"Them heapum much, much many-er different location. But them big forget heap fun! You savvy?"

I always like to discover a favorite author's old books, the sort that wouldn't be considered for paperback publication any more. I've even tracked some down through the extensive Chicago Public Library system and even wound up buying some via the Internet, bibliofind.com, and the like. I've never really been disappointed; one shouldn't be surprised that the out-of-print stuff is a notch below that which still has quality to be popular. I imagine computer games are a different matter, especially role playing games, which can cost many hours before you solve them. Ultima II(U2) may be the biggest disappointment; a regression from Ultima I despite its tremendous size(the parallel would be long passages of needless description or bad pseudo-science in a science fiction novel) largely due to arbitrary 'git-tuff' rules where one wrong keystroke or just bad luck wipes you out. Once I finished, I forgave the game.

Then I tried to complete it without giving myself critical items(I still futzed with my character stats, gold, and food--although it took a few times as in some cases I had to guard against rollover at ten grand.) I can't imagine trying to solve this game straight-up, but you can see the progression of ideas, albeit misguided, from Ultima I. Lord British is a more prominent character in this game, having dominion over all of your original planet instead of one of four kingdoms, but I think all that ruling must have taken a bit out of the programmer in him, especially since I hear he started all early Ultima games from scratch.

The game background is fair enough but esoterically flawed. Minax, apprentice to Mondain whom you knocked out of commission in Ultima I, has managed to pick up the shards of the Gem of Immortality which you had burst on defeating Mondain. She has used it to turn civilizations against themselves, until in 2112 they have all but destroyed each other. You(it's still a one-player RPG) have been dumped in the year 1423 BC where you have access to a network of time doors, which allow you to explore several eras, a variant on the trip back in time to defeat Mondain, to gather clues in several different eras until you can find a way to the Age of Legends and Minax's castle.

Now time travel is a neat concept. But it can be easily overdone in creative works. H.G. Wells's The Time Machine provides all the wonder I need, Douglas Adams provided the satire in a few swift strokes on Lallafa the poet, and Ray Bradbury provided social import of minor changes in a similar short story which he later trumped simply by having kids call an old man a time machine. Still time travel should never become the staple of a creative canon or even get too tangled(remember the simplicity of Back to the Future compared to the contortions of its sequel,) and it establishes itself too prominently in U2. I am glad they cut this nonsense out with Ultima III, although they did well to rearrange the continents in each time period.

Another vestige of Ultima I which isn't vanquished until then is space travel; while it's done rather better here, using rockets found only in Aftermath as links between different worlds(they provide nice variety from the surprisingly unoriginal decision to start the game on the Earth--deduct five originality points,) you still get killed during the reflex test of landing if you push any button other than 'L'--even worse than the dungeon traps that kill you. Since you can't save in dungeons or on different planets, there's a lot of replication necessary to visit certain places. So the anachronisms have been neutralized(planes are only available in 1990 and beyond,) but Ultima has more serious problems.

U2 is simply too hard for the average gamer to explore seriously. Sure, it's easy to create a character(four class and race choices,) the keyboard commands seem straightforward, the initial world map should be familiar, and it's easy to figure where to go and basic commands to use. But my first crack at the game, after being dumped far from any town(most other games are courteous to drop you two squares away from one,) I was unlucky to stumble on a nasty bug; I walked on the Alaska-Russia isthmus and battled a monster which would be identified as an orc in later games. Without hitting the orc once, I watched as my generous allotment of 400 hit points disappeared; I was on the right edge of the computer's internal map, apparently. Later on I found a problem with food, which you consume at an alarming rate in towns; every few moves you lose a unit of food. While every town is as big as the outside world(but often with few distinctly interesting places--New San Antonio being the exception) this makes mathematical sense but not common sense. The other problem with towns is that your game is saved each time you enter one. As you don't get resurrected, it is easy to work yourself involuntarily into a dead end. Once you have, you'll need to create a new character disk, as you can't write over the old one. Ugh. The best way to make a competent character seems to be to cheat and steal repeatedly in one place. Then finding Lord British, who will replenish your hit points, is not trivial either as he is on an island(guess which!)

If you ever get into U2, you'll find it has random annoyances to complement the persistent ones. As you defeat monsters you pick up items but are often not notified. It's never clear which item does what until, say, a cloak stops your arms from being paralyzed, or boots stop your legs from being paralyzed(two examples of how the game got tuff early, as devils appear right away.) I was shocked to find you need an ankh to board a spaceship. Then thieves steal your items(losing your airship or frigate items can be especially tough blows,) or if you get a hundred of one item, it rolls over to zero. Then there are the vast largely predictable wastelands and interminable cities with mostly generic conversation(you can scour a few clues) and shticky special things such as 'RED SKWARE'/CCCP in a town that's really in Finland and not Russia, various pizza pubs, and the first examples of electronic bonsai in towns: Pac-Man ghosts, people, and the exclamation HA! These contrast with the five different monster types available to fight in the wild, each giving random experience, which will make you mad enough to walk into towns and beat up the very civilians you want to end up saving. The only thing that could hope to be spectacular would be Minax's castle, where the final combat descends from initial chase-and-flee excitement into repetition, and you get a dizzying scene if you manage to win.

'If towns and the overworld are this bad, how lousy must the dank dark smelly dungeons be?' Well, despite the arbitrary random traps popping up and the bug where, if you're in front of a wall, front-left and front-right walls are drawn, dungeons are really rather friendly. The standard practice of entering a place, looting, leaving and returning pays even more dividends in dungeons than towns although the early revelation that dungeons are sixteen levels high makes for mucho intimidation. However the ones I explored(there are too many, and each ultimately can serve the same purpose) were good exercises in mapping as you constantly need to look for secret doors, and monsters here show colorful details.

U2 just seems cursed. Wise guys may comment that it is because it was the only one Richard Garriott wrote while at On-Line Systems(which would become Sierra On-Line and then Sierra.) It didn't get the remake Ultima I did, so I can't fully compare it to the original effort. When ported to the PC, it became easier to restart the game with a new character(you can just trash your character file if nothing else,) but the blue and purple colors never make for believable vegetation in the outside world. And as computers got faster, the game did, and the small delay before the game makes you pass a move can get you killed quickly. Using Moslo to peg the game back means it takes forever to load. So even if you have the Ultima collection and must play this game, avail yourself of an emulated version with a free conscience. You can learn a lot about emulating and maybe will even be driven to learn byte editing, which is easier than slugging through the game.

Clearly, even more effort went into Ultima II than you'd have to expend solving it. Its size is amazing for the time the game was written, and the attempt to create a real set of worlds and huge item repertoires is ambitious. However, it is too linear even though it takes a while to find the path, and it seems entertaining detail was often sacrificed for, or clashed with, features not fully developed, as any step forward(helms which allow you to view a rough map of the area) has something to set it back on the other hand(ugly swamp icons.) You actually have a sense of people in the towns of the world you're trying to save, but I've mentioned the size disparity. Items create arbitrary confusion you must sort out as you go along, and there are a few spots where you'll be killed without explanation. So I enjoyed exploring the distant planets(an interesting canvas for ideas they couldn't execute on Earth--not an imaginative place to start the game, and this seemed to carry over) but don't want to go through the whole ordeal again. Having had the U2 experience is a good thing, as it felt like a Bradburyian time machine of the sort I mentioned above(I had a copy of Ultima Classics(I-III) in '90 and got frustrated with U2, then looked back on both that and the early days of programming when I bought the new classic Ultima package--I through VIII,) but I did not always enjoy having it.

All I Want is You
--eras are linked up well
--easy to perpetuate the coping formula
--lots of places to visit and people to talk to
--some interesting new items
--some color in towns, castles and even dungeons
--Minax's castle is impressive if onerous

I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For
--nearly impossible to get started
--nearly impossible to figure out space travel
--nearly impossible to find what to do
--nearly impossible to have a pleasant walk around a town or castle with your food dwindling
--nearly impossible to retain the patience to improve so you can beat Minax
--nearly impossible

Reviewer's Score: 4/10, Originally Posted: 06/13/02, Updated 06/13/02