Linguistic Dragon has been busy over the course of the last week; indeed, he’s already well into his playthrough of Ultima 5, having recently reached the end of Ultima 4. Of course, having finished Ultima 4, he has of course posted his final thoughts about the game for all to read. As one might expect — Ultima 4 being his favourite — Linguistic has a lot to say about it:

Ultima IV wasn’t just a turning point for the series, it was a turning point for me. It was the first RPG I’d ever played, let alone seen through to completion, and seeing the mechanics used, diving into the world of Britannia as the game laid it out for me, gathering clues and chasing down leads – Ultima IV taught me what games are able to do, the stories they’re able to tell in ways that books or movies can’t quite accomplish. So for me, there’s something a little poignant in seeing the quest draw to a close once more. In a sense, this isn’t just a time for me to reflect on the game and its place in the history of the series and gaming as a whole – it’s a time for me to reflect on my own journey to this point.

…

I can’t entirely move on from Ultima IV without some mention of its music, either. I didn’t play with music this time around because I couldn’t figure out how to get it to work properly without making the game zip at hyperspeed or else using a graphics path in conjunction with it, but I’ve done so in the past, and while I’m not overly fond of the overworld wandering tune, I love the rest of it. The town theme feels appropriately ‘medieval domestic,’ the dungeon theme is simple but ominous, a subtle reminder that danger could lurk around any corner. The music for the castles is bold and regal, the combat music just intense enough for a fight without being overbearing, and more triumphant than the minor-key bit used for Ultima III, to better reflect the honorable nature of it in this game. And the shrine music! Wispy and almost ethereal and reflective, just as it should be. None of it’s terribly complex, but it’s very well utilized.

…

Ultima IV’s story is undeniably a part of mine. And in the same manner that the Quest of the Avatar is forever, so too is there still a lot of my story yet to be written.

As always, there is much, much more to read than what I have excerpted here; you are thus advised to click on through and read the whole thing.

As noted above, Linguistic has also begun his playthrough of Ultima 5. Here is where his efforts will become, possibly, rather more interesting, seeing as how he has never completed the game before:

Toward the beginning of my venture through Ultima IV, Boolean Dragon said over on the Ultima Codex that he thought it’d be interesting to see how I fare in Ultima V – well, frankly, so do I. I’m entering a very long stretch of games that I’ve played around with but never finished with this one (I won’t be replaying a game to completion until Ultima VII at this point), and while I think it’s something of a toss-up as to whether I’ve seen more of V or VI, I think V takes the edge (if only by a little) due to the nature of its closer ties to IV. I’m kind of eager to see how this time around treats me.

It should be noted that “never completed” does not mean “has never played”, however:

For me, though… Ultima V just never really clicked for me the same way Ultima IV did. I highly appreciated the more nuanced conversations I could have with NPCs, but something about the game didn’t quite gel for me. I remember finding the day/night cycle a bit obnoxious at times (I’ve never really liked games that limit your field of vision that much for extended periods of time), and while the combat system was much improved I never really got that good a feel for it. Consequently, I never really spent all that much time with the game before – mostly just running around the overworld, finishing shrine quests and gathering information, and maybe peeking into a dungeon or two. There’s a lot in the game that I haven’t seen before, so with a project like this giving me incentive to push forward, I’m excited to see some of the key moments of this era that I’ve never experienced before.

Now, it should be noted that there’s no actual gameplay described in his first article about the game. However, Linguistic does devote some attention to Stones, the now-iconic Ultima tune that was first introduced to the series with Ultima 5. Indeed, he even wrote his own arrangement thereof:

A friend of his even contributed some vocals:

Linguistic’s most recent posting sees him actually plunging into Ultima 5 proper, having imported his character from Ultima 4:

And right off the bat, Ultima V sets the stage with a much more uneasy sort of tone than its immediate predecessor. Though I started the journey with Iolo and Shamino at my side, that’s not quite the boon that it seems at first – Shamino was severely injured, scant inches from death. I had a couple Mani spells to spare, so I made use of two or three of them to get him back into stable fighting condition before we all left Iolo’s cottage, but the very fact the player has to deal with a party member that close to death right from the start does help set up Ultima V as a less lighthearted journey than Ultima IV. Putting the player at a disadvantage from the get-go does give a sense of the distance one has to go in order to achieve their goals, and when delivered at the hands of one of the game antagonists (in Ultima V’s case, Shamino’s wounds come from the Shadowlords, as depicted in the game’s intro), it also helps establish the threat the antagonist presents. But I like this approach much better than the ‘supposed-to-lose fight’ method, simply because it doesn’t set the precedent of setting the player up for failure. Instead, it just forces the player to either tread carefully or expend a few resources to care for the injured, or perhaps just drop Shamino off at an inn and let that be that. Whatever the case, it lays out the dire circumstances without putting the player into a situation they can’t mitigate themselves. It’s a nice little design choice.

He spent much of his first session with the game exploring, meeting the various companions and gaining information needed to progress. He didn’t really progress too far along the actual plot, but it made for a good opportunity for re-learning Ultima 5 even so:

…so far Ultima V is going rather better than I remember it. Still getting a hang of all the new mechanics (my fingers went on autopilot when mixing reagents for cure spells which it wouldn’t let me do on account of muscle memory telling the system I wanted to mix a CORP BET CORP spell), and the vast new variety of items and spells and equipment is taking some time for me to wrap my head around, but all in all I’m enjoying myself. Buying anything from the guilds seems dang expensive if the one in Paws is anything to go by, but it’s nice that fights now provide items as well as gold, as I get the feeling it’s going to be my main source for keys. Once I get a better stock of reagents I’m looking forward to messing around with the wider variety of spells, too – I’ve long enjoyed Ultima’s magic system, even though I haven’t really played around with it as much as I could. So it’s taking a bit of time to settle into Ultima V’s groove, but the process is proving enjoyable.

Let us see how long it takes before he is able to overthrow the first Shadowlord!