Pix has made some excellent progress in his attempt to play through the Sega Master System port of Ultima 4, having both raised his Avatar’s virtues completely and having begun the task of conquering the game’s dungeons.

The basic layout of every dungeon level is exactly the same as the original and it also contains each and every room within these so nothing is missing as such. It removes the maze aspect when you can see so much of the map in one go though. I do still have to contend with the same occlusion as on the overworld but some of these maps only make sense in 3D. For example one level is simply crisscrossing corridors with one ladder up and one down at different intersections. With the map wrapping at the edges fining the way out took a bit of effort in 3D. Here I can see where I need to go from the start and there is never going to be a problem avoiding monsters with all those intersections to hide in. This isn’t how you would design a level if you knew this was how it was going to be played and is perhaps a case of the port being too faithful.

This does make this section of the game easier in one sense but for most levels I’m surprised just how well the transition has worked. The 3D dungeons were always a peculiarity of the early Ultima series in that they came across as a game within a game, which is of course exactly what they were back in Ultima 1. This was especially the case with Ultima 4 introducing the tile-based rooms within the dungeons which arguably provided the main challenge in this part of the game but left the player constantly swapping between viewpoints. On the whole I’m all for the variety this offered but the 2D dungeons here are almost as much fun as their counterparts and do feel more cohesive within the context of the rest of the game.

The reduction in difficulty is more than negated by the fact that I’m unable to save in the dungeons.

Destard is up next!