Ultima II: The Revenge of the Enchantress...

aka: Ultima 2, Ultima II: Revenge of Enchantress
Moby ID: 880
Apple II Specs

Description official descriptions

The sequel to Ultima featured several improvements over the original, such as larger town maps, and the concept of traveling through time gates into different eras on Earth. Other than that the gameplay is pretty much the same as in Ultima I, with your single character roaming the land fighting monsters and looking for key items.

In the original Ultima a hero from a certain third rate blue planet orbiting an insignificant yellow sun came to the world of Sosaria and slew the evil wizard Mondain before he could fulfill his dreams of universal domination. Thus peace was brought to Sosaria, and the hero hailed as a champion of the people of all time.

Unfortunately, Mondain happened to have a young apprentice/lover named Minax who is understandably upset over his death. Using her considerable powers, Minax travels through time and space to the hero's homeworld of Earth and instigates a nuclear war, thus serving the dual purpose of working out her frustration as well as erasing the hero from history. Of course, as the hero, this works out rather badly for you, and so with the help of Lord British you must travel through time and somehow find Minax and prevent the events which culminate in the destruction of Earth.

Spellings

  • ウルティマ2 女魔法使いの復讐 - Japanese spelling

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Screenshots

Promos

Credits (Apple II version)

13 People (12 developers, 1 thanks)

Reviews

Critics

Average score: 74% (based on 5 ratings)

Players

Average score: 3.8 out of 5 (based on 111 ratings with 7 reviews)

Has trouble keeping the player motivated

The Good
After Ultima became a big success for Richard Garriott, the logical thing to try was creating a sequel in which everything was bigger, better, and cooler. Ultima II achieved that. The improvements are many, and not just minor ones, too.

The game world is a couple of times the size of the original Ultima. You don't only travel through different kingdoms anymore, you also travel through time. Not only do you once more venture into outer space, but now you can even land on other planets of our solar system, and explore them. Towns are now themselves multi-screen environments, each with a unique structure. And there many other peaceful inhabitants wandering around, although they don't have much to say yet. Along with dungeons, there are also towers, and both of them have over a dozen uniquely designed levels each, with improved monster graphics.

The list goes on. The scope of the game is absolutely amazing, even more so when comparing it to that of other titles of the time.

The Bad
The game's biggest problem is ultimately (pun intended) that it forgets about the players. While providing a great world to toy around in, it fails at giving players a lasting incentive to do so. This is not the fault of the story, which is basically a clone of the first Ultima - getting strong enough to battle an evil wizard. The whole journey to get there is just not gripping enough.

For a large part, this is due to obvious balancing issues. In the beginning, players have a hard time keeping their injuries and travels at a minimum, in order to not run out of food or hit points early on. A while later, difficulty gives way to dullness. The remaining part of the game now mostly consists of cruising around in a battleship and firing at enemies, over and over again. That in itself wouldn't have to be completely bad, Diablo for example was just as repetitive. What made Diablo entertaining, however, was that it always kept patting the players head. An interesting item after every dozen of enemies, increasing amounts of gold, and a change in scenery every few levels.

Ultima II does have nothing of the sort. The amounts of gold and experience the player gets from fights is increasing extremely slow, and there is a general lack of enemies. This means literally hours of cruising around the world with the hero, killing hundreds and hundreds of the same types of enemies. All for a slow progression in experience levels, and a small stack of gold to increase hit points and equipment to finally be ready for the endgame. It is no rewarding experience by any standard. At most times, Ultima II more resembles work than play. To make matters worse, increasing stats can only be done through bribing a hotel clerk, which then might increase a character value, and if he does, a randomly chosen one.

But what about all the nice features I mentioned? They don't really matter. The dungeons are nice, but there is no reason to visit them, as the enemies are much stronger than those on the surface, yet the rewards are just as puny. And in contrast to the first Ultima, there are no quests, so why care about the other inhabitants of the world?

The Bottom Line
The only reason why I played and completed Ultima II was because of my determination to finish every Ultima game in existence. If you don't feel that urge, there's no real reason to force yourself to finish it. And believe me, you will reach a point where you would have to force yourself. Apart from the background texts in the manual, you're not missing out on a great, surprising story.

It is an interesting fact that for later releases of the DOS version in compilations, files from all the game's disks were copied to one folder, overwriting several files with identical file names. This eventually got rid of all the outer-space game maps, rendering space travel useless and the game unwinnable without applying a fan patch. The real problem is however that the game itself is so demotivating that most players probably never even got far enough to notice.

It is fun to walk around in Ultima II for a while, experience the new features it has over the first part in the series, explore the worlds and time travelling. But it is not fun enough to work towards completing the game's objectives. In the end, you will find that all the game's interesting features and elements are pointless, while the necessary ones are boring. This is a fatal combination for a game, especially after its novelty has worn off.

DOS · by Daniel Saner (3503) · 2008

A Better Game for its Time

The Good
A lot of reviewers tend to look down on Ultima II as the black sheep of the series. But when you consider what was available at the time, its actually a pretty good advancement over the previous game. Improvements from the previous Ultima include :

Gigantic World - The game world is huge, the towns and dungeons are huge, and there are several time zones and planets to explore. Getting to those planets and some places in the time zones is a real challenge.

Faster Gameplay - Akalabeth and Ultima used Applesoft BASIC and Atari BASIC (for Ultima's 8-bit port to the Atari computers) for most, if not all of the games. Travel in Ultima was ridiculously slow, as you can literally see the screen refresh itself with every step. Dungeoneering is an exercise in frustration as the slow refresh rate leads to lost keystrokes and extra hits from the monsters. Everything feels faster.

More Detailed Graphics - While many of the tiles in this game were reused from the last one, the graphical level of quality has improved. Water is now animated, each character class has a unique icon, and overworld enemies have real shapes. Dungeon enemies now are shown in color instead of wireframe. The towns no longer are in a smaller perspective than the overworld.

A Sense of Direction - In the original Ultima, the player practically figure out what to do by spending hard earned gold at the taverns and figuring out to do quests from the Kings. The manual was very sparse, it did not even inform the player that there were multiple continents that needed to be explored. Nor did it identify that the object of the game was to defeat a bad guy. Ultima II gives the player a backstory and a cloth map with the time gates delineated.

More Lively World - In Ultima, you could only transact with Kings and Merchants. In Ultima II, you can actually talk to townspeople. While most can only spout a canned line, there are some in each town which can provide you a clue or some amusement. They also move around, except for guards (unless you kill someone in town).

Lack of Disk Swapping - In this game, you will not need to swap disks often. After the initial Program / Player swap, you will not swap again until you lift off from Earth.

Packaging - This is the first Ultima game to come in a box and a cloth map. The previous Ultima had come in a ziplock bag without a map. Unlike today's games which may include a cloth map, Ultima's maps are actually useful and necessary for gameplay.

The Bad
Bugs - This game has two very nasty bugs. One of which is that, in the original release versions for the Apple II, Atari 8-bit and IBM PC, it is impossible to raise your strength level. The second one is that your stats, like HP, Food and Gold, can "roll-over" if you earn more than 9999 in a stat. So if you have 9950 food and buy 50 more, you are dead.

Unforgiving Death - If you die in this game, the game will force you to restart. It writes your death to your player disk, forcing you to make another. You can die from lack of food, bad luck or failing to land your ship properly.

Lucky Items and Thieves - You can buy weapons and armor in this game, but all items, including useful ones, are randomly acquired upon defeating enemies in the overland. For example, one special item is a Blue Tassel, which you can use to board any pirate ship. You need to board pirate ships in this game. But if a thief randomly steals your Tassel, you cannot board another pirate ship unless you find one again.

Combat Inequality - It seems like, no matter what kind of weapons and armor you acquire, you can never really carve your way through even the weaker monsters like Orcs and Thieves.

Inability to Reset the Player Disk - On the Apple, Atari 8-bit and IBM versions, you had to create a new Player Disk each time you began a new game. There was no utility to reset the maps or the character, so if you mistakenly used your original Player Disk, you were out of luck if you saved to disk. The C64 version does include a reset utility.

The Bottom Line
Ultima II is quite an improvement over its predecessor, and it is only fair to judge the game against what else was available in 1982-1983 and its predecessor. To judge it against the Ultima I: The First Age of Darkness 1986 remake is not appropriate. It had little competition, as the second Wizardry scenario did not drastically improve on the first and the rest were Rogue-like games.

Apple II · by Great Hierophant (559) · 2011

To Be Honest...This Isn't My Favorite Ultima Game

The Good
The manual was an interesting read. I liked the overall concept. Space and/or time travel could have been really cool if they pulled it off...

The Bad
It took me forever to get a complete copy of this game. And then to acquire the neccessary patches. When the game finally got running...I had all these expectations. And I was sourly let down. I could have endured this game...if the food management would have been more realistic and all the tiles for seperate time periods didn't look exactly the same. I guess there wasn't enough story in U2 to enthrall me.

The Bottom Line
If you're a die-hard Ultima afficionado, it's worth a look. A short one.

DOS · by rs2000 (13) · 2001

[ View all 7 player reviews ]

Discussion

Subject By Date
Screenshots: Double and I'm not sure if this should be like this Edwin Drost (9295) Nov 5, 2017
Resolution? Edwin Drost (9295) Feb 9, 2017
Ultima 2: hotel raising stats And Wan Jan 19, 2017

Trivia

Development

While designing the game Richard Garriott went to see the movie Time Bandits repeatedly just to copy down the map seen in the film and incorporate it into his game. He eventually decided that the map didn't actually make much sense but still wanted to include a cloth map with every copy of the game. Every publisher in the industry turned him down because of the cost, except Sierra.

DOS version

Little known is the fact that the IBM PC port is supposed to be played on an IBM CGA with a *composite* color monitor (EGA/VGA cards only emulate the display of an RGB monitor). Using that configuration, the pink-striped water becomes blue, the pink-speckled street tiles become red, and the cyan trees become green (see DOS screenshots).

Fanpatch

There exist a freeware EGA graphics patch, which adds some colors to replace that original CGA graphics.

References

  • The weapon needed to defeat the villain(ess) in the game is a sword called Enilno. Spelled backward, it becomes Online. Sierra Online was the game's publisher.
  • Richard Garriot in general and the various Ultima development teams in particular have something of a reputation for hiding various inserted oddness into the series. For example, in the map of the solar system in this game Earth is at coordinates (6,6,6). Make of that what you will.

Release history

In its original release this game was published by Sierra Online. For one reason or another, this didn't work out, and Richard Garriot left and published Exodus: Ultima III under his own outfit. It was never re-released by Origin as a single game. They had trouble getting the publishing rights back from Sierra, and it wasn't until Electronic Arts published the Ultima Collection almost 15 years later that the game was commonly available for purchase again.

Unofficial Port for the Apple IIGS

Rebecca Heineman and Brutal Deluxe Software were working in 2011 on an unofficial port for the Apple IIGS port of Ultima II, whose code was based on the one that was used to create Ultima I in 1994. Unfortunately, this version was for 50% completed before being cancelled due to the fact that she could only sell about 500 copies at the time and the steep licensing fees from current copyright holders Electronic Arts. If the port would have been completed, it would have been released on two disks.

Information also contributed by Eisentel, NewRisingSun, Pix, Terry Callahan and Ye Olde Infocomme Shoppe

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Contributors to this Entry

Game added by Alan Chan.

Macintosh, MSX, Atari 8-bit, PC-88, FM-7 added by Terok Nor. PC-98 added by Unicorn Lynx. Atari ST, Commodore 64, Apple II added by Jeanne. Windows added by eWarrior.

Additional contributors: Rebound Boy, Unicorn Lynx, jlebel, Patrick Bregger, Infernos, Edwin Drost.

Game added February 21, 2000. Last modified March 27, 2024.