Let me start by saying that this is probably the hardest piece I've ever had to write. The Ultima series, more than any other set of games, was responsible for getting me into game journalism to start with. Over the past decade, I have spent countless hours in Richard Garriot's Britannia, falling in love with the series' fantastic environments, deep character analyses, and its powerful storylines. Sadly, when the press first caught a look at Garriot's plan for what would be the last title in the series over two years ago at the 1997 E3 Expo, it looked suspiciously like the next Tomb Raider rather than the next Ultima.
After a year of reading previews blasting his approach to the new title, Garriot invited certain members of the press to a private screening of the game at last year's expo in order to prove once and for all that Ultima Ascension would be a title worthy of the Ultima label. Excited again, I couldn't wait to get my hands on a copy to finally see what the creator of the longest running RPG series had cooked up to end his ten-year journey. The sense of disappointment that I felt on actually seeing the result of all the time and money that went into this project is very, very difficult to convey. But, since that's my job, I'm sure going to try...
Perhaps the most frustrating thing about Ultima IX: Ascension is that all of the mistakes that Origin made in its development are mistakes that they have made before. Years ago, the company released Strike Commander, a high concept flight sim that, while very entertaining from a purely theoretical point of view, was so resource demanding that no one in the country actually owned a machine that could play it. Later, in Ultima 8, the company decided to try and increase their sales numbers by adding action sequences straight out of a platform game to their ultra deep RPG. The results managed to piss just about everyone off. With Ascension, the company has made both mistakes again, but this time on a scale that is likely to make everyone finally forget about the company's past mistakes and concentrate their efforts on making fun of this one.
This is all too bad, because if you can make it past the terrible framerates and the fact that the Avatar runs around whacking bad guys like Lara Croft on acid, there's actually an amazing depth to this game. The story begins in your house in the real world. After you've managed to get dressed and find all of your basic belongings (which is actually laid out as a light tutorial to get you used to walking, fighting and manipulating inventory items), you find your way to a gypsy fortuneteller that opens the way to the magical world of Britannia. After a couple of surprises, you'll make your way to an old and tired Lord British who explains that the Shrines of Virtue that you have protected for so long have become warped and twisted. As usual, it's your job to sort it out. While this story setup is pretty basic and predictable, the actual dialogue and situations are not. As fans of the series already know, each of the major cities in Britannia is the home of a different virtue. When the shrines were desecrated, the thoughts and actions of the townspeople who reside in these different towns became warped versions of the original virtue. The people of Britain, the town of Compassion, have gathered up all the poor, sick and injured and sent them out to a small town in the swamp. Then they send the town food and medical supplies, believing that they are being more compassionate by dealing with their weakest citizens at a distance. Later in Yew, the city of Justice, you'll find a people who delight in executions and the condemnation of crime without worrying anymore whether or not people are actually guilty. Slowly, but surely you'll be able to make these horrors right, but not without learning that you, the Avatar, are in a large part responsible for the continuing cycle of good and evil in Britannia. The story is deep and rewarding and reflects a great deal of thought behind problems like homelessness, dishonesty and pride in our own society.
Ascension's plot is made even more intriguing by the inclusion of an amazingly well developed love interest named Raven. Raven, a pirate from Buccaneer's Den, first shows up in the game as a sort of deus ex machina, saving you from capture at just the right moment. Later she becomes a more important part of the game, acting as a method of transport for you (she's got her own boat) and eventually becoming a trusted companion. The interaction between your character and Raven is surprisingly touching and acts as yet another way to keep you absorbed in events as they unfold. While there's no doubt that Raven gets most of the attention, there are also several other major characters in the game that boast just as much depth. Unfortunately, there are still plenty of the standard RPG villagers in the game who are pretty much useless. Worse still, there are loads of bugs in the game that prevent certain characters from recognizing that you've accomplished certain tasks, so you will often find someone who keeps chatting with you about things that happened ages ago. There's a patch available that fixes a few of these conversational issues (the ones that actually kept you from finishing the game), but you'll still be able to spot a bunch of 'em if you try.
So if I liked the storyline and the characters so much, what's my damn problem? My problem is that the game is unplayable. The game is obviously designed for a set of computers that don't exist yet. On my P3 500MHz with 256 megs of RAM and a Voodoo 3, the game ran so slowly that I could actually count the individual frames any time two or more characters were on the screen ¿ and this was with the detail level turned to medium. And before all of you freaks start, I followed all of the instructions on Origin's site for optimization before I started playing. The three or four of you who have sent in letters telling us that you have the game running fine on a P2 300MHz with 128 megs obviously need to get to a doctor ¿ your severe depression is causing you to see motion faster than it actually occurs. This is one of the most performance unfriendly games I've seen since... well, since Strike Commander.
While the performance issue is plenty of reason to leave this game on the shelf, let's say you're a horrible RPG geek like me and you're willing to play the game frame by frame just to find out what happens to the hero you've known for the last ten years. Well, you're still screwed... Ascension was obviously rushed through the door to make Christmas season. In the first few hours that the game was available, users managed to find dozens of game disabling bugs that the QA department never noticed (or more likely never had the chance to notice). People fall through floors, objects disappear, characters don't acknowledge your completion of game tasks, and so on, and so on. I'm sure that Origin will sort out the worst of the problems over the next few weeks with patches, but I have a real problem with a company shipping a product that's not finished. How happy would you be with a new car if you were forced to drive down to the dealership each and every day to get that door handle put on that the manufacturer just didn't have time to add, or get a set of headlights installed because the dealer wanted to get their hands on the car before Christmas? Until the first patch was released, players couldn't even finish the game ¿ what kind of testing is that? Sigh. Let's just move on.
Okay, let's go another step further. Let's say that you're a really, really, really hardcore Ultima fan, and you're so intrigued by the end of this story that you're willing (although you're not happy about it) to download the patches, to put up with the fact that your saved games often disappear, to deal with the fact that sometimes weird stuff happens, and to handle the whole slide show performance. You want to know what happens to the Avatar so badly that you're willing to put up with just about anything. Then you realize that you're spending most of your time hoping around rock caverns, pulling yourself up on rocks and striking down giant animals with whatever weapon you have at hand. In short, you're playing Tomb Raider. It's not that it's not a really deep and impressively scripted Tomb Raider, but it's still Tomb Raider. Let me break it down for you... In order to repair a shrine, you've got to find a glyph, sort of an anti-rune that represents the corruption of whatever virtue is at hand, the symbol of the virtue you're trying to fix, and the mantra for the shrine. The glyph is always at the bottom of some really nasty dungeon that you'll have to crawl around, pushing buttons and moving stones to get through; the symbol is almost always in the hands of the shrine's guardian who will make you jump through hoops (kill these goblins, wolves, vultures, etc.) to get it, and the mantra is almost always guarded by someone else who feels like they need to get a little something from the Avatar for their troubles. It's not really all that much fun to begin with, but when you combine the fact that it's repetitive as hell with the fact that the game runs at a snail's pace, you're in for a pretty hideous gameplay session. The worst thing is that I realized at one point that I could have finished the game in a few hours, but merely moving around the screen took me so damn long (because of system slowdown, etc.) that the game managed to stretch out for ages. This is not my idea of hours of entertainment.
It gets worse. Because the interface (which is actually well designed, its just the gameplay type I hated) is so simplistic, things like new weapons, armor and spells start to lose their real meaning. You have two bars on either side of the top of your screen that represent the relative strength of the armor and weapons that you're carrying. Each piece of armor you collect runs the armor bar up a little bit, and better weapons run up the weapons score a little bit. This breaks down the acquisition of new items to the level of a console platform game. Spells aren't quite as bad, but the action interface really does whittle down their impact quite a bit. First there are simple damage spells, which work pretty much like they should ¿ you cast 'em and someone gets hurt. These are fine. Then there are the personal effect spells, like Heal and Cure, and these aren't really a problem either ¿ they do what they're supposed to. Next up are the quest-solving spells, which is where my trouble really begins. These are spells that exist solely to ensure that you have acquired a certain level of magic before you move past a certain puzzle. Light is kind of an example, but since there are ways around it (you can carry a torch, lantern, etc.) it's probably not the best one. Telekinesis is a better one. There's a key behind a grate. You need to get the key to move on. Until you learn how to cast Telekinesis, you're pretty much screwed. Levitate is another good example, but I think you get the point. This last point is a minor one, and certainly doesn't bother me nearly as much as the rest of the issues I've brought up, but in the interest of being thorough, I thought I'd bring it up.
So how does it all look? Well, this is a hard call to make. Since the frame rate is utter crap, it's really hard to say that the game looks good. But once you take the slow framerate out of the equation, the game looks fantastic. Buildings, people, objects, and monsters are all modeled in breath-taking detail. Don't even get me started on how beautiful the weather effects are. The most impressive part of the graphical impact is Ascension's magnificent lighting effects. Everything casts light realistically, and shadows fall where they should at all times. Once I got used to it, it was hard to look at other games again. Spell effects are varied and over the top, delivering a sense of power that is really addictive until you get bored with them. My one exception here is the Light spell, which manifests itself as a constantly moving ball of light (a la Pixel in the movie Tron). After a while, this little booger gets really annoying. If I'm such a mighty mage, why can't I command my light source to stand still?
The game's sound is also impressive. Although Ascension does have a tendency to play the Rule Britannia theme way too much, the rest of the game's music does an excellent job of completing the mood of individual scenes. The New Magincia theme, a haunting flute melody that sounds straight out of Braveheart, was particularly memorable. The guys working on the sound track (and the game's effects) need a raise ¿ they obviously know their craft well.
I have to confess that I never got my hands on a standard copy of this game, but the Dragon edition came with a ton of cool gear. In addition to a couple of well bound, hefty instruction manuals, I also received Ultima Tarot cards, a big cloth map, a nifty little ankh pendant, and a signed certificate from Lord British telling me how nice I was for taking part in his journey. I remember when every game shipped with goodies like this, and it's very nice to see a company appreciate once again the power of opening a box and finding items that make you feel like you're part of something special. I just wish the game itself hadn't been such a disappointment.
In the end, it's nearly impossible for me to give Ultima IX: Ascension any sort of meaningful score. While its presentation, graphics and sound are all excellent, the fact that the game is nearly unplayable really makes all of that meaningless. In the end, although this title wound up with about a score over six, I really wouldn't recommend it to anyone until more of its problems are sorted out. Even if the company does lick the performance problems and outright bugs, I would still only recommend it to Tomb Raider fans who are looking for something a little more cerebral, and fans of the series who don't mind going through a whole lot of pointless exercises to get to the end of a story they've been part of for over a decade. After spending a lot more time with this game than I really wanted to, I couldn't help shaking the feeling that I'd somehow been cheated. Origin invented a certain style of gameplay that created an entire genre and then sold their fans out by jumping over to a Tomb Raider style interface because the business model looked good. When I think of what this series has meant to me over the years, I am nearly paralyzed with disappointment over the way the last chapter turned out.
-- Trent C. Ward
P.S. If these screenshots look familiar too you, it's because I nabbed them off Origin's site. Sadly, the screenshot function within Ascension never actually worked on my system and the screenshot program that we normally use slowed the game down so much that it was taking me hours to get each shot. We will get our own shots up here before too much longer, but for now we figured it was more important to get the review up rather than wait for art.
