History of the Ultima series. Part 3: Ultima II: The Revenge of the Enchantress

After the successful first part of Ultima, Richard set about the next part with the excitement. For her, he began to study assembler, left the university and wanted to give the game a more impressive look in general. But some difficulties interspersed with this – California Pacific had economic problems, and they could not pay money to realize everything that Richard wanted.

But the solution was found relatively quickly. Several companies came to Richard with offers. Of all of them, he chose the notorious “Sierra on-line”, as they agreed there to his requirements. And these were – the replacement of the Ziploc plastic package with a full -fledged packaging and the inclusion of the world maps in it with a description of the work of portals (see below) and manual, and all this was with qualitatively drawn and stylized illustrations and fonts.

All this gave the game a more presentable look. But this is only the appearance – a wrapper. And what about it.

After the victory over Mondain, Lord British united the whole world under its rule, the old enmity was forgotten, trade flourished and Sosaria began to celebrate. A new miracle has even opened in the world – the lunar gates. They allowed to move in time and space. This was the beginning of the new philosophy and science. It lasted as long as 18 – 20 years. So the era of enlightenment could begin. But this has already happened and until everyone rejoiced, no one noticed an impending danger – Minax, a student and beloved Mondain.

For obvious reasons, she decided to take revenge. And she did it in a rather difficult way-she created one wounded, exhausted orc and sent him in this form to the world. And so farmers found him. They went out of him/her. Having woke up, the orc did not understand what to do – his natural malice at first did not allow him to accept a feeling of gratitude, but as a result it took up. People accepted him to their society and even magicians who know about the magical origin of the orcs of the orcs, did nothing and did not begin to look for his creator. And as a result, more orcs began to appear among people.

But the influence of the orcs on society was stronger than their goodwill. Evil began to gain strength and switch to people’s behavior. As a result, conflicts began to be kindled, which reached the war destroyed the world by 2111 in the heat of nuclear war. Many were saved, taking advantage of the lunar gates and went into the past, among these were the main character.

As a result of research, it turned out that all Thames-slots.co.uk problems come from Minax, which was hidden in the most ancient times – the time of legends. Having learned this, Lord British organizes a detachment to solve this problem and to destroy Minax.

Note: There is a problem in the plot from the manual – it never mentions the resettlement of Minax to Earth, but the world is similar. The fact is that the plot depending on the time difference. After all, the well -established main character will be only from the fifth part – only there they will say that the events of all games occurred with the same person and that he came from the ground. This is what explains why the world in the game is like the Earth, why the game has a Soviet Union. It turns out that Minax wanted to take revenge on the main character by destroying first Sosaria, and then his home. In fact, it is precisely such incomprehensibility of the plot that disagreements arise on the kind: “Moon gates created Minax” or “Lunar Gates were found”.

Starting the game, you are already met by the screen of the creation of the character. The same characteristics as in the first part, the same choice of floor, race, class and name. And the distribution between them is the same: a man means +10 to force, a magician to dexterity, and so on. But the game is a little hackite. In the first part, all the characteristics already cost 10, and 30 points are given for the distribution. The second is given 90. It would seem generous, but no, you have the same 30. Just each characteristic costs 0, but by the beginning of the game each of them should have at least 10.

What can be said about the gameplay. If in general, then this is like the first part, but worse. Much remained unnecessary, but everything crushed the balance. The fact is that the game requires an inexorable amount of grind. Money is needed for food, pumping, weapons, food, transport, quests, food and still to quests. And even if you do not change the prices of the second part (and they are large), then if the speed of earnings was like in the first part, then this would not be a problem, but this is not so. Killing any monster, you will get from 0 to 12 golden. This is very little. And we also need to grin the necessary objects like strange coins to stop the time to stop the time, a blue brush for possessing a frigate, tri-lithium as fuel for a rocket and so aaaaa further.

But not only regarding the earnings of prices and the grind of objects suffers from the balance. The point is still the importance of some characteristics. Considering that you do not need dexterity at first, you risk not getting a game. After all, 1 unit of dexterity is even 1 percentage. But this does not look like the truth, because even with the maximum at the beginning of the game with dexterity, you will miss very often. So with a low dexterity indicator you will be killed very quickly, you will not even reach the city. In addition, dexterity helps a lot in opening locks and theft of armor from shops, and food, and a master line, and so on. That is, it is better to be dexterous, but weak? No. You cannot use good armor (weapons depend on dexterity). In this part, it is better to be stupid and ugly enormous to get through the enemy and kill him with this blow, and not tickle the heels. But other characteristics suffer that mainly affect prices (only in stores). And if you need to increase the characteristics, then you have a guy who is in the California Hotel in the city of New San Antonio during our era. It will generously increase (for 100 gold) a random parameter by 4 units, but may not increase, but be careful, an increase in the parameter above 255 will lead to a decrease to 0.

But not only problems appeared in this game. Yes, there are very few innovations, but they will go to the next parts. One of them is the religious lunar gate for the series, moving the player at different times and places and appearing in specific phases of the moon. The second is more developed cities. Now they were like cities, not the market. They had parks, houses, bays, prisons and, accordingly, shops. And the latter is more developed dialogs. That is, NPC did not just say one phrase or just stood, everyone could say something and many had more than one replica.

And now to the rest. In principle, compared to the last part, there are fewer key tasks and there is no need to go to the dungeons at all. It would be easier if the game at least hinted what needs to be done. And you need to get the best sword in the game – Quick Sword requiring 49 dexterity and this is the only weapon capable of killing Minax. Get a ring that protects against power fields in the castle of the sorceress. And to fan a lot of strange coins stopping time, because there are many immortal monsters in the Minax castle.

The sword in principle is easy. He is at one of the prisoners in San Antonio. So you need to decently pump dexterity in order to open the locks and bent keys (master keys) from any guards in any city. Yes, the game requires you to arrange genocide. This prisoner for a sword will also require money … 500 gold. And immediately after his release, security. If there is a Skull Key, then you can climb into an airplane that is not far away and fly away (besides it will need it), if not, you will have to run the whole city before leaving the guards behind.

It’s more complicated with the ring. To receive it, you must again go to the stars on the rocket. But there is a problem – the only rocket in the game is in the Soviet Union (which is called the pirate harbor), which is easier to get by plane. But before you need to prepare, because the Russians/pirates will not be satisfied with the theft and it will not be a shame not to start the chase on time. So we need one ankh (it is strange that in the series he appeared in this way) and more Tri-Lithium’a and Reflect or Power Armor (otherwise die when taking off). You can fly to any planet of the system, but we need a planet X with coordinates 9–9–9 that are introduced when the hyperople is turned on. There we find the father of Antos and having received his blessing to the ring again we go to the ground in San Antonio and find the old man under a tree, pay him 500 gold and we get a ring.

After all these actions, we arm ourselves all that we need and go through one of the portals during legends, break through with a battle in the castle periodically rubbing the coins and kill Minax.

The result was a very long and boring game, most of the time the player simply repeats the same algorithm yet can not fulfill, something according to the plot. The game is simply simply dishonest to the player and it does not matter how he developed and went far, it will always encourage him.

But at the time of the release of the game, people would not agree with me. She received approving criticism, many called it the best in the year and was nominated for the “Best Advent for Home Computers” in 1983 HA Origins Game Fair, losing Wizardry II (rival to the series). And sales compared to the first Ultima. Whereas at the beginning the first was bought in the amount of 20,000 copies and then this figure was expensive to 50,000, the second was immediately sold in the amount of 50,000.

And even if she was bad, but she still took a step towards the species for which she was loved by fans: detailed cards with the manual were coming included, lunar gates, a big world and the presence of freedom of action (albeit within the framework of a possible one at that time).

All this led Richard to one thought that it is possible to develop games in the future without a publisher who may not agree to spend strength and money on a similar project. Why not work for yourself. With such thoughts, Richard began to work on creating his game company – Origin Systems.