Ultima III: Exodus

"The 3rd in the Ultima Saga, a great classic"

Ultima ]|[ Exodus is a fun game to play over from time to time. The C-64 is by far the best version unless you have gotten the EGA Graphics patch for the IBM one. The NES one is just plain garbage.

Ultima ]|[ picks off where 0-2 left off. Here is a breif overview

0-(Akalabeth)-Having rid the world of Mondains foul beasts the soon to be avatar helped Lord British greatly...blah blah nothing really exciting.

1-(First age of Darkness)-The evil wizard mondain tries to conquer the world using a gem of immortality. You traversed Sosaria in search of a time machine to go back and stop him.

2-(Revenge of the Enchantress)-Minax, Mondains apprentice, wrecks havoc on earth as you travel through time and space to stop her by having a certain weapon fast enough to slay her in her castle.

3-(Exodus)-The evil spawn of Mondain and Minax is soon to awaken and you most stop it from destroying the land. This is where this review starts.

Story-8
The story is really more interesting than the first ones. You must save the world From exodus awakening and destroying Sosaria. It isnt extravagant and it isnt a cliche. Lord British did it ALL first hahah. To stop exodus you must get the 4 marks and 4 cards (No names or locations revealed heheh...good luck finding the cards). This also sets a nice background (Age of Darkness), for the Age of Enlightenment...which is the next 3 Ultima games.

Gameplay-10
The gameplay is GREAT you can beat this game over and over and over....you make a party of 4 characters that are totally customizable and control all 4. (This makes for a fun multiplayer game during battles). Once you beat it...make 4 more or use some old chars with some new ones. The replayability is endless. The controls are simple too, each command is a key on the keyboard. The first person dungeons also make for a bigger challenge then the previous Ultimas. The spells and the need for food are the same as usual so some stuff is still the same

Music-10
The music is phenominal for a Commodore game. The SID Chip sounds good with these songs. The world map song in particular is the best of them all. These are worth loading off the disks while playing. The sounds are the usual booms and crashes of a c64 game.

Graphics-8
For C64...they are great. The monsters show some character and they arent as bad as 2 was. The dungeons are decent...the characters need some work though....

If you see this game and own a C64....Buy it..it's well worth it.

Reviewer's Score: 9/10, Originally Posted: 07/19/03, Updated 07/19/03