| ULTIMA (III): EXODUS |
  Ultima is a game series developed for personal computers by Richard Garriot, and published first by Sierra On-Line (yep, THAT Sierra), and later his own publisher known as Origin Systems (which was bought out by E.A. Games in the late 1990's). Ultima: Exodus is the third installment in the titular Ultima series, and is the first Ultima to get a console port, in this case, for the NES/Famicom. It was released in Japan as Ultima: Kyofu No Exodus, and in America as Ultima: Exodus.
IN Ultima III, Exodus, the "lovechild" of Minax and Mondain from the previous 2 games (which don't have NES ports) is wreaking havoc over the land of Sosaria from his punch-card computer lab on the Isle of Fire. It is your job to kill Exodus before he kills Sosaria. Ultima III was the last game in the "Age of Darkness" triology (which includes Ultima I-III). This particular port was published by FCI with development done by Neutopia Planning. As such, it's drastically different from the PC version, though it and the PC version are pretty much the same. It's more colorful, and has a Dragon Quest quality to it. IT also features an awesome soundtrack composed by Tsugutoshi Goto unique to this particular release, in a Koishi Sugyama type moment, also saw it's own release on CD in Japan around that time . Which included VOCALS on these songs. Ultima: Exodus was one of those games like Dragon Warrior that the USA Public did not really pick up on very well and thusly suffered the same fate as being that "rando purple cartridge" someone has in their collection but most likely knows very little about. Whereas the PC port is deemed a classic, if far more outdated than this release is.Adventures in Nintendo Babysitting - My Expedriences I was first introduced to Ultima through this game, and it was not a very good introduction. I was about 8, impatient, not into RPGs, and thusly, not really mature enough of mind and spirit for this game. My sister's collegate friends brought it for me to keep me out of their hair while they watched Mad Max on TV in the livingroom. I later got the game from Kay Bee for my birthday. Please note, I did not hate it, but I found it very hard to get into, and it likely was yet another reason I did not appreciate the JRPG genre much until after age 14. I returned to this in the 2000's, transcribing it's whole soundtrack to guitar in hopes for a Project 2A03 release of the entire soundtrack done as a metal album. I have been making some attempts at this more recently in BandLab. Honestly, I really liked the soundtrack, expecially that creepy tune from Ambrosia. The thing is, I kind of left it behind for Dragon Warrior IV in 2022 because I wanted that game a lot more than I wanted this, but I still liked it. But then I bought it back - for around the same I sold it for, because I wanted to give it yet another chance. See, I like Ultima, quite a lot, It's just compared to Dragon Quest, which has some linearity on thec onsole versions - something I look for in console RPGs - if I want complex I go for the PC usually, but I felt like maybe giving this one a chance, maybe even read some online FAQ's and see how the Richard Garriott Western RPG on Nintendo compares to the Yuji Horii layman friendly method, or Sakaguci (SP?) method that's a little more open ended. So I dug in recently after picking this one back up again and realized that the design language and philosophy is elegant, just very different. It turns out, the EARLY Western RPGs, including this one (Ultima IV is where the series made the shift), are not THAT different. It's just the focus is less on stats buffs, weapons, and armor, and more on fulfilling exploratory quests without a clear goal in mind, more like a real life quest would be, and that's what throws people off on Ultima: Exodus - because it's on a Nintendo, the player assumes it's another Dragon Warrior/Final Fantasy Scenario, when in reality, it's more like Dungeons & Dragons or going to explore a giant cave. So I've been getting back into this game and exploring it more, I may even do another series of YouTube Videos on it, though I'll be more leisurely about them as I'm getting kind of tired of pushing myself to rotely carry out various tasks.VIDEOS My Writings & Other Sites My GameFAQs Review of this Game |
