Linguistic Dragon managed to defeat the two remaining Shadowlords in yet another foray into the depths of Ultima 5:

With the defeat of Faulinei at the end of my last session, I realized that I’m hurtling pretty quickly toward the endgame of Ultima V, and I’m… surprised at how smooth the ride has been, really. I’ve mentioned before my difficulties in getting into the game on my previous attempts, but they haven’t really been an issue this time around. I’m not exactly sure why, either. Maybe it’s because I have more reason to see the game through to its end, what with a blog to “hold me accountable” to a degree. Maybe it’s because I’ve taken the time to really process the game, think through my impressions and the game design so I have something interesting to say. Or maybe it’s just because I’m finally becoming ‘fluent’ in Ultima V – I’m so used to doing everything the way Ultima IV does, there’s been some ‘translation’ issues. For example, to mix, say, a Tremor spell in Ultima IV, my fingers go on autopilot and hit M-T-E-A-H-Enter, and poof, one Tremor spell all mixed and ready to go. It’s muscle memory in action, I don’t even have to think about what those individual keystrokes represent, I just know that’s the sequence that gets me a Tremor spell. Here, I have to remember the incantation, look up which reagents go with it. Sometimes I forget the sextant is something I have to (U)se now instead of (L)ocate with, and that I can only do so at night. These sorts of things used to be an impediment – not so anymore.

As such, I’m finding it difficult to stop playing long enough to write up a synopsis of the session!

…

In the end, though, it meant that the three Shadowlords were all defeated. I had the Crown Jewels in my possession as well, which meant it was time to prepare for my last sojourn into the depths, this time through Shame. Dungeon delving had given Jaana, Johne and Shamino the experience they needed to reach level five. Yew and Cove provided the stock of reagents I needed, and I prepared several high-level spells for use. I set sail for Buccaneer’s Den to make sure I didn’t run out of gems like I had on my way through Wrong. I poked around Serpent’s Spine in the hopes of finding the glass swords I’d been hearing about, and did eventually find a few of them. I would need every advantage I could get in the trials to come, so best to make sure I collected as many as possible.

When all was said and done, though, we set sail one last time. We docked our ship, set out through the waterways in our skiff, and as Shame came into view, we remembered the words of the Codex:

That which the world has lost awaits thy coming.

The paragraphs above are just the beginning and almost-end of the post, which is much longer than what has been excerpted here. As always, do yourself a favour and click on through to read the whole thing.

And don’t miss Linguistic’s follow-up commentary, either:

…the story of the Ultima series appeals to me in another manner, namely because it doesn’t exposit all the details. It’s true, yes, that much of the effectiveness of a story, and indeed any creative endeavor, lies in the detail work, so you don’t want to forgo them entirely, and Ultima certainly doesn’t ignore the minutiae. At the same time, though, its story leaves the player with a lot to interpret for themselves – it trusts the player to fill in the blanks on their own. It’s more the framework of a story, a series of plot points and motivations set before the player which they can then thread together and interpret with as much or as little import as they want to give it. Granted, I think a good deal of this is, in part, a product of its time – there just wasn’t the ability to include the grand, lavish cutscenes or several novels’ worth of meticulously crafted writing back in the 80s. Even so, allowing a player to do some of the work in crafting the dramatics, if only in their imagination, can be just as conducive to crafting an excellent story as anything else.

And yes, there’s more of that to read, as well.