Ultima VI: The False Prophet Review

Here is my review of Ultima VI: The False Prophet (1990) for MS-DOS computers! Thanks so much to everyone that provided research and helped me put this video together.
If you would like to play Ultima VI, you can find it here (#notsponsored, I wish tho ): www.gog.com/en...
If you want to see more make sure to like and subscribe!!!!

[@Will-xk4nm]

I played U6 for about a year straight when it was released. I didn't finish it until 2020. Fantastic game and one of my favorite Ultimas.

[@amphreded]

From the reviews I’ve seen, U6 was not ranked as highly as U7 but for me the world seems so much larger, and the way you type in dialogs feel more grand. The graphics are also much clearer than its successor.

[@MSDOSProject]

I much prefer Ultima 7, but Ultima 6 does do some of those things better I do agree

[@Jrdotan]

Not to mention 6 has better combat system and food actually matters

[@Inignot12]

Thanks algorithm for bringing this great video on my feed, subbed!

[@MSDOSProject]

Dang I'm glad the algorithm is putting out there and that you enjoyed it!

[@Will-xk4nm]

Great vid! Excellent review of the whole thing, from creation to completion. Really enjoyed it and definitely looking forward to the spin-off games between 6 and 7!

[@MSDOSProject]

Thank you! I hope to do those in the next few months (probably not till September because I'm getting married next month)

[@Will-xk4nm]

@@MSDOSProject Congrats! Focus on getting past the wedding first for sure.

[@Adino1]

My personal favorite of the series I still have all of the notes and maps I drew & wrote down for this game in the summer of 1991

[@MSDOSProject]

That's awesome. One of my favorite things about the Ultima games is the notes and maps and everything you put together. You feel like youre really discovering a world and mapping it out.

[@Adino1]

@@MSDOSProject Yeah, looking back at them I'm surprised a 10-11 year old me made such organized and detailed notes Good times

[@kght222]

my mom still has a stack of notebooks for u6-u7.5 , more hilarious is that she had plotted out a full map of the warp points (i don't thing that is the right term, it has been decades) for wing commander: privateer and had it pinned to the wall. she just finished playing through the entire dragon age series for more than the second time (inquisition for the second time, the others for like the 4th) and she is 73 years old.

[@Adino1]

@@kght222 That is cool

[@Runk3lsmcdougal]

Yassss thank you so much. Love the series and videos

[@MSDOSProject]

I appreciate the love!

[@moodydude6790]

Nice, Ill be rewatching the previous reviews before this one!

[@stevemanart]

Funnily enough, the cover of Ultima VI is the one that unravelled their trepidations against fantasy fiction. My parrents had enough critical thinking to see a heroic knight standing victorious above a demon while wearing a cross-like tabard and it finally clicked the inclusion of demons and dragons in these games were as the villains and you were playing as the good guys.

[@MSDOSProject]

That's awesome. I love that the actual game is a subversion of that expectation 🤣. Thanks for sharing the fun story!

[@stevemanart]

@@MSDOSProject oh yeh no, but I was i think 11 or 12 when i got this game if I was aware enough to "get" the game I would have never told them how it is a circumvention of the heroic knight trope.

[@tedpetch6180]

Worth the wait! I replayed this myself about 6 months ago. I originally played it on the C64 - a horrifying experience as every action seemed to require a pause and a disk access. How I did it without walkthroughs still amazes me!

[@MSDOSProject]

Dang I couldn't imagine playing through the c64 version for a few minutes😅

[@toslinked]

i loved c64 version back in the day. I had all the time in the world to play it.

[@jmanclan]

Awesome video, I love the flow you have to the videos with the history of development and the indepth mechanics and story overviews. Looking forward to the next one, excited youre covering the spin offs as well!

[@MSDOSProject]

Thank you! I love getting to talk about all the aspects that go into the game, so I am glad you like that as well!!!

[@spicanagamer1062]

This game still remains one of my all time favourites. When I played Elder scrolls I would compare it to this. It was like escaping to another world when I played this.

[@firecrest3325]

good review thank you for bringing me back..

[@generallykaiden]

Congrats on finally getting this video out! I know what it's like having a project you're working on keep getting prolonged on and on and you can't even see the end in sight. I meant to get to this one sooner. but other things got in the way, and then I decided to watch every episode leading up this one before watching it. Love the amount of detail in your retrospective, talking about the game development, the plot, and a good deal of details about the pros and cons of the game itself. And especially listening to your earlier episode you do sound a lot more comfortable speaking into a mic and the general quality is improving keep it up! I missed out on this Ultima when it came out and kind of went from 5 to 7 part 2, and then didn't play Black Gate until after. It was kind of a novelty exploring the world of ultimas 4+5 in the much more detailed world of Ultima 7. Unfortunately, once you play Ultima 7, going back to Ultima 6 is SUPER rough. It sort of feels like playing a half baked proto version of 7, and the inventory system just killed it. I know this post is getting a bit long. But I also wanted to mention, if you weren't aware of it, there was a series of Ultima knock off games called Ultizurk. I can't remember if they used the same engine as Ultima 6, or if it was just copied to look like it.

[@MSDOSProject]

Thanks so much! The feedback means a ton!

[@patsk8872]

Who didn't have hard drives in 1990?? Even my old PC XT had a hard drive. Only 20MB but that was still quite a few floppies worth of storage. Loved this game, especially the music.

[@MSDOSProject]

I'm sure some didn't as they were still kind of expensive, but definitely become a much more common and required thing at that point. That's probably why they didn't run into that many issues with the save system as hard drive adoption was getting pretty high.

[@andrewhofmann5453]

Neat little factoid, the phone number that flashed up on the U6 intro screen was actually the Origin Customer Support line.

[@MSDOSProject]

That is a fun detail! Thanks for pointing it out!!

[@andrewhofmann5453]

@@MSDOSProject I worked at Origin from 1991 to 1995 so lots of fun stories.

[@mattshuey1]

This was a great review. You deserve way more subscribers, you put the real effort in!

[@MSDOSProject]

Thank you! I've been trying my best to make these all quality products, and will definitely be redoing some that aren't up to that standard.

[@LittleMushroomGuy]

It's up boys

[@blockmasterscott]

To this day I cannot believe that I actually beat this game back then with no walk throughs. Between U6 and Daggerfall, I was a glutton for punishment. 🤣🤣🤣

[@JustMe99999]

I remember killing Lord British and having "a Lord British" in my inventory haha

[@MSDOSProject]

Exactly where he belongs haha. I neglected to mention how to kill him in this game but it's the age old tradition!

[@Eli-kt3td]

You should get your act together and make these faster :) Just kidding, but looking forward to your take on my favorite, Ultima 7.. in maybe a couple of years :P great video, I'll check out your savage empires video now then i'll wait patiently ;)

[@MSDOSProject]

Don't worry I'm trying to work faster, and Ultima 7 is my fav 🤣. I've really gotten sucked into underworld so that should be sometime in may!

[@Eli-kt3td]

@@MSDOSProject Underworld 1 and 2 are also fantastic games :) glad you're enjoying it. I watched the latest video on savage worlds and saw you mention your marriage and school so totally understandable for you to get busy with other priorities, congratulations on both. Have a good one and happy Easter!

[@tranceightseven]

When I bought this on 1990, the 3.5 floppies were randomly corrupted. I had to buy then return the game 3 times to piece together a working game. It was worth the trouble…I quite enjoyed the game.

[@MSDOSProject]

Dang that's crazy. Glad you got it to work though!

[@bratticuss]

Remember sneaking off from school to go get this game

[@MSDOSProject]

@@bratticuss that's awesome haha

[@accountname8819]

I think the zoomed in perspective in comparison to modern 2d rpgs creates more immersion

[@MSDOSProject]

It's definitely a good artistic choice beyond the fact that they needed to do it because of the low screen resolution.

[@StiffAftermath]

Dude, 8-bit Actraiser soundtrack? Awesome! And Brainlord 😅

[@MSDOSProject]

If I remember correctly I found a midi file of "Birth of the People" from act raiser and played it on my Roland MT-32 for the soundtrack! I'll have to look at the project file again to confirm

[@StiffAftermath]

@@MSDOSProject ah, man! So good!

[@Will-xk4nm]

The Skara Brae mystery is complete! You just need to wait until Ultima 7 to understand what happened....

[@MSDOSProject]

Well that's true. But in Ultima 6 you can actually pretty much figure out what happened but not do anything about it.

[@Will-xk4nm]

@@MSDOSProject Really? I will need to go back and revisit U6 Skara Brae then. In my last play through I guess I only talked to people who mentioned the Gargoyle angle concerning Quenton's death. So many conversations are easily missed in U6!

[@ingridndrewmar2504]

@@Will-xk4nm Yeah, there is a conversation tree with Michael and another with Quenton's ghost with Seance that reveal what happened. The U6 Nitpicker patch addresses this, as does the U6 Project fan remake, but it's not solvable out of the box.

[@MSDOSProject]

@@ingridndrewmar2504 yep, you can find the person who did it and accuse him of it immpregtya ire but he basically tells you to screw off. Can't bring him to justice or anything

[@Will-xk4nm]

@@ingridndrewmar2504 Cool! I will need to try that patch for sure.

[@ianfrazier9896]

Nicely done! Looking forward to U7!

[@MSDOSProject]

Thank you! I really am as well, as that's kinda the game that got me into this whole thing. That's gonna be a great review to write for sure

[@ianfrazier9896]

@@MSDOSProject Nice. U7 was my intro to the series as well. Good luck!

[@TheFuckvalidnames]

good vid

[@MSDOSProject]

Thanks! It means a lot!

[@kght222]

you don't go back to earth until after ultima underworld.

[@mp-kq3vc]

I'm sure I am in the minority here (and maybe the only one), but Ultima VI to me was ruined by the highlighted keywords in red. A big part of IV and V for me had been discovering the story by testing different words in NPC dialog rather than having them automatically revealed to me. The keywords in red killed the immersion for me. What are these characters doing, using air quotes or something? If thou dost need "healing" and such. Yeah, I know not everything was triggered by red words but it still felt a bit hand-fed. I know people love this Ultima, and peace to all!

[@analogmoz]

I believe that option could be turned off by turning off "help."

[@Ale-ft4re]

i finished thiss game last year, is impressive that this game came in 1990, i dont know about gaming history so i dont know if there was a rpg that came close to this. i recomend this game as a entrie point to the series since in terms of acessibility is basicaly a snes game

[@MSDOSProject]

I agree! It's a great entry point to the series, especially since you have a few solid titles after and then from there you can back to the earlier games!

[@Tybron]

32:38 Um, actually the points DO matter. There are a few hard karma checks in the game, all plot-related, like meditating at the gargoyle Shrine of Singularity and submitting to Lord Draxinusom. If your Karma is too low, you cannot continue in the game. I learned this the hard way on an early playthrough where I kept ganking Trinsic guards with the cannons to get easy money and equipment. When I meditated at the Shrine of Singularity later, it kept saying I was "unworthy" because of my low karma. So much like in U5 you can put the game in an unwinnable state with low enough Karma. There's probably ways to raise it without resorting to Iolo's Spam cheat menu but if so I hadn't found them back then.

[@MSDOSProject]

Dang that makes a lot of sense. I guess I was really nervous about locking the game at an unwinnable state so I just hardly stole this playthrough lol.

[@Tybron]

@@MSDOSProject I know there's some side missions that'll raise it though, and optional stuff. Like actually turning in the Storm Cloak in the pirate hoard to Homer instead of keeping it, I think that spikes your karma by over 10 points. But yeah, 13-year-old me in 1994 didn't know about the Iolo cheat menu or that karma was a thing since I'd murdered and stolen to my heart's content in U7 with no real consequences, and didn't know U6 was different. I managed to lock myself out of winning U4 on NES by ripping off the blind reagent merchant for 99 of each reagent, and now that I know THAT game's karma system is on a -100 to 100 point scale PER VIRTUE I realize that game was nigh unrecoverable. There's no real redemption arc if you tank a virtue to -100 unless you feel like spending hours and hours of real-time repetitively doing the right thing to recover it. I think meditating at a shrine jumps it a little, but you're limited on how often that's effective too.

[@Darhan62]

This was the last Ultima that I finished on my own (i.e., without a hint book). I never completed Ultima VII, though I played it for untold hours and probably got a substantial part of the way to completion. I completed Ultima VIII with the help of the hint book. I never finished Ultima IX. I finished Ultimas I through V on my own. The first one I played was Ultima II, and I went back and played Ultima I when it was re-released in a box with a Denis Loubet cover. With Ultima VI it was kind of a disappointment, in some sense, to abandon the tile-based graphics of previous Ultimas before they had reached their full potential graphically and for gameplay, although the tile-based art was getting pretty sophisticated by Ultima V. Ultima VI was exciting, however, in that it introduced a new sort of graphics -- this colorful third person isometric perspective.

[@mercster]

Hah, my orb didn't look like that, it was completely black. Thanks for the video.

[@mercster]

Should be noted my version was for Amiga.

[@rainerausdemspring3584]

This was my very first RPG - on a CD together with Wing Commander at a low price. I solved it without any hint books or walkthroughs, which was extremely hard. Today's RPGs look excellent, but are MUCH easier.

[@MSDOSProject]

Yeah I do enjoy the difficulty of old school RPGs, at least from the standpoint of you have to figure it out yourself. Ive really enjoyed playing through the System Shock Remake because it's basically the same as the game was in 1994, reautoign you to pay attention and figure out what to do without a quest marker or journal

[@blockmasterscott]

I did too my first time, beat it with no hints. Took forever and three days lol.

[@accountname8819]

you should record the game from the real crt, would look amazing! Best wishes

[@kght222]

23:02 you can cast wake on lord british, he will wake up and any time you talk to him heal is a legit request.

[@MSDOSProject]

Oh darn I didn't know you could do that. Thanks for the tip!

[@Odexian]

Good stuff!

[@MSDOSProject]

Thank you!

[@JoseHernandez-ql8vw]

I play Ultima 6 every day and try my best to embody the spirit of the Avatar.

[@rickl9462]

What I'm taking from this video because I never played U4 5 or 6. Is that Lord British and the council pulled the codex from the void causing this strife among the gorgoyles while you werent even on Britannia. Yet you get blamed for it. In my younger days of playing I use to think Lord British was the good guy. But now looking back on it as I've gotten older. I'm starting to think that he's really not the best leader. He holds a Princess hostage in U1. U4 he forces his made up ideology on the land causing people to leave in a mass exodus from their homes to Serpent Isle. He steals the codex causing the blood war between Britannia and the gargoyles. He ignores the suffering of his people and allows a group of cult fanatics brainwash people. Down with Beast British I say!

[@MSDOSProject]

Yeah the harder you look at it the more you think "maybe the people of Serpent Isle had a point" 🤣

[@dbradford259]

That game was awesome I played it for years and never understood how to beat it. After I got a walkthrough via a bbs I figured out you could beat it super fast. I really loved 6 and 7. So sad the last game was complete trash at launch. :(

[@KabutoZX]

I have never played the Ultima series, but lately I've been interested in getting into it. Is this particular game a good starting point? If not, which one then?

[@MSDOSProject]

6 is a solid starting point, but if you are looking to get into them there are two I think that are better. Ultima 4 or Ultima 7. Both are great games with vastly different styles. I covered 4 earlier and will get to 7 hopefully soon. 6 is good but the story will make more sense if starting with 4. But if that one is too antiquaited for a first go then 7 is definitely the move.

[@KabutoZX]

@@MSDOSProject Thanks!

[@pilotstiles]

It’s a shame what happened to the later Ultima’s especially X. I blame EA for the downfall of Origin.

[@MSDOSProject]

Yeah EA certainly didn't help. I always wonder if they went for an IPO instead of a buyout if they would still be around.

[@pilotstiles]

@@MSDOSProject who to say. Maybe Richard just wanted out to live his life and go to space. I’ve played his new game Shroud of the Avatar, even bought a house. Was still in early access and haven’t tried it out in awhile.

[@tohitAC0]

Is there a way to play this game without the animation going 100mph?

[@MSDOSProject]

Yeah if you are playing in DOSBox you can slow the cycles down, or if you are on a real machine and it's running way too fast for your liking you can use a slowdown software.

[@WilliamScavengerFish]

The debug mode.

[@Aggrofool]

U6 supported other displays too (e.g. CGA and EGA) 🙂 not just VGA. Also it could run on floppies, though the nonstop disk swapping is giga annoying.

[@MSDOSProject]

Ah yes I did notice that in the settings, just forgot to mention it. Just was not able that it was the first Ultima game to let you take advantage of a VGA display. And fisk swapping does mega suck. It must be better at least than the c64 version in that respect because that has no hard drive. Why they bothered to create that port boggles my mind

[@brizwaldjonson]

I got a kick out of Japanese Lord British.

[@MSDOSProject]

Yeah I loved that haha

[@1jamarks]

So Strange. I've known a certain debugging mechanism for this Engine. Say to Iolo, "Bah Bah Bah Humbug". Why is this not out there? It's been around for years. You can build your own house from this 'cheat'.

[@MSDOSProject]

It's "SPAM SPAM SPAM HUMBUG" , and I mention it in the video

[@retroarchives8379]

The game actually supported EGA graphics, so you didn't really have ro rely on a cutting edge PC to play it (you didn't even need a hard drive), but it certainly felt far more confortable on a VGA 286 PC.

[@MSDOSProject]

Yeah I realized that after I had wirtten and recorded the line, the book I had read had bad info. My bad for not going back and editing that

[@retroarchives8379]

@@MSDOSProject No problem. I'm also surprised you didn't get why the game felt a little small: the fact that the whole world is now on one scale (versus three different scales in Ultima 3-5: one for the world map, one for the city maps, one for the fights). So although the world IS bigger, you always feel like you can't see further than ten feets away because you never have acces to a larger world map scale.

[@SorrettuKansa]

Not only VGA and EGA, but CGA, Tandy and Hercules also.

[@iidoyila_live_]

LORDO BRITISHU

[@BlazinInferno]

How come no one ever play this game on snes that how i found the game in the 1st place

[@MSDOSProject]

It's a less accessible and easy to use version of the game. It's still very good but nowadays it's just easier to play the PC version.

[@BlazinInferno]

@@MSDOSProject can I ask how it's easier on pc?

[@DefaultDerrick]

Please work on the audio mixing or get a better microphone otherwise I really enjoyed the video

[@MSDOSProject]

Yeah I've been struggling to get it right. Sorry it wasn't up to par, I will try to have better audio for the next video!

[@leodf1]

00:49 'Garriott brothers'? That looks like Chris Roberts. You're talking too fast. Relax and don't 'read'. Speak. Like to a friend. You can do one line at a time and cut them all together. Otherwise great job, keep it up....

[@MSDOSProject]

Yeah I didn't grab a good picture there. And I'm still working on slowing down when talking in my videos. Thanks for the feedback

[@jayroi1814]

My favorite Ultima. I can say Ultima 7 is objectively better in some ways but I like Ultima 6 the most. Graphically ad storywise it's the best to me, and I first played the SNES version when I was 7. The DOS version is the only one I finished though.

[@MSDOSProject]

It's a great choice. Personally 7 is my favorite but 6 was really, really good.