Ultima V Lazarus

Isewein

I have recently begun playing an old favourite of mine again, and it continues to baffle me how relatively unknown it remains. Ultima V Lazarus is a fanmade project (yet so much more than a mod!) which ports the classic Ultima V to the Dungeon Siege engine, but the result is more than the sum of its parts. It is, without doubt, one of the most lovingly designed, well-written, mature and polished RPGs ever created - and it's available for under £5 (the current price of a copy of the Dungeon Siege engine on Steam). Its production value in terms of art, music and quest design intricacy exceed that of most professional games. After sitting through the most beautiful intro sequence again just now, I could not help myself but think I should try and advertise this gem to the community here. For a far more eloquent (and less superlative-ridden) review than mine have a look here: https://web.archive.org/web/20080119073435/http://www.rpgdot.com/index.php?hsaction=10053&ID=1224

If you are looking for a soothing game with great writing to play through with a good cup of tea now that the nights are growing longer, it is absolutely worth purchasing Dungeon Siege just to play this game. You don't need to be a fan of Ultima to enjoy it (but you will likely turn yourself into one soon enough...). And if you do, remember to leave a note to the marvellous team of creators who have put so many hours into this project at http://www.u5lazarus.com/Downloads.html.

jjstraka34

Dungeon Siege is one game I've always had a hell of a time getting to run, but if the mod fixes that out of the box that makes it a non-issue. I always thought Lazarus was either in development in perpetuity or abandoned.

megamike15

if anything the fan remakes of ultima 5 and 6 are the only real reason i would consider buying dungeon sige.

Isewein

It runs fine for me. I was hesitant whether it would on the steam edition (I used to play it on CD), but this guide here worked out well for me: https://dor-lomin.com/2016/04/30/running-the-ultima-6-project-on-a-steam-edition-of-dungeon-siege/

Oh and yeah, never bothered to even fire up the original Dungeon Siege once. Only bought it for the remakes, twice.

ThacoBell

megamike15 wrote: »

if anything the fan remakes of ultima 5 and 6 are the only real reason i would consider buying dungeon sige.

There's a fan remake of 6? Maybe I should look into this.

Isewein

Absolutely! It was finished a few years ago and runs as stable as Lazarus (on the same engine). In some sense it is even more ambitious than the former, but personally I found it to be not quite as engrossing (the dungeons were far too large for my liking). If you want to try it, make sure to install the beta bugfix (http://www.projectbritannia.com/forum/index.php?topic=2339.0) and some essential QoL mods (a helpful mod installer is available here : http://www.projectbritannia.com/forum/index.php?topic=2315.0 ). I also found the online map viewer (http://u6project.yanksandbrits.net/u6p_map_viewer/#) essential to navigating the dungeons - the whole maze-like experience just doesn't translate well to the DS engine.