In this review, we track down Lord British in the NES game Ultima: Warriors of Destiny. We find out how well this RPG game plays.
This game was released in 1993 and is the fifth game of this main series.
We have a fair bit of experience with this series at this point. First is Ultima I – The First Age of Darkness. Unfortunately, the game flopped for us. So, we moved on to Ultima II – The Revenge of the Enchantress. That game ended up being worse than the first game. Then, we tried the third game in the main series, Ultima: Exodus. We ended up with another flop on our hands. After that, we tried the fourth game in the series, Ultima: Quest of the Avatar. That wound up being a passable game, but nothing special.
After that, we tried Ultima Underworld: The Stygian Abyss. That wound up being one of the only games in the series that earned an impressive score. After that, we tried Ultima Underworld II – Labyrinth of Worlds. That game ended up being less impressive and even ended up being barely passable.
So, we thought we’d continue on with this series to see if anything improves in it.
The story goes that Lord British has disappeared. Replacing him is another king, but as time has gone on, he has been acting more and more corrupt. So, it is up to you as the Avatar to locate Lord British.
You start off the game by answering a series of questions. This simply tests to see where your moralities lie in the various virtues. Eventually, you get to have those virtues ranked and this determines your class (so far as we can tell). After that, you get placed inside a house along with two companions. The computer controls your companions, but you get to control yourself. “B” allows you to interact with the target icon. “A” allows you to use whatever is in your hands (be default, a weapon and possibly a shield). After exiting the house, you can go in any direction you want.
Daylight becomes a much more prominent aspect of this game. Previously, you got the time of day based on the sun and moon icons. In this game, brightness turns down and sight distance decreases as night continues on.
There are a number of enemies you can encounter in this game. Some have ranged attacks while others are much more direct in their attacks. Defeating them means you gain experience points. Also, you can get gold for your efforts. Unlike previous games, in this game, all you need to do is collect enough experience points to level up. No need to go running to Lord British for level ups anymore.
If you die, then Lord British resurrects you. After the death, you start at the castle of Lord British.
In the pause menu, you can equip and remove items. Additionally, you can consume items as well.
Two major features have been dropped over overhauled in this game. The first major feature is the world map which has been overhauled. Instead of simply running from town to town, town maps are simply part of the overworld map. The other feature, battle screens, have been dropped completely. Instead, you simply fight on the world map.
For me, this is probably one of the most painful games I’ve played in a long while now. The first biggest problem is also the most immediate: the unresponsive controls. If you press a button, it may or may not take. Sometimes, the control is registered, but so significantly delayed, you think it didn’t register and hit it again. The result is that the control takes twice which results in unintended consequences. Whether it’s movement or actions, the controls are simply non-functional for the most part.
One way you can mitigate some of this is to simply hold down the button. This is especially true for movements. This can help make movement go faster, but you can only compensate for some of the lack of control, not all of it.
The second big problem is the lack of any idea of where to go. Once you leave the house or your castle, you simply have no clues as to where you need to go. So, you basically pick a direction and head in it until you get killed. That’s it. You can interact with people in towns, but they are either shops or yield no useful information.
Because of the sloppy control system, fighting enemies is borderline painful. If any of your characters take damage, then the game freezes for a moment to register the damage. This can be a painful process as you are constantly mashing the attack button so you can at least defend yourself. Since this game dropped the turn based system in favour or an action oriented system, this makes battles much more unnecessarily difficult as you wrestle with the controls to at least not do too poorly in battle.
As a result of the many glaring flaws, I found the game pretty much unplayable for the most part. The bad controls were bad enough, but a lack of any clue as to what you even need to do wound up making the game even worse. While the new daylight system offers an interesting new concept, the game is otherwise a painful one to play. As such, this is already something to avoid.
As for graphics, this game does upgrade the overall look from the previous game. Unfortunately, this series winds up falling far behind other games already out there. Just try comparing this to other games released at the time: Ultima Underworld II – Labyrinth of Worlds, Kirby’s Adventure, Lufia & the Fortress of Doom, Doom, Battle Cars, and even Secret of Mana. Yes, this game was released on a year when 2D graphics were giving way to basic 3D worlds, yet this game can barely even handle 2D top down perspective graphics. While the day and night system does add some credibility, it’s just plain bad all around.
Music is also very painful. Once you start playing the game itself, all you are treated to is a short song on permanent loop. To make matters worse, there are no sound effects to speak of. Ultimately, this game flops hard on this front.
Overall, this is, simply put, a bad game all around. The controls are unresponsive, there’s absolutely no direction to this game, and the battle system is heavily flawed. On top of that, the graphics are very poor and the audio is almost non-existent. So, overall, I’d say avoid this one as much as humanly possible.
Overall
Furthest point in game: Got up to level 2 for the Avatar, then just stopped playing altogether.
General gameplay: 9/25
Replay value: 1/10
Graphics: 2/10
Audio: 1/5
Overall rating: 26%
Drew Wilson on Twitter: @icecube85 and Facebook.
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