An empire-builder with dungeons.

Unlike most FreeMMOs out there, Lords of Ultima is not made by a small third-party start-up, but by a large, (somewhat) respectable gaming company: Electronic Arts. Depending on your opinion, this is either a good thing (because they have a good team behind them), or a bad thing (it’ll set the bar too high). I tried to keep my opinions of Electronic Arts out of my assessment of this game, and I think I succeeded (at least for the most part).

The one cool thing about this game is the dungeons. The dungeons are city squares that hold certain types of units with goods to be plundered. This is a nice improvement over normal farming because there will always be goods as long as the dungeon is there. The downside of this is you will always be fighting some enemies, though, if you have a fairly sizable force, that won’t be an issue.

Another cool thing is the synergy bonuses of various buildings. Depending on what is near the building, you can get bonus on resource production, recruitment speed, or even storage space. This can double or even triple the power of a building just with correct placing, which adds a nice element of strategy.

The one bad thing about this game is the rapid increase of resources for each level of building. This means you either have to build a bunch of low-level buildings, or spend a long time waiting for a single upper-level building. Of course, the high-level buildings are the ones needed for ships, siege equipment, the better units, and to capture other towns.

Overall, the game is on the upper-end of the empire-builders I’ve played.

Rating: (4 stars)

URL: www.lordofultima.com