• Platform: Super NES
• Release Date: 1993
• Similar Games: Ultima: Exodus (Nintendo Entertainment System), Ultima VII: The Black Gate (IBM PC Compatible), Ultima: Warriors of Destiny (Nintendo Entertainment System)

Game Description

You, the avatar from the other Ultima adventures, see a gate appear from the world known as Britannia where you have gone on countless adventures. This can only mean one thing: Britannia is in trouble again. You step through the portal to see gargoyles looming over your body which is on some kind of slab. Suddenly, Iolo, Shamino, and Dupre, your friends from previous Britannian adventures come to your rescue at just the right moment, and your adventure begins.

In Ultima VI: The False Prophet, Lord British, the King of Britannia, tells you of a new peril that has befallen the land. Gargoyles have been attacking everywhere, and are currently present at all eight of the sacred Shrines of Virtue. You must fight off the gargoyles at the shrines, and find the runes that can seal them from further invasion from the gargoyles. However, things are not always as they seem, and you will be led on many adventures, and interaction with hundreds of people, and gargoyles.

To travel the vast world of Britannia, you will walk on foot, buy a skiff to travel rivers, acquire the deed to a ship which can bring you across oceans, and eventually contruct your own hot-air balloon that can carry you anywhere you want. You are also aided with a moon orb, a strange stone that can transport you instantly to almost any town or shrine. This game is full of puzzles and riddles in the form of dungeon exploration, and in actuality, the game is less combat-based than most role-playing games. In combat, players can equip various weapons and armor, and up to 48 different spells. Part of the challenge, of course, is finding a teacher for these spells, and the components to cast them. Actions are menu-based, when the avatar performs an action, several options such as "look", "talk", and "item" come up.

Another notable feature is the "Karma" system. Since the player is the avatar, an example of goodness, some actions such as stealing from houses and lying to characters will hurt the Karma score. Low Karma results in a loss of experience when a character dies, and the game cannot be finished if Karma is too low. The game will take most players around 20 hours to complete, but can take up to 40 or 50 if they care to find out all of the game's many secrets and puzzles. ~ David Borowski, All Game Guide

Review: Enjoyment

The game is a lot of fun, as long as you can look past the few flaws. Taking the time to find out the game's many optional quests and secrets may not carry great rewards as far as character development and items, but they are lots of fun. It is easy to get drawn into the world of Ultima VI after just a short time of playing. ~ David Borowski, All Game Guide

Review: Overall

Ultima VI: The False Prophet follows the storyline and similar style of other Ultima games, and definintely improves on its predecessors. The storyline starts off with a short sequence explaining how the character got to where he is, and is done nicely. Unfortunately, there are only two of this type of sequence in the game; one at start, and one at the end. The story contains a few interesting twists and details if one is willing to search around a bit.

Probably the most stunning thing about the game is the world in which it takes place. The size of the game is mind-blowing, and there is alot that even never has to be reached, but has its rewards for doing so. The world really gives you the feeling that the story is taking place in a true world, and not just a few small continents like in other roleplaying games. The designers also did a good job in keeping the map to scale. When the Avatar walks into a town, it is truly the size of a town, not like in games like Final Fantasy 2 where the player walks into a square with a town picture and the town opens up. Combat is done right on the same map also, which gives a good sense of scale between the characters, monsters, and surrounding. The world is detailed with good realism also, as morning turns to afternoon, and evening turns to night, you can see people go about their daily routines such as waking up at a certain time, working the fields, taking a lunch break or two, and finally going to sleep. All characters do this differently, so there are farmers that wake up early, and sometimes mages that sleep until noon. The time of day greatly affects the events of the game, since people do certain things at certain times, but it can also be an annoying factor when you have to wait around to figure out what time things will happen.

The Karma system works well also, as you will find yourself often debating on whether stealing that one energy wand from the store is worth the Karma loss. One annoyance to note, is that the game cannot be finished if Karma drops too low, so one has to be careful. Players may find themselves traveling the world to perform good deeds, just to get their Karma scores up higher if they did too much pillaging and theft early in the game.

The one thing that will seem different to players of other roleplaying games is the lack of emphasis on combat. True, there are situations such as gargoyle battles where combat is necessary, but there are no boss monsters, and no more than twenty or so different monsters to battle, compared to other similar games where there are over a hundred. There are only around a dozen types of armor and weapons, which may also seem a bit strange to fans of the genre.

Overall, the game is fun to play, once one overlooks those differences that set it apart from other roleplaying games. If you are the type of person that prefers realism and roleplaying to combat and level gaining, then this game is for you. ~ David Borowski, All Game Guide

Review: Graphics

This is not a graphically-orientated game if you are looking for detail, but as far as realism, it makes up for this. Everything is done to scale well and really gives the player a sense of being a part of a world and not just a few scattered towns like in other roleplaying games. ~ David Borowski, All Game Guide

Review: Sound

The music is nice, but can get very annoying quickly if a person spends alot of time in one place, such as a town. The music at the beginning game sequence is great, though, and its too bad that it is not ever heard again after that part of the game. The sound effects are not very interesting, and are too similar to each other. All too often, one may have to strain to figure out if they just heard a dragon's fireball, or just a crossbow bolt. ~ David Borowski, All Game Guide

Review: Replay Value

If you liked to play this game once, you will probably enjoy playing it again. Around half the world of Britannia never has to be traveled at all, and there is one optional side-quest involving pirate maps which is longer than the entire rest of the game combined. Since the game is very "open ended" story-wise, it allows an incredible amount of replay value, more than most roleplaying games. Simply exploring the world is reason enough to play this one through a few times. ~ David Borowski, All Game Guide

Review: Documentation

Don't expect the manual to do any work for you, it is very vague at times and does not even tell enough information to really be able to play the game. It is much easier to just play and learn things instead of reading the manual to learn them. Strangely enough, at the same time, it is an invaluable resource for the one thing it does well: it has the teleportation chart for the moon orb, and once you figure out how to actually use the moon orb (which the book doesn't explain well) then the chart will prove very valuable. ~ David Borowski, All Game Guide