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RPGDot Game Rating Machine |
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Loz
has rated the following games:
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Ultima 7 - The Black Gate: 8/10 points |
Ultima 7 is probably as good as it gets in CRPG's. For those who have (seemingly) forgotten, RPG stands for Role Playing Game. That is, you take on the role of a character. From that I always inferred that the important thing was playing a role, and to me that meant being able to choose a character, a personality, and play the character according to that, so that means the more freedom to do things, the better (as it can accomodate more personalities).
Ultimately this is where computer games are limited, and Ultima 7 is no exception. It does give a rather unique level of interaction with the game world that I haven't seen in an CRPG since (possibly a rogue-like variant that I haven't seen trumps it). But even still choices are limited, you can't buy a shop, you can't build a castle and try and take over the land, and you can't take up with the Guardian. I'm not saying that it's reasonable to expect these things in a computer game, I'm just explaining why I'm not giving this 10/10.
What was nice about it was the ability to bake, act, go where you want when you want (after you get out of Trinsic of course), the ability to manipulate almost everything.
The NPC were really one of the best things about it. I never got the impression (as I do with most other CRPGs) that the NPCs were there just to further the plot. Every NPC had something to do with it, but they were so ready to offer up so much about their own lives that it made it seem like they were there for themselves and not for you (as most people are). Their day time schedules only added to that. In too many modern RPGs NPCs stay in the one spot all day! A shop-keeper that you can buy stuff off 24/7 simply feels contrived and as if they're there for your benefit and not for their own. (I mean, so what if you're on the quest to retrieve the sword of Holy Bob? Jones the merchant doesn't care; he wants to eat and sleep, and not sell you torches at 1 am--unless of course you drum him out of bed and pay extra.)
The story-line was quite good. However, I think that plenty of other CRPGs have done jut as well. Mind you, one good thing about the story-line that beats most other CRPGs is that large amounts of it didn't involve killing something. I'm not a pacifist, but I get tired of having to endlessly go from point a to b with 1000 orcs being slaughted in between. It's nice and refreshing to have the story-line teased out by talking to people (not just having characters talk at you, which is mostly how it's done in CRPGs now).
Yeah, ok, graphics and sounds are ordinary these days, but back then they were great, and even today after awhile of playing it I can still feel like I'm the character, so it works.
In short: indepth characters who are believable, lots of flexibility in interaction with the world but still not enough to justify the 'role playing game' title, and a nicely done story line. |
Ultima 9 - Ascension: 3/10 points |
I think I may be too generous with 3 points to this one. The graphics were good, and the swimming was nice, but that's about it for the good.
I didn't mind the bugs, even having to patch it, and then unpatch it to defeat the demon triumvirate wasn't a big deal to me. What I did hate was how the story line just ignored all the previous games in the Ultima series. The biggest annoyance for me was how the in U7 the Guardian was touted a conquerer of worlds and a member of a race of his kind by the wisps. Now sure they might have been wrong, but since they specialized in gaining knowledge I have trouble believing they were. My conclusion was that the evil twin story-line was written by someone who was totally ignorant of the past three ultimas. No attempt was made to tie it in with previous ultimas. At best they were ignored, and in many cases they were contradicted (e.g. the false prophet story-line was well and truly finished off in Ultima VI, only to be resurrected and abused in U9).
The moronic dialogue you were forced to say was annoying. The characters were bland and stupid. Your old friends from previous Ultimas acted like they had amnesia and had lost all their personalities. The 'love story' with Raven was contrived and superfluous.
The actual plot was just the same thing 8 times over: go to column, defeat naughty person, learn mantra you should already know, repeat 7 times.
The freedom of travel I'd come to expect from an Ultima game simply wasn't there. If you really think about it, you're more or less led from one place to another by the nose. If you want to, say, go to Yew right at the start, you can't (without exploiting the ability to get over the mountains). You have to get up to the point in the plot where LB lets you go there.
All in all this was a terrible diappointment and its only redemption was that in hindsight made me realise how bad Ultima 8 could have been. |
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