Ultima™ 9: Ascension

Not as good as ultima 7 but this game was awesome. Buggy as hell and kind of incomplete but the graphics and immersiveness were so good when it came out, i spent hundreds of hours playing this game, the environments looked so good. If your an ultima fan get it and play it, do not listen to everyone whinging about how bad it is, just enjoy it for what it is, the last ultima game ever.

This is a great game by itself, if you can ignore the funny bugs. I played this game as a kid, it was my 2nd game after Ultima 8: Pagan, and I actually liked the story and the fighting system even if hard at times. Its also kind of an open-world, I remember venturing north to kill the ice dragon for his icy sword. WORTH IT ! I guess expectations were high for people who played Ultima 1-7 and it didn't met it, but I didn't so I did enjoy the game :)

... and don't play this game. If you love - or even just 'like'! - the Ultima series, don't ruin it forever by 'playing' this trainwreck of a 'game'. Other reviewers have said that the graphics were impressive for the time, and they were (they look like hell now) but that's doesn't make up for the fact that the game is completely asinine and a rotten waste of time. $6 is too much for this. Seriously. Take the six bucks and BUY ANYTHING ELSE. Literally. Buy a beer. Go to McDonald's and have a Big Mac. Buy any other Ultima game. Just not this one. Please.

Where to being with Ultima IX? The problems with the game, from its glitchyness to its disregard of the Ultima history are well documented. The community patch and dialogue patch fix a lot of things, but fundamentally the game still doesn't really 'feel' like an Ultima. The world still feels empty, a haunting image of the Britannia we left at the end of the Black Gate. Some say that if it wasn't an Ultima, it'd be considered a good, even great game (technical problems aside). I don't know about that. So why play it? Well for one thing, to this day I have never seen sky rendered so beautifully. The sunsets are GORGEOUS. Certain parts of the country side still look amazing, despite the relatively primitive polygons used. And finally closure. You've journeyed as the Avatar for up to 13 previous games (depending on your view of the canon!). How does it end? I will say that the ending wasn't satisfying to me, but in the end I was glad to have finished it and the series.

Your knowledge of the world shall be great!