Uploaded March 2026 | Updated September 2026, 2 weeks ago
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Ultima V: Warriors of Destiny upgraded version of the game adds:
- Original Music Score (Apple II / Commodore 128)
- Music during Intro and Finale (SoundBlaster for this gameplay)
- Amiga music during Character Creation
Ultima V: Warriors of Destiny (from Wikipedia):
Ultima V: Warriors of Destiny is the fifth entry in the role-playing video game series Ultima released in March 1988. It is the second in the "Age of Enlightenment" trilogy. The game's story takes a darker turn from its predecessor Ultima IV. Britannia's king Lord British is missing, replaced by a tyrant named Lord Blackthorn. The player must navigate a totalitarian world bent on enforcing its virtues through draconian means.
Ultima V sports numerous advances from Ultima IV. The game world is larger, with more towns, further detailed dungeons, and an expansive Underworld to explore. Dialog with NPCs hosts more choices to make during the conversation. World interactivity is further increased with new options to search, manipulate, and explore the player's surroundings.
Ultima V was followed by Ultima VI: The False Prophet in 1990.
Plot
After having mastered the eight Virtues, attaining Avatarhood, and retrieving the Codex of Ultimate Wisdom in the previous game, the Avatar is summoned back to Britannia by his old comrades Iolo and Shamino using a magic coin, which was included as a trinket in the game's box. Upon arrival he is greeted by Shamino, but they immediately come under attack from the three powerful beings known as the Shadowlords...
Runic alphabet
Ultima V used a modified form of the Elder Futhark runic alphabet for some game text, adding some letters to make a complete one-to-one correspondence with the English alphabet (plus a few runes to represent some common two-letter combinations). While all the earlier Ultima games since Ultima II had used runes on accompanying material such as maps and manuals and Ultima IV had shown single runes on the screen in specific situations, Ultima V was the first part of the series to incorporate multi-letter runic texts into the actual on-screen display.
Development
Warriors of Destiny was the last Ultima developed on the Apple II; the limits of that system (excluding the 16-bit Apple IIGS) were increasingly becoming a hindrance to further technological advance, and thus all later games were developed on PC systems. This was also the last time in which Ultima creator Richard Garriott did a major share of the actual coding; in the later parts he acted as a game designer only. In his approach to Lord Blackthorn and his involvement in the overarching narrative, Garriott wanted to create a more insidious villain that wasn't just passively waiting for the heroes to arrive.
The use of telescopes in the game was inspired by Garriott's experience as an amateur astronomer; Garriott programmed the game to accurately depict planetary orbits.
Ultima V was also ported to the NES by Origin and, like the previous two games in the series, published through FCI; it was released as Ultima: Warriors of Destiny in 1993. Each of the NES games had significant differences from the originals; this NES version was, however, a less faithful rendition of the source material than its predecessors had been.
The Commodore 64 port of Ultima V came on five 1541 disks (around 1.5MB total) and was criticized for the excessive amount of disk access and swapping required, although like Ultima IV, the game can utilize two disk drives if present.
All editions contained: the game media; a cloth map; a metal coin with the symbol of the Codex-as described in the game's introduction; The Book of Lore; Lord British's Odyssey; a quick reference card; a player reference card (version specific); and a registration post card.
Reception
By 1990, the game had sold over 100,000 copies in the United States.
Computer Gaming World stated that "the game system and technology are strides ahead" of Ultima IV's. The magazine's Scorpia described Ultima V as "well worth the wait", citing improved graphics and storyline. Minor criticisms were directed at flaws in the documentation and combat system. In 1993 she called the game "a worthy follow-up ... not to be missed", although criticizing the Underworld as "a disappointment, being vast but essentially empty". Compute! called V "a tour de force in the realm of computer role-playing ... but it doesn't match the elegance of IV". The game was reviewed in 1988 in Dragon number 137 by Hartley, Patricia, and Kirk Lesser in "The Role of Computers" column. The reviewers gave the game 5 out of 5 stars.
Garriott claimed in 1994 that V was the high watermark of the Ultima series in terms of storytelling. In 1990 the game received the eighth-highest number of votes in a survey of Computer Gaming World readers' "All-Time Favorites". The game was ranked the 18th best game of all time by Amiga Power in 1991.
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#ultima #crpg #dosgames #rpg
No Commentary
Ultima V: Warriors of Destiny upgraded version of the game adds:
- Original Music Score (Apple II / Commodore 128)
- Music during Intro and Finale (SoundBlaster for this gameplay)
- Amiga music during Character Creation
Ultima V: Warriors of Destiny (from Wikipedia):
Ultima V: Warriors of Destiny is the fifth entry in the role-playing video game series Ultima released in March 1988. It is the second in the "Age of Enlightenment" trilogy. The game's story takes a darker turn from its predecessor Ultima IV. Britannia's king Lord British is missing, replaced by a tyrant named Lord Blackthorn. The player must navigate a totalitarian world bent on enforcing its virtues through draconian means.
Ultima V sports numerous advances from Ultima IV. The game world is larger, with more towns, further detailed dungeons, and an expansive Underworld to explore. Dialog with NPCs hosts more choices to make during the conversation. World interactivity is further increased with new options to search, manipulate, and explore the player's surroundings.
Ultima V was followed by Ultima VI: The False Prophet in 1990.
Plot
After having mastered the eight Virtues, attaining Avatarhood, and retrieving the Codex of Ultimate Wisdom in the previous game, the Avatar is summoned back to Britannia by his old comrades Iolo and Shamino using a magic coin, which was included as a trinket in the game's box. Upon arrival he is greeted by Shamino, but they immediately come under attack from the three powerful beings known as the Shadowlords...
Runic alphabet
Ultima V used a modified form of the Elder Futhark runic alphabet for some game text, adding some letters to make a complete one-to-one correspondence with the English alphabet (plus a few runes to represent some common two-letter combinations). While all the earlier Ultima games since Ultima II had used runes on accompanying material such as maps and manuals and Ultima IV had shown single runes on the screen in specific situations, Ultima V was the first part of the series to incorporate multi-letter runic texts into the actual on-screen display.
Development
Warriors of Destiny was the last Ultima developed on the Apple II; the limits of that system (excluding the 16-bit Apple IIGS) were increasingly becoming a hindrance to further technological advance, and thus all later games were developed on PC systems. This was also the last time in which Ultima creator Richard Garriott did a major share of the actual coding; in the later parts he acted as a game designer only. In his approach to Lord Blackthorn and his involvement in the overarching narrative, Garriott wanted to create a more insidious villain that wasn't just passively waiting for the heroes to arrive.
The use of telescopes in the game was inspired by Garriott's experience as an amateur astronomer; Garriott programmed the game to accurately depict planetary orbits.
Ultima V was also ported to the NES by Origin and, like the previous two games in the series, published through FCI; it was released as Ultima: Warriors of Destiny in 1993. Each of the NES games had significant differences from the originals; this NES version was, however, a less faithful rendition of the source material than its predecessors had been.
The Commodore 64 port of Ultima V came on five 1541 disks (around 1.5MB total) and was criticized for the excessive amount of disk access and swapping required, although like Ultima IV, the game can utilize two disk drives if present.
All editions contained: the game media; a cloth map; a metal coin with the symbol of the Codex-as described in the game's introduction; The Book of Lore; Lord British's Odyssey; a quick reference card; a player reference card (version specific); and a registration post card.
Reception
By 1990, the game had sold over 100,000 copies in the United States.
Computer Gaming World stated that "the game system and technology are strides ahead" of Ultima IV's. The magazine's Scorpia described Ultima V as "well worth the wait", citing improved graphics and storyline. Minor criticisms were directed at flaws in the documentation and combat system. In 1993 she called the game "a worthy follow-up ... not to be missed", although criticizing the Underworld as "a disappointment, being vast but essentially empty". Compute! called V "a tour de force in the realm of computer role-playing ... but it doesn't match the elegance of IV". The game was reviewed in 1988 in Dragon number 137 by Hartley, Patricia, and Kirk Lesser in "The Role of Computers" column. The reviewers gave the game 5 out of 5 stars.
Garriott claimed in 1994 that V was the high watermark of the Ultima series in terms of storytelling. In 1990 the game received the eighth-highest number of votes in a survey of Computer Gaming World readers' "All-Time Favorites". The game was ranked the 18th best game of all time by Amiga Power in 1991.
