Summary
Ultima meets Final Fantasy!
The Good
"Serpent Isle" once won the title of "The Most Similar Game Ever". Similar to what? Obviously, to
Black Gate - the first part of the complete Ultima VII. "Serpent Isle" uses the same engine as the first part, looks almost identical to it, and has the same combat mechanics, stat-improvement system, and party management. Surprise - in its core, "Serpent Isle" is a totally different game, that almost belongs to a different genre. "Black Gate" still continued the tradition of open-ended Ultima games. "Serpent Isle" is decidedly inclined towards console-style role-playing.
The most noticeable change is the abundance of scripted events. Earlier Ultimas had very few of those. You had an intro and an ending, but the rest of the game was dedicated to your exploration (which was nearly unrestricted), and only very few things did really
happen. It is true that the initial impact of those great stories and the fascinating gameplay were enough to sustain the interest of the player, but there has been always very little "inside" story in those games. "Serpent Isle" is the first one that is built in a different manner. You really
play a story in this game, in the sense of console RPGs - things happen because they are supposed to happen, you just have to trigger the appropriate events. There are many cut scenes in the game, unlike earlier Ultimas, that hardly had any. There are much more obligatory dialogues and events that make the plot progress regardless of your actions: you are often being teleported, thrown into prison, your inventory is taken away from you, etc. As a result, the game has a much more distinct feel of a good novel than all earlier Ultimas. "Serpent Isle" is, so to say, is an Ultima with a
Final Fantasy flavor.
Another great "Final Fantasy-like" addition is the importance of your party members. In all earlier Ultimas they were there just to decorate the game. In "Ultima IV" you had to find seven companions in order to finish the game, but none of them influenced (or even enhanced) the plot individually. In "Ultima V" they were little more than speechless fighters once they joined your party. In "Ultima IV" and in the first part of "Ultima VII" they became more talkative, and started having distinct personality traits, but were still equally unimportant. However, in "Serpent Isle" they became an integral part of the plot - they commit deeds of their own, participate in the story, and behave like people with their own wills rather than item-carrying, fighting machines.
The story itself also heavily tends towards "Japanese" style. Ancient prophecies, mysterious ancient civilization, bits of "save the world, get the girl" in the plot (the latter part doesn't really work out, but I strongly suspect it was included in the initial plan - Cantra should have played a much more important role in the game according to early screenshots), "personal talk", slightly cartoony, diabolically ironic villains (think of the Banes taunting you in White Dragon Castle), an overall epic feeling, and most importantly, the two pillars of Japanese story-telling: mind-controlling and sacrifice. Good guys are being controlled by an evil force and turn into bad guys; and one of your friends sacrifices himself near the end of the game. All this is a whole new dimension for the somewhat dry, impersonal Western story-telling style - "Serpent Isle" makes a very important step towards merging PC- and console-style RPG genres.
Being so tightly scripted, "Serpent Isle" is naturally much more linear than all the previous Ultimas. Often you can't access a new location until you have completed certain tasks in the old one. Particularly the first part of the game is of a very straightforward nature: Monitor/Fawn - Moonshade - Erstam and Monk Isle - Furnace - back to mainland; there is no other way and no other order to complete this part. The result is a much better focus on the story and a more novel-like feeling - things happen all the time, and new locations gradually become available during the entire game to keep you interested.
So, with all those peculiar traits, is this still a true Ultima game? It certainly is - partly thanks to its content. The foundation stone of all Ultima games has always been their great attention to ethics. "Serpent Isle" is no exception. Since "Ultima IV", this is the first Ultima that is not set in Britannia, but in New Sosaria - a world that was built by those who opposed the rule of Lord British. The inhabitants of Serpent Isle have a totally different ethical system, based on different principles - virtues of Chaos and Order, that have to be united to create Balance.
Certain aspects of Ultima were nearly brought to utmost perfection in "Serpent Isle" - most importantly characterization and dialogue. The personalities of the game's characters are more detailed than ever, the dialogues more complex and finely written. There are many more important characters here than in any Ultima game before - plenty of characters are involved in the story and are much more active than the somewhat indifferent inhabitants of Britannia in earlier Ultimas. The addition of large, realistically looking character portraits (the only graphical change in the game, along with the cool equipment screen - equipped items are visible on the character) was a great decision - it is nice to talk to people with such expressive faces, and it adds a lot to their personalities.
The game is
long. Although it is much simpler to follow and to play than earlier Ultimas, it will still take quite some time to complete - not wandering around aimlessly, searching for clues, like in earlier Ultimas, but actually experiencing things and making the story progress. The quests are large, wonderfully detailed (take Monitor as an example, with its political conspiracy involving plenty of characters and their personal views of each other), there are huge dungeons and some very colorful and unique locations to explore, like the Lost City with its unbearable heat and gargoyles, or the ice-covered northern regions.
Like in the first part, there were many humorous dialogues and situations in "Serpent Isle". One of my favorites was the dialogue choice you have after Filbercio catches you fooling in his mistress Frigidazzi's bedroom and asks you whether you did something with her or not: 1) I'm guilty 2) I'm innocent 3) I'm leaving... By the way, "Serpent Isle" is
sexy. Decidedly the sexiest Ultima game out there, "Serpent Isle" offers quite a lot of action. The aforementioned scene with Frigidazzi is quite convincing - if you decide to go along with her, you see both her and the Avatar undressing and going to bed... this damn Filbercio shows up just when its starting to get
really interesting!...
For those who can't get along with the open-endness and the high difficulty level of earlier Ultimas, "Serpent Isle" can serve as the best introduction of the series. It is much more user-friendly and generally much easier than all previous Ultimas, both exploring- and combat-wise.
Those are the "new" good things in "Serpent Isle", but together with them, it also contains plenty of traditional Ultima goodness we know and love. Like the first part, it is set in a fully interactive, breathing, believable world - spin threads to make clothes, catch fish, hunt deers, and take and move around everything you like...
The Bad
This is the first Ultima game that doesn't suffer from excessive lack of concentration, and also the least frustrating one, but it has its own share of flaws.
There are even more plot items in "Serpent Isle" than in "Black Gate" - chances are you'll carry around lots of weird things without the slightest idea of how and where to use them. Since your inventory is limited, and you can drop things, there is always the risk of dropping a seemingly unimportant item and then being unable to retrace it back when you suddenly discovered it was needed to make the game progress at a much later stage. Many items are also very small and easy to overlook, like the serpent teeth you need to teleport around.
Worse than just dropping an item (you can always find it later, although with much effort) is the possibility to get irrevocably stuck - sadly, "Serpent Isle" does contain a couple of "dead ends". You should be very careful, have a lot of available save states, and try keeping all the irregular items you find.
There is a truly
embarrassing amount of locked doors and various keys in "Serpent Isle". If you don't drop the keys you have used (a few of them have several functions, but as a general rule, a key is valid only for doors in the location where you found it, so it is relatively save to discard them after usage), you can easily end up with a whole bag
stuffed with keys of all colors. The "find a key to unlock the door" puzzle is terribly overused in "Serpent Isle" - you'll spend a lot of time just hunting for keys in dungeons. There are only a few locks you can pick, which makes lockpicks nearly useless.
I should mention the party AI, which was dangerously close to zero. My companions used every opportunity they had to unequip the best weapons I was giving them and to equip some junk instead. I was careless enough to give a glass sword (basically an instant kill item of one charge) to Shamino, who equipped it without me noticing it, and used it to kill a rat. Boydon jumped write into fire with 3 hit points in the midst of a hard battle. Iolo killed me once by repeatedly hitting me with fireballs while I was fighting a slime.
The linear nature of the game does have its downsides. There are next to no true side quests in the game - everything is plot-related in this or another way. Some of the obligatory quests are pointless and serve only as triggers to make the story progress. You can access certain locations and solve some puzzles by trial and error method, but you'll be still unable to proceed if you didn't complete an "official" triggering part before. For example, a door in Shamino's castle is protected by an energy field, that disappears after you find the Hound of Doskar and summon him to trace Cantra. There is no true connection between the disappearance of the energy field and the summoning of the dog - you have to summon it only because you are supposed to.
"Serpent Isle" still has some Western "dryness" left in it that is quite disturbing when combined with the emotional Japanese style of the game's story. For example, your companions just return to their standard dialogues once they are purged of the banes that have been possessing them, as if nothing has ever happened.
The ending of "Serpent Isle" is a disappointment - partly because of the Guardian's voice, that suddenly became so ordinary and boring. Hey, it wasn't like this in the first part!
The Bottom Line
"Serpent Isle" is an unusual Ultima - it is not set in Britannia, but most importantly, it is much more "adventurous" and resembles a console-style RPG much more than all other Ultimas. Despite its flaws, it is a fantastic example of style-merging, that greatly influenced the revival of Western RPGs during the late nineties - in particular tightly scripted, story-driven games like
Planescape: Torment - and encouraged further genre-mixing experiments. A large, rich, creative, wonderfully detailed, and very involving game, "Serpent Isle" is yet another great Ultima game.
This Guardian is surely a pain in the neck, isn't he?...
