YMMV / Ultima V

• Awesome Music: Stones practically became one of the series' leitmotifs from this game on, but the game has quite a number of other memorable music tracks besides that one, such as the Ultima V Amiga theme, Greyson's Tale, and Dream of Lady Nan.
• Demonic Spiders: Guaranteed in a game of this difficulty:
  • Daemons. You'll need Lord British's crown to stand up to these guys, otherwise they'll summon more of their kind, of whom can possess your characters. Even if their powers are nullified, they can still fire projectiles at you, and are very powerful both in numbers and by themselves. Dragons, while stronger and capable of summoning daemons, are more so Bosses in Mook Clothing than this trope (and they drop valuable goods, unlike the daemons which give squat).
  • Mongbats, like daemons, are powerful and fight in large numbers. They thankfully don't have annoying magic spells like daemons, but are still overwhelming without using magic.
  • The worst of the bunch are the guards. They're quick and powerful fighters that band together just like mongbats, except they use ranged weapons, allowing them to stay in place and pummel you before your party can even move. The ones in Lord Blackthorn's castle don't even bother fighting you: they'll just swoop your party away and place it in the torture chamber, where one of your companions is guaranteed to be permanently killed off. The game makes it so you specifically have to avoid these enemies, rather than face them head-on as you would others.
• Game-Breaker:
  • The Magic Axe in this installment is by far the most efficient weapon in the game: it has the same range as the Magic Bow, but deals more damage, doesn't require ammunition, can also be used for melee combat, and can be carried in one hand. There are only three weapons that deal more damage, of which the Halberd is heavy and two-handed, the Mystic Sword only works in short range, and the Glass Sword only works once. Even better, you can find one for free in a tree stump in Jhelom. Walkthroughs swear by this weapon.
  • Lord British's Crown. While it's a necessity when going up against daemons and dragons ^note Both of whom can summon more daemons, of which can possess your characters., it renders every other magic-using enemy completely helpless.
  • The invisibility rings. The purpose of these is allow you to skip combat; since you're invisible all of the enemies will just walk off the battle field, allowing you to (x)it. However, the game does this by determining if all of the party members are invisible; if they are, all of the enemies are inflicted with the "fear" status effect, which will make them run away. The fear status effect works by reducing the hit points of the enemy so that they flee in mortal terror. Hence if everyone is wearing invisibility rings, every enemy can be killed in one hit; add to that the fact that the magic axe can hit anywhere on screen....
• Porting Disaster: While the previous two games got pretty good (if somewhat limited) NES adaptations, this game's NES incarnation is a barely-playable trainwreck. Even more shockingly it was developed by Origin themselves, and while it probably makes some sense given that they had never developed for the console before, you'd think they'd care about making a quality product.
• Sequel Difficulty Spike: The party members' health has been reduced to 30% of what they had in the previous game, while enemies don't seem to be any weaker. Ultima V is considered one of the hardest games in the series for a reason. However, the newly introduced day/night cycle does help things a bit - monsters aren't too likely to be encountered during the day, so it is now actually possible to travel from town to town without having to fight hundreds of mooks along the way. Also, if your party wipes, you now lose experience and even levels.
• Suspiciously Similar Song: The Amiga theme sounds like it copies the opening guitar riff from Metallica's "One", and then goes off in its own direction.
• That One Attack: Many of the game's strongest enemies are capable of either summoning daemons ad infinitum, possessing your party members, or - in the case of daemons themselves - both.

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