Ultima I: The First Age of Darkness Review

Game: Ultima I: The First Age of Darkness
System: PC (DOS)
Genre: RPG
Developer: Origin Systems
Release date: 1981, 1986


Pros: Lots of character customization options, ambitious story
Cons: Not much guidance on how to make progress


Ultima is one of those legendary series that sit in the pantheon of influential video games. The first game in the series, Ultima I, was one of the very first commercial computer role-playing games. It borrowed ideas from tabletop RPG games like Dungeons & Dragons and brought them to life on a computer screen. Although video games have become much more sophisticated in the 30 years since Ultima I was first released, almost all modern role-playing games owe something to Ultima.

Ultima I takes place in the lands of Sosaria, where an evil wizard named Mondain is causing havoc. Evil men and beasts roam the land, and dungeons crawl with sinister things. A hero is called upon to save the land by defeating Mondain and destroying his Gem of Immortality. The story in Ultima is surprisingly ambitious considering its subject matter  -- let's just say it's not your standard medieval fantasy -- and considering it's the work of only two men, one of whom was a freshman in college. The story is not entirely fleshed out -- the game is rather short, after all -- but it's interesting and it slyly maneuvers around RPG tradition.

The revolutionary tile graphics in Ultima I allowed for huge worlds.

At the onset of Ultima I, players can create a custom character. They can choose race, class, and sex, and assign a name to each character. Ultima I also allows players to modify statistics such as strength, wisdom, and agility. It's very Dungeons & Dragons. During the game, each avatar earns experience points by defeating monsters. As with all RPGs, characters also have hit points. However, in Ultima I there is no current hit points/total hit points system. Rather there is a single number that rises and falls throughout the game. Players can increase their character's hit points by emerging alive from a dungeon or paying tribute to a castle lord. Food plays an important role in Ultima I as well. Even if a character has 5,0000 hit points, he will starve and die if he runs out of food.

One of the more revolutionary features in Ultima I was it's graphics engine, which might seem unbelievable when compared to something like the Unreal engine or Source. But in 1981, when the game first launched, Ultima was a technical marvel. The secret was tile graphics, a collection of pre-rendered tiles, each one 14x16 pixels. Each screen in Ultima was formed from 200 of these tiles, laid together in rows of 20 and columns of 10. Essentially each tile was a miniature picture of everything that appears in the game world. For example, several grassy-looking tiles would be laid side-by-side to create a meadow, or several watery-looking tiles laid together to form an ocean. It allowed Richard Garriott, who designed the game, to create a huge game world with many continents, each covering several screens.

The isometric first-person perspective of Ultima's dungeons.

This method, however, was only used for the world map screens. When a player descends into a dungeon, the perspective switches to an isometric, first-person point of view.

So, Ultima I has an exciting, unorthodox story, lots of customization options, and a huge game world to explore. What it doesn't have, however, is much advice for its players. Without some sort of guide or hint book, players might find themselves wandering the lands of Sosaria ad infinitum. It's easy to get lost and difficult to know what to do, and in which order to do it. Non-player characters offer a few vague hints, but much of the game is left to trial and error.

Still, Ultima is worth playing. It's a very important game, and recommended for anyone interested in the history of computer role playing games. Setting aside its historical significance, it's still a fun and different RPG with a lot to offer.