In the Victorian age many celebrities that range from Marie Curie to Lenin have ended stranded on Mars. Now a second expedition, with a few more celebrities along the Avatar and professor Spector, is sent in a rescue mission.

Sadly those characters tend to have little to do, and sometimes even to say. The game lacks the dept of other Ultima games, probably because it is short. It looks as if it was pushed to be released quickly, even more because some important points of the game would be recycled in the second part of Ultima 7.

Your main objective will be getting back to earth, but for that it will be necessary to reactivate the left-overs of the martian civilization. Greenhouses, underground machinery, strange towers and the water channels that cover the world will take an important role in the rediscovery of the long dead culture.

On this quest one of your main worries, as Mars haves less oxygen than earth, will be the oxium mineral, which helps breathing when chewed and also is used as money, but with a bit of exploration you will find plenty of them. As the enemies aren’t a true worry, the fights tend to be easy, becoming a bit more dangerous in the underground where the worms live, you won’t have much pressure and be free to discover the place, and see that there are no secondary missions and few places to find, even thought they have interesting things.

The tools, as in the previous one, have an important role. Tents for enduring the cold nights, spyglasses to see far away, sextants that are vital for finding places, tinder boxes or matches, needed to lit lamps… there is plenty of them, some with a limited special use, such as the wrench; some that can be very useful, like the hidden wormsbane; and some which look very promising look but are barely used, that is what happens to the berries.

Those fruits are the equivalent to a magic system. One kind for telekinesis, another for psychometry, and a third for spatial awareness. It will be luck if you find more than one place where they may be useful.

The dreamworld, a place with the more interesting adventures in the game, and also its shortness that avoid the plot from falling apart and noticing its fails (it looks unfinished and made quickly, for example the martians wrote and speak in English, even thought in the previous linear Ultima, the sixth, the gargoyles use a completely different language) makes the game nice and fun. Try it if you have played the previous ones.


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