Posted February 11, 2018
I was just watching a stream where someone was trying to speedrun the NES "port" of Ultima 5, and that game is horrible. What happened there?
Ultima 3 NES was a decent game, even if there are a couple changes I find questionable (Druids not getting fast MP regen and overworld enemies scaling to your level). Sure, some things had to be changed (the other commands have to be learned by talking to people, for example, and digging requires special items), but the NES version actually came out decent.
Ultima 4 NES was a good game. Sure, it isn't faithful to the original, but it still manages to be quite good in its own way. In particular, the game is fun to play, and it has decent (for an NES game at least) graphics and sound. (Note that the SMS version was not ported by the same developer.)
But then you get the disaster that is Ultima 5. You see, they tried to remake the game in an Ultima 6-style engine, but the game is worth off for it. There are many issues, like having only one music track (~20) seconds repeating for almost the entire game, not having an obvious way to recover MP (resting doesn't work), and worst of all, the game drops inputs (according to the streamer, there are 5 frames per second (at 60 FPS) in which the game drops inputs).
Anyone know what happened here?
I actually did have the game as a child, but never got into it; the fact that the game has only one save file doesn't help when multiple people in the household are interested in playing the game. (Final Fantasy 1 also had this issue, but that game was at least decent in other respects, unlike Ultima 5 NES.)
(Ultima 6 SNES is ported by the same developer, and while not as good as the PC version, it's at least decent, unlike Ultima 5 NES.)
Ultima 3 NES was a decent game, even if there are a couple changes I find questionable (Druids not getting fast MP regen and overworld enemies scaling to your level). Sure, some things had to be changed (the other commands have to be learned by talking to people, for example, and digging requires special items), but the NES version actually came out decent.
Ultima 4 NES was a good game. Sure, it isn't faithful to the original, but it still manages to be quite good in its own way. In particular, the game is fun to play, and it has decent (for an NES game at least) graphics and sound. (Note that the SMS version was not ported by the same developer.)
But then you get the disaster that is Ultima 5. You see, they tried to remake the game in an Ultima 6-style engine, but the game is worth off for it. There are many issues, like having only one music track (~20) seconds repeating for almost the entire game, not having an obvious way to recover MP (resting doesn't work), and worst of all, the game drops inputs (according to the streamer, there are 5 frames per second (at 60 FPS) in which the game drops inputs).
Anyone know what happened here?
I actually did have the game as a child, but never got into it; the fact that the game has only one save file doesn't help when multiple people in the household are interested in playing the game. (Final Fantasy 1 also had this issue, but that game was at least decent in other respects, unlike Ultima 5 NES.)
(Ultima 6 SNES is ported by the same developer, and while not as good as the PC version, it's at least decent, unlike Ultima 5 NES.)