Um RPG bem mais experimental do que eu esperava. Leva o estilo único de Ultima, com seu foco na exploração e diálogos, ao extremo - ao ponto de quase não dar mais pra considerar um RPG. Considerando a quantidade de puzzles envolvendo gerenciamento de inventário e manipulação de objetos e como o combate e progressão de personagens são quase dispensáveis, dá até para ver The Savage Empire mais como um adventure com interface de RPG do que um game tradicional do gênero.
O mais interessante do game, entretanto, fica por conta da ambientação. Qualquer RPG que foge da dobradinha Medieval/Sci-Fi já tem minha imediata atenção, e Savage Empire constrói uma narrativa de mundo perdido pulp com maestria. Todos os sistemas do jogo são adaptados para servir à esta narrativa, da magia baseada em oferendas a ídolos à economia baseada na posse comum e escambo. O resultado, além de bem único, possui ótima consistência temática - uma qualidade às vezes subestimada.
O mais interessante do game, entretanto, fica por conta da ambientação. Qualquer RPG que foge da dobradinha Medieval/Sci-Fi já tem minha imediata atenção, e Savage Empire constrói uma narrativa de mundo perdido pulp com maestria. Todos os sistemas do jogo são adaptados para servir à esta narrativa, da magia baseada em oferendas a ídolos à economia baseada na posse comum e escambo. O resultado, além de bem único, possui ótima consistência temática - uma qualidade às vezes subestimada.
A lazy reskin of Ultima VI which suffers from the same plot issues I have with the mainline games.
Pretty dumb story, but I still had a lot of fun. I enjoyed the detailed crafting system; I liked being able to harvest raw materials to make most of the finished items in the game.
Released a few months after Ultima VI, The Savage Empire uses the same engine with a few updates to tell a more adventure and puzzle rather than combat and RPG focused pulp style story. The Avatar is transported along with two of his friends to a jungle and dinosaur filled environment with many different tribes that might trade, war with, or ignore one another. You begin working to unite the tribes against the violent ant like creatures that attack them all while trying to track down your friends, the woman you were having dreams about, and others from your world that have found themselves trapped in this world. The first of two Worlds of Ultima games that used the Ultima VI engine as somewhat of a filler game before future bigger projects released.
The visual presentation has mostly improved from Ultima VI in the way the engine handles, though some areas have less detail and variety likely due to the reduced budget and development time. Environments and enemies can look a bit more detailed, character portraits are better, when talking to people it brings up a new window that focuses on their portrait and dialogue rather than just having the text come up in the bottom right of the screen under a smaller and less focused portrait. Likely due to the smaller budget and faster production there are some areas where this falls behind, the character models can look less visual distinct and instead of each person being their own model almost every village will have the unique leader, often a unique shaman, maybe one or two other characters, and everyone else is just a repeated male or female villager with the same things to say and same look to them portrait wise and on their character models (sometimes the unique character's models don't look that different either). The look of the interface has been altered to be more in line with the theme. The music is good for a 1990 PC game being clear and having a variety of tracks for different areas and situations, though some are a bit minimalist and can be easy to not notice and the quick shift when nearing a hostile can make it sound like you suddenly entered a horror movie.
The tribes vaguely represent or are said to represent different cultures where an outfit style or the way they look can represent Aztecs, Native Americans, an African or Asian tribe, a tribe of a green lizard like race, Neanderthals, etc. This aspect was less offensive than I assumed it would be without what would typically be more stereotypical or imagined cultural aspects as what the tribes are doing or want aren't really related to anything real, more like System Lord's of the Stargate series where they just want to wear many of the men want to wear some depiction of old cultural clothing and the women want to wear as little as they could get away with. What a combination of the generic pulp idea, less budgets, and small romance plot with the only main female character does lead to is a lack of customization of the Avatar that would start to continue in later games in the series. No more nonbinary hobbits like in Ultima 3, you are a white human man and in this game barely have any control over your character build at all (not that you really need any) and little in the way of choices or ways to deal with other characters and quests. Your goal of uniting the tribe basically amounts to you going to every village (or some caves, etc) and talking to the unique looking characters by asking things like name, job, and about the highlighted words that come up through your first two options (nice feature is you only need to type the first four letters of words for it to recognize what you mean and to just hit enter with nothing typed to end the conversation). Nearly every tribe (one just seems to be nice enough to agree to unite just from you asking) has one or two tasks you need to preform before they agree to unite with the other tribes. These can include overthrowing a power mad Warren Spector who has taken over a tribe after being transported to the setting from your world, finding an item, finding a way to defeat a dinosaur that is endangering the tribe, restoring an idol, saving a leader's daughter from a gorilla, etc.
Your options for party members is somewhat limited if you are going for more story and interaction. Even though the interface looks like it supports 7 (or maybe 6.75) party members space wise you can, sort of, only have a party with four other people. Of those four you are going to want the guy you start with who is the only one who can cast magic from the game's very limited number of spells (only nine cast by using one of three totem types with one of three different ingredients, of which the healing spells tends to be the only one likely to see much use), your professor friend who can make more modern powerful weapons in his lab (that was also transported along with your group) and identify certain materials in the environment, and the reporter who was brought into the world with you who keeps a notebook detailing your objectives and what has been accomplished so far. Both your companions from the modern world also have more interactions with people or events. The final spot is likely to be a more open spot for a variety of characters that don't really do or say anything from what I can tell and are there more for combat and to carry stuff. I say the party is sort of limited to five because once you rescue your love interest she just joins the party and it doesn't check to see if your party is full, so if you have five people when you find her she joins as an additional member, near the end of the game the same thing can happen with a seventh party member. Most characters start at a fairly high level and with combat not being the main focus of the game you don't see level ups happen that often. When they do a dream is described where the character has to chase on of three animals with one increasing strength, one dexterity, and on intelligence. Intelligence apparently effects magic based on what people say but you only have one character who casts magic, the magic isn't really helpful combat wise, and they are a member starting at one of the higher levels so you will basically always be going with strength or dexterity depending on what weapon people are using.
The Ultima VI engine allows you to interact with the world in various ways. You can use your knife to skin creatures whose hides aren't too tough, an axe can cut down a tree to make a path, a bomb can move large boulders, ingredients like tar can be collected to craft bombs as well as finding ways to make gunpowder and to craft simple rifles, a fire extinguisher can be used to cool paths covered in lava, you can use ovens to bake tortillas, etc. Villagers have a place they sleep in towns and you can find areas that a tribe uses for things like food storage or cooking. There are some creatures that you can find fighting one another or that might be passive in your travels.
When it released, I can see this being a lot more interesting. Even the Ultima VI engine that is slow and a bit clunky has a lot of more forward thinking aspects to it with the options in interacting with objects in the world and mouse and keyboard supported eight direction movement. Going back now though, you aren't getting much plot from your interactions with most of the tribes, only two of your companions tend to interact with the narrative, the romance plot could be removed with nothing lost as it just kind of shows up at the opening and when locating her. The more adventure focus tends to have you doing a lot of walking in an engine where you get a lot of ways to interact with things for the time but that doesn't feel as meant for walking back and forth all over a world with half the screen being the party and inventory menu. It was odd that magic wasn't used for puzzles or exploration, even a part of the game where you needed to shine light on something did not accept light from the light spell but from taking a picture with the reporter's camera. The reduced focus on combat tends to make level ups, stats, and magic fairly pointless as even difficult fights can just come down to whether or not you have guns and gunpoweder or not and also reduces the use of your equipment and inventory as you won't be finding magical items, helmets, rings, amulets, boots, etc to equip.
Screenshots: https://x.com/Legolas_Katarn/status/1799944027078574145
The visual presentation has mostly improved from Ultima VI in the way the engine handles, though some areas have less detail and variety likely due to the reduced budget and development time. Environments and enemies can look a bit more detailed, character portraits are better, when talking to people it brings up a new window that focuses on their portrait and dialogue rather than just having the text come up in the bottom right of the screen under a smaller and less focused portrait. Likely due to the smaller budget and faster production there are some areas where this falls behind, the character models can look less visual distinct and instead of each person being their own model almost every village will have the unique leader, often a unique shaman, maybe one or two other characters, and everyone else is just a repeated male or female villager with the same things to say and same look to them portrait wise and on their character models (sometimes the unique character's models don't look that different either). The look of the interface has been altered to be more in line with the theme. The music is good for a 1990 PC game being clear and having a variety of tracks for different areas and situations, though some are a bit minimalist and can be easy to not notice and the quick shift when nearing a hostile can make it sound like you suddenly entered a horror movie.
The tribes vaguely represent or are said to represent different cultures where an outfit style or the way they look can represent Aztecs, Native Americans, an African or Asian tribe, a tribe of a green lizard like race, Neanderthals, etc. This aspect was less offensive than I assumed it would be without what would typically be more stereotypical or imagined cultural aspects as what the tribes are doing or want aren't really related to anything real, more like System Lord's of the Stargate series where they just want to wear many of the men want to wear some depiction of old cultural clothing and the women want to wear as little as they could get away with. What a combination of the generic pulp idea, less budgets, and small romance plot with the only main female character does lead to is a lack of customization of the Avatar that would start to continue in later games in the series. No more nonbinary hobbits like in Ultima 3, you are a white human man and in this game barely have any control over your character build at all (not that you really need any) and little in the way of choices or ways to deal with other characters and quests. Your goal of uniting the tribe basically amounts to you going to every village (or some caves, etc) and talking to the unique looking characters by asking things like name, job, and about the highlighted words that come up through your first two options (nice feature is you only need to type the first four letters of words for it to recognize what you mean and to just hit enter with nothing typed to end the conversation). Nearly every tribe (one just seems to be nice enough to agree to unite just from you asking) has one or two tasks you need to preform before they agree to unite with the other tribes. These can include overthrowing a power mad Warren Spector who has taken over a tribe after being transported to the setting from your world, finding an item, finding a way to defeat a dinosaur that is endangering the tribe, restoring an idol, saving a leader's daughter from a gorilla, etc.
Your options for party members is somewhat limited if you are going for more story and interaction. Even though the interface looks like it supports 7 (or maybe 6.75) party members space wise you can, sort of, only have a party with four other people. Of those four you are going to want the guy you start with who is the only one who can cast magic from the game's very limited number of spells (only nine cast by using one of three totem types with one of three different ingredients, of which the healing spells tends to be the only one likely to see much use), your professor friend who can make more modern powerful weapons in his lab (that was also transported along with your group) and identify certain materials in the environment, and the reporter who was brought into the world with you who keeps a notebook detailing your objectives and what has been accomplished so far. Both your companions from the modern world also have more interactions with people or events. The final spot is likely to be a more open spot for a variety of characters that don't really do or say anything from what I can tell and are there more for combat and to carry stuff. I say the party is sort of limited to five because once you rescue your love interest she just joins the party and it doesn't check to see if your party is full, so if you have five people when you find her she joins as an additional member, near the end of the game the same thing can happen with a seventh party member. Most characters start at a fairly high level and with combat not being the main focus of the game you don't see level ups happen that often. When they do a dream is described where the character has to chase on of three animals with one increasing strength, one dexterity, and on intelligence. Intelligence apparently effects magic based on what people say but you only have one character who casts magic, the magic isn't really helpful combat wise, and they are a member starting at one of the higher levels so you will basically always be going with strength or dexterity depending on what weapon people are using.
The Ultima VI engine allows you to interact with the world in various ways. You can use your knife to skin creatures whose hides aren't too tough, an axe can cut down a tree to make a path, a bomb can move large boulders, ingredients like tar can be collected to craft bombs as well as finding ways to make gunpowder and to craft simple rifles, a fire extinguisher can be used to cool paths covered in lava, you can use ovens to bake tortillas, etc. Villagers have a place they sleep in towns and you can find areas that a tribe uses for things like food storage or cooking. There are some creatures that you can find fighting one another or that might be passive in your travels.
When it released, I can see this being a lot more interesting. Even the Ultima VI engine that is slow and a bit clunky has a lot of more forward thinking aspects to it with the options in interacting with objects in the world and mouse and keyboard supported eight direction movement. Going back now though, you aren't getting much plot from your interactions with most of the tribes, only two of your companions tend to interact with the narrative, the romance plot could be removed with nothing lost as it just kind of shows up at the opening and when locating her. The more adventure focus tends to have you doing a lot of walking in an engine where you get a lot of ways to interact with things for the time but that doesn't feel as meant for walking back and forth all over a world with half the screen being the party and inventory menu. It was odd that magic wasn't used for puzzles or exploration, even a part of the game where you needed to shine light on something did not accept light from the light spell but from taking a picture with the reporter's camera. The reduced focus on combat tends to make level ups, stats, and magic fairly pointless as even difficult fights can just come down to whether or not you have guns and gunpoweder or not and also reduces the use of your equipment and inventory as you won't be finding magical items, helmets, rings, amulets, boots, etc to equip.
Screenshots: https://x.com/Legolas_Katarn/status/1799944027078574145