Ultima II: The Revenge of the Enchantress

Ultima II: The Revenge of the Enchantress, developed for the Apple II computer and published by Sierra Online on August 24, 1982, is the second computer role-playing game in the Ultima series. It was also the only official Ultima game published by Sierra On-Line. Controversy with Sierra over royalties for the MS-DOS port of this game led the series creator Richard Garriott to start his own company, Origin Systems.

The gameplay is very similar to the previous game in the series, Ultima. The scope of the game is bigger, in that there are several more places to explore, even though some of them (like most of the solar system planets and the dungeons and towers) are optional and not really needed to complete the game.

In the game, the player has to travel to several different time periods of Earth, using time doors. The periods are the Time of Legends (a mythological period), Pangea (about 300 to 250 million years ago), B.C. (1420, "before the dawn of civilization"), A.D. (1990), and the Aftermath (after 2111). The player also has to travel to space, where he can visit all the planets in the solar system.

Story
From the game's story, we learn that the lover of the dark wizard Mondain, the enchantress Minax, is threatening Earth through disturbances in the space-time continuum. The player must guide a hero through time and the solar system in order to defeat her evil plot.

The young Minax survived her mentor's and lover's death at the hands of the Stranger (in Ultima I) and went into hiding. Several years later, Minax got older and very powerful, more than Mondain once was. Minax wanted to avenge the death of her lover, so she used the time doors created by Mondain's defeat to travel to the Time of Legends, a place located at the origin of times. From there, she sent her evil minions to all the different time eras; she also used her dark powers to disturb the fabric of time and influence men, who ultimately destroyed each other in the far future, nearly wiping out humanity.

Lord British called for a hero to crush Minax's evil plans. The Stranger once again answered British's call. The game begins with the Stranger starting his quest to defeat Minax. Minax's castle, named Shadowguard, can only be reached through time doors (similar to moongates in the later games); even then an enchanted ring is required to pass through the force fields inside. The war against Minax's vile legions is long and hard, but eventually the hero hunts down the sorceress to the Time of Legends, pursues her as she teleports throughout the castle, and destroys her with the quicksword Enilno.

Versions and patches
All the english versions of Ultima 2 are affected by a roll-over bug: whenever an attribute reaches its maximum (either 99 or 9999), it resets down to 0. A fan-made patch for the DOS version fixes this and every other bug, as well as it greatly improves graphics. It can be downloaded here: exodus.voyd.net.

The Japanese-only version included in Ultima Trilogy (FM Towns) has two important changes to gameplay: (1) visiting dungeons in now necessary, because one item is no more dropped by defeated enemies; (2) understanding of Time Gates becomes more prominent, because traveling by ship is limited by the availability of another item. A fan-made patch for the Apple II version adds these changes to the game.

The following table is based on the review by Teran.