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Ultima II: The Revenge of the Enchantress, released on August 24, 1982, for the Apple II, is the second role-playing video game in the Ultima series, and the second installment in Ultima's 'Age of Darkness' trilogy. It was also the only official Ultima game published by Sierra On-Line. Conflict with Sierra over royalties for the IBM port of this game led the series creator Richard Garriott to start his own company, Origin Systems.
The plot of Ultima II revolves around the evil enchantress Minax, taking over the world and exacting revenge on the player for the player's defeat of Mondain in Ultima. The player travels through time to acquire the means to defeat Minax and restore the world to peace. Ultima II has a larger game world than Ultima I, and hosts advances in graphics and in gameplay.
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Ultima II: The Revenge of the Enchantress (DOS) |
The gameplay is very similar to the previous game in the series, Ultima I: The First Age of Darkness. 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 not required 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. (1423, 'before the dawn of civilization'), A.D. (1990), and the Aftermath (after 2112). The player also has to travel to space, where all the planets in the Solar System can be visited.
From the game's story, the player learns 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 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: The First Age of Darkness) and went into hiding. Several years later, Minax got older and very powerful, more so 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 Shadow Guard, can only be reached through time doors (similar to moongates in the later games); even then an enchanted ring is required to pass unhurt through the force fields inside. 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.
Even though Ultima I is set on the fictional land of Sosaria, Ultima II borrowed characters and the story of Ultima I, but relocated them to Earth. Garriott explained from a narrative perspective, Earth needed to be used as a basis for comparison due to the time travel element. Later games in the Ultima series ret-conned this, and assumed that Ultima II actually happened on Sosaria, not Earth, to create a continuity among the games.
More details about this game can be found on
Wikipedia.org.
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This version of Ultima II: The Revenge of the Enchantress was designed for personal computers with operating system MS-DOS (Microsoft Disk Operating System),
which was operating system developed by Microsoft in 1981. It was the most widely-used operating system in the first half of the 1990s. MS-DOS was supplied
with most of the IBM computers that purchased a license from Microsoft. After 1995, it was pushed out by a graphically more advanced system - Windows and
its development was ceased in 2000. At the
time of its greatest fame, several thousand games designed specifically for computers with this system were created. Today, its development is no longer continue
and for emulation the free DOSBox emulator is most often used. More information about MS-DOS operating system can be found
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5 different online emulators are available for Ultima II: The Revenge of the Enchantress. These emulators differ not only in the technology they use to emulate old games, but also in support of various game controllers, multiplayer mode, mobile phone touchscreen, emulation speed, absence or presence of embedded ads and in many other parameters. For
maximum gaming enjoyment, it's important to choose the right emulator, because on each PC and in different Internet browsers, the individual emulators behave differently. The basic
features of each emulator available for this game Ultima II: The Revenge of the Enchantress are summarized in the following table:
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