ULTIMA IV IS FUCKING UNPLAYABLE!!!

[mondblut]

Ultima 4 is all about spamming beggars with coins and skipping turns so the wounded enemies may escape alive. If you think grinding xp or skills is retarded, think about grinding "virtues" that do nothing other than being prerequisites to complete the game.

If anything, it would be a major consoletard hit if given a modern treatment:

Press "Start" to, duh, start.

Please do this meaningless action to raise humility.
Please repeat 99999 times.

Please do this meaningless action to raise spirituality.
Please repeat 99999 times.

(999999999999 meaningless repetetive actions later) 

Congratulations, you are the Avatar now, please proceed to the ending sequence.

...oh, and:

 

[Zeus]

So they are playing an incomplete pirated game and they find it unplayable? How surprising.

Ultima IV, pirated? Origin granted permission to a few websites to distribute Ultima IV for free.

http://www.thatfleminggent.com/ultima/u4download.html

I believe that still stands, not like the whole temporary BaK freeware promotion thing.

 

[Carlos' Bitch1]

I finished a pirated copy of Ultima IV on the C64. I managed to scrounge a few spells from a friends 'Big book of hints for 500 games!' thing. Apart from that, no book, no map, no nothing.

I was quite young at the time.

I tried every key, wrote down the command. I made my own map, which strangely added to the game. A great feeling of being an explorer.

I trial-and-errored spells using my small existing knowledge of spells and which reagents they used.

Conclusion: These people (and, it seems, many people on here) are hopeless. No wonder the current crop of games is right up their alley. Still, they are getting the last laugh, aren't they?



The Earth...belonged...to the Popamole...

 

[Elzair]

So now Ultima IV is a C&C-based game for storyfags?


If you're going to blame the Ultima series for anything, blame it for Bethesda's hiking simulators.

This.

 

[Topher]

Someone needs to remake Day of the Triffids into day of the popamole... I think it would convert quite nicely.

 

[Silellak]

 

[A user named cat]

We need a new Ultima with a cover system and regenerating health.

 

[Clockwork Knight]

We need a new Ultima with a cover system and regenerating health.

looks next gen enough to me

Ultima 4 is all about spamming beggars with coins

 

[deuxhero]

Sure, since it'll probably encourage me to play the game.

I'll try. Going to sleep now.

 

[Mastermind]

I'm a dumbfuck who finds tedium entertaining.

 

[Jaesun]

We need a new Ultima with a cover system and regenerating health.

Ultima VII already has regenerating Health and Mana. The Popamole of it's day bitches.

 

[Saxon1974]

I want to see these fine young things play the realms of arkania series.


Can you imagine a Khad style lp of Blade of Destiny or Star Trail (even worse)..

Oh the delicious tears of rage...
buying food and water...
The dead ends...
The labyrinthine cities...
The enormous fetch quest...
The diseases...
The shoes wearing out...
The spells with cryptic names...
The insta-deaths if you do stupid things...
The magical weapons that look exactly the same as non-magical ones...

yesssssss

Now this I would like to see This game even frustrated me with all the attention to detail.

 

[ironyuri]

...

Great post ironyuri and, in my opinion, quite accurate.

of the Greeks.

 

[waywardOne]

i stole this game from a bookstore (for my Apple IIc, lulz) when it came out -- sans manual, map, coin, and quick reference sheet.

kids today...

 

[Ruprekt]

I never got into Ultima IV. Probably I was spoiled by playing V first and the previous title seemed like a major step backwards in every way (especially dialogue).

 

[Fowyr]

And yes, part of the reason is that I think modern gamers have an expectation that anything that's in the game should be on the screen. The idea of reading something outside of the game is odd - but the idea that you have to *write* something outside of the game is almost completely foreign. Okay, note-taking I can understand a bit, but graph paper for dungeons? Seriously?

 

[made]

Uh, I remember reading the same article years ago. Teacher shows kids Ultima, kids go wtf. Is this just a repost or the same guy continuing his experiment?

 

[Destroid]

Is it appreciably harder to play than Ultima 6? I played the shit out of that nugget when I was a little kid, but I don't think I ever got near the finish.

EDIT: I have to say, bad UI is actually the thing that makes it hardest to go back and play old games that you never did. UI is something that has inclined for the most part since the 80s and 90s.

 

[latexmonkeys]

the short version: kids nowadays are dumb and cannot into the classics without quest compass and PS3 pad.

I'd like to say it's more a lack of patience than outright stupidity. What with modern games spoon feeding everything to impressionable young minds and all that...
They do sound pretty moronic though.

I mean, I understand jumping right into the game, but once realizing that even mechanics as simple as the control scheme for movement are baffling you'd think reading the manual would be the next logical step. Instead these kids choose to wring their hands and give up. I think that's just sad and more than a little pathetic. I would hope that they not give up as easily in all of life's endeavors.

It's a sign of wisdom, today time is too valuable for wasting it for such a bad game.

Yeah, perhaps their time would be better spent reading a book without pictures, but I doubt that's gonna happen anytime soon.

 

[coldcrow]

@ SCO

You forgot the word-puzzles. I can imagine it vividly, especially in RoA3:

Wizard summons huge elemental and orders it to kill your party, text prompt appears. "what am I supposed to enter now?" "kill him" , "ADASDF", "fuck you" ........ ARGH this puzzle sucks

 

[Ruprekt]

How does the xbox generation deal with the memory/deductive and tower of hanoi puzzles in Bioware games?

 

[Elzair]

How does the xbox generation deal with the memory/deductive and tower of hanoi puzzles in Bioware games?

GameFAQs

 

[Elzair]

EDIT: Alright, alright, it was a stupid question. It looks like everybody has always been too thick for these games.

 

[Jaesun]

Basic summary: Professor teaches class on classic video games. Makes students play old games. Goes all right until they try Ultima IV. They find it to be opaque, dull, and completely unplayable.

Well, YEAH.

Look, nobody worships at the altar of Lord British more than me, and you can't put into words what a breakthrough Ultima IV was at the time. It set me on the path to writing games for a living. I played it again and again. It literally Changed My Life.

But it isn't playable now. The controls make no sense. The dialogue is bland. All of the little UI tricks that make RPGs accessible (tooltips, in-game maps, pathfinding) were not yet invented. And, and this is really important, everything that Ultima IV introduced everyone has done far better. Ultima IV had an epic quest and morality woven into the game, which was amazing at the time. But everyone does those things way better now.

What a retard. You lose 100,000 points in respect for Jeff.

http://jeff-vogel.blogspot.com/2010/09/ ... y-are.html

 

[Mastermind]

Basic summary: Professor teaches class on classic video games. Makes students play old games. Goes all right until they try Ultima IV. They find it to be opaque, dull, and completely unplayable.

Well, YEAH.

Look, nobody worships at the altar of Lord British more than me, and you can't put into words what a breakthrough Ultima IV was at the time. It set me on the path to writing games for a living. I played it again and again. It literally Changed My Life.

But it isn't playable now. The controls make no sense. The dialogue is bland. All of the little UI tricks that make RPGs accessible (tooltips, in-game maps, pathfinding) were not yet invented. And, and this is really important, everything that Ultima IV introduced everyone has done far better. Ultima IV had an epic quest and morality woven into the game, which was amazing at the time. But everyone does those things way better now.

What a retard. You lose 100,000 points in respect for Jeff.

http://jeff-vogel.blogspot.com/2010/09/ ... y-are.html

Oh noes, he loses "respect points" with some nobody on the internet.

I bet you're sexually attracted to other men too.