Worlds of Ultima: The Savage Empire

• Platform: IBM PC Compatible
• Release Date: 1990
• Genre: Role-Playing
• Style: Third-Person 2D RPG

Game Description

Worlds of Ultima: The Savage Empire is a continuation of the long and varied life of the Avatar, the creation of Richard Garriott and the rest of the designers at Origin Systems. In this game, the Avatar teleports to an even stranger world than the realm of Britannia, a place he visits on a fairly regular basis. After a scientific experiment by one of his acquaintances goes wrong, they both find themselves in a strange and foreign land, full of prehistoric creatures and landscapes, but also populated by Neanderthal-like humans and various mythical creatures.

The Avatar's primary goal in this new land, aside from discovering what caused his teleportation to begin with, is to find a way back. Along the way, he has to overcome obstacles like warring native tribes, raids from insect-like creatures, a nearly immortal Tyrannosaurus Rex and, possibly most difficult of all, a lovely, strong-willed native woman. As the game progresses and the Avatar accumulates more followers in his quest, the story continues to unfold but the mystery of his arrival in the world of Eodon remains elusive, even while more pieces of the puzzle are revealed.

Worlds of Ultima: The Savage Empire's main gameplay screen is divided into a few sections. The bottom of the screen has an icon bar representing the various actions in the game like "use," "talk" and "move." The right side of the screen has a character information display, in addition to a general text and conversation region on the bottom half. The rest of the screen is devoted to the main gameplay window and utilizes a top-down, slightly tilted perspective on the world.

As with many CRPGs, the game is a mix of combat, character interaction, inventory management and constant game saving to prevent having to redo all your accomplishments due to an untimely death. Combat is not the game's main focus, however, as several of the game's quests require thought over action and avoiding combat is occasionally even in your best interests.

The game sports 256 color VGA graphics as well as support for Adlib-compatible MIDI music. The songs, composed by prolific musician The Fatman, play continuously throughout the game, ideally surrounding the player with the proper atmosphere of a dense jungle, an abandoned temple or a catastrophic showdown with a Tyrannosaurus Rex.

The game boasts hundreds of NPCs to interact with via its keyboard parser, each responding to sometimes fifty or more key words or phrases. However, if conversation fails, you can expect to hack, shoot and blast your way through all manner of creatures with a mix of ancient and modern weapons including obsidian swords, bamboo flintlock rifles and makeshift bombs.

Persevere long enough in your quest and you finally come face to face with the one man who can clear up the entire mystery behind your purpose in the world of Eodon -- the one man who can finally answer all of your questions -- but, will he? Join the Avatar in his quest for escape from the Worlds of Ultima: The Savage Empire!

Review: Overall

Origin Systems is standing tall amongst its CRPG competitors after having just released Ultima VI: The False Prophet. The elegant mix of action and thought involved in their games has made them both critical and financial successes. Capitalizing on this winning formula, Origin has released a spin-off series entitled the Worlds of Ultima. With Worlds of Ultima: The Savage Empire, Origin, quite logically, is expecting another huge hit.

The game depicts a quite novel CRPG atmosphere (prehistoric-meets-modern era -- think Land of the Lost), complete with the strong graphics and play control of the Ultima VI: The False Prophet engine. After firing the game up, a quite pleasant and informative opening animation leads you through the background of the story -- how the Avatar came to be sent to this alternate reality seemingly through the experiments of his scientist friend.

The action begins with the main character waking up in a hut in the middle of a prehistoric jungle, the memory of the laboratory and subsequent explosion driving him to find answers. This proves to be a solid method of throwing you directly into the action. The beginning parts of the game deal with the Avatar's attempts to discern as much about his surroundings as possible, trying to figure out exactly what happened and finding a way home. Of course, the need to stay alive is also prominent, though "death" in this game merely plops you back in the same hut in which you first awoke.

The game has an engrossing story from the very beginning and the graphics are no slouch either. Utilizing the dazzling 256-color array of VGA, Worlds of Ultima: The Savage Empire provides plenty of lush jungle scenery, an abundance of colorful and interesting native creatures and people, and exquisitely drawn portraits of all the game's NPCs during conversation. The graphics, in fact, are occasionally even superior to Ultima VI: The False Prophet. All of the music in the game is written by prolific game-soundtrack musician The Fatman. The sound effects are also fairly good considering the limitations of the PC speaker.

The game, however, is not without its problems. First, it's simply too hard. Unlike previous Ultima games where your sword is your best friend, Worlds of Ultima: The Savage Empire requires use of your musket at times to dispatch some of the difficult creatures you encounter. The musket has limited ammunition, but to the game's credit, you can create more (although it's a challenging prospect).

In addition, the Tyrannosaurus Rex featured so prominently on the game's cover is actually immortal for all intents and purposes and requires a special quest of sorts to finally dispatch. Any game with a creature roaming its world that can kill you almost instantly is bound to generate some negative word-of-mouth from frustrated players.

If you persevere through the initial difficulty of the game, you'll be amply rewarded with an abundance of mystifying plot elements, amusingly anachronistic characters and situations, engine enhancements and, if you last long enough, a well done ending sequence. Also, for Ultima fans, the requisite appearance of Shamino, Dupre and Iolo, just as in any Ultima game (though their names have been appropriately changed to reflect the environment), is a welcome feature.

Overall, Origin's quality control is sufficient. Most bugs are noticeable only to gamers specifically looking for them and the game runs quite smoothly. Essentially, Worlds of Ultima: The Savage Empire is quite solid despite its tendency to be a bit too difficult at times and certainly will form a solid foundation for the Avatar's adventures away from the typical realm of Britannia. In the end, Worlds of Ultima: The Savage Empire remains a testament to the game construction abilities of the Origin team and is certainly well worth a look.

Review: Enjoyment

Just as with other Ultima games released previously, this game provides abundant enjoyment with its interesting mix of character interaction, combat and world exploration.

Review: Graphics

The game uses a modified version of the Ultima VI: The False Prophet engine and is capable of quite impressive 256 color artwork; Origin graphic artists have always been top notch. The lush colors of the jungle are represented quite nicely based on current technology.

Review: Sound

The sound effects are well done PC speaker fare but the music, over an AdLib card, is reasonably appropriate for the jungle setting and attributes well to the overall atmosphere.

Review: Replay Value

{*Ultima} games have a long-standing tradition of worlds chock full of places and items that are easily missed on a first play through the game as well as secret areas that require diligence to locate. Thus, playing through the game a second time is quite enjoyable.

Review: Documentation

A thorough manual complete with a map of the World of Eodon.

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