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The self-proclaimed final chapter in the Ultima series of games has arrived after more than five years in development. The development saga of the ninth Ultima is a story in itself, and we will only touch on it briefly enough to say that there have been many ups and downs. The vision for the game changed several times, there were many staff departures and arrivals, and always we were assured by Richard “Lord British” Garriott that the game would not be released before its time.

You play the protagonist of Ultima games since Ultima IV: the Avatar. You awake on Earth knowing only that your nemesis, the Guardian, has invaded the fantasy world of Britannia, and something must be done to stop him.

After some tutorials regarding weapon usage and movement, a gypsy asks you a series of questions that will loosely determine your starting attributes and equipment, and then you leave Earth for Britannia. This typical fantasy world of green hills and dark dungeons has been pierced by several giant columns, courtesy of the Guardian, that are causing a variety of behavioral disorders amongst the citizens of the world. It is your task to determine the nature of these columns, shut them down, and defeat the Guardian once and for all.

The most important advance of this game over previous Ultima games is that this time everything is rendered in full 3D. The world is large, and completely connected (no “maps” or “zones”), and intricately detailed. This is a monumental achievement that unfortunately makes great sacrifices in the way of performance.

There is no game that could live up to the anticipation and hype that has escalated over the last five years. With this in mind, expectations for this review were kept realistic, while still maintaining an air of anticipation. Despite that, the results were still disappointing. Gameplay:

One recurring concern amongst those following Ultima: Ascension’s progress over the years has been the interactivity, and whether or not it would be a “real” Ultima. The good news is that yes, Ultima: Ascension has a fully interactive world ripe for the exploration, with many usable objects and plenty of room for exploration. In this aspect, Ultima: Ascension has succeeded.

The world is full of interesting places to go, and each place is populated with interesting creatures, people, and items. Exploration is a large part of Ultima: Ascension, and there are rewards for those who take the time to examine the world with care.

Conversation with NPCs is tree-based, similar to the conversation method first used in Ultima 7, but enhanced with full speech. This method works fine, except for the occasional case where responses don’t seem to match or make sense.

There is some sentiment that an RPG does not need to have a high frame rate in order to be playable. I agree with this sentiment in principle, but what I find more important is a consistent frame rate, and certain aspects of the gameplay would seem to be designed around an average or higher frame rate.

For example, combat is real time. There are five classes of attacks based on weapon type, and each of these classes has four specific attacks. Combat is accomplished by switching to combat mode and clicking on your opponent, using keyboard modifiers to switch attacks. This system works well and is entertaining, however if you’re in an area where the frame rate is poor, it becomes nothing but frustration. The 3D world and the possibility of attack from all angles necessitates rapid turning, which in many cases is not an option.

Along the same lines, the same constant “mouselook” interface that is perfectly adequate for moving around and exploration can become a hindrance in areas with low frame rates. Just turning can cause pauses of an entire second or longer in areas that have a lot of detail. This problem is exaggerated by the tendency of the camera to swing back and forth between the Avatar and anyone with whom he is engaged in conversation.

You may wonder why a frame rate discussion is taking place in the middle of the Gameplay section. It is because this problem encompasses the entire game, at least the outdoor portions. Much of the game interaction is done in towns, and unfortunately towns are where the most world detail exists. I have to admit that my favorite portions of the game were outdoors, but at times I dreaded going into town because I knew that the stuttering and slow display problems would start. At one point I even said to myself “Oh no, now I have to go back to Britain,” Britain being one of the worst case scenarios for performance.

Ah, but enough about frame rates, back to gameplay. Tasks performed in the game are typically quests with segmented pieces to complete. In fact, the larger goal of the game is to complete a segmented quest (note that I’m trying to be as spoiler free here as possible) that encompasses all of the towns and dungeons in the game.

The largest problem with gameplay is that there are unavoidable places in which you can get “stuck,” and most of these require re-loading from an earlier save game. This could be from doing something in the “wrong” order (ie. an order other than the developers envisioned), or from something just plain not working the way it was supposed to. I had to abandon the dungeon Hythloth (after unknowingly accomplishing the key objectives) because the rising and falling water level had somehow turned into huge unconnected blocks of water that were occupying the hallways. I decided to cut my losses and get out before anything worse happened. The first time this sort of thing happens it is unfortunate. After the second you begin to lose confidence in the game, so that quests that take an abnormal time to complete or that require additional exploration will have you wondering if you have experienced a bug or not.

Then there is the matter of the intelligence of the enemies in the game. One of my first experiences was a wandering rogue that I decided to take on with my bow and arrows. After leading him to a point atop a hill from which he could not get down, I fired arrows at him for what seemed like forever. During the course of the battle he built a “bridge of blood” by walking across his blood splatters into mid-air. Finally I managed to find the right angle to shoot from, even though my earlier arrows were hitting him, and took him out, only to see the corpse and loot hang in mid air. In another town I witnessed a skeleton trying in vain to kill a helpless villager who was standing on the table in her shop (as helpless villagers often do). I have no idea of the outcome, because after five minutes of the battle nobody had suffered any visible damage. There are so many examples of brain dead artificial intelligence in the game that after a point I felt like I was cheating just by initiating combat.

The artificial intelligence does exhibit moments of lucidity, however, most often in dungeons. There are several segments of the game that are very playable and relatively free of bugs, if you have the patience to shake your head and move on when something unlikely and improbable occurs.

Longevity:

By the time you finish Ascension, you have seen around 80% of what the game has to offer. Would you play again to find the remaining 20%? This is questionable, and a more likely scenario would be to reserve a save game close to the end of the game for exploration.

There is the concept of character class, and you are assigned a class (Paladin, Fighter, Bard, etc.) at the start of the game in true Ultima IV style, by answering a gypsy’s question. Class only minimally affects the game, however, and nearly all classes advance to the point of being equal in ability by mid-game or sooner.

The final option for replayability involves what many consider to be the heart of a role playing game: can you make different choices in your path and end up with a fundamentally different game experience? Unfortunately the answer to this is no. In the end, you will need to accomplish the same tasks and visit the same locations in order to finish the game, with little variation from game to game. You can play the “evil” Avatar if you like, but this only serves to lower your karma, and thus your mana, making the game more difficult while not providing a significantly different game experience. Besides, all key NPCs in the game are invulnerable, so any thoughts of full scale Britannia domination should be thrown out now.

Despite these complaints, the game offers the ability to roam free throughout the world after about midway through, and this in itself provides a measure of longevity.

Controls:

The game defaults to a “freelook” style interface where mouse movement in any direction moves the camera. After a short learning curve this method is ideal for keeping what you want on the screen at any given time, with a minimum possibility of blocked camera angles. This is one thing that the game has absolutely gotten right.

There are many keyboard commands to be learned, and the keyboard is not immediately redefinable. For those willing to take the plunge, the keyboard configuration file can be manually edited, although a more ideal solution would have been to have an in-game keyboard mapping function.

The basic task of movement throughout the game could have been refined somewhat. The Avatar tends to get stuck on small obstacles and corners more than seems realistic. This problem is made worse by the tendency of small objects such as monster loot to float in the air, a big problem when you have killed the same respawning zombie five times. Nobody wants to repeatedly walk around a half dozen rotten cabbages that refuse to obey the laws of gravity.

Perhaps a side effect of this is the Avatar’s swimming prowess. Sure, it’s the first Ultima where the Avatar can actually enter the water, but he needed a little more time in the baby pool before going in the deep end. Swimming is a dangerous endeavor, with the expected air meter constantly ticking down to the Avatar’s death while underwater. This would be fine, except that the Avatar has a tendency to suddenly stop swimming whenever he touches the smallest obstacle, whether it’s an object in the water or something as obvious as a wall. There are several places in the game where swimming must be done, and through passages where hitting an obstruction is a near certainty. The first patch to the game has relieved this issue somewhat, but it is still far from perfect.

Graphics:

In a word, the full-3D world depicted in Ultima: Ascension is beautiful. The graphics aren’t in-your-face with tons of polygons and explosions of color; the effect is more subtle. The fantasy environments in the game have been designed with great care and attention to detail. If there is any one component of the game that appears completely finished, it’s the graphics.

There are almost too many niceties to mention. Day turns realistically into night. The ocean rolls convincingly toward the shoreline. Wildlife roams the forests. Each city has its own style, making each visit to a new town an exciting prospect.

Scale is also used effectively throughout the game. Leaving the starting tower of Stonegate and stepping out into the world was quite honestly a breathtaking experience. There are other moments like this scattered throughout the game, both above and underground. And toward the end of the game, when you think you’ve seen it all, there are more fantastic environs waiting outside of Britannia.

In the end, the only thing that left me wanting was the ability to run the game reliably with 16-bit textures instead of 8-bit, which I chose for performance reasons. Even with this limitation, however, the graphics are stunning.

Sound:

The music in Ultima: Ascension is perfectly suited for the world, and changes according to certain goals that you must accomplish in the game. In all cases the music was pleasant and enjoyable, even after hearing certain pieces for more times than I can count.

The voice acting is a mixed bag. All dialogue that takes place is accompanied by full speech, which is both a curse and a blessing. Some of the voice acting is top notch, while some may have you cringing with contact embarrassment. Case in point is the Avatar, who you necessarily listen to throughout the entire game. This guy sounds like a combination between John Wayne and Sylvester Stallone, which may not be how everyone imagines their Avatar to sound. Despite my initial reaction to his voice, though, I was exhibiting only the occasional wince during the Avatar’s dialogue by the end of the game.

Sound effects are varied and appropriate in nearly all cases, and the world is full of ambient effects that greatly enhance the feeling of “being there.”

Installation:

No problems were experienced during installation. The largest installation is a larger than usual 1.5 gigabytes of space, and this is what was used for this review in an effort to maximize performance. Smaller installations are available that use less than a gigabyte, but these can cause some performance loss.

Overall:

Ultima: Ascension is two scoops of your favorite ice cream, accidentally dropped in the dirt; your favorite movie, showing after hours on a channel with terrible reception; your favorite CD, with a scratch down the middle. This is a compelling game to play with exciting places to visit, but obvious technical flaws that should have been fixed prior to the game’s release mar the experience.

This review was performed on a 450mhz machine with 128mb of ram, dual Voodoo 2 cards and a single TNT2 Ultra installed, and all specs exceeded the minimum and met or exceeded recommended system requirements. This configuration yielded performance just on the acceptable side when playing in Glide mode on the Voodoo 2 cards, but still unacceptable on the TNT2. Non-Voodoo card owners are advised to steer clear until the Direct3D performance has been enhanced, a task that the development team is allegedly working on now.

One final aspect that bears mentioning is the game’s stability. From the start of the game straight through to the ending, I experienced many crashes while preparing this review, and more than a few corrupted save games. This is inexcusable for a “finished” game, and coupled with performance issues makes up for a large part of the final rating. Ultima: Ascension was clearly released before its time. The problems cited in this review are all too visible to anyone playing the game.

A warning to system tweakers and hardware gurus: if you think your machine can handle Ultima: Ascension in the same fashion that it handles the average 3D first person game, you are mistaken. If you’re looking for something to show off your shiny new P3 or Athlon, Ascension can do the trick visually, however you won’t be getting impressive framerates in certain areas of the game no matter how much tweaking you do.

The score for this game should have been 9 or 10; instead it’s crossing the finish line at half its potential. The problem is not deficiencies in the game’s design, plot aspects, or weak gameplay. The problem is that things do not work as intended. A single patch has been released for the game already which fixes numerous bugs, in logic, enemy intelligence, and operation. This patch was apparently in the works prior to the game’s release, and at least two more patches are expected for the coming months.

There is a good chance that the problems within Ultima: Ascension will be fixed, but rating on potential is not an option. Our advice is to watch and wait, and to only make the jump if you are extremely eager to play the game and willing to put up with frustration along the way. I personally am looking forward to playing the entire game again, if it ever gets fixed properly.