Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Ultima VII Revisited

github.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

91–99 of 99 posts

Re: Ultima VII Revisited

#91

Post by jakebasile »

jerf wrote: post #83
jakebasile wrote: post #29

There's a YouTuber that's been going through and making in-depth retrospectives of each Ultima game that some here may find interesting. I've found them a pleasant watch and I don't usually go for this type of content. I never played the Ultima series until Ultima Online so I don't have the nostalgia goggles that I'd need to go back and play games this old (sorry, it's the truth) so these videos are as close as I'll…

As someone who played these back in the day and enjoyed them, I don't think I could even recommend them to myself today. Ultima VII is everything the other comments say it is... but it's also one staggeringly large nested fetch quest, with nothing much breaking it up. I'd recommend some combination of the Bethesda open world games and the JRPG genre today. They're not the same, nothing really quite fills the Ultima g…

I keep meaning to go and play the Underworld games, since I love the subgenre they pioneered (Immersive Sim). I'll get around to it... one day.

It's like you say, not exactly the same, but for CRPGs it's hard to go wrong with Baldur's Gate 3. It's similar enough to later Ultima in some ways that it might scratch the itch.

Re: Ultima VII Revisited

#92

Post by aidenn0 »

cubefox wrote: post #66
aidenn0 wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

JRPG games like FF VI are far more accessible than the Ultima games. The Avatar trilogy (Ultimas IV, V, and VI) are essentially unplayable without having all the manuals and taking detailed notes[1]. Even doing that, they are quite hard. Nearly every single Final Fantasy game is easy to beat just by taking a bit of time to grind levels whenever you get stuck. There is a blogger who teaches a class on old games (I can…

I guess back in the day, PC RPGs like Ultima were more targeted toward high-IQ nerds, while JRPGs were targeted toward kids or more average adults. Nowadays RPGs are pretty much always as accessible as the JRPGs of old. Or more accessible, as even random encounters and turn-based combat are increasingly perceived as not streamlined enough. The question is whether the hand-holding approach makes certain types of games…

Many of the JRPGs that made it to the US were targeted for kids (or sometimes made easier when translated).

A major influence on RPGs in Japan was Wizardry, which was probably even more popular in Japan than in the US. Influences from it can be seen in many early JRPGs.

Dragon Quest was intentionally made simpler than Wizardry both to reach a wider audience and to be easily playable on the Famicom; it's probably the easiest of the first 3 DQ games still has some "hunt for the right square" puzzles.

Re: Ultima VII Revisited

#94

Post by khedoros1 »

ta12653421 wrote: post #27

Rise your hand if you remember how long you had to tinker around to get enough EMS to load the game plus sound card drivers loaded into memory when being in DOS! :-D

I remember getting "The Complete Ultima VII" on CD and never figuring out how to get it running. I think I've still got the box, but I think the disc has been missing for years. I bought it on GOG some time ago, though.

Re: Ultima VII Revisited

#95

Post by jerf »

jakebasile wrote: post #91
jerf wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone who played these back in the day and enjoyed them, I don't think I could even recommend them to myself today. Ultima VII is everything the other comments say it is... but it's also one staggeringly large nested fetch quest, with nothing much breaking it up. I'd recommend some combination of the Bethesda open world games and the JRPG genre today. They're not the same, nothing really quite fills the Ultima g…

I keep meaning to go and play the Underworld games, since I love the subgenre they pioneered (Immersive Sim). I'll get around to it... one day. It's like you say, not exactly the same, but for CRPGs it's hard to go wrong with Baldur's Gate 3. It's similar enough to later Ultima in some ways that it might scratch the itch.

Elsewhere in thread is mentioned an Underworld remake.

I do not have the same complaint about them as I do Ultima VII. A good remake could still be an interesting experience today, with little more than a graphical overhaul and modern controls. Both of them have a mixture of exploration, combat, and conversation that keeps them engaging over time.

Ultima VII's problem is that it's just... one big fetch quest. The combat is a non-entity (in the original game, I gather some of the remakes have tried to address this but they're starting way, way behind the eight ball), and there just isn't much else there.

Ultimas prior to VII don't have that problem because combat is functional, so the essentially multi-genre nature of an RPG where each subgenre keeps the other from becoming painfully tedious is there, but by modern standards, probably still fairly unplayable. Neat ideas, you can see how later games picked up the ball and ran with it in various directions, but very hard to play by modern standards. For instance, Ultima 4 combat has modern TRPG combat in it to some extent... except no even remotely modern TRPG game makes "moving one space" an entire action on par with "make one attack", and for good reason.

Re: Ultima VII Revisited

#96

Post by aidenn0 »

int_19h wrote: post #88
jdwithit wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The "ancillary" materials like manuals and maps were crucial for old games. Even simple ones. The other day I was going through some of the old SNES games in the Switch online catalog. I found F-Zero, a racing game I played the heck out of as a kid. I started telling my son some info about the different cars and drivers and he was like how the heck do you know that? At no point is that info presented in game. You jus…

They were crucial in more than one way! Quite a few games used manuals as a simple form of copy protection: you had to answer some question at start that required the manual to answer. Sometimes explicitly so, like asking for the first word on some page. Sometimes it was more creative. E.g. people who remember F-19 / F-117 flight sims might also remember how on startup you had to pass an "aircraft identification exam…

I can probably still answer most of the copy-protection questions from Wing Commander. e.g. Maniac is 23 years old.

Re: Ultima VII Revisited

#97

Post by hakfoo »

int_19h wrote: post #88
jdwithit wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The "ancillary" materials like manuals and maps were crucial for old games. Even simple ones. The other day I was going through some of the old SNES games in the Switch online catalog. I found F-Zero, a racing game I played the heck out of as a kid. I started telling my son some info about the different cars and drivers and he was like how the heck do you know that? At no point is that info presented in game. You jus…

They were crucial in more than one way! Quite a few games used manuals as a simple form of copy protection: you had to answer some question at start that required the manual to answer. Sometimes explicitly so, like asking for the first word on some page. Sometimes it was more creative. E.g. people who remember F-19 / F-117 flight sims might also remember how on startup you had to pass an "aircraft identification exam…

Sid Meier's Railroad Tycoon did that, and the thing about railway enthusiasts is that they go encyclopedic on that.

They could identify any of the locomotives and probably tell you every pixel of them that was wrong.

Re: Ultima VII Revisited

#98

Post by aksss »

mrinterweb wrote: post #80
block_dagger wrote: post #24

Neat, let me just find those old DOS U7 files…

Let me go find my collection of floppy disks, then I'll need a 32 pin connection adapter for the drive. I remember U7 was my favorite game for a long time. I received U7 Serpent Isle as a gift, but at least one of 15 of the 3.5" disks was corrupted, ordering a replacement disks cost $14 dollars per disk, and I wasn't sure how many disks might be corrupted. I gave up on the game. I should just buy it on GoG.

Serpent Isle was fantastic.

Re: Ultima VII Revisited

#99

Post by dark-star »

TheAmazingRace wrote: post #45
dark-star wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

the game didn't run with EMS. You needed XMS

Fun fact. Ultima 7 was one of the few commercial titles ever made that used "Unreal" mode. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unreal_mode It wasn't particularly popular as it couldn't play nice with protected mode environments.

Other than Ultima 7 I only know of Zone66 as another game that used Unreal mode. Early versions also didn't like v86 mode but later versions added support for DPMI or in some other way started to play nicely with EMM386
Post reply on HN