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This time around, you're working to defeat an enchantress who was a lover of Mondain, the wizard you defeated in the first game, as she spreads evil across worlds. The most notable new feature: a larger world to explore, including optional dungeons to complete and different planets to visit in the solar system. Ultima II: Revenge of the Enchantress hit shelves two years after Ultima I and is stylistically similar to its predecessor. A great game that stumbles at times, especially if you're not giddy-nostalgic for the series, but worth experiencing for the bragging rights alone. There's even an arcade-like first-person space shooter section! Most of the elements found at the core of the Ultima experience are rooted here, and the game attempts to translate traditional pen and paper elements, including character creation, spells, and the like, to the video game world as best as it can. Par for the course as far as role playing games are concerned, but then you end up locating a time machine and traveling back in time to defeat the wizard.
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It all begins with Ultima I: The First Age of Darkness where the Stranger (you) is summoned to Sosaria to defeat an evil wizard. The first clump of titles with a digital release is Ultima I, Ultima II, and Ultima III, representing the early stages of the series where the formula was established and ultimately transformed into the seed of the modern role playing genre. The Ultima series slowly perfected the formula and expanded it with each new release, providing a good story along with plenty of gameplay to digest. It's possible to wax on for hours about any single game, but for starters, just know they practically birthed the genre and contain elements most modern role playing games are build around. If you're unfamiliar with the Ultima games, what you need to know to get started is this: they are the RPG experience. Now, thanks to the nostalgia-hungry folks at GOG.com, the Ultima series is being made available as a series of digital downloads, packaging the games together in groups of three for all to enjoy, starting with Ultima 1+2+3! The titles have graced almost every gaming platform known to humans, from the Apple II to the NES, PlayStation, and modern computers. Ready for some very serious RPG adventuring? The Ultima series has been grabbing players and pulling them into complex worlds for over 30 years, creating games that may look primitive on the surface but have helped define what a role playing game is since the beginning.
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