Ultima VII Part II- Serpent Isle

History: A short time after the smash hit Ultima 7 was released, Origin presented a sequel to this game. Since it uses the same engine as Ultima 7 and Lord British felt bound to his own promise that no two Ultimas would ever share the same engine, it was decided to call it Part II of the game. Technically there are only minor changes, the inventory screen looks better and the NPCs in the game have now different names when clicked. But the hunt for the evil sect leader Batlin now leads the Avatar into a completely new world to explore. Serpent Isle is mostly plot-driven, with a linear and very detailed story. Unfortunately, Lord British already felt the pinch of the EA management which forced him to clip off almost the whole second half of the game. This leads to a scene where the entire population was killed for no apparent reason and to many logical inconsistencies in the second half of the game.

On the way to the Serpent Isle, a snapshot from the beautiful Intro.

The mystic Xenkan monks will help you in your quest.

Background: In pursuit of Batlin the Avatar is sent to the Serpent Isle. Unlike Pagan from Ultima 8, the Serpent Isle is one of the former continents from Ultima 1 and it has retained many links with Britannia. You will recognize many locations like castles and dungeons from the Lands of Danger and Despair in Ultima 1. Furthermore, refugees from Britannia after the Age of Exodus have re-created three cities from Old Sosaria here. You start the game badly prepared, right at the start a strange lightning teleports most of your equipment and party members away and part of the quest is to search the lands and get them back. Later you can deal with Batlin and the Imbalance storms which threaten to destroy the world. The Great Earth Serpent from Ultima 3 guides you on this quest and talks to you while the Guardian rarely speaks in this game. In fact, one of the plot-holes in the game is that you never learn what exactly the plans of the Guardian on Serpent Isle have been.

A goblin ambush in the forest.

Moonshade, a whole city full of egocentric magicians.

Recommended Version: Serpent Isle is a PC only game with the option of installing an Add-On scenario, called the Silver Seed. The PC versions of Ultima 7+8 use a crazy memory management system, thus they are hard to install under Windows. There are patches for Win9x as well as a complete remake of the Ultima 7 engine, called Exult. This engine runs smoothly under newer Windows versions and allows to install some fan-made mods and bugfixes, too.

Great Captain Voldin - a typical hardliner!

The paperdolls in the inventory screen look much better now.

Statistics:

Party with 1 created character and up to 7 NPCs.
68 different magic spells
Introduction of spell scrolls
Dungeons/Outdoors/Buildings 2D
On-Screen-mapping: Yes (No in dungeons)

Conversing with the natives in the northern ice wastes.

Crossing a bridge in a fiery dungeon.

Morale: Serpent Isle leads the player into a world which has been devastated by a civil war and tries to explain the reasons for it. The old inhabitants of the Isle believed in two forces, the forces of Order represented by Logic, Discipline and Ethicality and the forces of Chaos represented by Emotions, Tolerance and Enthusiasm. As long as there has been Balance between these two forces the Serpent Isle thrived. But when an incident shifted this balance, the Order fraction gained enough power to subdue the chaotic forces until the emotions erupted in a bloody civil war. In the virtual world of Ultima, this event which shifted the balance towards Order has been the intrusion of Exodus. But I believe after the 9.11. our real world is suffering from a similar disease. The security, control & order fraction is already dominating too much, spying at our daily life with cameras, giving out fines for bagatelle delicts like picking common wildflowers or driving without a safety belt, they even would like to reduce us to pure meatballs by storing DNA profiles of everyone. But even if restrained by pure force, Chaos has the unpleasant feature to be released in destructive waves, like volcanic eruptions if it accumulates enough. I am worried about the future. Very worried.

Serpent Isle