Ultima Malignant Manor's U5 Lazarus and U6 Project Adventures

[Shaewaroz]

Damn, I still have Lazarus installed but never have the time to play the damn thing.

 

[Malignant Manor]

The Tomb of Kings was short and boring. I didn't mention it earlier, but silver serpents are pitiful. Cyclops Cave, Ant Mound, and Pirate Cave have tons of enemies. It's easy to get lost in Ant Mound. Killing the queen didn't result in a karma loss. I got both lenses and assembled the balloon and flew it to the Shrine of Singularity.

Finding the control, passion, and diligence shrines felt tedious to me. You move too slow and the overworld is pretty boring, but I finally beat the Ultima 6 Project after 53 hours. I still need to get the evil ending and explore Heftimus' Cave, Hero's Hole, and Deceit. I still haven't found a magic boomerang.

You need to ask Naxatilor his name in order to have the vortex lens option from the lens maker even if were told to get it repaired and have it written in the journal. They didn't add a flag for being told to repair the lens and just checked that you asked Naxatilor his name. Of course, I forgot to pick it up off the ground and wasted more of my time. Also. click on the Codex again instead of trying to drop the lenses.

 

[Malignant Manor]

Heftimus' Cave nand Despise connect to Heroes' Hole level 2. Level 2 and the paths from Despise and Heftimus' Cave are boring, pretty linear, and not worth your time. Heroes' Hole level one is not much better for loot but some is close to the entrance. Deceit has something needed for the evil ending and don't expect treasure until the end. It is more interesting but the first floor has a bit too many long deadends. I also learned that enchantment staffs can be corroded and zombies seem to be immune to death wind unlike skeletons. The evil ending has an exclusive mini-dungeon with 2 rings of protection which were moot at this point especially since I lost 3 companions.

After 57 hours I am finally finished with both endings. After playing Lazarus and U6P I can see buying Dungeon Siege to play them despite the bugginess. I don't recommend playing them back to back because of the similarities and long dungeons. My save for Lazarus has 46 hours and 23 minutes so I have over a hundred hours between the two.

 

[Werdna's Revenge]

Not sure where you'd download it these days, but I remember a good little campaign mod called lands of hyperborea. At least it was a blast to play multiplayer 12 or so years ago, and the single player portion was good as well. The tripod page for it seems to still be up, but all the download links I can find seem to be dead. Honestly I don't remember a lot of details about it, just that it was original and I had a blast with it. I was also younger and dumber, but it was at least better than the vanilla campaigns from what I remember.

http://wench_of_woe.tripod.com/indexframes.htm

 

[Olivoist]

I finished both U5 Lazarus and U6 Project and my personnal verdict is : Lazarus has a waaaaayyyyyy more interesting plot and world than U6 Project, that seems very empty and non-reactive in comparaison.

Both have huge dungeons that are way too big to my taste and some very sad difficulty spikes.

Overall from a subjective point of view U5 Lazarus was a great re-discovery of the Ultima world for me with good story-lore/world-exploration/quests-NPCs, and U6 Project was not interesting enought considering the amount of time involved.

In U6 Project the discussions with NPCs are really thin and not very reactive or interesting ; starting with Lord British and his retarded collegues who share 20 sentences for all of them for the whole fucking game lol this is just utter crap. So very poor. In that regard U5 Lazarus does a fair job and is pretty cool.

 

[octavius]

I thought U6P was brilliant, so I'm looking forward to play Lazarus if it's that much better.

 

[ShaggyMoose]

Is there any documentation on what u6p_bugfix_mod.dsres linked by Infinitron does? The only trace I can find of it is in this thread... I assume its to address post v1.1 issues, by the dates, but not sure.

 

[YES!]

This is weird. I just was trying to play Ultima 5 and 6 since I never really gave either much of try, and I still can't. So I tried Ultima 7 again, and still think it is rpg-lite pre-console apocalypse console popamole precursor game. I know 6 (and I am pretty sure 5 had even less) had really bad rpg elements.

Does the DS remakes of these games improve on the rpg elements? Or is it still 3 stats, pray to level up and level up barely does anything, retarded questions by a gypsy to decide your weak class?

I know I ahd 4 on the NES, but I think I had 5 for the NES too as the little bit I played seemed very familiar and I know I never had 5 for the pc. Was that an NES game too?

I think its funny how as a really young child I still disliked popamole but lacked the ability to really define or figure out why. I think it started to become clear with LoL and all the rave reviews it got, but games like Thunderscape not even making a blip. I remember thinking "How to people love this? It seems like it was made for six year olds. There is just nothing to it."

My main question is - does the DS remakes of Ultima 5 and 6 add any sort of oomph to the rpg elements? Or is it just rpg-lite DS combat and rpg-lite DS stats? Or worse, the original rpg system from the Ultima games? If so, can I play them with the DS 2 engine with the DS2 chardev mechanics?

 

[Grumpy Grognard]

This is weird. I just was trying to play Ultima 5 and 6 since I never really gave either much of try, and I still can't. So I tried Ultima 7 again, and still think it is rpg-lite pre-console apocalypse console popamole precursor game. I know 6 (and I am pretty sure 5 had even less) had really bad rpg elements.

Does the DS remakes of these games improve on the rpg elements? Or is it still 3 stats, pray to level up and level up barely does anything, retarded questions by a gypsy to decide your weak class?

I know I ahd 4 on the NES, but I think I had 5 for the NES too as the little bit I played seemed very familiar and I know I never had 5 for the pc. Was that an NES game too?

I think its funny how as a really young child I still disliked popamole but lacked the ability to really define or figure out why. I think it started to become clear with LoL and all the rave reviews it got, but games like Thunderscape not even making a blip. I remember thinking "How to people love this? It seems like it was made for six year olds. There is just nothing to it."

My main question is - does the DS remakes of Ultima 5 and 6 add any sort of oomph to the rpg elements? Or is it just rpg-lite DS combat and rpg-lite DS stats? Or worse, the original rpg system from the Ultima games? If so, can I play them with the DS 2 engine with the DS2 chardev mechanics?

The combat is basically Ultima 5 combat system done as RTWP, with party formation control etc. There's also class-based skills you can train party members in. Won't run in the DS2 engine, AFAIK. Could be wrong though - try the forums: http://www.projectbritannia.com/forum/

 

[ShaggyMoose]

Is there any documentation on what u6p_bugfix_mod.dsres linked by Infinitron does? The only trace I can find of it is in this thread... I assume its to address post v1.1 issues, by the dates, but not sure.

Just about to give this a go and thought I would investigate this mod a little more. I found a reference to it as a "patch" from the guy who runs the Sylores Compendium site. He mentioned that its not actually on the site, which is why its a bit of a mystery. Guess I will use it and hope for the best.

 

[ShaggyMoose]

The technical improvements the team made over the Lazarus mod are quite impressive. The journal and map handling in particular is great and consumables are handled in a much more sensible fashion.

 

[ShaggyMoose]

Is there any documentation on what u6p_bugfix_mod.dsres linked by Infinitron does? The only trace I can find of it is in this thread... I assume its to address post v1.1 issues, by the dates, but not sure.

Just about to give this a go and thought I would investigate this mod a little more. I found a reference to it as a "patch" from the guy who runs the Sylores Compendium site. He mentioned that its not actually on the site, which is why its a bit of a mystery. Guess I will use it and hope for the best.

Sorry, can't seem to edit my previous posts to include this. Found a clear description of the patch in another thread in the same forum. Not sure how I missed this before...