Ultima II: The Revenge of the Enchantress...

The Good
After Ultima became a big success for Richard Garriott, the logical thing to try was creating a sequel in which everything was bigger, better, and cooler. Ultima II achieved that. The improvements are many, and not just minor ones, too.

The game world is a couple of times the size of the original Ultima. You don't only travel through different kingdoms anymore, you also travel through time. Not only do you once more venture into outer space, but now you can even land on other planets of our solar system, and explore them. Towns are now themselves multi-screen environments, each with a unique structure. And there many other peaceful inhabitants wandering around, although they don't have much to say yet. Along with dungeons, there are also towers, and both of them have over a dozen uniquely designed levels each, with improved monster graphics.

The list goes on. The scope of the game is absolutely amazing, even more so when comparing it to that of other titles of the time.

The Bad
The game's biggest problem is ultimately (pun intended) that it forgets about the players. While providing a great world to toy around in, it fails at giving players a lasting incentive to do so. This is not the fault of the story, which is basically a clone of the first Ultima - getting strong enough to battle an evil wizard. The whole journey to get there is just not gripping enough.

For a large part, this is due to obvious balancing issues. In the beginning, players have a hard time keeping their injuries and travels at a minimum, in order to not run out of food or hit points early on. A while later, difficulty gives way to dullness. The remaining part of the game now mostly consists of cruising around in a battleship and firing at enemies, over and over again. That in itself wouldn't have to be completely bad, Diablo for example was just as repetitive. What made Diablo entertaining, however, was that it always kept patting the players head. An interesting item after every dozen of enemies, increasing amounts of gold, and a change in scenery every few levels.

Ultima II does have nothing of the sort. The amounts of gold and experience the player gets from fights is increasing extremely slow, and there is a general lack of enemies. This means literally hours of cruising around the world with the hero, killing hundreds and hundreds of the same types of enemies. All for a slow progression in experience levels, and a small stack of gold to increase hit points and equipment to finally be ready for the endgame. It is no rewarding experience by any standard. At most times, Ultima II more resembles work than play. To make matters worse, increasing stats can only be done through bribing a hotel clerk, which then might increase a character value, and if he does, a randomly chosen one.

But what about all the nice features I mentioned? They don't really matter. The dungeons are nice, but there is no reason to visit them, as the enemies are much stronger than those on the surface, yet the rewards are just as puny. And in contrast to the first Ultima, there are no quests, so why care about the other inhabitants of the world?

The Bottom Line
The only reason why I played and completed Ultima II was because of my determination to finish every Ultima game in existence. If you don't feel that urge, there's no real reason to force yourself to finish it. And believe me, you will reach a point where you would have to force yourself. Apart from the background texts in the manual, you're not missing out on a great, surprising story.

It is an interesting fact that for later releases of the DOS version in compilations, files from all the game's disks were copied to one folder, overwriting several files with identical file names. This eventually got rid of all the outer-space game maps, rendering space travel useless and the game unwinnable without applying a fan patch. The real problem is however that the game itself is so demotivating that most players probably never even got far enough to notice.

It is fun to walk around in Ultima II for a while, experience the new features it has over the first part in the series, explore the worlds and time travelling. But it is not fun enough to work towards completing the game's objectives. In the end, you will find that all the game's interesting features and elements are pointless, while the necessary ones are boring. This is a fatal combination for a game, especially after its novelty has worn off.

The Good
This is a much larger game than its predecessor. This time, towns are on scrolling maps, instead of the one screen, and there are numerous world maps to represent each time zone. Its also the first Ultima to feature moon-gates, although this time they take you through time as well as space. You can now talk to people in the towns, although you will just get a brief (and usually meaningless) one line response.

It was also the first Ultima to come in decent packaging with the obligatory cloth map. The over-sized box, map and manual are seriously impressive and a lot better than anything that comes with today's games.

The Bad
The game took place on Earth, which seems very out of place to an Ultima fan. It was necessary to give the time travel context but it doesn't fit in with the rest of the games.

The game was also extremely open ended, the quests of the last game have gone altogether. This can be a good thing but here it just made the game less fun. 95% of the time to complete this game was spent gathering experience and sailing round and round the time of legends island shooting monsters with my ships cannon. This sort of mindless grinding is something I dislike in RPG's. Getting a blue tassel (required to get a ship) also takes forever.

The dungeons in this game were basically pointless, I never went into one during the whole game. Its far easier to gain experience with a ship.

There's no story, and some very strange gameplay elements. Stats are raised by offering gold to a clerk at the Hotel California. Getting to key characters means butchering your way through innocent guards - this is definitely not the behaviour of the avatar of later games.

The Bottom Line
I couldn't honestly recommend to anyone that they bother playing this game. Its part of the Ultima series so I had to play it, but the game is a bit of a mess, doesn't advance the plot beyond what is in the manual and requires a reasonable amount of time to finish (maybe 5-6 hours).

The Good
The manual was an interesting read. I liked the overall concept. Space and/or time travel could have been really cool if they pulled it off...

The Bad
It took me forever to get a complete copy of this game. And then to acquire the neccessary patches. When the game finally got running...I had all these expectations. And I was sourly let down. I could have endured this game...if the food management would have been more realistic and all the tiles for seperate time periods didn't look exactly the same. I guess there wasn't enough story in U2 to enthrall me.

The Bottom Line
If you're a die-hard Ultima afficionado, it's worth a look. A short one.