Monsters provide gold to spend in towns on equipment, items, and oracle and pub services.

The goal of the game is again based primarily around diving into dungeons, this time to gather ‘marks’ which bestow new abilities on your party members. There are more races and classes than before, which still for the most part follow the template of Dungeons & Dragons races and classes with humans, dwarves, hobbits (bobbits), fuzzies (think Ewok) and elves electing to become thieves, priests, magic-users and fighters or various combinations thereof (such as the alchemist, a sorcery-casting class with some thief ability). The world of Exodus sets the trend that all later Ultimas would follow, to a stronger high fantasy feel, doing away with the science fiction elements of aliens, rocketships, phasers, time travel and power armor from previous games, with one notable exception.Įxodus begins with the creation of characters with which to form a party. Victory in battle leaves a chest behind, usually trapped, a gameplay mechanic that later saw wide use in early Japanese console RPGs. Combat is no longer an affair of just pressing (A)ttack and a direction to aim, but now takes place on a separate battlefield screen where you control each member of your party individually against bands of monsters in turn-based style. Exodus features music composed by Ultima I co-creator Ken Arnold, becoming the first game in the series with a soundtrack. Many of the graphics tiles are now animated, with lapping water, waving flags, and posing monsters and NPCs, giving the game world a far more lively look. The game opens with an impressive animated title screen, playing a movie of how the game works as a party of adventurers wanders and gets into trouble this animated demo would remain in the series until Ultima VI, when it was replaced with cutscenes. Genre-savvy Lord British hand-picks four heroic adventurers to go out and find a way to stop the monster Exodus, and along the way they’ll dive into dungeons, find exotic arms and armor, discover the sunken city of Ambrosia, meet with an immortal time lord, and ultimately challenge the beast to a final showdown in his castle on the Isle of Fire.Įxodus is the first game in the series to include adventuring parties, among many, many other additions and improvements which redeem the awkward Revenge of the Enchantress. The half-demon, half-machine progeny of Mondain and Minax is stronger than either of his parents and has arrived in full force to bring doom to the lands that slew them. A volcano has erupted out of the sea, and monsters once again roam the land, directed by an unseen malign intelligence whose name is discovered written in blood on a ghost ship: EXODUS. Lord British has united Sosaria under his banner after the cataclysmic upheaval of Minax’ defeat, and is busy sending expeditions out to map the world when the darkness looms up stronger than ever before.

It?s a much more developed and more mature game, where the story for the first time is integral to the actual gameplay. As he usually did, Richard Garriott threw out all the old code for Revenge of the Enchantress and started fresh with the programming for Ultima III he claims often in interviews that the point of these older games was to ‘teach Richard how to program’ and the focused concept, tight design and graphical and story advances make Exodus a joy to play even decades later. The foul offspring of Mondain and Minax comes forth to revenge itself upon the world, and your band of adventurers has answered the call to stop him!Įxodus is really the first game in the series to have aged well, and could be considered the first “modern” CRPG. The sky darkens, an island of fire rises from the depths, and on the deck of a derelict ship a name is found written in blood: EXODUS. Such were the only words to escape the lips of the shattered man, found wandering outside Lord British’s castle.

From the depths of Hell, he comes for vengeance!

Ultima iii exodus theme