Ultima: Exodus

"Not Bad, But Still Could Be Better"

Hello, it's the reviewer formerly known as Mike_J here, with a whole new review of one of the first console RPG's I've ever played: Ultima III: Exodus.

Ultima hails as one of the classic series of PC gaming (and has quite a bit of notable stance on the Commodore 64 too I see), and Exodus was yet another first for Richard Garriott and co, as Exodus was the first game ever ported to a game console, the Nintendo Entertainment System. The people who ported it, FCI, need proof, download the NSF file and read the music authors name in the author queue (Koji Kondo or something like that), and you'll see why this has a slightly different feel than any other port of Ultima III. The producer of the game was Pony Canyon Inc, whom also seem to be a musical producing firm that does work for Yngwie Malmsteen I believe (a Danish neo-classical guitar virtuoso few outside guitar circles know about).

The Plot: 5/10

Ultima III was the last of the first three Ultima games (duh), these first three were known as the "triad of evil" saga. All three games, this one included, had the typical RPG plot. Fight to level up your good guy, find all the mystical magical items (in this case a sword and some armor), and then kill the evil bad dude/being/whatevers whom has not done anything to you so far. That's why I consider it average, it has the same basic plot structure as The Legend Of Zelda, Dragon Warrior I & II, Final Fantasy, and so on have. So what IS the plot of Ultima III, basically Minax and Mondain created a machine known as Exodus (a computer?), and your quest is to destroy Exodus before he executes and destroys all of what Ultima fans now call "Ancient Sorsaria". To do this you must talk to many people, travel through dungeons, and retrieve some special weapons, armor, and some tattoos and punch cards to destroy him, all the while you fight like a son of a gun to get there.

The Graphics: 6/10

They're better than that 4 color mess that was the CGA PC XT based version, I'll give it that, but not as great as they could have been on Nintendo. The characters are not too bad, but the squat 4X4 8 pixel square tile characters don't work too well for a game like Ultima, but they work great in something mostly manga like Dragon Quest/Warrior where squat little Japanamation type graphics work well. The character portraits are a little plain, usually being some blank face with just two eyes and some hair and the upper torso, they could have put much more into it and made a full blown portrait and it would have looked much better. The little 4X4 8 pixel quare sprites don't look too bad as I said before, but the size forces them to look a little chubby, however, they have some pretty darn good and lively animations.

The background graphics are pretty sparse outside of the trees, bushes, and nearly photorealistic mountains that litter the landscape. The grass and sand is a little too "non-random" for my taste, giving it a look a little on par with a Playskool Little People Playset more than a serious RPG. However, this game has the NES's best representations of bushes, trees, and mountains I have ever seen in a Nintendo game, so I do have to give kudos for the very well drawn landscape features. Another rough spot is the castle walls for vertical walls, just what is that supposed to be, it looks almost like the inside of some neon strip lighting rather than bricks! However, the water is right up there with trees and mountains, AND ANIMATED quite accuratley for a nes game.

The NPC's look pretty good in some places, and others look like a smaller version of Pitfall Harry! Possibly the most amusing are the red guards that usually come to kick your patoot when you try to loot the King's money supply. They look like some kind of dumb gym buff with a bucket for a helmet, which I find totally amusing. However, outside of amusing NPC's, the enemies can go from real scenes of hilarity, like the basic enemy fight sequences are started by coming up along side some dude in what appears to be a wetsuit, while the hilarity ends at later levels when you have some of the best drawn 32 pixel dragons I've ever seen in a videogame! Some of the later enemies like the large black dragons almost possess the ability to scare the willies outta' this 22 year old retro-gamer, at least, if it were not for the thousands of hitpoints I accumulated.

Oh, and the ships, when idle, have some crazy level of sentient being apparently as they pulsate their sails and change directions by themselves when you are not on-board. Probably one of the most bizare and trippy moments in the game right there.

Sound: 7/10

Ultima for the Nintendo has about an album's worth of music, which works out ok for this game. One thing I noticed is how NONE of the tracks make use of the PCM or noise channels on the Nintendo, meaning no drums, which I think is a little lacking on some pieces of music (especially that upbeat tune that plays when you talk to the king). Probably the best tunes off this game are the King's upbeat little ditty, which is fairly complex and quite long for a piece of NES music. The Overworld theme for both Ambrosia, and the normal Overworld rock too. The Normal Overworld theme fits the game perfectly, giving this vibe of long sparse traveling distances and heroic conquest, all the while hinting that danger could be lurking anywhere (AAACK! SCUBA DIVERS!). The Ambrosia theme is my personal favorite, and possibly one of the most fitting and complex pieces in the game, as well as very haunting. I had that echoy "NES Through a rotating Leslie Speaker Cab" song stuck in my head for the better part of 2 days after first hearing it. Probably the only annoying piece of music is the battle theme, which is the same mess of minor key notes over and over (dudududud DUH DUH DUH). They could have done much better than that for sure.

Gameplay: 6/10

This game starts off with you creating your characters for your quest, which allows you two choices: Hand Made, where you create your own characters and their own stats using divisions of 5 out of 50 for 4 attributes, and pick your class, race, and whatnot with no limitations whatsoever; and then there's ready made, where the computer creates some pretty good character designs and allows you to pick your party of 4 from those and name them. My major complaint is the lack of space for a name, you are only limited to FIVE characters for a character name, meaning if you are like me and use something like Mad-Mike as your warrior every time, you're gonna' have to swap to using something shorter.

Dependant on weather you Hand-Make or Ready-Make the characters determines where you start the game too. If you hand made your characters, you all start standing before Lord British in his castle with that slow and meloncholy tune playing in the background, but Ready Made characters send you off to an introduction of "Exodus, dreaded devil, is about to awake...." in the typical badly translated Nintendo fashion ("A Winner Is You" "Dodongo Dislike Smoke"), then you are sent out into the overworld, usually under-armed with cloth and hands for weapons (and one "missile" per party memeber to start with as a handicap surprisingly enough), and surrounded by little grey scuba diver guys.

Walking around towns and the castle usually involves talking to people, buying weapons and armor and equipping them, bribing, killing off town inhabitants that give you crappy clues ("Hey YOU! I just MET YOU!!!" - cram it generic dressy girl sprite!), and even once or twice in the game you have to pray in a certain locale! Talking is done through a menu, as is spell casting, picking fights, stealing from the local bank, equipping your characters with weapons and armor, and even cool functions like moving gold around between characters and sharing food so everyone get's an equal mix of the groceries you just bought from the tubby grocery dude (who almost ALWAYS has a store in the southernmost part of town surprisingly enough).

If you're not walking around town or trying to decide weather you want a bobit (some kinda' Ultima-ized version of a Hobbit?) or fuzzy alchemist, you are probably fighting, which is possibly the most annoying part of the game, as you do A LOT of it, more than usual, however, they did give us a head start at not fighting when we don't want to, there is no such thing as random encounters (well, outside the dungeons anyway). The enemies are usually represented by little black and grey or black and yellow scuba diver guys, though sometimes they are these weird space bug looking things with a patoot mounted spotlight spinning all around underneath (UFO's?), and on some occasions, black, grey, or red dragon type creatures complete with functional wings (usually pitting you with combatants 4-6 times your size!). Once you "touch" one of these characters, you are thrown into battle mode. Now the entire left 2/3rds of the screen are an UN-ESCAPABLE battle field, and the right side shows character stats, and a SMALL status window for only three commands: Fight, Magic, and Tools, which are all self explanitory. You can't escape battles in any way, and worst of all, if you mess up and make a bum move, you can't reverse it and try again like in most RPG's, instead you move along to the next party member. Another downside to the battle side of the game is that, if you are not careful and somewhat strategic about leveling up, the enemies can become WAY too tough for you and your party to defeat! While in a way this adds to the challenge, most RPG players used to something like Dragon Warrior with all it's in-built safety nets would have a problem.

Last but not least are the dungeons, done in first person persepective like all the Ultima games on the PC that came before it. Here the graphics get quite sparse, that wacko dungeon theme plays in the background over and over again, and enemies now CAN'T be seen, meaning random encounters, and often with enemies 4X stronger than you if you don't look out. I once had a party to level 10, and got slayed by a group of angry demons just because I used a DESCEND spell one time too many. Dungeons are also quite confusing, don't have any landmarks, and the maps provided by using a gem are pretty tough to read, so I suggest you map out the dungeons as you go along.

Replay Value: 5/10

Not a whole lot. The game pretty much plays the same way no matter what types of characters you choose, the only differences being quest order, and strategy.

The Verdict: 6/10

While Ultima III for NES is pretty good for a first effort, against the entire NES catalog of RPG genre games, it pales. With it's hit and miss graphics, a couple mildly annoying musical arrangements, and some bad translation work here and there, it can be fun for some, but bothersome to pickier gamers. Chrono Trigger it ain't keep that in mind, but all in all, it's still a pretty good game.

To Buy, To Rent, or hit with a 5 LB sledge: I'd probably get it if it's $5 or under, otherwise, don't bother. Oh, and you might want to replace the savegame battery, this game is almost 10 years old now, and probably needs it (the battery was supposed to last for 5 years).

Reviewer's Score: 6/10, Originally Posted: 07/27/05