Runes II box cover
Runes of Virtue II title page


Runes of Virtue II

History:
When the unbelievable happened, the return of consoles and hand-held games in a time when many people already had a computer, everybody jumped on this trend and hoped to get its share. Origin has not been an exception. Apart from their conversions of Ultima 4-7 for the consoles they created two additional games with an Ultima background, Runes of Virtue I only for the GameBoy and Runes of Virtue II for GameBoy and the Super Nintendo Console.

The Black Knight is back and he wants to have some fun!
He captures the mayors of the eight cities in movie-like cutscenes.


Background:
Runes of Virtue is generally considered a non-canonical Ultima, it has a greatly reduced Britannia and some plot inconsistencies. It seems to play in the long time of the absence of the Avatar between Ultima 6 and 7 and introduces a new Foozle, the Black Knight. The reduced Britannia has only the four castles and the eight dungeons in the first game, the second game also has the eight cities. You can pick one of four companions as a replacement Avatar in this single-player action game. In part I the Black Knight has stolen the eight runes and you have to solve puzzles in the dungeons to get them back. In part II he captures the mayors of the cities in amusing cut-scenes and you will have to free them and finally defeat the Black Knight himself.

Unfortunately the SNES version has no character portraits in conversations while the GameBoy version has them.
The inventory screen.


Recommended Version:
Here you can choose between the original GameBoy and the Super Nintendo version. The SNES version naturally has much better graphics and music but there are no portraits of the NPCs in conversations.

The countryside near Lord British's castle.
Approaching a dungeon entrance.


Statistics:
  • Single-player game
  • No magic spells
  • Dungeons/Outdoors/Buildings 2D
  • On-Screen-mapping: Sometimes (Crystal balls)

A typical dungeon interior.
Moonglow, city of Magic. One of eight cities to explore.


Morale:
No morale. Runes of Virtue is a sliding puzzle game for the average GameBoy player. But it can be fun for a while.

Britannia