After obtaining aid from the lords of the realm in Ultima I, your character travels back in time, locates the mad wizard Mondain, slays him, and ends his reign of terror. In Ultima II: Revenge of the Enchantress, Mondain’s protégé, Minax, who studied the mad wizard’s teachings and writings, returns to wreak vengeance on the person who slew her teacher and lover — you. And, instead of waiting for you to return to her native land of Sosaria, she wreaks havoc on your own Earth.
Throughout Ultima II: Revenge of the Enchantress, your quest is quite different in scope from its predecessor. Earth is turned into a half-modern, half-fantasy world by the forces of magic and, as a result, things are much stranger than one might expect. As explained in the introduction, your tasks in the game are to “Battle strange creatures across the face of the Earth, search for clues in careless words spoken at the local pub, traverse deep, dark, deadly dungeons and tall, terrifying towers…and conquer Time itself to battle Minax the Enchantress.”
| Minimum System Requirements | Recommended System Requirements | |
| CPU | Intel 1.8 GHz Processor | |
| RAM | 512MB RAM (1 GB recommended) | 1MB RAM |
| OS | Windows XP or Windows Vista | |
| Graphics Card | nVidia 3D graphics card compatible with DirectX 7 (compatible with DirectX 9 recommended) | |
| HDD Space | 2GB HDD |
Ultima 2 isn’t a great game. I know that. It probably isn’t even a good game. It is much maligned by fans of the series. But it was my first, and I love it, and I’ll try to defend it in a rational way. It is probably worth travelling back to 1982 to give it its due. Crank up some Asia and compare it to games of the day and it doesn’t look that bad. If you played it on the PC you might be confused by why it looks so much worse than its predecessor. Well, Ultima 1 got a face lift, but 2 and 3 did not. So you get four color CGA graphics. (Fan created patches not only fix the game breaking bugs of some releases, but also bump it up to 16 color CGA.) Every numbered Ultima game from 1 to 9 got a brand new engine, and 2 implemented cities you could walk around rather than view the whole town at once in a different scale. This opened up more exploration and secrets. I’ve heard fans complain about the setting. Back in the day you often had to rely on the manual to explain the story. The reason why the game takes place on Earth is explained, so at least the inclusion of a space shuttle is a little more logical than in the first game. Also, the time doors that predate the Moongates of future games are “borrowed” from the film Time Bandits, so there is even an explanation of why different technologies exist in different times. (As a Rush fan, I hope that the inclusion of Earth in 2112 was no accident.)
So that’s my rationalization of the complaints I most often hear. The actual game? I’d call it average for the time. There’s a bad guy you have to take out, and there’s a unique mechanic for the fight. I’m not sure I’d have ever figured out the game without reading some hints, but once you know it its all pretty straightforward. Increasing your stats is presented in an odd way. Collecting the gold you need for health, armor, and said stat increases is tedious and slow even with shortcuts. Getting required items as random drops off of thieves can make getting your first boat or plane really slow. But being an elementary school kid in the 80’s, taking turns with friends, the game had a kind of magic. So my heart gives it an 8 though my brain knows it shouldn’t be. The true greatness of the series comes later but 2 is another admirable building block on the way.