Lord of Ultima: First Impressions of a Google Chrome Browser Game

Recently, I downloaded the Chrome game "Lord of Ultima," from Electronic Arts and Phenomic.

I have to say that I play a lot of flash games online, and I decided to give Lord of Ultima a try. I remember the 1980's versions of Ultima, and I suppose that they're banking on people recognizing the franchise. This is what initially interested me in trying out the game -- Ultima was a medieval-style role-playing game with swords and sorcery.

I enjoy farming, build-up games, such as Heroes of Gaia and other strategy MMORPG/MMORTS games. I have a short attention span, however.

I get tired of the repetitive "wait-for-bar-to-fill-up" moments. I hate having to upgrade and upgrade. If the game does not offer some tangible fun moments, the time wasted waiting for the game to upgrade is not worthwhile.

Lord of Ultima provides a city-interface with buildings and resources. For example, if you build a Woodcutter's hut, you gain the resource Wood, which can be used to build further buildings.

There's a tutorial guide directing you to perform these actions. Personally, I'd rather jump in and figure things out. I'd rather build immediately, create my army and attack. Some sort of action must take place to keep my interest.

I clicked through the first half-hour of tutorial and built the following buildings: Woodcutters hut, Farm, Barracks, and Iron Mine. I created some units: City Guards, Beserkers.

After a half-hour, I had not found anything to attack, or any treasures to loot. There were "Artifacts" offered. Artifacts are how Ultima Online pays to play. The Artifacts provide instant resources and cost real money. Using Artifacts can boost your castle without having to wait for the time. I believe they cost a few dollars per pack at the time of this writing.

There is a world-view button also wherein you can find dungeons to attack and epic bosses to battle. The GUI is fairly simple. You can easily transfer between the City and Region, Building-Upgrade panels. The programming is smooth, as you would expect from a Google Chrome browser-game. The load time is fast, the graphics are fairly decent, and there's a decent amount of depth to the game.

One thing that I missed was scarcity. Great games find a way to balance scarce items with common ones. For example, let's examine Heroes of Gaia's purple heroes.

Lord of Ultima is like Heroes of Gaia; without the heroes. The whole fun of Heroes of Gaia was the scarcity of the purple heroes. Purple heroes were a once in a month treat if you had maximized the chanced to gain one. Once you had a purple hero, you could spend weeks cultivating that character to maximize stats, battle with other players, and strut your stuff on the arena page.

If you sent your purple hero on a dangerous mission (such as the final levels of Babel Tower), you had to risk the troops that you spent time creating. All those resources went towards building troops to attack your enemies. There is a real interest in keeping your forces maintained.

Furthermore, the rare items within Heroes are genuinely difficult to find. You have to spend time looking for those items to have a chance to compete. With similar Heroes, and similar stats, the magic items really push the game to competition.

I'll write a further review as more events unfold in my playing of Lord of Ultima. You can download and install Lord of Ultima here http://www.lordofultima.com/en/, or on the main Chrome ap page under "games."