Ah yes, soon! Both games will be MINE! MINE! MINE! WHEEE!! The former I won on Ebay and the latter I got through trade.
With the Ultima Collection, I was already informed about the patches, so all that’s in the way is the DOS stuff, but Exalt takes care of that too. I gather most people here think that Ultima 7 is the best?
As for the Wizardry Archives, do I need any patches for this one? Just making sure. Oh, and I already know that most of Wizardry is insanely difficult!
Good on you. I picked up both of them on CD retail a few years ago. I’ve got the Ultimate Wizardry manual within arm’s reach, actually, well-chewed by my dog. I don’t recall any patches necessary for the Wizardry archives, but it wouldn’t hurt to doublecheck with Sir-Tech’s website.
For the Ultima series, it’s really a tossup for me between 5, 6 and 7 for my favorite. I suppose if push came to shove, I’d concede that 7 had the best interface and story of those three. I guess I’m just a sucker for Blackthorn (the classic Blackthorn) and the Ultima6 / Worlds of Ultima engine.
I assume you’re going to play Wizardry I through III with the same party, right, and the same with the latter games?
I adore the Ultima 7 set. Be sure to nab Exult, which makes getting the game to run under Windows nearly painless and negates some interface annoyances to boot.
Speaking of, if you haven’t played Ultima 1 or 2 yet, just don’t be surprised whenYou go into space. A spaceship. Multiple spaceships. Blowing up other spaceships. Then landing and chopping up gelatinous cubes. And traveling through time. On a map of Earth. Oh god. Those parts DIDN’T HAPPEN.
Hey, that was the good part of the game. My personal favorite thing to do with U2 was to fill all the oceans in with pirate ships.
[sub]You see, you could board pirate ships who were attacking you and sail off with their ships. The pirate ship would clone off and follow you. If you parked your new ship, you could board the attacker again and repeat the process. Ad nauseum.[/sub]
You might have problems getting the later wizardry’s to run. I never did get 6 or 7 to run on anything newer than a p200…and I’m pretty experienced with this sort of thing. Hopefully somebody will eventually do something like Exult for Wizardry. That would be pretty darn cool…
Everyone knows Wizardry 8 is the best of all the Wizardry and Ultima games.
I assume that one is not included in the collection, which is a shame, becuase it is the culmination of everything Wizardry was building to. Unlike Ultima IX, which is on my personal list of worst games ever made.
No, Wizardry 8 isn’t included in the Archives. I’ll have to get that seperatly. I’m sure it’s worth it.
I’ve ALWAYS wanted to play the earlier Ultimas, which is one of the reasons why I got the Collection(the other being for having never played 5, 7 and 8).
One more question though, do I DL the patches and Exult before or after installation of the games? I’m guessing after, but I want to make sure.
Install the patches and Exult after installing the games. After that you can just copy the directories whenever you need to move them. Dos games aren’t picky that way, most of the time. Exult will want to know where the various Ultima directories are, but that’s pretty much it for installation.
I don’t have Ultima IX yet and don’t intend to get it until all the bugs have been fixed. Heh
Thank you, Slortar!
Ino:
“That is, unless you like jumping puzzles. A lot of jumping puzzles. A mind-deadening amount of jumping puzzles.”
Oh my…I can see why a lot of people hated it. I can’t make any judgments though as I haven’t played the game, but I DO tend to dislike a lot of puzzles! HEH! I get over it if the game is good enough though.
If you’re waiting for the bugs of U9 to be fixed, you’ll probably be waiting a long, long time. I recommend you play it for a while, and then just find a walkthrough to get to the end so you can say you witnessed the entire saga of the Avatar.
<aside>
Despite the disappointment that was U8, when I heard a tentative release date late '98 for U9 I was ecstatic. So ecstatic that I worked 80 hour weeks from May to August '98 to buy a (at the time) state of the art Pentium II 400MHz, solely so I wouldn’t have any hardware difficulties for U9. (Well, I also worked that much to pay for college, but since the money was rolling in, I thought I’d treat myself.)
Then the game was delayed, and a actual release date of late 1999 was announced. I scrimped and saved again, as my 8MB Diamond Permedia 2 video card wasn’t state of the art any more. I shelled out $300 for a GeForce DDR - not a GeForce 2, not a GeForce 256, but the very first GeForce model that was on the market. After all of my years of playing Ultima, this, this was what I was waiting for.
And it turned out to be absolute shit.
(I still use that original GeForce, by the way. 3.5 years and going strong.)
The jumps you had to make were awful in the first release of Ultima VIII. It was too much hand-eye coordination for an RPG; yet, it wasn’t done well enough for action game fans to like.
Fortunately, in a patch, it was changed so that all you had to do was double click where you wanted to jump to, and you would jump straight there with no error, which made the game playable. If I recall correctly, that’s already in the version on the Ultima archives CD (which we have and love).
And my favorite on there is a toss-up between U6, and U7 (both parts).
I don’t beleive that they are on the Ultima collection, but I found Worlds of Ultima:Savage Empire and Worlds of Ultima:Martian Dreams to both be enjoyable. They use the same game engine as Ultima 6, in vastly different settings.
Come to think of it, I never bought or played Wizardry 4 or 5. I’ll have to look for the Wizardry Archives…
Also not in the Ultima Collection are the two Ultima Underworld games. They are also available on a CD, though you’ll probably have to hit Ebay to get it.
Savage Empire and Martian Dreams are no longer available commercially, but you can get them at the Underdogs Home Page. I know abandonware is quasi-illegal, but as I understand it the Underdog folks pull any game upon request of the copyright holder, so at the very least no one’s complaining about the games being made available there. Mods can kill that link if they feel it appropriate.
Of course, if you try it, you’ll have the joy of trying to get an old DOS game to run under a modern OS.
Finally, there’s a fan remake of Akalabeth. I have no idea if it’s any good, but might be worth checking out.
WHEEE!! The former I won on Ebay and the latter I got through trade.