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As with its predecessor, Ultima IV also has a view that shows characters and monsters traveling around, fighting each other.
Ultima IV is one of the best known and most widely distributed computer role-playing games. It was first released for the Apple II in 1985 and then ported (among other systems) to the Amiga, Atari ST, C64, MS-DOS PC, FM Towns, MSX, and even the NES and Sega Master System.
Note: Ultima I and Ultima II have never been released for the Amiga.
The Story so far …
Ultima IV continues the story that has been set down by its predecessors Ultima I through III. These first three parts chronicle the defeat of the Triad Of Evil that terrorized the lands of Sosaria: the Wizard Mondain, (defeated in Ultima I) his apprentice, the sorceress Minax (defeated in Ultima II), who actually threatened to destroy Earth, and their child or creation Exodus (defeated in Ultima III). Mondain and Minax were defeated by a single person where the threat of Exodus had to be ended by a group of four people.
The destruction of Exodus brought the end of the “Age of Darkness” and ushered in the “Age of Enlightment.” This also brought many changes to the land itself. The shape of Sosaria differed greatly between Ultima I and Ultima III. In Ultima I, Sosaria consisted of four continents, in Ultima III, it was just one large continent. In Ultima IV, Sosaria is renamed Britannia and its appearance changed again into an L-shaped continent. This is the form that it will keep throughout the rest if the series.
Another huge change was the disappearance of the different races. In the previous three parts the player could choose not only to be a human, but also a bobbit (U1 & 3 only), dwarf, elf, fuzzy (U3 only), or hobbit (U2 only). But that was ancient Sosaria. The new Britannia only supports humans. The History of Britannia tells us how the destruction of Exodus changed the shape of the world, but remains silent on the disappearance of the five other races.
But let’s not dwell on the past. We need to get our story going. An evil wizard has brought eternal winter to the land and the player has to find six magical orbs to vanquish the evil wizard … no … wait, that would have been the story if Richard Garroitt would not have gotten a lot of letters complaining how computer role-playing games corrupt young people by promoting violence and bad behavior (according to Matt Barton’s Matt Chat 114 and Dungeons & Desktops book). So, the whole evil wizard thing has been dumped and instead we fight against … well, actually we do not fight against any arch-villain. The Quest of the Avatar is actually incorporating the eight virtues, living by them and be an example to the people of Britannia. How do we do this you might ask? Well, let us first open the game box.
This is where it all begins … under the willow, beside the stream.
Inside the box
Ultima IV, as with most of Origin’s games that were released in the late 80s and early 90s, is quite a package. Inside the box you found the Boot/Program Disk, “The History of Britannia as told by Kyle the Younger” (the game manual), “The Book of Mystic Wisdom” (the book containing all the magic spells of the game), a cloth Map of Britannia, and a Quick Reference Card. The first boxes that were sipped also included a metal Ankh, which was later omitted, as neither my Amiga nor my C64 box had an Ankh.
The Quest
No evildoer awaits you in any stronghold. Your quest is to live by the eight virtues and become a shining example in each of them. This is done by doing or not doing certain actions throughout the game. That means not attacking anyone in a town, not attacking non-evil creatures in the wilderness, and fleeing from combat if they attack you and they will attack you, because everything in the wilderness will attack you. Don’t worry, you will just loose the experience from the kill, but even if your opponents flee, they leave behind a chest with gold in it. Also you should not cheat when buying spell components from the blind, old women who run the shops, you should give gold to beggars, not take any treasure chests in towns or castles, not flee from battle with evil enemies, donate blood (hit points) at the healer, and not lie or be proud in conversations. The seer Hawkwind in the castle of Lord British can tell you how well you are doing in each of the virtues. If you behave like an Avatar should, he will tell you to go to the shrine of that virtue and meditate there. To do that you first need to find the rune and mantra for each virtue or you will not be able to enter and meditate at the shrine. You also need to find other items and, once Avatarhood in all the eight virtues is achieved, finally descend into the Stygian Abyss to find the Codex of Ultimate Wisdom. Only then can you call yourself Avatar.
Into the game
The graphics are very similar to its predecessor. It’s almost like nothing has been changed, except for the dungeon graphics which have been improved. As with all Ultimas, the surrounding area is seen in a top down perspective. Only when entering a dungeon the view switches to 3D, but reverts to top down when entering combat or a room. Like in Ultima III the music is very nice, even better imho. Also, like in the predecessor, there is a different music playing, depending on where you are. So there is a tune for traveling outdoors, one while staying in a city, another while in a castle, and so on.
Instead of choosing or assigning stats you choose virtues.
Character creation is different than in Ultima III. Instead of selecting a race, class, gender, and assigning stats you are now presented with a certain situation and are given two option on how to deal with it. These situations can be something like: “Thy friend seeks admittance to thy Spiritual order. Thou art asked to vouch for his purity of Spirit, of which thou art unsure. Dost thou A) Honestly express thy doubt; or B) Vouch for him, hoping for his Spiritual improvement?” Basically you can select whatever you would do if you were in that situation. On the other hand, as you can see in the example above, each choice is linked to one of the eight virtues, in this case Honesty and Spirituality. Each virtue is linked to one of the character classes. If I’m correct, the connection should be as follows: compassion (bard), honesty (mage), honor (paladin), humility (shepherd), justice (druid), sacrifice (tinker), spirituality (ranger), and valor (fighter). So, if you select valor three times out of the seven times possible, your character will be a fighter. A bard is not a bad option, because he can cast spells and you begin with a sling, which is a better beginning choice than a mêlée weapon. Beginners should avoid humility. A shepherd cannot cast spells and has a very limited selection of weapons and armor that he can use. Character stats (Strength, Intelligence, and Dexterity) range from 1 to 50 and each character gets 100 hit points per level. There are a total of eight levels, level 2 being achieved at 100 experience points, level 3 at 200, level 4 at 400, and so on. Experience points are gained by killing monsters and finding certain items (e.g.: runes), but only your character will get the experience for finding those. The rest of the party will just get experience for killing monsters. If you or anyone in your party has earned enough experience to advance a level, go see Lord British and he will grant you the new level. Up to eight characters can be in your party, one for each experience level that your character has achieved. So, if you are a 5th level character, 5 people can be in your party (you and four others).
Interacting with the game world is still done via keyboard commands. By pressing the first letter, you can Attack, Board, Cast, Descend, Enter, Fire, Get Chest, Hole up and camp, Ignite a torch, Jimmy lock, Klimb, Locate position, Mix Reagents, New order, Open door, Peer at gem, Quit & save, Ready a weapon, Search, Talk, Use, Volume, Wear armour, Xit, Yell, and Z-tats (show stats and equipment) your way through Britannia. Just like in the previous Ultimas (with slight differences).
The graphics of the game are simple and outdated.
Magic spells now require one or more of the eight reagents: Sulphurous Ash, Ginseng, Garlic, Spider Silk, Blood Moss, Black Pearl, Nightshade, and Mandrake Root. The latter two cannot be bought in shops, but must be found in the wilderness. There are 26 spells in total, one for each letter of the alphabet. A spell is selected by pressing the first letter of its name. This is actually quite intuitive, as there is “a” for “Awaken”, “c” for “Cure (Poison)” (you will need that one quite often), “f” for “Fireball”, “h” for “Heal”, “l” for “Light”, and “s” for “Sleep”, to name just a few. Before you can cast a spell, you have to mix the reagents for it. So if you want to cure a poisoned character you need to first mix one portion of Garlic with one portion of Ginseng. You can mix reagents in advance. You do not have to do that prior or during the casting of the spell, which would be awkward in combat. Also the “Mix” command is not available during combat. Up to 99 ready-to-use mixed reagents for each spell can be stored in your inventory, enabling your spell casters to throw fireballs like a Gatling gun (well, almost).
Talking is now one of the most important aspects of the game. Also, people now have more to say than the simple on-liners known from Ultima III. It works by typing in a keyword and see what the person you are talking to has to say about it, hopefully getting more keywords to ask him or her or someone else. Keywords that work with everyone are: name, job, health, and bye. So if someone did not tell you his name, just ask for it by typing in “name.” If you want to know the physical condition of someone just say “health” and to end a conversation type in “bye.” The most important keyword is “job” which will tell you what the person is doing or what he is up to. There you might get additional info, like that he is searching for someone or something or that he is on a quest. Now you can ask about the person or object someone is searching for or what kind of quest he is on. Also they might give you hints, like what to do or not to do if you want to become an Avatar, and other useful information. Additional keywords that might work are “join” (asking someone to join your party), “rune” (asking if someone knows where a rune for one of the shrines of the eight virtues is), “mantra” (asking if someone knows the mantra for one if the shrines of the eight virtues), “give” (offering to give money to someone) and “look,” which reprints the information how the person you are talking to looks like. Lord British is quite the talker. You can ask him about Ankh, Britannia, Avatar, Quest, Virtues, Honesty, Compassion, Valor, Justice, Sacrifice, Honor, Spirituality, Humility, Pride, Principles, Truth, Love, Courage, Abyss, Mondain, Minax, and Exodus. It is enough to type in just the first four letters of the keyword, so if you want to ask someone if he knows a mantra, you just need to type in “mant.”
There are also eight dungeons, one to oppose each virtue: Covetous, Deceit, Despise, Destard, Hythloth, Shame, Wrong, and the Stygian Abyss. These will be important later in the game, as some of the items required to finish the game are found there.
The python is a typical non-evil enemy you should flee from.
The good and the bad
Ultima IV is as much a hack-and-slash game as every other computer role-playing game of that time. You can even mow down fleeing opponents as long as they are branded as “evil.” The only difference is that you have to let some of them go or should flee from them if they attack you.
Conversation is also somewhat spartan. If you meet a child or guard and ask for their names, they will usually reply “I am a child,” or “I am a guard.” In the end conversation boils down to finding all the keywords in the database of the person you are talking to. Replies are often very short and not as informative as one might hope. But there is a silver lining, as conversations gets better in Ultima V and are very well developed in Ultima VI.
Besides being optically more on the simple side, the large amount of keyboard commands will probably also shy away newcomers to the series. And the conversations also require getting used to. But once you have traveled beyond these obstacles, you will find Ultima IV to be a game that can be played and replayed for a very long time.
The game was shipped on a single disk, but a Play Disk needs to be created for every character whose progress you want to save. Ultima IV then boots from the Boot/Program Disk, but all data needed for playing it (including your character and party) are stored on the Play Disk. A second floppy drive, installation to Hard Disk, and extra RAM beyond 512 KB are not supported. On the other hand Ultima IV will run on machines with Kickstart 1.2 through 3.1.
Note: Always wait for the disk lights to go out before changing disks and for the Amiga to load the disk validator before clicking on “Ok.” Else the program will crash.
An outlook on other versions
Apple II: The original from 1985. Long loading times and not very colorful. A second disk drive is supported. Music is quite good if a Mockingboard soundcard is present.
Atari ST: Identical to the Amiga version with a slight drawback in the music department. Also the constant jitter of the mouse pointer can be somewhat disturbing.
C64: Has, imho, the best music (with the Apple II version). Loading times and disk swapping can slow down the flow of the game a little. A second disk drive is supported.
MS-DOS: Like the Amiga / ST version, but with slightly less colors, simpler 3D graphics in dungeons, no music, and PC speaker sounds. Check out XU4 though, which upgrades the graphics of the top down view and adds music.
NES / Famicom: Avoid this one! Ultima might be in there somewhere, but it is all affected by the Nintendo stupid virus. Everyone is a small, ridiculous looking figure with a bloated head. The music is some terrible Nintendo tootling that will drive you mad within seconds and the menu is cumbersome.
Sega Master System: Quite good and very true to the computer versions. The menu is very good and quite intuitive. Graphics have been upgraded, but the 3D view of the dungeons has been replaced with a top down view. The combat is similar to Ultima V, so you can aim your weapons at any opponent on the battlefield and are not restricted to being able to attack just north, south, east, or west. Hardcore fans will probably criticize that it is not possible to enter text during a conversation. So the keywords are already presented in the dialog menu and new keywords are added during the conversation. But if you are new to Ultima, you might want to check this one out first, then move on to one of the computer versions.
Visit Lord British often, for he can heal you and advance your levels if you have earned enough experience.
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The graphics are almost the same as those found in the MS-DOS/EGA version. They were not very good back then and time has not changed that. The introduction has been improved optically as well as the 3D look of the dungeons.
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The sound effects are simple, but not annoying which is quite important since you will be hearing them a lot. The music is very nice with roughly a dozen tunes to accompany the player during his travels through Britannia. Neither music nor effects are in any way challenging for the sound chip of the Amiga, but the important thing is that you can still listen to them without having the urge to turn down the volume on your monitor after playing the game five hours straight.
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There are a lot of keyboard commands to memorize, but since they are quite intuitive that will only be an issue for someone who is new to the series. Control via the mouse pointer is functional, but not necessary as the whole game can be easily played with the keyboard. Gameplay is not too slow, so even impatient players will not have a chance to complain. Loading times are also quite short.
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| Ultima IV is one of the best computer role-playing games of its time. While still being a hack-and-slash game, it at least tries to do things different. The conversation system is somewhat simple (later Ultimas are better at this), but once you get a hang of it, you can really get lost in the Ultima experience. The world is way larger than in the predecessor and there is enough motivation to replay it a couple of times. Newcomers might have some trouble with the truckload of keyboard commands. The Amiga version is among the most playable of all the conversions that exist. |
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