In this review, we form a party in the NES game Ultima – Exodus. We find out how well this RPG game plays.
This game was released in 1987 and is a port from the Apple II computer.
We have some experience with this series. We’ve previously played Ultima I – The First Age of Darkness. That game wound up being a bust for us. From there, we tried Ultima II – The Revenge of the Enchantress. That game wound up being an eve bigger flop for us as it was pretty much unplayable.
We also played a side series. We tried Ultima Underworld – The Stygian Abyss. That game wound up being quite the great game. After that, we tried Ultima Underworld II – Labyrinth of Worlds. That game ended up being barely passable for us.
So, we are continuing on to see if we can get some better luck with the third game in the series.
The story we got is that Lord British summons four brave souls. They are to stop the evil entity that threatens to overrun the world in darkness. That’s all we got out of the game in terms of storyline.
You start the game with three open save spots. You then create a party. There are a number of ways you can create your party including letting the game generate characters for you and hand-making the characters yourself. There are a couple of races you can choose from including human, elf, gnome, and fuzzy. From there, you can choose from a massive number of occupations each character has. After that, you can spend 50 points on stats (assuming you are going for the hand-made approach of course).
From there, you are plopped on the world map next to a city and Lord British’s castle. Each character has 100 gold to work with along with a generous amount of food. You even start with 150 maximum health to boot. Additionally, you are equipped with cloth armour and even a dagger sometimes.
In the city, there are grocery stores, pubs, a weapon store and armoury. Grocery stores are important because they can replenish your food supply. While you do start off with a generous helping, this won’t last forever. Luckily, food is relatively cheap. The weapon store offers an assortment of weapons that is an upgrade to what you have, though not a stunningly big upgrade. The armoury, however, has a pretty wide selection of armour from simple cloth all the way to dragon armour. Of course, it’s only if you can afford it which is the only question.
Meanwhile, the castle features Lord British. This seems to be where you can level up if you have enough experience. My understanding is that you need 100 experience points to level up, but that’s about it. Additionally, there is a hospital where you can cure some things (though it won’t always be successful) with gold. Also, there is an inn where you can save.
As you move around, you’ll notice that some parts of the area turn black. This is supposed to simulate visibility which, based on my limited knowledge of this game to this point, appears to be a novel new concept for the game.
On the overworld, there are a few things you can discover. Water is something you cannot pass on foot for one. Walking through forests greatly reduces visibility. Also, there is a number of enemies you can encounter. If you walk up to one or an enemy touches one of your party characters, it will initiate a battle sequence.
In the battle sequence, each player is given a turn to do something. Either you can walk one square in any of the four directions or perform an action. Make sure you know this action before you perform it because cancelling in the menus counts as the conclusion of your turn.
If your character has a ranged weapon, you can use fight and select the direction to fire. If you are a magic user, you can cast magic. What magic you can cast depends entirely on whether your character knows Wizard or Cleric spells.
As you fight, this game greatly favours ranged attacks in the long run. This is because close up attacks will permit almost any enemy to hit back. In one battle, this doesn’t seem like that big of a deal. Over the course of several battles, however, you’ll eventually find yourself asking how to heal yourself.
Recovering HP is a bit more complex then you would think. In previous instalments, all you had to do is kill some enemies, then leave to recover health. That doesn’t appear to be the case. Instead, you can simply wander around aimlessly. While you recover HP over time, the process is slow and you consume food in the process. If you want to recover safely, recover in a city or castle. This will also restore magic points.
Alternatively, you can find a “delicious” fountain that recovers all hit points. These are only found in dungeons.
After a while, you may find yourself wanting to equip newly bought weapons or armour. This is accomplished by accessing the status menu and selecting the character you want to change equipment on. Also, having gold split over four characters can be a bit problematic. So, if you access the menu and hit select, you can find a seemingly hidden menu where you can give gold or food. This will help you pool resources. Annoyingly, you are given increments of 10, 100, and 1000 to perform these actions. If you have 325, you can simply select 1000 to give all gold to the other character.
After a while, you might be tired of being badly beaten by various enemies. So, you might have built up experience points enough to level up. So, after you visit Lord British, things will seem much more promising after levelling up. This is thanks in part to the higher maximum HP you now have. Then you go outside and realize that all the enemies have become much more powerful, ready to pretty much wipe you out. If you do manage to take a set out, the gold you get stays the same, so you don’t get much of an improvement from fighting tougher enemies from the looks of things.
If your character dies, you can always go to the hospital. For 500 gold, he will resurrect your character only to watch that character get turned to ash. So, it’s pretty much game over for you after.
For me, I don’t like quitting games early, but this is one I had to quit early on. This is because I really didn’t enjoy playing this one at all.
For one, the learning curve is very steep. I ended up following a guide just to create a decent enough part when a warrior, paladin, thief, and wizard wound up being a bad choice. The guide recommended I try a human Ranger, a Bobit Paladin, an elf thief, and a fuzzy lark. This actually allowed me to survive to the point of levelling up (which ended up being a mistake after). Just finding some of the critical functionality of the menu system was painful. Healing up after battle wound up being a lucky observation after a while. Plus, what are you supposed to be doing in this game anyway? I never did figure that one out.
While the learning curve is painfully steep, the difficulty curve is also just as bad. The game is heavily tilted towards the enemy. If you manage to set your part up right, you might finally form something that allows you to survive to a reasonable degree. If you level up, yeah, the game will simply wipe you out by making enemies much tougher to take down. It’s as if the game is telling me to not bother trying. The more I try to get an advantage in the game, the more the game will simply say, “nah, your dying and that’s the end of it.”
Additionally, the controls are quite clunky. Sometimes, the pop-up status window gets in the way of accessing the actual menu. As a result, you could press “A” two or three times just to get back to the menu again. Also, you need to press “A” in the battle menu just to call up an action. Otherwise, you get a blank square with no real indication of what you need to do. The fact that cancelling the action cancels your whole turn is annoying. Talking to townspeople can also be irritating. You might walk to the counter and press “A” to talk only to watch that person walk one space over. You can end up chasing that character up and down the counter just to buy something.
The only thing I see as a positive is the fact that enemies now have its own battle system. It even accounts for projectile attacks which works quite well once you got the control system down. Beyond that, it’s hard to really see positives in this game.
Graphically, this game is OK for a game of its time. It’s somewhat on par with Gauntlet, though others at the time certainly were better like Mega Man. So, the graphical overhaul this game got worked pretty well. I like the way darkness and line of sight works in this game. The sprites are pretty decent and the environments are also pretty good. So, a decent effort there.
Audio was less than memorable. The music in this game is OK, but nothing huge. Sound effects are pretty basic, though.
Overall, this game comes off as more of a prototype of ideas more than a fully realized game. The learning curve is excessively steep and the difficulty curve and balance is also very bad. Clunky controls also wound up making this game an even more painful experience not to mention the fairly badly laid out menu system. Graphics are quite solid for a game of its time, though audio is merely OK. Overall, this game is a very broken game.
Overall
Furthest point in game: Got my paladin over 1,000 experience points. Bough iron armour for the paladin and a blowgun for the ranger. Got three characters turned to ash when a sea monster caught me and just gave up after.
General gameplay: 10/25
Replay value: 3/10
Graphics: 7/10
Audio: 3/5
Overall rating: 46%
Drew Wilson on Twitter: @icecube85 and Facebook.
