Our own Reed Hubbard has completed his review of Samurai Empire - the latest expansion pack for Ultima Online. A preview of the article is below:
Ultima began when a programmer named Richard Garriott decided to combine his computer expertise with his love of role playing games. He wrote a game called Akalabeth in which the dark Lord Mondain did battle with a champion named Lord British. For his next project he brought Mondain and Lord British together again and the Ultima series was born. In the original Ultima game, there were four major lands. While two of those lands became part of ongoing Ultima lore, becoming Britannia and Serpent Isle, the other two were lost. One of those was known as the Lands of the Feudal Lords. Now, almost 25 years later, the Feudal Lords are making a comeback, at least indirectly, in Ultima Online: Samurai Empire.
For those who remember the beta test and/or the initial launch of Ultima Online, it's hard to believe that the game is now in its eighth year. It's even more astounding to those who remember playing the original Ultima back in the very early 1980s on an Apple II with 48 kilobytes (yes, kilobytes with a K) of RAM. The franchise has come a long way from the days of Ultima I, which included everything from wizards and dungeons to time machines and spaceships, to the very popular MMORPG that has been captivating over a quarter million subscribers for the better part of a decade. As such, it's interesting that for its newest expansion the Ultima team has reached all the way back to the original game for a bit of inspiration.
To read the full review, click here.
