As he explains in the post he subtitles “Part 6”, Origin historian Pix decided to give the NES port of Ultima 5 one more go:

When I last posted about this game I’d come to an abrupt halt when one of the dungeon ladders went missing. At the time I wasn’t too keen to try again as I’d been playing most nights for a week to get that far. However, I wouldn’t be doing this blog without a stubborn/obsessive streak which took over a week or so later and I decided I should give it another go.

That still didn’t mean I was all that keen and it’s taken long enough since for me to get back to it. I’m now playing on a NES emulator and at 2x speed the game has proved to be a lot more playable than it was on real hardware. At this speed, the controls aren’t always especially responsive but movement is much improved and it’s a lot more like the sort of speed an Ultima should play at.

Retracing my steps was still a largely mechanical process but at least I knew what needed to be done this time around. I headed down through Covetous to get the mystic arms at the first opportunity before getting back to relearning all the mantras.

The site of his issue with the game on his previous attempt at playing it through out of the way, Pix then set about completing the game once and for all:

There is a short ending sequence which is true to the original with regard to the banishment of Blackthorn although here it’s watched by the Avatar in person. In the original of course, the Avatar was sent home in the same spell that transported Lord British from his prison only to receive an ignominious homecoming and discover that his house had been burgled in his absence. On the NES he is rewarded with a banquet in his honour first. Indeed!

So that’s Ultima 5 on the NES done at last. Escape From Mount Drash aside, it’s easily the worst Ultima I’ve played on any platform. Definitely not as bad as I feared going into it but not one that should be tackled by any but the most (fool?)hardy of Ultima fans. The series moved to the SNES for Ultima 6 which should prove to be a big improvement.

I for one wouldn’t be so sure about the SNES port of Ultima 6, but I do wish Pix luck should he attempt to play through it at some point.