Ultima III: Exodus - Review / Retrospective 

The entire Ultima review series playlist: ru-vid.com/group/PL6ySdS-taQCLCyXvRRoHCYgBDo2h8bUle

Being a very...persistent...child, who liked finding the most efficient but most mindless way of doing things (unsurprisingly, I became a classical musician...), my solution to the grind was to create a full menu of Female Fighter Fuzzies named F, with 5s in all stats (the fastest characters to create). I'd load them up with one "main" character, transfer all their armor, weapons, food, and gold, then rinse and repeat. Forever. The fact that U3, on PCs at least, had its own boot system meant that you had to reboot the computer entirely rather than just quitting the game and restarting it. It took freaking forever, but by the time I actually started, I had four characters with 9999 gold, 9999 food, and a ton of cloth armor and daggers to sell. Slaughtering everyone in the village of Yew...the only place without guards...was another way of handling the issue. I didn't have a lot of friends in the early 80s...

That whole damn Ambrosia thing trolled me so hard the first time I played Ultima 3 as a pre-teen. I had liberated a couple of pirate ships, but then I would hear the horrible sound telling me a ship had been destroyed by a whirlpool off screen, so I avoided them from then on. The first time I accidentally got sucked into the whirlpool and the game told me I had been sucked to a watery doom and the disc started loading like when a character is killed, I shut off my C64 in a panic to 'save' my party. It took MONTHS before another whirlpool caught me, and in despair I let it load through....and then found myself cast up on a far-off shore, and I started laughing. At least I had enough gold with me by then to make the trip worth it, and suddenly my wizard and cleric were nuking groups of monsters (and guards! such easy XP) and I was on the way to final victory. What a great game, what a great series, what great memories.

Man, that view count is a crime. Your videos deserve a LOT more views than this. Like, seriously, the quality of the video is excellent.

I played this game as a young teen back in 84 on my C64. The unjaded, unspoiled fun of this game still resonates in my memory.

Ultima III is perhaps the most influential RPG ever, along with Wizardry. These 2 games defined the CRPG and created most of the elements of the JRPG. Ultima III is also the first home video game to feature a full soundtrack of multiple original tunes written specifically for the title.

This was the RPG i cut my teeth on as a kid on the Atari 800XL (this and Alternate Reality). This game and series started my love of role playing games and has a special place in my heart.

Ultima III and The Bard's Tale were two of my favorite games as a kid.

I enjoyed this game. I really like how the moons open up gates.

Can't believe i'm watching these again. So. MUCH. NOSTALGIA. Now I am remembering me and Chris W* doing the "Mark of Kings" dance in my basement when we finally travelled deep enough into the dungeon to discover the First Mark. We literally made up a dance and stomped around my basement at our pure joy. Then upon leaving the dungeon and discovering that Lord B suddenly shot us up from 500hp to 2500hp we had banked so much XP that we danced the Mark of Kings dance all over again....god DAMN it was good to be a teenager in 1985!!!!!

If you thought the floor was tough, try to get around the outside of Exodus' castle and face...THE GRASS!! Not even kidding. I fought the grass before i ever found the floor. I think they had the same stats, thus bloody annoying to fight. I didn't want to waste my screen clearing nuke spells on them either, as you had to fight multiple sets. Also a little-known tidbit about the Serpent: you can also yell the original Apple II version's word 'EZOCANE' as well as 'EVOCARE' to pass the serpent in the C64 and I believe Amiga versions of Ultima 3. Thanks again for this great video!

This was the Ultima that we were playing in our high school computer rooms in the mid-eighties, whenever we could get away with it. It was very addictive.

1:22 *faintly hear a 8-bit rendition of "Stones"* Holy shit a huge wave of nostalgia just washed over me. I will be honest, I never played Ultima I - III because of the sheer tedium and madness of the plot (I mean Britannia wasn't even a thing yet. The plot was just whatever Garriott thought was cool). However - Ultima IV - VI (and of course VII, though IV and V will always be my favorite) I absolutely adored, even if I was years late to the party. Well, why the hell not. Here, have a subscription, not like it costs anything more than a button click.

Great job with this review. Played on the 800XL and this is one game where the 16 graphics look better but offer no improvement to the actual game. Note that the U3 dungeons, while tedious and confusing in first person, have a very smart design when viewed as maps (in a pdf document). Garriot is brilliant, or he copied a great source. They are not just 2D but 3D using the multiple levels together. The dungeons make perfect sense when seen as maps. Almost like a master class of perfect design. If Garriot released a modern RPG in the same vane (graphics, top-down grid style) as III through V that would be great! He's getting old now =( Richard if you are reading this, please make another U3 through U5 style game. Just look at how well Stardew Valley has sold! There's a modern Apple II game in the very same RPG spirit released on Steam a few years ago called Nox Archaist that is supposed to be very good. It runs included inside an emulator from Steam and also plays on real hardware.

Yup, the grinding...85% of this game for me was going to one specific dungeon that had the most gold lying around. Take it all. Go outside. Go back in to collect it. Go to Ambrosia and spend it all maxing out 1 stat for 1 character. Go back to that dungeon. Rinse and repeat. I made a template for the dungeon maps on graph paper, asked my mom to make copies at her job, and then I bought 8 gems and spent a sick day at home drawing the maps, then reloading the game and using the same gems to map all of the dungeons. Stumbled on all of the Marks eventually by doing this. I know the Snake one was only in 1 spot in the entire world. I think the others appeared multiple times. Did the NES version even have the cards? I don't remember exactly how you beat Exodus, I just remember it being "sealed in the deep ground." Roll credits.

This was the center of my life on the Atari 800 when I was a kid.

I played this back when it was new. Years later, I rather enjoyed the story of exodus that was released as part of the lead up to the ill-fated UOX. The evil Lord Blaththorn who was transformed into a cyborg by magic and twisted alchemy created Exodus with similar crafts. He was going to use it to conquer his time (the far future) but a cataclysm was about to destroy his world. The AI Exodus used its magic to open a small time portal and pour itself through the hole, to escape the cataclysm. This cataclysm was the intro to the game. it involved three time periods of the world... The ancient Past, ruled over by a race of intelligent cat folk who spearheaded the creation of Britanian magic. They bound the words of powers to great Ether Crystals and were trying to dominate their world. The 'present' where Lord British and his kingdom lies, finally the distant future where Lord Blackthorn rules over a few of the cities of Britainia and has loads of enslaved gargoyles. As the three times begin to collide, Lord British casts a great spell to protect the world... the result is that the three times collide somewhat safely in that the resultant world has aspects of all three. It was going to be the foundation for UOX until EA killed the project.

When I played that game, I used a fighter, Thief, cleric and finally a wizard

I gave the NES version of this a shot recently and even using a walkthrough to soften the edges (getting to Ambrosia, successfully digging etc) I've had to give it up. The gold shortage issue mentioned here is an absolute killer. Plus in the NES version combat gets far more hazardous and massively more time consuming once you reach level 3. However, more than enough to get my attention and give Ultima IV a shot.

17 minutes into the video: I haven't played Ultima III for decades, but I clearly remember that someone told you " on islands", you must have missed that clue. Finding the exotic weapons is not so random and tedious, after all, it took me less than one hour after finding the clue.

I've never played an Ultima game but recently had a shot at this one on the NES. There is so much positive about the game but the way combat in the NES game becomes far more hazardous and time comsuming as you increase your level beyond level 2 is demoralising. Add in the gold shortage issue mentioned here and i've had to give up even though I'd used a walkthrough to learn about Ambrosia and successfully dig for items. I'm hoping for a but more humanity from Ultima IV.

Just five points in Intelligence for Fessor? I can see some revenge donations of 100 bits coming your way. :-D Also: Thank you for including an alter ego of mine in the video. In my case five points in Intellgence might me accurate. ;-) Also, also: It's great to see some familiar names in the game, even though the NPCs behind the names are not quite the same as they are from Ultima IV on (if I understood that correctly).

What really stuck with me was that you could chose "other" as sex. We thought it was hilarious back then, today it is a very different story. I always assumed it was meant as a joke, or possibly because Lord B had some fixation on history and wanted eunuchs in Ultima or something.

On old PCs the arrow keys were on the numpad and included diagonals. I don't know for sure but I assume that was supported. I definitely played 286 games that used them.

Man your channel is amazing ❤

The NPC in the corner in Dawn tells you "dig on isles". You must kill one of the NPCs next to him, which will send the guards after you.

Best rpg games Ultima 3to6, SSI Champions of Krynn/Dark Queen of Krynn and Pool of Radiance. The Krynn SSI you could obtain 9th lvl spells like lvl 40. Pool of Radiance there are some of hardest fight lvl 4 to 7 vs 40 orcs + bosses. You have to use hold person, and stinking cloud. Stinking cloud the universal tool to even the playing field

Small channel producing a quality game review video catering to my niche interest in stone-aged CRPGs? Yes please!

Lord British himself sent me to these.

Loved playing this one on the NES. Had a guide in Nintendo Power, I think, that explained things like how the moon gates worked. Anyway, I never beat it but played a lot.

The castle was definitely hard....thats what i remember. My best friend and I would play it all weekend switching off when one of us got tired lol.

Not much to say here, as this was the last of the 'original' trilogy, so it's got a basic plot, tied to the prior two, but not really anything moving forward. The ending is mostly just one step up from a 'congratulations' screen, but then, that was the typical thing at the time, and the final boss was at least unique. I will point out, however, there is one enemy deadlier than the floor in Exodus' castle. Or at least, outside of it. The GRASS! Yeah, apparently they decided to do the invisible enemy trick twice, with the second time being a kind of hard mode bonus boss, the sort of thing you won't see for a while in other games, which typically put the hardest challenge right on your path. Regardless, a good video.

Perhaps the killer app of 8bit crags. Along with wizardry the most influential crpg

the nintendo power issue covering the port of this game has a moongate guide that works for every version of the game

Ultima III is a murder hobo simulator. There is no penalty for attacking towns aside from the possibility of getting clobbered by guards. In Yew, there are a lot of squishy clerics and no guards. It's the easiest place to grind for gold in the early game, but beware of trapped chests. Since the towns reset upon exit and re-entry, you can commit genocide on Yew's clerics, leave the town, go back in, and repeat. This game was groundbreaking in its day, and it is the first Ultima game I ever played. By today's standards, it is rather clunky, and the grind is tedious, but fun can still be had in it. I still remember the first time I went down the whirlpool and found Ambrosia - it was so exciting to have a new place to explore. I remember getting attacked by the grass and the floor in the final castle. I thought that was funny even though the fight is annoying. I also liked having the option to choose "Other" for the gender. At the time, it was funny so I had to do it, but maybe the game was ahead of its time.

Your videos are very, very good. You should have more subs!

Ummm, my memory might be a little rusty, however: didn't you have to find the Silver Horn to get pass the serpent, and Not the Mark of the Serpent?

I played all of the early Ultimas when they came out. We always pronounced Minax as "MY-nax". A few years ago i heard Richard Garriott pronounce it "MIN-ax". Your pronunciation offers a third option :)

The Geomancer class on Bards Tale 4 brings the fighter/magic user class thing full circle in a fun way. Only a geomancer can take you to the alternate worlds and only a fighter class character can finally be upgraded to.this class so by the time your fighters are becoming mooted by increasingly capable magic users in gameplay, one becomes your most powerful magic user. Does this channel cover bards tales, i will check.

I'm playing UOForever watching these. 😂😂

Feeding the algorythm

Appar Unem will open chests.

Dude compile this series into one long video and it'll do like 10x better in views than the individual uploads! That's how the algo works these days apparently. *edit* I just saw your Ultima VIII vid just came out, so you're probably waiting until you finish the series.

What are the names of the soundtracks that you used in this video?

Ah the pleasure of grinding

Oh yes you must have secondary magic users so you can exhaust your big guys on big spells

Thank you for the whole Ultima retrospective. :) This is a cool video expanding on the sound side of Ultima 3: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-oJ-XfiEXN-A.html

Choose your Sex : 1. Male 2. Female 3. Other 4. No thank you

this is so bad looking even japanese jrpg looks far better