Ultima IX: Ascension
- January 01, 2000 00:00 AM PST
When is a role-playing game not a role-playing game, at once beautiful and ugly and new and old--all at the same time? When it's Ultima IX: Ascension.
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When it's Ultima IX: Ascension. The final episode in Origin's long-running RPG series is at once exciting and dull, delightful and disappointing. In the end, the negatives win out.
You're the Avatar, hero of heroes, brought back to Britannia for one last round against the forces of evil. As in Ultimas VII and VIII, the villain is the Guardian, an extra-dimensional force that has been seeking physical entry into the world. In Ascension, he's finally succeeded, and has corrupted most of the people. You must restore the Shrines of the Virtues--no easy task, since the keys to their freedom, the eight runes, have been spirited away within deadly dungeons.
Game balance is good, but Ascension is far more linear than previous Ultimas, as your acquaintances force you to deal with each dungeon in a relatively specific order. Nor has Origin compensated by genuine dialog branching. The Avatar is limited to simply agreeing or disagreeing constantly to the acceptance of quests.
The moral ambiguity which gave a real-world feeling to some previous Ultimas is missing, too. You're not out to convince others that their ideas are wrong, as in Ultima VIIa. Ascension retreats into fairytale solutions. You use purifying magic near monster-filled dungeons, and suddenly everybody's vices vanish.
Brittania looks very different from the way it did in previous Ultimas. Ultima I through V used top-down tiles, and Ultima VI through VIII moved to angled-down views of a painted, animated landscape. Ultima IX keeps the isometric perspective but switches to a floating camera, whose angle and distance are automatically determined by the objects (NPCs, walls, terrain) in an area. Add both primary and secondary lighting effects (particularly noticeable with the Light spell), and you have the makings of a very impressive world.
The distinctive weather patterns, moving skies and highly interactive outdoor and indoor environments show Ascension is at its visual best. It's hard to forget the ruined geodesic domes of New Magincia or the fanciful beauty of Moonglow. Even dungeons like Destard and Hythloth each have their own unique look, structure, contents and feel. (A good soundtrack helps, although some numbers, like Rule Brittania, are done to death.)
However, the people of Britannia show the game at its worst. Gestures are mechanical and faces are masks lacking any expressive mobility. Objects are equally problematic. For example, I picked up what appeared to be a shard of brown glass after killing a monster, only to have it turn into a ham in my inventory.
Ascension also comes with steep system requirements attached to its lavish 3D world. I have a Pentium II/450 with 128 MB RAM, a high-end 3D card and a 1.5 GB swapfile, yet the game stutters if my Avatar turns quickly or runs through an above-ground area. (Typically, the dungeons are less resource-intensive.) Combat is severely compromised when the frame rate drops under such conditions. It's a little like trying to fight demons with a disco ball turning quickly overhead.
But, in any case, Ascension's combat system isn't well integrated with its 3D environment. I've approached a rat from behind and repeatedly slashed at it only to hear the "thunk" sound which comes from beating up on the terrain. (The rat had improperly loaded into the area.) It's sometimes impossible to tell if a ranged attack has succeeded, with no evidence of damage even after you've shot six arrows at your target. Wait 10 minutes, and nothing happens. But if you then approach your antagonist, blood appears out of nowhere, and your opponent keels over dead.
Ascension's underwater swimming system (mandatory at several points in the game) is just broken. My Avatar frequently stops swimming for no discernable reason and simply hangs in the water. Water-breathing potions work for about a two seconds each. Origin reports a fix is in the works--for this and many other bugs. Some (like the inability to restore underwater save games) crash the game, while others are merely annoying (like the stacked crates and barrels that hang in midair after you destroy their underpinnings). This bug-ridden Ultima doesn't provide the kind of memories I wanted to carry away from the last of the series.
So is Ascension an RPG? I say it's an action/adventure. It has a Tomb Raider-ish perspective, a single adventurer, time-related puzzles (underwater swimming), linear progress and a single path dialog tree. Even its statistics (strength, dexterity and intelligence), the mainstay of RPGs, are designed so they uniformly max out by game's end no matter how you start.
If you like action/adventures, this one may be the best thing you've seen, provided your system is top-of-the-line, and you can wait patiently for all the fixes.
Otherwise, take a pass.
