Ultima™ 8 Gold Edition

This was the first Ultima I ever played and the only one I've completed, as such I have a fondness for Ultima 8. It shoves the Avatar into a situation where he can't rely on anyone; he is stranded on an oppressive, alien world and must get to know the people and their customs in order to get home to Britannia. What I think that this game does really well is atmopshere: it's dark and gritty, with death and fear seemingly everywhere, it truely gives a sense of fighting against the odds. Hell, one of the first things you see is a man being decapitated for treason. You'd better believe that stayed with me as a kid. Unfortunately there are many areas where the game falls flat. Firstly, it is a massive departure from anything the Ultima series had done before, mostly due to the vastly changed setting. There is no character customisation, no party members, no familiar characters at all and the virtues are nowhere to be found. If you grew up playing every iteration of Ultima then I can see why you'd feel rather betrayed by Ultima 8. Then there's its flaws as a game in its own right: The biggest is that the majority of the game is spent in grey dungeon after grey dungeon fighting (or more accurately, running past) zombies and ghosts. This is alright at first but eventually becomes very tiresome. The combat is very weak; there is only one attack and it takes a dozen or so hits to kill anything. Usually you'll find yourself avoiding combat unless absolutely necessary. Character stats are very shallow with no noticable difference when improving strength or intelligence. There are other things that I could nitpick but these are the main problems. Ultimately, Ultima 8 succeeds in creating a rich world with interesting lore and people but fails to create a compelling gameplay experience. Deep within it lies a nugget of brilliance but it feels rushed and it was obviously kicked out the door before it was truely ready. Whether you should buy it or not really depends on whether you have the patience to run through hours of samey grey dungeons to get to the enjoyable bits.

The most fun I've had being frustrated. For a game with several drawbacks, I managed to play through it twice, and help a friend through it once. You move around on an unseen grid, and it was very easy to be off by one grid space, miss a jump that you were sure you would make, and lose two hours of play. Why didn't I save more often, well it took an eternity to save on my PC at the time, a 486 DX, I think. The leap of faith, if you've played it you know what I'm talking about, cost me at least 4 hours of lost gameplay before I made it on my 3rd try. Going on my wishlist, interested to see how the gameplay holds up, and how the quick save and load times may add to the fun.

Like many Ultima players I am an Ultima fanatic. I have played them all, and consider Ultima VII and VII Part 2 to be the best CRPGs ever. Needless to say I bought Ultima 8 the day it came out, and to this day I have never been as disappointed with a purchase. I understand that they wanted to do something different with Ultima 8. It's more action oriented. It's single player. It has a much darker story line. I think that the game fails on all of these levels. I just re-played the game last month, and time did not improve the experience. I find the story boring and un-Ultima. They were trying to put out a game where the Avatar must act in a very non-Avataresque way in order to escape a hostile alien world. What they produced was a story where you don't even try to make a difference. It would have been far more interesting to write a storyline where the Avatar overcomes a hostile alien world by sticking to his Virtues, but frankly I don't think the writers had the chops for it. In any case they didn't try. The game play is bad. You start the game very fragile, and even with magic armor and the best weapon in the game you can be easily killed in a very short period of time. On top of that there are a lot of instant-death jumping puzzles. The worst part for me was that navagating around the undergound maze that forms the world's main highway was a nightmare without a detailed map. This was the first game that I ever bought a hint book for out of necessity in those long lost days before you could look up solutions on the intrawebs. The only reason that I give the game 2 stars is that I like their experiments with the magic in the game. They created 4 new magic systems and you must master them all. Sorcerery is far too complicated, though, and the game engine makes preparing your spells the equivalent of a pixel hunt adventure game. Interesting idea, but hobbled by the game engine. I would rather play Ultima 2 again then play this game a third time.

Incredible bad controls, even for it's age.

I just loved this game atmosphere... The music, sound, everything when I first played it ages ago... Back then I did not have internet at home to assist solving the puzzles and it was hard to figure it out by myself but worth it! I used to love the magic system, the interaction with gods, the way you would be punished by them if you dont behave... Its definitively a golden classic!