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are those worth it? i always wanted to try the franchise, im still new with it.
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hercufles: are those worth it? i always wanted to try the franchise, im still new with it.
Ultima 1 and 2 are basically adventure games with combat and a few statistics here and there. You control a single character who gets dumped into a world and you have to work out what to do to win and then go about doing it.

Ultima 3 is quite a bit different. You create a party of four characters, choosing their races and classes appropriately. The combat is done on a separate "tactical" combat screen like in Ultima 4 and 5. The gameplay is a lot more varied and exploration is a hell of a lot more fun. It feels much more like a standard RPG than the first two.

However, Ultima 4 is where the Ultima series really starts. Ultima 4 is the first game to introduce the Avatar, the virtues, the continent of Britannia, the famous cities and towns, the companions and consistent lore. Furthermore, the manual of Ultima IV tells you more about the story and lore of Ultima 1, 2 and 3 than the actual games do.

To summarise, if you are dead set on playing through the entire Ultima series then go for it! Ultima 3 is a good game, Ultima 1 is historically important and Ultima 2 is just plain weird. If, however, you only want to play the best Ultima games then I strongly advise you to stick with Ultima 4, 5, 6 and 7. Those are the core Ultima games in my opinion.
Post edited September 04, 2011 by DeathStrike
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hercufles: are those worth it? i always wanted to try the franchise, im still new with it.
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DeathStrike: Ultima 1 and 2 are basically adventure games with combat and a few statistics here and there. You control a single character who gets dumped into a world and you have to work out what to do to win and then go about doing it.

Ultima 3 is quite a bit different. You create a party of four characters, choosing their races and classes appropriately. The combat is done on a separate "tactical" combat screen like in Ultima 4 and 5. The gameplay is a lot more varied and exploration is a hell of a lot more fun. It feels much more like a standard RPG than the first two.

However, Ultima 4 is where the Ultima series really starts. Ultima 4 is the first game to introduce the Avatar, the virtues, the continent of Britannia, the famous cities and towns, the companions and consistent lore. Furthermore, the manual of Ultima IV tells you more about the story and lore of Ultima 1, 2 and 3 than the actual games do.

To summarise, if you are dead set on playing through the entire Ultima series then go for it! Ultima 3 is a good game, Ultima 1 is historically important and Ultima 2 is just plain weird. If, however, you only want to play the best Ultima games then I strongly advise you to stick with Ultima 4, 5, 6 and 7. Those are the core Ultima games in my opinion.
thanks for the info i hope i cant get trough with talking to npc if im correct i mostly use hi name job ect.
Ultima 3 is a fun diversion for those who enjoyed the original Final Fantasy, for example, or games like The Bard's Tale. Actual conversation-based Talking only begins in Ultima 4; in U3, you have {T}ransact, which is pretty well like Talking in a console RPG - people simply give you their line and that's it. It's more for shopping than anything else.

Talking is pretty straightforward - if you read the source material, it will tell you that all NPCs respond to three questions:
1) Name,
2) Job, and
3) Health
You can also {Look} at any time during the conversation to get the initial NPC description repeated.
Beyond Look, Name, Job and Health, you have to use the words that the NPCs give you to continue the conversation. In U4, there are usually one or two further keywords per character; U5 has much more developed conversation trees, including questions that can't just be answered Yes/No.

Good luck!
Post edited September 05, 2011 by organmike
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organmike: Ultima 3 is a fun diversion for those who enjoyed the original Final Fantasy, for example, or games like The Bard's Tale.
Ultima 3 has very little in common with The Bard's Tale.
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organmike: Ultima 3 is a fun diversion for those who enjoyed the original Final Fantasy, for example, or games like The Bard's Tale. Actual conversation-based Talking only begins in Ultima 4; in U3, you have {T}ransact, which is pretty well like Talking in a console RPG - people simply give you their line and that's it. It's more for shopping than anything else.

Talking is pretty straightforward - if you read the source material, it will tell you that all NPCs respond to three questions:
1) Name,
2) Job, and
3) Health
You can also {Look} at any time during the conversation to get the initial NPC description repeated.
Beyond Look, Name, Job and Health, you have to use the words that the NPCs give you to continue the conversation. In U4, there are usually one or two further keywords per character; U5 has much more developed conversation trees, including questions that can't just be answered Yes/No.

Good luck!
so its a good thing to make a lot of notes?
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hercufles: so its a good thing to make a lot of notes?
It definitely helps!
well im gonna try 4 first since its free anyway and look how far i get thanks all
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hercufles: so its a good thing to make a lot of notes?
Necessary, in fact. My father played them before I did (that's right - I have a gaming pedigree) and he filled a 2' three-ring binder with pages of notes from Ultima IV, and overfilled one for Ultima V. To be fair, he and his friend recorded everything - the name, rank and serial number of every single person in every towne, village and castle - which came in handy when Jim tells you to ask John about something, because Dad knew exactly where John was.
In addition to that, unless you're bound for a walkthrough, the game doesn't give you all the necessary information - the spell mixtures for the Gate Travel, Undead and Resurrection spells, for example (although the latter two are simple enough to puzzle out when you know what the individual reagents do, and that is in the book) - and some of the information that they do give you is incomplete or just out-and-out incorrect, although not in a game-breaking way. You'll also often be given co-ordinates to find items (especially in the open ocean), individual letters from a greater word puzzle, or spoken keys, all of which you'll need to keep tabs on so you know just what to do when.

Basically, a ream of looseleaf and some graphing paper, a three-ring binder, a few good pencils and a bunch of sticky tabs are a good investment. Failing that, a word processor that allows you to make maps is a reasonable facsimile.
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hercufles: so its a good thing to make a lot of notes?
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organmike: Necessary, in fact. My father played them before I did (that's right - I have a gaming pedigree) and he filled a 2' three-ring binder with pages of notes from Ultima IV, and overfilled one for Ultima V. To be fair, he and his friend recorded everything - the name, rank and serial number of every single person in every towne, village and castle - which came in handy when Jim tells you to ask John about something, because Dad knew exactly where John was.
In addition to that, unless you're bound for a walkthrough, the game doesn't give you all the necessary information - the spell mixtures for the Gate Travel, Undead and Resurrection spells, for example (although the latter two are simple enough to puzzle out when you know what the individual reagents do, and that is in the book) - and some of the information that they do give you is incomplete or just out-and-out incorrect, although not in a game-breaking way. You'll also often be given co-ordinates to find items (especially in the open ocean), individual letters from a greater word puzzle, or spoken keys, all of which you'll need to keep tabs on so you know just what to do when.

Basically, a ream of looseleaf and some graphing paper, a three-ring binder, a few good pencils and a bunch of sticky tabs are a good investment. Failing that, a word processor that allows you to make maps is a reasonable facsimile.
thanks it maybe sounds strange but i i dont like to use walktroughs since it spoils the suprises in a game but i hope its possible without one.
It's most certainly possible, and it's definitely a great deal of challenge. You will (and I speak from experience here) feel lost a fair bit - not an unusual feeling for old CRPGs, actually, because standard operating procedure provides only about half the required information and asks you to figure out the rest. Not sure where to go and what to do? Go somewhere, do something.
Ultima IV is unusual (compared to modern RPGs and even a number of its contemporaries, including its own sequel) in that there are no sidequests, even though some might feel like it. Okay, not none - there's one, to get the best weapons and armour in the game. That's it. What this means, then, is that everything that you're asked to do, you're eventually going to have to do. It's something of an achievement in unified construction, but it can be frustrating if you're missing just that one little thing that you can't find, because you will need to go get it.
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organmike: It's most certainly possible, and it's definitely a great deal of challenge. You will (and I speak from experience here) feel lost a fair bit - not an unusual feeling for old CRPGs, actually, because standard operating procedure provides only about half the required information and asks you to figure out the rest. Not sure where to go and what to do? Go somewhere, do something.
Ultima IV is unusual (compared to modern RPGs and even a number of its contemporaries, including its own sequel) in that there are no sidequests, even though some might feel like it. Okay, not none - there's one, to get the best weapons and armour in the game. That's it. What this means, then, is that everything that you're asked to do, you're eventually going to have to do. It's something of an achievement in unified construction, but it can be frustrating if you're missing just that one little thing that you can't find, because you will need to go get it.
well mostly off those kind of rpg i just wander around and make notes of all what i find so that if i find a solution of it i know where to find it.