Ultima II. I've had an itch to replay the Ultima series, with a purist impulse to do the original "home" versions (which basically means the Apple II for the first five), but the one game that was really holding me up was this one. I strongly considered just skipping it, but I figured I'd go ahead and just get it out of the way relatively quickly. I think it's an impressive upgrade over the first game in terms of graphics and a much bigger world to explore. However, there's not much of interest going on in that world.
You can talk to everyone, but the vast majority have nothing interesting to say. The fighters all say "Ugh, me tough!", the clerics say "Believe!", and the thieves all say "Psst, wanna buy a watch?" There are dungeons and towers to explore, but you don't actually need to ever explore them. There's a whole solar system to explore, but the planets aren't really good for anything beyond sight-seeing (I wonder if the Computer Camp is laid out like the one Richard Garriott went to?). Only one of them is necessary to win the game. You can see how the game iterates on the design of the first game (and Akalabeth, if we count it), but that sort of design isn't sufficient to sustain a game of this size. I don't really mind replaying Ultima I because as repetitive as it is, the game is at least pretty short. This game is just...drudgery.
The only thing that really matters is grinding for gold for literally everything. The grindiest JRPGs ever made ain't got shit on this game for grinding. You need gold to buy food so you don't drop dead of starvation, but you also need gold to buy hit points from Lord British. You need gold to buy stat increases and plot important items. The game really could have used some kind of get rich quick mechanic like gambling to get around the grinding limitations.
You get experience points and levels, but they don't mean anything. The game also requires grinding to loot important items from monsters so you can explore. You need to kill thieves until you get a blue tassle, which allows you to commandeer pirate ships, but pirate ships spawn very rarely, so you wander around hoping a ship will appear (helps to kill sea serpents if they spawn, but they're not common either).
Once you get a ship, the game opens up a lot because you don't consume food as long as the ship is in motion, so grinding gets a lot faster, but a big part of this game's design is based around Garriott's love of Time Bandits, which means you have to enter time gates to visit other eras...and you need pirate ships to explore these places, too, so more grinding is needed for boats in each era. The time travel is a neat idea, but learning which gate goes where (and when) is a pain, especially when you just want to see one guy for something like buying stats. Everything feels far away. Eventually, when you're strong enough (really strong!), you need to start picking fights with town guards because they're the only source of keys in the game, and you need the keys to get the most important hints (unless you've already played before and know the main points) and unlock the doors to get access to airplanes and the space ships. Eventually you get all the stuff you need to confront Minax the end boss, and even then the fight requires you to go all the way across a big castle, hit her once, and then travel to the opposite end to hit her again, back and forth, while dodging an invincible balron stalking you, so even that's a chore. I think she took five hits before going down, and now I can say I'm done and will likely never play this game again. Onward to better things!
