A Word on Ultima VI

                    From Piotr Tyminski

I do agree with Ian Taylor (Letters section, issue 22) that
"Ultima VI" is just unplayable on the ST. What is strange though,
is that Ian says the game doesn't run with two disk drives - it
used to run on my system (520 ST 1 Meg of RAM, Rainbow TOS, 3,5''
+ 5,25'' disk drives) without crashing although disk accessing was
simply killing any possible enjoyment.  I understand Ian doesn't
have a hard drive but it really doesn't help much with "Ultima
VI".  I installed it on my hard drive but the only improvement was
in terms of speed of accessing the disk since as Ian says
"...every time you look at an object or move too far or look at a
character it seems to require a different disk."  Unfortunately,
the whole game just runs like a snail and it seems to take ages to
travel from one place to the other.  Things get even worse when
you have a bigger party.  Each new member slows down the movement
in a merciless way.

I haven't played ULTIMA series on anything except the 8-bit ATARI
and ST and having in mind Sue's positive opinion about PC versions
(see "Red Herring") I dare to think the only system good enough to
let you enjoy the game is some 386SX 33MHz beast.

Controls are sluggish, too.  Characters tend to bump into each
other and it gets pretty tricky to control a full party,
especially among buildings and other obstacles.  My team was not
especially dumb I guess (or was it?) but guys always seemed to get
lost on the way, e.g.  one or two of them usually got stuck
somewhere among boulders, trees, buildings, etc., so I always had
to get back to pick them up.

They were not perfect in fighting, either.  No matter what kind
of position I tried to assign them the only character effectively
involved (and actually taking most of the blows) was myself, the
rest was just a perfect Czech army, i.e. seemed to do their best
to keep away from the trouble.

I can still live with all the technical bugs and restrictions,
provided the game makes me forget about sleeping, eating, etc.
Unfortunately, "Ultima VI" made me sleep, eat; basically doing
anything in order to keep myself at a safe distance from it.  It
comes nicely packed with a fine map and usual gadgets but what
they say at the back of the box is simply a total rip-off. I have
never seen those promised "hundreds of characters"; actually it's
so miserable with them all!  There are like twenty inhabitants in
the biggest cities (including dumb guards with whom you can not
even interact in a nice way, unless you cut their throats just for
fun) and similar number of buildings to explore (stay tuned to see
my articles on Reline's "Fate/Gates of Dawn" for comparison).  OK,
so maybe "Ultima" has better graphics and at least one can touch
and move every matchbox found in a house but I don't play
graphics, I prefer to play GAMES instead (the same can be said
about "Lure of the Temptress).

The fairy tales about the immensity of "Ultima" are simply not
true, either.  The whole land is just of average RPG size, if not
small.  You can, though, have an impression that you are exploring
vast pieces of land but this is a totally false one and you may
just get it because it takes ages to travel anywhere.  The snaily
speed at which this game runs requires lots of time to explore
anything, so it's just time-consuming, but not huge at all.

Believe it or not, I prefer the old "Ultima III" for my ancient
8-bit ATARI so it's more probable I'll get back to this instead of
playing "Ultima VI" on the ST. I'm thinking now about buying a
PC, too, and I do hope "Ultima VII" or "Underworld" are really
made for these machines.  Because if not, why the hell they are
made at all?

@~My 386SX copes fine with Ultima VII and both Underworld games
@~but I think fairly soon the minimum needed will be a 486,
@~dammit.