Dedication or masochism?
Do you remember Ultima?
I never played the computer versions of the game.
Instead, I played Utima: Exodus and Ultima: Quest of the Avatar on the NES (Ultima III and IV on the PC, respectively).
Well, this guy (who goes by the name Ophidian Dragon) decided to beat every single Ultima game for the PC. All 9 games. 11, if you count the expansion packs. Yeeesh.
I don't think I ever completed Ultima: Quest of the Avatar. If I did it wasn't memorable enough to leave an impression.
However, I did beat Exodus... with the help of a guide book that mapped the madness inducing dungeons. It definitely left an impression.
The game, in retrospect, had a few cool things going for it:
1) Eleven different player classes... with lots of possible customization options. And slots for over 20 different characters.
2) No "random encounters": Enemies on the overworld map were visible and could usually be avoided. I love me my RPG games, but there are times where I want to just totally stop playing a game after trying to get somewhere or do something and getting stopped every two steps by some bullshit random battle I had no control over avoiding. Underground, you were fair game.
3) You could fight and kill EVERYONE. Even the king. Although the king was basically invincible and would slaughter you every time. But shop keepers: potential Alpo. The old guy saying random useless phrase in town: target practice. Ass kicking city guards: LETS RUMBLE!
What about the rest of the game?
Basically, you spend 50+ hours level and stat grinding away, wandering aimlessly through badly rendered "3D" dungeons where EVERYTHING looks the same in search of stuff that is never clearly spelled out in the course of the game.
(50 hours is a very conservative estimate, too... especially if you worked on more than just your base party of four).
Oh, and you had to buy food or you'd starve. And possibly die. And when you died in this game... you really DIED. There was no "oh he's not REALLY dead... he's 'knocked out'... or 'defeated'". No, you DIED. And if your ass didn't get resurrected in time, you turned to ash and were completely boned. And sometimes, trying to get resurrected caused you to turn to ash. Hope you saved, or else you lost your character.
"LOL"
OH! And the only way to raise your stats was to go to this completely separate continent via whirpool... the majority of which was completely "dark"; as in you couldn't see far enough in front of you to avoid anything that might be hiding, so a lot of time was spent running into mountains, dead ends and nasty monsters.
That could kill you.
It was a total maze, loaded with locked doors and some of the hardest overworld monsters in the game. And you had to pay 100 gold for each stat point. And to raise different stats, you had to trek across the entire continent to one of the four different "shrines". The highest stat you could have in a new character was 20. And you rarely got more than 50 gold in any fight. And often, the treasure chests left after fights that held the loot were boobytrapped and could poison and/or kill you. See the above about the whole suckitude of death in Exodus.
I kid you not, the easiest way to get money in that game was to make tons of "junk" characters, strip them of their money and starting equipment, give it to one of your "good" characters and then delete the junk characters. Wash, rinse, repeat.
After that all of that... you plunge into a large, monster infested castle, which I guess was the source of all evil in this game world.
Oh, and the best weapons and armor in the game, which were a necessity in the last castle, were each hidden on a single, different, unremarkable tile of land on the vast overworld.
It gets EVEN better!
The final boss(es) were... a bunch of invisible floor tiles. Yeah, big bad demon "Exodus" (I guess that was the plot...), was a bunch of FLOOR TILES. And they weren't even THAT HARD... aside from not being able to see them. It was pretty easy to figure out where they were when they started hitting you. Floor tiles. FUCKING FLOOR TILES. And when you finished killing them/it off, the castle began collapsing around you....
Finally, the creme de la creme: You suffer through the seemingly never ending level and stat grind and the insanity-inducing dungeon crawling. Kill the "tiles". Survive escaping the castle... and your ending is...
The credits.
No congratulations. No distance shot of the castle imploding. No thank you. Just... all the people that created this game... scrolling slowly upwards on your screen.
This was "fun". So yeah, more power to you, Ultima playing dude.
I never played the computer versions of the game.
Instead, I played Utima: Exodus and Ultima: Quest of the Avatar on the NES (Ultima III and IV on the PC, respectively).
Well, this guy (who goes by the name Ophidian Dragon) decided to beat every single Ultima game for the PC. All 9 games. 11, if you count the expansion packs. Yeeesh.
I don't think I ever completed Ultima: Quest of the Avatar. If I did it wasn't memorable enough to leave an impression.
However, I did beat Exodus... with the help of a guide book that mapped the madness inducing dungeons. It definitely left an impression.
The game, in retrospect, had a few cool things going for it:
1) Eleven different player classes... with lots of possible customization options. And slots for over 20 different characters.
2) No "random encounters": Enemies on the overworld map were visible and could usually be avoided. I love me my RPG games, but there are times where I want to just totally stop playing a game after trying to get somewhere or do something and getting stopped every two steps by some bullshit random battle I had no control over avoiding. Underground, you were fair game.
3) You could fight and kill EVERYONE. Even the king. Although the king was basically invincible and would slaughter you every time. But shop keepers: potential Alpo. The old guy saying random useless phrase in town: target practice. Ass kicking city guards: LETS RUMBLE!
What about the rest of the game?
Basically, you spend 50+ hours level and stat grinding away, wandering aimlessly through badly rendered "3D" dungeons where EVERYTHING looks the same in search of stuff that is never clearly spelled out in the course of the game.
(50 hours is a very conservative estimate, too... especially if you worked on more than just your base party of four).
Oh, and you had to buy food or you'd starve. And possibly die. And when you died in this game... you really DIED. There was no "oh he's not REALLY dead... he's 'knocked out'... or 'defeated'". No, you DIED. And if your ass didn't get resurrected in time, you turned to ash and were completely boned. And sometimes, trying to get resurrected caused you to turn to ash. Hope you saved, or else you lost your character.
"LOL"
OH! And the only way to raise your stats was to go to this completely separate continent via whirpool... the majority of which was completely "dark"; as in you couldn't see far enough in front of you to avoid anything that might be hiding, so a lot of time was spent running into mountains, dead ends and nasty monsters.
That could kill you.
It was a total maze, loaded with locked doors and some of the hardest overworld monsters in the game. And you had to pay 100 gold for each stat point. And to raise different stats, you had to trek across the entire continent to one of the four different "shrines". The highest stat you could have in a new character was 20. And you rarely got more than 50 gold in any fight. And often, the treasure chests left after fights that held the loot were boobytrapped and could poison and/or kill you. See the above about the whole suckitude of death in Exodus.
I kid you not, the easiest way to get money in that game was to make tons of "junk" characters, strip them of their money and starting equipment, give it to one of your "good" characters and then delete the junk characters. Wash, rinse, repeat.
After that all of that... you plunge into a large, monster infested castle, which I guess was the source of all evil in this game world.
Oh, and the best weapons and armor in the game, which were a necessity in the last castle, were each hidden on a single, different, unremarkable tile of land on the vast overworld.
It gets EVEN better!
The final boss(es) were... a bunch of invisible floor tiles. Yeah, big bad demon "Exodus" (I guess that was the plot...), was a bunch of FLOOR TILES. And they weren't even THAT HARD... aside from not being able to see them. It was pretty easy to figure out where they were when they started hitting you. Floor tiles. FUCKING FLOOR TILES. And when you finished killing them/it off, the castle began collapsing around you....
Finally, the creme de la creme: You suffer through the seemingly never ending level and stat grind and the insanity-inducing dungeon crawling. Kill the "tiles". Survive escaping the castle... and your ending is...
The credits.
No congratulations. No distance shot of the castle imploding. No thank you. Just... all the people that created this game... scrolling slowly upwards on your screen.
This was "fun". So yeah, more power to you, Ultima playing dude.