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Recently, I livestreamed an (almost) complete playthrough of Richard "Lord British" Garriott's 1982 RPG, Ultima II: The Revenge of the Enchantress. These videos were originally simulcast on my Twitch and YouTube channels. 

Ultima II was typical of many 1980s sequels, similar to Mario 2, Zelda 2, Final Fantasy 2, Dragon Quest 2, or Castlevania 2. Even more so, since Ultima II predates all of these other games. Nobody at that stage of the game industry knew what a sequel should look like.

Ultima II is basically a whole-plot reference to a 1981 Terry Gilliam movie, Time Bandits, which Garriott had seen in theaters. It was set on Earth rather than Sosaria, as Minax's "revenge" for your killing of her mentor and lover Mondain in the original Ultima was to pollute the time stream on your native Earth, culminating in a nuclear war between the U.S., Russia, and China in 2111 AD. The real-world explanation was that Garriott didn't feel the time travel theme would be as impactful in a fantasy setting, though that is exactly what Square would do a decade later with Chrono Trigger. You travel through five time periods using "time doors," the predecessor to moongates in later games, killing monsters and finding the artifacts needed to battle Minax, including the Quicksword Enilno (a reference. to On-Line Systems, later Sierra On-Line, which published U2). There is space travel, a nod to Garriott's astronaut father Owen, but space travel is downplayed compared to the first game, which had a full-on remake of Star Raiders embedded in it. This time, you need to travel to Planet X to get a blessing from Father Antos.

Ultima II is considered the black sheep of the series. It's buggy (this version I'm using is heavily patched). There are first-person dungeons, but they are completely unnecessary, as the object of the dungeons, spaceship fuel, can easily be found as random drops from overworld creatures, and magic classes are therefore essentially useless as magic can only be used in dungeons. I did a dungeon anyway, and there is a timestamp in the second video where you can watch my dungeon run. And it's really grindy.  You need copious amounts of gold to raise your stats and buy the equipment you need to defeat Minax. In fact, I did a lot of grinding off-camera as I felt that the videos were already getting too long.

Nevertheless, I am rather fond of Ultima II. It had a lot of interesting ideas that one man with his Apple II did his best to bring to life, though the end results were obviously never going to be as refined as Chrono Trigger. The real-world fantasy RPG theme would later show up in games like Dragon Quest III and the Ys series. It was ambitious. Garriott would correctly recognize what worked and what didn't, and expand the series in the direction it would eventually go with the excellent Ultima III: Exodus. And for that, this game deserves some recognition, which I have tried to give. Or, if you care to look at it in another way, I played it so you don't have to.

As always, thanks for watching, and like and subscribe!