PLOT -

Upon arriving back in Britannia you are immediately attacked by a group of horned creatures, you only escape at the last minute due to the help of your old companions. You arrive a Lord British's castle where he tells you that these "Gargoyles" have invaded Britannia, that they have killed many citizens and have taken over all the Shrines of the Virtues.

Can you discover why the Gargoyles are attacking and stop them before all of Britannia is destroyed?

FEATURES -

The False Prophet is played with the screen effectively split into 2, on the right side is a text box that lists all the conversations and descriptions in the game and on the left is the graphics of the game world and a list of actions, although the game can be played by mouse by clicking on these buttons, its almost impossible to play like this and you soon revert back to the keyboard. The game world is far more detailed than in previous Ultima's and you can see the design evolving towards the Superb Ultima 7.

There are many different people to talk to in the game, but unlike with later episodes there is no list of topics and you have to ask people about different things, its a good idea but it quickly becomes annoying trying to find out who knows about what and being presented with dumb answers like "ask Dupre about that" rather than just saying "I don't know".

The gameplay is based on "turns", whenever you move 1 square or perform a task, everyone else will then move and so on. This while basic means that you can sit and think about your next move, even when in combat, which gives the game a more strategic feel than in later real time games. One benefit off this is that the game will still play fine even on very fast computers, although you may miss the animations!

GAMEPLAY -

There are many different people to talk to in the game, but unlike with later episodes there is no list of topics and you have to ask people about different things, its a good idea but it quickly becomes annoying trying to find out who knows about what and being presented with dumb answers like "ask Dupre about that" rather than just saying "I don't know".

Fighting is a fairly simple affair, you simply activate combat, select your weapon and move the curse over the person you want to hit, when you activate combat your companions will attack too. The addition of magic as always makes combat more interesting.

VERDICT -

The False Prophet is the first of the truly modern Ultima games and is still great fun to play to, the graphics obviously aren't very good but you can get it to run quite happily in Windows unlike some of the earlier Ultima's!.

WHERE CAN I GET IT? -

I don't know of anywhere to download this from, if you know let me know.

This one works fine in Windows (haven't tried it in XP yet), though you might want to slow it down using a program called Moslo.

Or you can try searching on Ebay to buy it secondhand.

You can download the Commodore 64 version here, you will also need to CCS64 emulator to play it on your PC, you can get that here.

MISC -

There is a project to remake Ultima 6 , you can find out more here.

The original review for the C64 version can be found in the website devoted to that classic C64 mag, Zzap. You can read it here. Its pages 54 and 56 and got a score of 98%!

CHEATS -

I know of 2 cheats for The False Prophet -

To open locked doors, first cast the spell "Magical Lock", then cast "Magical Unlock", the door will the be unlocked.

To bring up the cheat menu talk to Iolo and say "spam" 3 times then say "humbug". Although I can't get this to work myself, it seems to be quite common on the Internet