The Dwarves
7.7 hours, 20 of 34 achievements
The Dwarves, a game that should have been good, but fell flat.
The Dwarves is a party based RPG seen from an overhead perspective, with RTwP combat. It's similar to games like Pillars of Eternity or Baldur's Gate in this regard (although with a 3D camera).
Somehow the controls feel floaty. I don't think I would ever describe a game that's controlled like this as having floaty controls, but somehow this game does have that! It just does not feel good to control your party, and the dwarves slide around the place as if on ice (I think this has to do with how the game handles collisions. Characters can "push" each other)
The level design is lackluster. The game loves throwing loads of enemies at you (like 30-50 at a time!), but the best strategy is to not fight, instead just give your party the order to go to the exit, and they'll (usually) push their way through the enemies without taking much damage. Which is a terribly boring strategy, but it's the best one.
The game presents you with a large world map, with a lot of just empty space. The game even has a system in place that discourages you from going out to explore, as you use food with every step you take. Not that exploring is worth it anyway, there's nothing there. The map is just large for no reason.
The story is disjointed. It feels like scenes are missing. And I also suspect that it follows the book a bit too well at times, as characters die or leave in a way that would work in a book, but it does not work in a game. And towards the end everything just feels super rushed.
My guess is that the developers ran out of money or time halfway through development, and just had to push what they had out the door, with no time to properly test it, and thus they had to cut a lot of intended content. It's a shame, this game could have been good, but in the state it's currently in (and probably will remain in), it's a rather bad game.
Ultima IX: Ascension
27.4 hours, no achievements
Non-steam game
Ah, Ultima 9. It's been in my backlog since 2002, and finally I've beaten it!
Notorious for being a buggy mess, that breaks a lot of established lore and for over-promising and under-delivering. And somehow, I did not hate it. Let's get something straight, Ultima IX is buggy, really buggy, in fact I would not have been able to beat the game had I not used cheats, and I could not get the best weapon in the game due to a bug. I could also not fast-travel by boat to one location, as the game crashed on me when I did so, so I had to take the slow route there, and healing potions made the game unstable. The voice acting was often funny-bad, and sometimes just painfully bad. There were broken quest triggers, and in one specific fight between an enemy and an NPC, where the NPC was supposed to win, they somehow managed to make the enemy invulnerable, so the NPC lost, yet the quest actually continued as intended. The world is also surprisingly small, yet your slow movement speed makes it take time to travel.
But for a game released in 1999, it's still somewhat impressive. It's got a fully 3D open world, with lots of things going on, and despite its age, it still does not look horrible. In fact, it's one of the best looking games from that year. And the dungeons, except for dungeon 2 & 3 (which were very close to each other in terms of when you go to them) were actually fun.
I can't recommend this game, it's so buggy, and fans of the series justifiably dislike how it just disregards past events, and how it can't even get very basic things right, like what the last boss in Ultima 3 was (and Ultima 9 was made by lead designer of all the previous Ultima games. How could he not get that right!). But I had fun with it. The game was oddly compelling. When it did not crash on me.
Funk of Titans
2 hours, 10 of 21 achievements
Funk of Titans is a simple runner. Ever played games like Bit Trip Runner? Then you have a good idea of how this game will work. There's really not much to say, you're playing a funky guy who fights for funk against pop, rap & rock in a world inspired by Greek mythology. The game is incredibly upbeat though, and it's hard to not at least smile at its silliness. This is not a masterpiece or anything like that, but as far as runners go, it's a nice one.
Do you recommend other Ultima games? I hear’d a lot good stuff about Ultima VII and Underworld but not sure if I should play everything in the series or not
It’s hard to say yes or no to games that old, but here are my thoughts on the games:
Akalabeth (often called Ultima 0, although it’s not actually a part of the series): Skip this. It’s very rough. It’s a relic, which was far surpassed by Ultima 1.
Ultima 1: Surprisingly playable actually. You can have some fun with this one, although probably best played with a guide so you know where you’re supposed to go and what to do. Also very weird, they dropped many things from this game in the later games.
Ultima 2: Hard skip. This one feels nigh unplayable. It’s very grindy and messy.
Ultima 3: Probably worth skipping as well. It’s very grindy, but you can tell that some good ideas are starting to firm.
Ultima 4: You can get this one for free on GOG. It’s rough, but it’s also interesting. Might be worth a try, but keep in mind that beating it might require a fare bit of grind. This one is interesting in that you’re supposed to live up to a set of virtues, and doing deeds that are in line with them increases your “points” in those, something you need to do to beat the game. So chasing down fleeing enemies is considered bad, donating money to the poor is considered good and so on.
Ultima 5: A bit grindy, but it has rather good writing, and is an improvement on 4. I like this one, but it is still a very old game, so it will have many rough edges.
Ultima 6: I hate the game engine. But the story is interesting, and the world feel very alive. Still, game engine might be a killer for you.
Ultima 7 part 1 & 2: Two games that do world building very well, but combat is really bad. I like these, and these are probably the ones that are the easiest to get into.
Ultima 8: Unfinished, buggy and rather messy. If you’re going to play one Ultima game, skip this one. It does start relatively good, but the further you get into it, the more clear it is that a lot of stuff was cut. The story is somewhat incoherent, and I hope you love grey dungeons or grey catacombs. Because this game has very limited tilesets!
Ultima 9: Well, you can see above :P
Ultima Underworld 1 & 2: 1 takes part after 6, 2 takes part between part 1 & 2 of 7. These are really good games, if rather clunky. And they’re also very impressive for their age (remember, Ultima Underworld pre-dates Wolfenstein 3D, yet it has a far more advanced 3D engine!)
Worlds of Ultima: Free on GOG, both of them. These use the Ultima 6 engine, which I hate :P Not played them much.
Runes of Virtue: A weird puzzle game that is more annoying and frustrating than fun.
Runes of Virtue 2: Here you learn that there’s a pie factory in the Abyss! Yeah, it’s weird.. and not very good. Skip.
Thanks for sharing your thoughts on the whole series, but are they in any way connected story wise? :D Can I just jump straight into good ones without worrying I’m missing something?
Yes, kind of. It’s unclear if you play the same character in 1-9 (+underworld & Runes of Virtue), or if it’s just from 4 and onward that you play the same character. Ultima Online & Ultima 9 implies that it’s the same character, but none of the previous games really make it seem like Ultima 1-3 follows the same character as 4 and onward.
4 and onward has a story connection. You don’t need to play them in order, if 4-6 feel too old it might be worth just reading a summary of the plot. Underworld can easily be skipped, as I don’t think they even reference those events in any of the other games, although they are officially part of the plotline. Actually, Ultima 9 directly contradicts Underworld 1, and implies that those events never happened. Kind of. Or alternatively it says that they did happen, but they were not worth mentioning because something else is more important (in 9 the number of times the avatar went to the lands of Britannia gets mentioned, but in 8 you went somewhere else, so Underworld 1 has to have happened for that number to make sense, but then they show images from each of your visits, and it does not show anything from Underworld, but it does show images from 8…Then again, in 1 & 2 you never go to Britannia either, so it’s all really messy)
Anyway, I’m rambling. only the events in 4 and onward are important. 1-3 can be safely ignored.
Aww shiiieeet, I’m going through The Dwarves myself at the moment.
It definitely took me a while for combat to click with me and special attacks having force to push objects around is vital because finishing off downed enemies is the easiest way to take them out of combat AND get points for characters. You are right it does get tricky because it affects your own characters as well, but it’s something you get used to and learn to space out the party. I don’t know, I’ve found the food stores to not really be a problem because you can take your time on the world map unless you’re chasing someone specific or you’re being chased for story moments. Story is something I have yet to see through, but there are hints of what you say with pacing and maybe assuming player has read the books. Kickass soundtrack so far that gets extra props for signing up Blind Guardian to perform a song.
You get like 10 party members later on, and when you have that many, your food supply will go down fast.
With the number of enemies the game throws at you later on, it’s just easier to spam abilities in the few cases where you actually have to fight. I’m not sure if killing enemies actually give experience though. I was level 10 on my main character by the end-game, and it seemed to me that as long as you complete a map, you get experience, no matter the number of enemies killed. Which is why just running to the exit is such an efficient strategy :P
TEN characters? And I thought having five was already difficult choosing which one to leave out. :D
Interesting. I’ll just have to wait and see what happens as I play. Just escaped the ambush and going south, but if you finished it in under eight hours that’s real short. Haven’t had many “run to the exit marker” missions yet so maybe my opinion will change.
Character balance is kind of iffy. I found some of them to not be very good at all. Basically the ones with some form of area of effect attack that can take out multiple enemies at once and the ones that can take a bit of a beating were a lot better than the ones that tried to be fancy, for the levels where you actually have to fight.
Having finished the game I see your points much clearer now. :D