Ultima VII: Part Two - Serpent Isle

The Good
The box looked good. It had an interesting manual with a bit of cryptography in it. Some very humorous explanations of weapons and armor ("Many experts consider the helmet a vital piece of armor").

The interface was OK. Basic paper-doll inventory, and point and click for just about everything else.

It had some OK background music.

The Bad
Pretty much everything - even the things I liked had negatives to them.

To start, the installation sucked. If you have a CD-ROM, you must put a CD in before the game will install. The game comes on diskettes and will abort the installation (with no error message) if it can't find info on every drive.

After struggling to get the game running with sound and having enough conventional memory for this hog, I finally got to start playing.

Even the paper-doll inventory had problems. You never knew where the pointer was if you picked something up, and it was easy to mis-place something. The story line was - for me - disconnected. I never had a clue as to what to do next; I had never played the previous games before (which probably didn't help). I gave it six months of trying and finally gave up.

I finally gave up and found a walkthrough. That was a mistake. I tried following the walkthrough (and actually progressed very well over the next 3 months). Then I found out that something I had (or had not) done back near the beginning was preventing me from moving forward - and there was NO WAY to get it now.

The Bottom Line
First, don't buy it. If you're given it (like I was), read the manual and throw the whole thing away. Re-format the disks and re-use them to store old copies of AOL on them - it'd be a better use of them.

In all, bad install, problem-matic interface, bad story line, no hints to next step, problems with vital equipment being required - but not being able to go get it.

I literally keep the entire box, walkthrough, map, manual, and diskettes around and try to tell people how bad this game is, then ask them if they'd like to try it themselves. I even offer my first-hand knowledge of what to do in the game. I haven't gotten any takers.

The Good
Serpent Isle is a large, well-plotted sequel that removes most of the infuriating bugs from Ultima VII: The Black Gate. The world of the isle is richly textured, with extensive dialogue and a series of quests to navigate. More so than The Black Gate, Serpent Isle is the natural culmination of the Ultima series style.

The Bad
For all the density and complex interaction, Serpent Isle is a far more linear game than its predecessor. Though the game world is larger, you are shown small chunks of it at a time, with specific quests to complete before any further progress is possible. In structuring the game this way, Origin have removed the most attractive element of The Black Gate - unlimited freedom. A large world seems a bit wasted if you're only going on a guided package tour of it: for most of Serpent Isle the player is kept firmly "on quest".

In terms of game mechanics, Serpent Isle trades annoying bugs for verbal diarrhoea. Yes, atmospheric dialogue is great, but some of the game characters appear to have three-act plays in their heads. And a fair amount of the game depends on trade of information, so there's no real way to skip it.

The Bottom Line
Those who like to be marched through a game may prefer Serpent Isle to its maligned predecessor, The Black Gate. The storyline is particularly strong, with classic elements of betrayal, murder, and redemption. For me, however, the game felt too much like a path with high walls; the opportunity to go sideways sometimes would have been appreciated.

The Good
What's with these guys?.. We're talking about an essential classic here. In terms of depth, richness, immersion potential, atmosphere and invention, its sole match may be Arcanum, released 8 and a half years later. Every single ambitious isometric RPG after 1993 had drawn upon Serpent Isle for inspiration and basics. With Ultima7/1, Origin had developed way too masterful an engine not to employ in another game; this is that game. More polished and accomplished than Ultima7/1, it is arguably still the best 2D RPG around.

The Bad
The early, amateurish voice-acting and nothing else. Period.

The Bottom Line
This is the original sacred source of all your fancy Baldur's Gates, Fallouts and Icewind Dales--which were generally put together with much less love and attention to detail (similarly to Origin's own Ultima 8, but that's another story).