teleporters, spin tiles, invisible walls or instant death from screwing up teleportation magic. However I think the worst aspect of the game was the progression system. The entire thing about avoiding leveling up for easier combat, and grinding gold to raise stats. I would have enjoyed this game more if it was more like a traditional rpg: get rid of those 0mp instant death spells, restrict enemy power by location (always weak on the overworld and increasing in power by dungeon type and depth), allow equipping both melee and ranged weapons while making melee more important. The ambushes in Ultima 4 helped force melee. Melee weapons should be significantly more powerful and dex and even horses should allow moving more than 1 space per turn. Stats should improve at level up but I have no problem requiring going to ambrosia and spending gold to unlock the highest numbers. Enemies should randomly drop items and equipment, and dungeons should have more than just gold and quest stuff to find.
Overall I'd say the game was slightly worse than Ultima 4.
6.8/10
