This was my first ever RPG, I remember being both overwhelmed and amazed at the living, breathing world Garriot had created. I still reinstall it once a year to take in the atmosphere. I also loved how when both humans and gargoyles are united at the end their separate musical themes play over each other, combining into a new piece of music.
It was my first open world freeform RPG. Like I rented it once on SNES and was like "wow, this is good." The entire process of getting the hot air balloon was just great. Finding the silk, getting it crafted into a bag, finding rope and a basket, and then having travel really open up as a result.
It was my first PC RPG. No joke, it was so much more advanced than what I was used to, like Dragon Warrior, that i explored the castle for a couple months before realizing how to pass British’s questions. Granted, I was nine years old, but the bar had been raised from then on.
I absolutely loved Ultima 6 and played it so much in the past. Between forging ahead to complete the story, to spending loads and loads of time just sandboxing it up. I still have the short Stones song memorized. Still remember pushing crates from one town or another all the way to Britain drawbridge to create a makeshift house (because you could sleep there, and you couldn't in your own room nor buy the house for sale which drove me nuts). Still remember giving the homeless folks food, money, and throwing down cloth in my attempt to help them. And murdering 'Lord British' who constantly nagged you and hid him under the moveable statue. Those and so many other good memories. This game is definitely one of my favorites on PC from childhood and I still toss up the GOG version now and then and play.
I spent a few months in the castle before I could find a companion guide. still fun enough. I eventually collected so many items that the walls started disappearing (running on my 16mhz 386). welcome to the metaverse!
I still remember the first time I started up this game. What a marvel it was to see the intro cinematic. I played it till the end twice, but sadly my save games got corrupted at the last temple(volcano?) on both trials, so I could never finish it. Still have the game box, with the black stone, map and manuals :D
I remember walking out of Britania to the south, trying to find where the overland map began. And I kept going to Paws. I was shocked - not over map! It's the whole world!
I’m so glad I found your channel! The Ultima games mean a lot to me and the quality of your videos covering them is astounding. Please continue covering these excellent (mostly) games!
Thank you! I am astounded so many people have found this channel, and I do intend to continue. Currently playing through the finale of Ultima VII so I can start the process of editing the next video.
@@finntrovert I also love these videos and you have done an amazing job setting aside that this is my favourite RPG series. Will you be doing worlds of Ultima?
@@RetroGamingJebus Thank you! It's very much possible. I am interested in those, but my current focus is playing through the remaining four in my main Ultima list.
Best Ultima and a very good review! As a massive Ultima fan myself, I instantly subscribed. Congrats and I hope that your channel will grow much larger.
Probably the best review of U6 I've ever watched - great job. As the case of a few others here, this was my first RPG and it's still my favourite RPG of all time. Echoing Raindancer's comment, overwhelmed and amazed are exactly the words. I'll never forget the feeling of exploration, travelling the wilderness then spotting a building on the edge of the screen, that meant civilisation and new characters to interact with! There's just been nothing since, even though U7 did some wonderful things, too. Ten year old me never twigged that you should TALK to shrines though, so I played it through as a level 3 the first time... Ouch. No pickpocketing (level 4 spell I believe) of Phoenix for me, so glass sword to Phoenix's face and karma destruction was my only option (or maybe I powder kegged her...) I'm hoping to produce something like U5 / U6 myself as a hobby project - I've built an 'engine' of sorts, 2D top down, complete with U6 style party member formation. Though at present the combat is real-time and nearly U7 levels of chaos, though the main character is controlled via modern WSAD controls. I've modelled LB's throneroom just for fun, need to get something up on the interwebs to help prod me into more active development action.
Ultima 6 was so great! A huge open world full of details, each NPC has a life (you can see how a merchant is going home when the shop is closing), with a lots of dungeons and monsters. It was my first RPG and I still remember it.
Before playing Ultima VI, my only experience with CRPG was SSI's Secret of the Silver Blades for C64. I enjoyed it so much for what it was at the time, but my second was Ultima VI, played on a 386 PC. It was a kind of revelation, a living breathing world with a real day/night cycle, people living their life, tons of object to poke around, and even bread to bake! And all of it was in a small 1,44 Floppy Drive. I still have fond memories of all the many hours I've passed on playing it. Thanks for the great video!
Played it through twice. It was one of the best ludic experiences of my life. I still use my avatar name as nickname in the web, several decades after. Have a nice day, Avatars of the Virtues! Phitio
Spam Spam Spam Humbug This is the chat command for the in game cheat menu. Which I fortunately did not learn about until after finishing the game. This is peak Ultima. What an adventure!
Excellent summary of the first Ultima game I actively disliked. A big part of that was due to the fact that I played it on an Amiga 500 which required an insane number of floppy disc swaps until I gave in and sprung for a 20mb HDD, but even then it was painfully slow to play as it was a direct lazy port from the PC version which was usually running on 32 bit 25MHz 80286/386 CPUs and since the port didn't utilize any of the Amiga's custom chips, the poor 16 bit 7MHz 68000 CPU was made to do ALL of the work. It crawled like a syphilitic worm and was so painful to play even with the HDD that I simply had to give up. It was one of the biggest factors in me migrating to a 40MHz AMD386DX based PC in 1991. Even then I skipped to Ultima 7 and Ultima Underworld over U6. It had burned me so badly I simply couldn't go back, it was tainted in my mind. In this way you have a big advantage, Finn. You were never disappointed by this game whereas I was. Glad you were able to enjoy it, warts and all.
@@JustMe99999 That's just the point. Nothing wrong with the Amiga, the problem was the port that was done from the DOS version. The game was written for DOS and optimized for x86, Which had the CPU do all the heavy lifting. The Amiga was designed more like modern smartphones with custom chips that did alot of the advanced graphics and audio work, allowing a slower less powerful CPU at the core of the machine keeping the cost down while providing insane multimedia capabilities before that was even a word. The Amiga port was NOT optimized so did not use these chips and ran the game as if it were the DOS version, making the CPU do all of the heavy work which it was not suited for, therefore the port was slow and frustrating to play. As if you had tried to run it on a PC/XT.
I know, Finn, that you were looking for some more critical voices. I'm not one of them, because I again enjoyed the review very much. I also completely forgot that Sherry is in this game. So I was happy to read her name and see her little sprite. :-)
I played and completed U6 a LOT of years ago, and I did it without completing the pirate treasure quest line. This game was amazingly open ended in that you could skip way ahead in the plot if you understood how things like the orb of the moons worked. Or just flat out got lucky and found yourself standing in front of the place where Johne lived.
Early in the game I was screwing around with the Orb of the Moons and ended up in the Gargoyles home. Completely changed my perspective on the game (I was rather annoyed/disappointed I had to kill the gargoyles at the shrine after that and the game offered no alternatives).
Nice work! I love these Classic rpg reviews 👏🏼👏🏼. Its such a joy to see all this games I didnt fully understand as a kid. And as an adult I dont have the time to play 😅
I played Ultima VI on the SNES, and while I attempted it several times I never really made any progress. I am incredibly grateful to this channel for enabling me to get a sense of closure to this game that always fascinated me but that I knew I’d never return to. I’d heard that the solution involved making peace with the gargoyles, but I never guessed the true identity of the false prophet. Thanks!
Ultimate 4/5/6/7 p1 and 2 were my favorite Ultima games. Good stories and memories for a once 14 year old back in the day. I actually still have the Ultima 6 special edition that was signed Lord British. It’s a shame LB sold out to EA, Origin made some of my favorite titles. Wing Commander series being one of them that got me to upgrade my sound card to a Roland MT32.
As you pointed out the EA easter egg in Ultima 7, I'd like to add here that the pirates that have the map pieces are all EA employees. " 1990, Origin openly based several bloodthirsty pirates in Ultima VI on senior EA employees Trip Hawkins (Captain Hawkins), Joe Ybarra (Old Ybarra), Bing Gordon (Alastor Gordon) and Steward Bonn (Bonn). Richard Garriott also named a morgue after Hawkins."
I remember not being able to figure out Selganor's request, so i just ☠️ him to get his rune. Then i revived him, but he just stood there. Didnt move, wouldnt talk any more, dont think he slept. It was eerie. I felt so bad for Marney. She cried whenever you spoke to her. I wasnt sure who ☠️ Quentin Delancy in her town. His ghost pointed to his neck. But i couldnt figure out who dis it or how. One time on my first play thru i found a cave full of powder kegs and set them all off. I was never able to find it again. I remember hanging out with the cyclopses and fishing. "DIDN'T GET A FISH." Trying to steal an egg from the dragons so that guy could make Magincian pastry....terrifying. Man, do i miss this game. Player it on PC with a CGA monitor, and then Super NES.
Thanks for six trips down memory lane where I had forgotten that vast majority of this information except for the avatar part of IV. Totally forgot about VI's gargoyle reveal, which was indeed epic in mind blowingness. Will watch the rest of the series, thumbs up it, etc. but BG3 is calling.
Glad youtube decided to put this on my feed, hopefully it means I'm not the only one, you deserve more then your 245 subscribers so far :) I'm sure they will show up, this is some quality work. I'm looking forward to you covering one of my favorites, Ultima 7 blew my little mind as a kid.
Thank you! I'm still flabbergasted about the amount of people who've found these, and of the reaction. The Ultima 7 video should come out within a week or two, but do brace yourself, it's not all positives. ;) Spoiler alert though. Still love the game.
Gods you can literally SEE the leap between games with this one. I mean, it's kind of clear in others too, but here, the intro especially shows where Origin was going, pushing the limits of what systems could handle. They were doing the same with their Wing Commander titles around this time, with some crossover elements between the two series being neat(A Kilrathi Starfighter is in Ultima VII, and one of the worlds you can protect in Wing Command II is all but stated to be Britannia, if you go down a particular mission path). This is also one of those I watched a Let's Play of due to the other guy's review/retrospective of it back in the day being...incomplete we shall say, as he didn't gel with the game engine. So it is interesting to see someone who gave this one all the time to really deep dive into the stuff. Mind, that plot...it is a case of both sides are kind of bastards. Lord British is not a good man since he legit did not seem to care about the civilizations below, though honestly, he does have the excuse of legit not knowing about them, AND their whole world being propped up by evil. And that's important to remember, their 'Virtues' are ones that have to be shifted a bit to be positive traits. Worse, they're worshiping people who are in no uncertain terms, evil. Mondain and Minax were greedy, self serving, *insert swear word here*. Exodus was...a computer and didn't seem to HAVE a personality. So to worship them, especially after all the damage they potentially caused(That you prevented from ever having happened thanks to time travel), does not make them friends with those on the surface. Heck, Britannia was just recovering from the severe damage done by Mondain's corrupted Gem of Immortality, an artifact made by one of the Gargoyle's mythic figures that ruined many, many lives. Anyway, I could ramble on like this for a while, but it does show an interesting perspective on conflict, even if I don't entirely agree that the Gargoyle race was entirely innocent bystanders in the prior conflicts.
Thanks for posting this. This is my favorite game of all time. I played this when I was 10 years old (1990)and had no clue what I was doing to progress in the game. However it was a great sand box game. Not like any others I’ve seen at the time. I was rearranging the castle and I grinded sherry to level 8 killing guards.
What I also loved about this game is that it is more about problem solving instead of hack and slash. You can complete the game without having to kill anyone or anything. Way ahead of its time.
@@SupremeMayo Thanks for the kind words. As much as I enjoyed U6 now, I can only imagine how amazed I would have been had I been able to experience it when it was new, which is why I love hearing these stories of those who did.
A well done retrospective! I used to love Ultima 4/5 back in the day, and loved it. However, I never finished them. I wish I can play 6 but the outdated graphics and controls are something I can't get past. I tried many times but can't get past the beginning.
thank you for creating this video. I played u6 on PC as a teenager, only winning by help of a hint book. therefore I was not truly involved in the nuances of story and twists that you so eloquently demonstrated here. Bravo!
The Ultima games, in particular from V onward, rather highlight how little environment interaction/world simulation there is in many modern CRPGs tens of thousand times the size :/
Ah...! I knew I'd tried some Ultima game when I was a kid, way too young to figure out anything about it, and I kept waiting to have an aha moment watching this series. Here it is!! I literally saw nothing past that moongate scene and maybe a bit of walking around but it stuck in my brain
some crazy people remade the entirety of this Ultima 6 as a Dungeon Siege mod, it's really cool thanks a lot for these reviews about this series btw, they're great and ultima needed some love like that
Dude, your reviews are awesome! I've been looking for a more up to date review since Spoony did his in 2010. Nobody really plays these games anymore. Thanks a lot for making these amazing and well made videos!
If I remember right If you pick most humility on character creation you get highest stats. I cannot remember if spirituality does the same. I think if you get 3 humility and/or 3 of spirituality, it the max stats. Been a long time.
Humilty (Being the absence of virtues) gave 0 points, the virtues which embodied one principle gave 3 points (valor = courage = strength, compassion = love = dexterity, honesty = truth = intelligence), the virtues which embodied two principles gave 1 point of each principle they embodied, and spirituality gave 1 in each stat. So to get the max stats you'd go for spirituality and the single-principle virtues.
Nothing will ever top the nostalgia and feel of classic rpg games in their 2d goodness. Idc how realistic and HD the newer rpgs are. They dont have the charm or vibe created by older rpgs in a 2d setting
Hah, suck cannon, Chuckles! Sherry and Seggallion are my 2 favourite party members. Sherry is great for ranged with better dex than Iolo and being at level 1, all her training can go into strength. Something about a mouse running around decked out in full armour and wielding a crossbow is extremely hilarious. And Seggallion, well why wouldn't you want Tom Selleck and his moustache in your party as he so reminds me of the actor hehe (i know Seggallion was from Knights of Legend). Ever give Nuvie a try? It's like Exault but for U6 (and the Worlds of games) adding in some interesting customization. Like the U7 interface? Now you can have that in U6 if you so desire. It's part of ScummVM which makes it even easier to use.
Segallion is great but what I found disturbing is that I ran in to Gorn on accident 15 years later just randomly playing the game. I thought I explored every possible place in u6 😅
I am an ultima fan named ryan 36. I remember playing this on snes and being amazed at how it looked and felt versus jrpgs. In my opinion Western RPGs on the system were far superior due to the amount of exploration and character building they allow. I remember not being able to go back to the final fantasy games because their exploration felt so shallow by comparison. That is until I discovered a few wizardry look alikes like shin Megami tensei and persona. I just can't get into the other kind of game where my choices don't matter and the story is shoveled to me.
@@ryancarlson2763 I'm glad you've found games that suit your tastes! There's an unfortunate trend of people shitting on games they don't like instead of looking at games they love, and it makes me glad these comments have shown me more of the latter.
I never noticed it for skiffs, but it's possible I just got extremely lucky. Then again, I didn't really use rafts, and never bothered to learn how they work since they felt weird after having used skiffs which were easy to use, so perhaps rafts are affected by wind?
Your comments nudged something in memories undisturbed for maybe 30 years... Rafts would not let you move against the wind at least. Also, if you had a frigate and it was destroyed - e.g. by sea serpent fireballs then your vessel would converted into said flimsy pieces of wood... So basically unless you had 'liberated' Utomo's fan or were very late into the game you'd likely be looking at a Kal Lor. Also might be misremembering but on rivers I think they just followed the flow of water. So much depth in this game... I really don't believe it's been bettered! Great video by the way. Really enjoyed it.
I always felt this was the best classic Ultima. I like 7 and all that, but... this felt most like the evolution of what came before, while 7 is... a different beast from a more cynical time.
@14:43 -- Someone needs to create a remake of U3 where you have ONE INVENTORY for all of the Party ( Like U4 and U5). It would make the game 100x better right there. For gold/food, since every character can have 9'999 unit of each and there's 4 characters, just put a max of 40k food/gold and POOF. Done. I've always felt that although it is more realistic to have separate inventories it just clog down the gameplay of any party-based game. Or if you really insist on different inventories, then at least create bags of holding. So one character carries all the weapons, another all the armor, the other all the food, and the last one all the gold and other key items. If there's more than 4 characters, then the 5th one can carry all the loot. Last point of my rant on inventories (which was working fine in U4/U5) is stacking of items. Everything should stack so you dont lose 15 minutes finding what you're looking for. If you want to limit stuff being carried by the party, yet sill use the "Combined Inventory System" then set a max weight limit for the combined inventory based on strength of all characters in party (minus what they are carrying), but still use one inventory. Okay I'm done ranting (in the hopes current and future game devs and modders see this). Thanks for the Video 😛 PS: The Game engine is what ultimately drove me away from this game. I tried it first in 1996, then again a couple times over the years, but I just couldn't. Thankfully the EXULT version is literally just around the corner. So I should be able to finally enjoy my time exploring Ultima 6.
0/10. Not enough Chuckles were damaged in the production of this video. This game, for me, marks the end of the golden era... As much praise as Ultima VII deserves, I think it's the start of the declive of the series.
I scanned through the video and noticed none of the command icons had a bar beneath any of them. You didn't play through the entire game without rightclicking any of them, did you? Because it hotkeys the command to the right-mouse button, saving a massive amount of clicks.
I called it I-olo in the 1980s when I played these games originally, and never knew it was Yolo until watching Garriott in TH-cam interviews. I also called it Ack-luh-beth instead of Garriott's pronunciation "uh-KAL-uh-beth"
Had to check the PDF files of the manuals, and, not really. The chart is in the cluebook which was originally sold separately, so I wrote the line from the perspective of not reading what amounts to a walkthrough.
This is the Ultima that lost me. I played all the previous Ultimas on our family's Apple ][+ and then //e and the shift to PC was too great a shift. Yes, the intro was great, but hat terrible mouse interface, the awful PC Ad Lib warbly, off-key midi tone music (which was inferior to the Apple's Mockingboard sharp, crisp tones) and no clear delineation between town and wilderness made the game far less enjoyable for me. I gave up on it and never went back. I live with my happy memories of playing Akalabeth and Ultima, Ultima II, III, IV and V on our Apple ][.
I would be happy to learn which commands I didn't understand that well. I have been told about the command tagging, but I still don't use it, or the mouse really, since the keyboard controls of the early Ultima are so ingrained in my brain that they just feel more comfortable. Sorry if it was painful though, can't help that at this point.
@@finntrovert 14:10 One thing you may have figured out later is that when you want to move all of a stack in your inventory, you don't need to actually type in the number, you can just press ENTER and it will automatically input the total number. Also Iolo can very conveniently Gather and Split the party's gold.
Watching these video's is going to make spoony's reviews more difficult to enjoy. He complained so much about the looting in this game as if there was no function to move items.
I do admit, this comment does make me feel good about my choice to try and play each game thoroughly before making a video, even if it means videos take a long time to make. But on the other hand, Spoony's content is geared towards entertainment, and on that front I think the videos are still very good. Granted, I also promised myself to not watch them before finishing this project, to keep my brain only on my thoughts, but still.
@@finntrovert You are doing the Lords work. Not a lot of people would playthrough these long games before making a full review. I have the upmost respect for your process. Thank you for making these videos!!
Spoony brought up valid points. The fact that you have to individually move every single item to get to potentially one at the bottom of the pile really made the game feel clunky. Between the inventory management and the smaller viewport compared to prior ultima games, I wasn't a fan of U6's game engine either TBH, which is sad because it actually seems like a great game, but it made it really hard to get into. U7 really perfected the inventory management that U6 was going for while still seeming smooth and quick.
Okay I have to say it, I wish I could mute the voice over added here. The whole magic of this intro had always been the eerie music and reading the text that conveys the mood and atmosphere. So it doesn't add anything but detracts from the on-screen prose and repeats exactly what the text says using slightly different words. I can't be the only person that thinks this way, of those of us who are old enough to remember and experience this in its original form. In fact the first thing I did was search for a video of JUST the pure intro: th-cam.com/video/ueTc6jhl-1I/w-d-xo.html
Sorry you don't like it, but it is my style to rather summarize the story instead of just playing several minutes of video and music with no voiceover. And as you said, for those who just want to see the intro without commentary can either watch just that on this website, or even better, install the game! It's pretty cheap on GOG, and runs well on modern machines.
Okay I have to say it, I clicked the link you gave and there was no insightful commentary on the intro, it just showed the intro unedited. I wanted a review and retrospective! That’s why I clicked on a video that was advertised as just being the intro! What kind of moron would click on a video of the intro and not expect a review/retrospective?! I can’t be the only one looking for insight and commentary and not just a video of the game!
It's definitely not the most user friendly, which is why I ended up mostly using the keyboard controls that I was already familiar from the earlier games. VI sits in this awkward position where it's not yet properly GUI focused, but it's also not fully geared for the older style either. After getting used to it though, I felt the game was worth the hassle for me.
![BOWKYLION - วิงวอน (ex-change) [Official MV]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/cLdnZWDaO-w/mqdefault.jpg)
The entire Ultima review series playlist: th-cam.com/play/PL6ySdS-taQCLCyXvRRoHCYgBDo2h8bUle.html
This was my first ever RPG, I remember being both overwhelmed and amazed at the living, breathing world Garriot had created. I still reinstall it once a year to take in the atmosphere. I also loved how when both humans and gargoyles are united at the end their separate musical themes play over each other, combining into a new piece of music.
Reinstall??? its like 3 megabytes
It was my first open world freeform RPG. Like I rented it once on SNES and was like "wow, this is good." The entire process of getting the hot air balloon was just great. Finding the silk, getting it crafted into a bag, finding rope and a basket, and then having travel really open up as a result.
It was my first PC RPG. No joke, it was so much more advanced than what I was used to, like Dragon Warrior, that i explored the castle for a couple months before realizing how to pass British’s questions. Granted, I was nine years old, but the bar had been raised from then on.
@@ProphetSD13 Hahaha ok that got a good laugh out of me :)
@@Justsomeone99987 Damn that's awesome experiencing a game like that at that age :)
I absolutely loved Ultima 6 and played it so much in the past. Between forging ahead to complete the story, to spending loads and loads of time just sandboxing it up. I still have the short Stones song memorized. Still remember pushing crates from one town or another all the way to Britain drawbridge to create a makeshift house (because you could sleep there, and you couldn't in your own room nor buy the house for sale which drove me nuts). Still remember giving the homeless folks food, money, and throwing down cloth in my attempt to help them. And murdering 'Lord British' who constantly nagged you and hid him under the moveable statue.
Those and so many other good memories. This game is definitely one of my favorites on PC from childhood and I still toss up the GOG version now and then and play.
I spent a few months in the castle before I could find a companion guide. still fun enough. I eventually collected so many items that the walls started disappearing (running on my 16mhz 386). welcome to the metaverse!
I still remember the first time I started up this game. What a marvel it was to see the intro cinematic. I played it till the end twice, but sadly my save games got corrupted at the last temple(volcano?) on both trials, so I could never finish it.
Still have the game box, with the black stone, map and manuals :D
The part where you couldn't finish it sucks, but the part where you still have the feelings is amazing!
I remember walking out of Britania to the south, trying to find where the overland map began. And I kept going to Paws. I was shocked - not over map! It's the whole world!
I’m so glad I found your channel! The Ultima games mean a lot to me and the quality of your videos covering them is astounding. Please continue covering these excellent (mostly) games!
Thank you!
I am astounded so many people have found this channel, and I do intend to continue.
Currently playing through the finale of Ultima VII so I can start the process of editing the next video.
@@finntrovert I also love these videos and you have done an amazing job setting aside that this is my favourite RPG series. Will you be doing worlds of Ultima?
@@RetroGamingJebus Thank you!
It's very much possible. I am interested in those, but my current focus is playing through the remaining four in my main Ultima list.
I'm really enjoying watching this series of Ultima retrospectives. Please keep them coming, and the sooner the better!
Cool trick. You can push a canon into a chest and carry it around , open it and fire it.
Ooh, I'll have to remember that.
Omg, I never knew that!
I’ve seen so many people misspell canon as cannon, but I think this is the first time I’ve seen the reverse
im going to try that cannon trick lol
Best Ultima and a very good review! As a massive Ultima fan myself, I instantly subscribed. Congrats and I hope that your channel will grow much larger.
Probably the best review of U6 I've ever watched - great job. As the case of a few others here, this was my first RPG and it's still my favourite RPG of all time. Echoing Raindancer's comment, overwhelmed and amazed are exactly the words. I'll never forget the feeling of exploration, travelling the wilderness then spotting a building on the edge of the screen, that meant civilisation and new characters to interact with! There's just been nothing since, even though U7 did some wonderful things, too. Ten year old me never twigged that you should TALK to shrines though, so I played it through as a level 3 the first time... Ouch. No pickpocketing (level 4 spell I believe) of Phoenix for me, so glass sword to Phoenix's face and karma destruction was my only option (or maybe I powder kegged her...)
I'm hoping to produce something like U5 / U6 myself as a hobby project - I've built an 'engine' of sorts, 2D top down, complete with U6 style party member formation. Though at present the combat is real-time and nearly U7 levels of chaos, though the main character is controlled via modern WSAD controls. I've modelled LB's throneroom just for fun, need to get something up on the interwebs to help prod me into more active development action.
are you talking about Skald : Against the Black Priory ?
Loved u6. I’m glad I’m not the only one who’s this way about the game
Ultima 6 was so great! A huge open world full of details, each NPC has a life (you can see how a merchant is going home when the shop is closing), with a lots of dungeons and monsters.
It was my first RPG and I still remember it.
Before playing Ultima VI, my only experience with CRPG was SSI's Secret of the Silver Blades for C64. I enjoyed it so much for what it was at the time, but my second was Ultima VI, played on a 386 PC. It was a kind of revelation, a living breathing world with a real day/night cycle, people living their life, tons of object to poke around, and even bread to bake! And all of it was in a small 1,44 Floppy Drive. I still have fond memories of all the many hours I've passed on playing it. Thanks for the great video!
I loved the intro as a kid but as an adult it just makes me think the Avatar stopped taking their meds
Nice review! Ive been reviewing all of the Ultima games as well so I'm happy to see someone else's take on it!
Thank you!
I've seen some of your content as well, and it's really nice these games get more attention.
glad to see you picked the best portrait in the game for your run
Are we not gonna talk about the Avatar's tastes with his picture of a half naked zebra centaur lady on the wall?
Hes a freak
Played it through twice. It was one of the best ludic experiences of my life. I still use my avatar name as nickname in the web, several decades after.
Have a nice day, Avatars of the Virtues!
Phitio
Spam
Spam
Spam
Humbug
This is the chat command for the in game cheat menu. Which I fortunately did not learn about until after finishing the game. This is peak Ultima. What an adventure!
3/18/2024 - A nuanced, passionate review about a nuanced, passionate game.
Ergo, a review with 0 dislikes.
Long may it last.
Powder kegs and boomerangs were OP
Excellent summary of the first Ultima game I actively disliked. A big part of that was due to the fact that I played it on an Amiga 500 which required an insane number of floppy disc swaps until I gave in and sprung for a 20mb HDD, but even then it was painfully slow to play as it was a direct lazy port from the PC version which was usually running on 32 bit 25MHz 80286/386 CPUs and since the port didn't utilize any of the Amiga's custom chips, the poor 16 bit 7MHz 68000 CPU was made to do ALL of the work. It crawled like a syphilitic worm and was so painful to play even with the HDD that I simply had to give up. It was one of the biggest factors in me migrating to a 40MHz AMD386DX based PC in 1991. Even then I skipped to Ultima 7 and Ultima Underworld over U6. It had burned me so badly I simply couldn't go back, it was tainted in my mind. In this way you have a big advantage, Finn. You were never disappointed by this game whereas I was. Glad you were able to enjoy it, warts and all.
Seems more like an issue with the Amiga than the game itself. Ran fine on DOS.
@@JustMe99999 That's just the point. Nothing wrong with the Amiga, the problem was the port that was done from the DOS version.
The game was written for DOS and optimized for x86, Which had the CPU do all the heavy lifting. The Amiga was designed more like modern smartphones with custom chips that did alot of the advanced graphics and audio work, allowing a slower less powerful CPU at the core of the machine keeping the cost down while providing insane multimedia capabilities before that was even a word. The Amiga port was NOT optimized so did not use these chips and ran the game as if it were the DOS version, making the CPU do all of the heavy work which it was not suited for, therefore the port was slow and frustrating to play. As if you had tried to run it on a PC/XT.
I know, Finn, that you were looking for some more critical voices. I'm not one of them, because I again enjoyed the review very much.
I also completely forgot that Sherry is in this game. So I was happy to read her name and see her little sprite. :-)
I played and completed U6 a LOT of years ago, and I did it without completing the pirate treasure quest line. This game was amazingly open ended in that you could skip way ahead in the plot if you understood how things like the orb of the moons worked. Or just flat out got lucky and found yourself standing in front of the place where Johne lived.
That is one of the parts that made me fall in love with these.
Knowledge is key, and having knowledge allows YOU to plan how to do things.
Early in the game I was screwing around with the Orb of the Moons and ended up in the Gargoyles home. Completely changed my perspective on the game (I was rather annoyed/disappointed I had to kill the gargoyles at the shrine after that and the game offered no alternatives).
"Take everything not bolted to the floor" This is the way.
Nice work! I love these Classic rpg reviews 👏🏼👏🏼. Its such a joy to see all this games I didnt fully understand as a kid. And as an adult I dont have the time to play 😅
What i LOVED about it was that you could have party of up to 7 people, U7 and Serpent Isle was only 4 danggit.
I played Ultima VI on the SNES, and while I attempted it several times I never really made any progress.
I am incredibly grateful to this channel for enabling me to get a sense of closure to this game that always fascinated me but that I knew I’d never return to. I’d heard that the solution involved making peace with the gargoyles, but I never guessed the true identity of the false prophet. Thanks!
My favorite Ultima. Excellent review.
Ultimate 4/5/6/7 p1 and 2 were my favorite Ultima games. Good stories and memories for a once 14 year old back in the day. I actually still have the Ultima 6 special edition that was signed Lord British. It’s a shame LB sold out to EA, Origin made some of my favorite titles. Wing Commander series being one of them that got me to upgrade my sound card to a Roland MT32.
Those are definitely the gems of the franchise, no doubt about that.
Wing Commander was a complete, utter blast for me. So immersive and engaging.
As you pointed out the EA easter egg in Ultima 7, I'd like to add here that the pirates that have the map pieces are all EA employees.
" 1990, Origin openly based several bloodthirsty pirates in Ultima VI on senior EA employees Trip Hawkins (Captain Hawkins), Joe Ybarra (Old Ybarra), Bing Gordon (Alastor Gordon) and Steward Bonn (Bonn). Richard Garriott also named a morgue after Hawkins."
Was this due in anger to ea or just as a joke?
Best item:
green boots..
Actually, I would say those are essential items. You really suffer if you don’t have them.
Glass sword
@@delatroy What to do with a sword if dead by swamp poison?
I remember not being able to figure out Selganor's request, so i just ☠️ him to get his rune. Then i revived him, but he just stood there. Didnt move, wouldnt talk any more, dont think he slept. It was eerie.
I felt so bad for Marney. She cried whenever you spoke to her. I wasnt sure who ☠️ Quentin Delancy in her town. His ghost pointed to his neck. But i couldnt figure out who dis it or how.
One time on my first play thru i found a cave full of powder kegs and set them all off. I was never able to find it again.
I remember hanging out with the cyclopses and fishing. "DIDN'T GET A FISH."
Trying to steal an egg from the dragons so that guy could make Magincian pastry....terrifying.
Man, do i miss this game. Player it on PC with a CGA monitor, and then Super NES.
The amount of memories people have shared is a testament to how this series should be more known.
I love reading these. Thank you.
Thanks for six trips down memory lane where I had forgotten that vast majority of this information except for the avatar part of IV. Totally forgot about VI's gargoyle reveal, which was indeed epic in mind blowingness. Will watch the rest of the series, thumbs up it, etc. but BG3 is calling.
Thank you!
Can't blame you, I'd do the same if I could. BG3 is the RPG event of this decade. XD
Glad youtube decided to put this on my feed, hopefully it means I'm not the only one, you deserve more then your 245 subscribers so far :) I'm sure they will show up, this is some quality work.
I'm looking forward to you covering one of my favorites, Ultima 7 blew my little mind as a kid.
Thank you!
I'm still flabbergasted about the amount of people who've found these, and of the reaction.
The Ultima 7 video should come out within a week or two, but do brace yourself, it's not all positives. ;)
Spoiler alert though. Still love the game.
My first Ultima… Thanks for the video
I love me some ultima dude, keep up the awesome work
Thank you, and I will do my best!
Gods you can literally SEE the leap between games with this one. I mean, it's kind of clear in others too, but here, the intro especially shows where Origin was going, pushing the limits of what systems could handle. They were doing the same with their Wing Commander titles around this time, with some crossover elements between the two series being neat(A Kilrathi Starfighter is in Ultima VII, and one of the worlds you can protect in Wing Command II is all but stated to be Britannia, if you go down a particular mission path).
This is also one of those I watched a Let's Play of due to the other guy's review/retrospective of it back in the day being...incomplete we shall say, as he didn't gel with the game engine. So it is interesting to see someone who gave this one all the time to really deep dive into the stuff.
Mind, that plot...it is a case of both sides are kind of bastards. Lord British is not a good man since he legit did not seem to care about the civilizations below, though honestly, he does have the excuse of legit not knowing about them, AND their whole world being propped up by evil.
And that's important to remember, their 'Virtues' are ones that have to be shifted a bit to be positive traits. Worse, they're worshiping people who are in no uncertain terms, evil. Mondain and Minax were greedy, self serving, *insert swear word here*. Exodus was...a computer and didn't seem to HAVE a personality.
So to worship them, especially after all the damage they potentially caused(That you prevented from ever having happened thanks to time travel), does not make them friends with those on the surface. Heck, Britannia was just recovering from the severe damage done by Mondain's corrupted Gem of Immortality, an artifact made by one of the Gargoyle's mythic figures that ruined many, many lives.
Anyway, I could ramble on like this for a while, but it does show an interesting perspective on conflict, even if I don't entirely agree that the Gargoyle race was entirely innocent bystanders in the prior conflicts.
Thanks for posting this. This is my favorite game of all time. I played this when I was 10 years old (1990)and had no clue what I was doing to progress in the game.
However it was a great sand box game. Not like any others I’ve seen at the time. I was rearranging the castle and I grinded sherry to level 8 killing guards.
What I also loved about this game is that it is more about problem solving instead of hack and slash. You can complete the game without having to kill anyone or anything. Way ahead of its time.
@@SupremeMayo Thanks for the kind words.
As much as I enjoyed U6 now, I can only imagine how amazed I would have been had I been able to experience it when it was new, which is why I love hearing these stories of those who did.
A well done retrospective! I used to love Ultima 4/5 back in the day, and loved it. However, I never finished them. I wish I can play 6 but the outdated graphics and controls are something I can't get past. I tried many times but can't get past the beginning.
thank you for creating this video. I played u6 on PC as a teenager, only winning by help of a hint book. therefore I was not truly involved in the nuances of story and twists that you so eloquently demonstrated here. Bravo!
@@TrueDrezzer Thank you! I'm glad you enjoyed it.
The Ultima games, in particular from V onward, rather highlight how little environment interaction/world simulation there is in many modern CRPGs tens of thousand times the size :/
Very much agreed.
It is a shame more games don't reach for such interactivity as we have seen is possible, and amazingly immersive.
Ah...! I knew I'd tried some Ultima game when I was a kid, way too young to figure out anything about it, and I kept waiting to have an aha moment watching this series. Here it is!! I literally saw nothing past that moongate scene and maybe a bit of walking around but it stuck in my brain
Ultima 6 is nice change w the UI plus the bow vendor w give you a free magic bow at the start.
Thank you for giving the game, my childhood memory, a good and objective review!
Thank you for watching it!
some crazy people remade the entirety of this Ultima 6 as a Dungeon Siege mod, it's really cool
thanks a lot for these reviews about this series btw, they're great and ultima needed some love like that
they also remade ultima 4 which i believe is the best game in the series
Maybe the real false prophet were the friends we made along the way,
Dude, your reviews are awesome! I've been looking for a more up to date review since Spoony did his in 2010. Nobody really plays these games anymore. Thanks a lot for making these amazing and well made videos!
Thank you! I'm glad you've enjoyed them!
This was probably the best Ultima.
Hard tie between U6 and U5.
Once again, brilliantly summarised the game!!!
I had this for the SNES, good times
You can grab a barrel of gunpowder, throw it in the middle of a group of enemies, then shoot it with an arrow, causing an explosion.
If I remember right If you pick most humility on character creation you get highest stats. I cannot remember if spirituality does the same. I think if you get 3 humility and/or 3 of spirituality, it the max stats. Been a long time.
Humilty (Being the absence of virtues) gave 0 points, the virtues which embodied one principle gave 3 points (valor = courage = strength, compassion = love = dexterity, honesty = truth = intelligence), the virtues which embodied two principles gave 1 point of each principle they embodied, and spirituality gave 1 in each stat. So to get the max stats you'd go for spirituality and the single-principle virtues.
Nothing will ever top the nostalgia and feel of classic rpg games in their 2d goodness. Idc how realistic and HD the newer rpgs are. They dont have the charm or vibe created by older rpgs in a 2d setting
Hah, suck cannon, Chuckles!
Sherry and Seggallion are my 2 favourite party members. Sherry is great for ranged with better dex than Iolo and being at level 1, all her training can go into strength. Something about a mouse running around decked out in full armour and wielding a crossbow is extremely hilarious. And Seggallion, well why wouldn't you want Tom Selleck and his moustache in your party as he so reminds me of the actor hehe (i know Seggallion was from Knights of Legend).
Ever give Nuvie a try? It's like Exault but for U6 (and the Worlds of games) adding in some interesting customization. Like the U7 interface? Now you can have that in U6 if you so desire. It's part of ScummVM which makes it even easier to use.
Seggallion is mandatory for me. He kicks ass. I always get him early on and then really play the game from there.
Segallion is great but what I found disturbing is that I ran in to Gorn on accident 15 years later just randomly playing the game. I thought I explored every possible place in u6 😅
@@SupremeMayo Better late than never heh.
Fantastic video again. You have something good here.
I am an ultima fan named ryan 36. I remember playing this on snes and being amazed at how it looked and felt versus jrpgs. In my opinion Western RPGs on the system were far superior due to the amount of exploration and character building they allow. I remember not being able to go back to the final fantasy games because their exploration felt so shallow by comparison. That is until I discovered a few wizardry look alikes like shin Megami tensei and persona. I just can't get into the other kind of game where my choices don't matter and the story is shoveled to me.
@@ryancarlson2763 I'm glad you've found games that suit your tastes!
There's an unfortunate trend of people shitting on games they don't like instead of looking at games they love, and it makes me glad these comments have shown me more of the latter.
IIRC wind controls skiffs so you can't (easily) use them for long voyages. You don't take damage.
I never noticed it for skiffs, but it's possible I just got extremely lucky.
Then again, I didn't really use rafts, and never bothered to learn how they work since they felt weird after having used skiffs which were easy to use, so perhaps rafts are affected by wind?
Your comments nudged something in memories undisturbed for maybe 30 years... Rafts would not let you move against the wind at least. Also, if you had a frigate and it was destroyed - e.g. by sea serpent fireballs then your vessel would converted into said flimsy pieces of wood...
So basically unless you had 'liberated' Utomo's fan or were very late into the game you'd likely be looking at a Kal Lor.
Also might be misremembering but on rivers I think they just followed the flow of water. So much depth in this game... I really don't believe it's been bettered!
Great video by the way. Really enjoyed it.
@@crtglowgames I may have been thinking of rafts. You did need to take a balloon to the end which did depend on wind.
Sherry!
I always felt this was the best classic Ultima. I like 7 and all that, but... this felt most like the evolution of what came before, while 7 is... a different beast from a more cynical time.
hey hey, what's the track that plays at the very beginning of the video called?
This is the best review of a game i ever saw
Don't know if serious, but I'll take it! 😜
Is it bad that I can answer any of Lord British's copy protection questions instantly from memory?
@@kingcrimson234 Not in the slightest!
Just shows the lasting impact of the game!
Well, you get to fulfill the prophecy in Ultima IX. 🤷♂
@14:43 -- Someone needs to create a remake of U3 where you have ONE INVENTORY for all of the Party ( Like U4 and U5). It would make the game 100x better right there.
For gold/food, since every character can have 9'999 unit of each and there's 4 characters, just put a max of 40k food/gold and POOF. Done.
I've always felt that although it is more realistic to have separate inventories it just clog down the gameplay of any party-based game.
Or if you really insist on different inventories, then at least create bags of holding. So one character carries all the weapons, another all the armor, the other all the food, and the last one all the gold and other key items. If there's more than 4 characters, then the 5th one can carry all the loot.
Last point of my rant on inventories (which was working fine in U4/U5) is stacking of items. Everything should stack so you dont lose 15 minutes finding what you're looking for.
If you want to limit stuff being carried by the party, yet sill use the "Combined Inventory System" then set a max weight limit for the combined inventory based on strength of all characters in party (minus what they are carrying), but still use one inventory. Okay I'm done ranting (in the hopes current and future game devs and modders see this).
Thanks for the Video 😛
PS: The Game engine is what ultimately drove me away from this game. I tried it first in 1996, then again a couple times over the years, but I just couldn't.
Thankfully the EXULT version is literally just around the corner. So I should be able to finally enjoy my time exploring Ultima 6.
0/10. Not enough Chuckles were damaged in the production of this video.
This game, for me, marks the end of the golden era... As much praise as Ultima VII deserves, I think it's the start of the declive of the series.
Unfortunately, there's only one Chuckles to shoot with a cannon and shove him into Nystul's chest.
I understand your criticism though.
I scanned through the video and noticed none of the command icons had a bar beneath any of them.
You didn't play through the entire game without rightclicking any of them, did you?
Because it hotkeys the command to the right-mouse button, saving a massive amount of clicks.
That's useful to know.
I actually used the keyboard to play through most of it, since at game 6 those commands were ingrained into my brain.
I'd play this if it had a new engine. Instantly jumping between tiles in 1 frame with no interpolation bothers my eyes too much.
more ultima content please
The world does need more of it!
I'm trying to do my little part.
thank you for your contribution to the universe @@finntrovert
Hey you used the same avatar(lol) I always used when I was a kid
Are you planning on playing the Ultima World of Adventures series?
Possibly, if I can find the time for it.
That's really the biggest obstacle I have.
I liked this game a lot!
@@aslbaron1 It is a good one!
I heard that iolo is pronounced "Yolo" not "I-olo"
I believe if you ask your companions their names in conversation in Ultima VI, both Dupre and Iolo's pronunciations are explained.
I called it I-olo in the 1980s when I played these games originally, and never knew it was Yolo until watching Garriott in TH-cam interviews.
I also called it Ack-luh-beth instead of Garriott's pronunciation "uh-KAL-uh-beth"
the game actually came with a reference for the moongate positions, so you dont have to experiement
Had to check the PDF files of the manuals, and, not really.
The chart is in the cluebook which was originally sold separately, so I wrote the line from the perspective of not reading what amounts to a walkthrough.
i played this for the first time in the sega game gear XD
it was super nice though
Katsoin neljä videotasi ennen aloin kuulla sun suomalaista aksenttisi. Luulin että olit Englantilaista - voin että osaan puhua suomeksi yhtä hyvin!
Kiitos!
This is the Ultima that lost me.
I played all the previous Ultimas on our family's Apple ][+ and then //e and the shift to PC was too great a shift. Yes, the intro was great, but hat terrible mouse interface, the awful PC Ad Lib warbly, off-key midi tone music (which was inferior to the Apple's Mockingboard sharp, crisp tones) and no clear delineation between town and wilderness made the game far less enjoyable for me. I gave up on it and never went back.
I live with my happy memories of playing Akalabeth and Ultima, Ultima II, III, IV and V on our Apple ][.
Kind of painful to see you play the game without understanding the interface or commands that well but I'm glad you made your video!
I would be happy to learn which commands I didn't understand that well.
I have been told about the command tagging, but I still don't use it, or the mouse really, since the keyboard controls of the early Ultima are so ingrained in my brain that they just feel more comfortable.
Sorry if it was painful though, can't help that at this point.
@@finntrovert 14:10 One thing you may have figured out later is that when you want to move all of a stack in your inventory, you don't need to actually type in the number, you can just press ENTER and it will automatically input the total number. Also Iolo can very conveniently Gather and Split the party's gold.
6 is best.
4 is next.
If this was one of your favorites, surely you've played Martian Dreams and Savage Empire...?
MD is better, but both are worth the play.
Not yet, but they are on my radar.
There are just so many games to play!
Watching these video's is going to make spoony's reviews more difficult to enjoy. He complained so much about the looting in this game as if there was no function to move items.
I do admit, this comment does make me feel good about my choice to try and play each game thoroughly before making a video, even if it means videos take a long time to make.
But on the other hand, Spoony's content is geared towards entertainment, and on that front I think the videos are still very good.
Granted, I also promised myself to not watch them before finishing this project, to keep my brain only on my thoughts, but still.
@@finntrovert You are doing the Lords work. Not a lot of people would playthrough these long games before making a full review. I have the upmost respect for your process. Thank you for making these videos!!
@@Ptrixie Thank you for watching!
Spoony brought up valid points. The fact that you have to individually move every single item to get to potentially one at the bottom of the pile really made the game feel clunky. Between the inventory management and the smaller viewport compared to prior ultima games, I wasn't a fan of U6's game engine either TBH, which is sad because it actually seems like a great game, but it made it really hard to get into. U7 really perfected the inventory management that U6 was going for while still seeming smooth and quick.
as a mobile game now not bad haha
Okay I have to say it, I wish I could mute the voice over added here. The whole magic of this intro had always been the eerie music and reading the text that conveys the mood and atmosphere. So it doesn't add anything but detracts from the on-screen prose and repeats exactly what the text says using slightly different words. I can't be the only person that thinks this way, of those of us who are old enough to remember and experience this in its original form.
In fact the first thing I did was search for a video of JUST the pure intro: th-cam.com/video/ueTc6jhl-1I/w-d-xo.html
Sorry you don't like it, but it is my style to rather summarize the story instead of just playing several minutes of video and music with no voiceover.
And as you said, for those who just want to see the intro without commentary can either watch just that on this website, or even better, install the game!
It's pretty cheap on GOG, and runs well on modern machines.
Okay I have to say it, I clicked the link you gave and there was no insightful commentary on the intro, it just showed the intro unedited. I wanted a review and retrospective! That’s why I clicked on a video that was advertised as just being the intro! What kind of moron would click on a video of the intro and not expect a review/retrospective?! I can’t be the only one looking for insight and commentary and not just a video of the game!
I just couldn’t get into this game. I tried back in the day but the interface is just the worst.
It's definitely not the most user friendly, which is why I ended up mostly using the keyboard controls that I was already familiar from the earlier games.
VI sits in this awkward position where it's not yet properly GUI focused, but it's also not fully geared for the older style either.
After getting used to it though, I felt the game was worth the hassle for me.