Exodus: Ultima III

The Good
I'm pretty sure I stumbled upon the Ultima: Exodus NES game cartridge by accident as nobody else I knew at the time was playing it. In fact, in my little world, I seemed to be the only one who liked RPGs - everyone else was into the 'shoot-em-ups'! And this was the best of the role-playing genre that I'd seen back then (circa 1990 and it came out in 1987). I loved the story line and the huge number of Spells available to use, and the fact that you were in charge of a 4-character team which you could change up every time you went back in to play. I loved the separate battlefield screens and fighting all those different, very scary-looking monsters with the cool names!

The Bad
Maybe it was just the contrast on our TV set but the whole land of Sosaria seemed extremely 'dark' and foreboding to me (and not just the dungeons and Ambrosia, either!). Of course, this was perfectly suited to the game storyline and everything (and I'm not complaining!); I just hadn't seen anything that looked like it before, graphically. It seemed like a very complex and 'more adult' game to me at the time. Some of the game play and controls (Commands and Spell casting) seemed a little cumbersome but, then again, there was a lot of things you could do in this game, compared to the relative simplicity of other RPGs that were around.

The Bottom Line
I found it to be utterly absorbing, and I'd spend hours and hours at it! Once my character party finally had everything it needed in order to go up against Exodus, I remember delaying doing so for quite a while, just so that the game wouldn't be over!! You'd better have a lot of time on your hands as it is a pretty long game. It takes a lot of time to build up your money and hit points. I would highly recommend it even today, as it is. The days and nights I spent playing it is a great gaming memory for me and I wouldn't change a thing!