Ultima™ IV: Quest of the Avatar

Many bugs, particuarly on the menu. Not the biggest fan of Ultima, but is an average game.

I've given this game a shot since its free. There's probably a great game hidden inside especially for 1985 standards, but is highly unfriendly to newcomers. There's a lot of keyboard commands that are not intuitive; even talking involves you having to type in things like T->Enter->press direction -> then type in the text Name, Job, Health, Look, etc. Confusingly the manual contains no instructions, but the actual instructions are contained in the reference card. The reference card also encourages you to create a journal and record the conversations to solve the game. In modern times that amounts to having the game run on a window while an excel sheet on another window can be used to record, sort, and order things. This is probably something no one's gonna do today, myself included, given that's way too much time and work for something that should just be entertainment. Its important to note that this game is historically significant in that it inspired the first Dragon Quest / Final Fantasy games in 1986-1987, which are much more playable even in now in 2024. But other than its historical significance, there's no reason for me to play nor keep this game.

Unfortunately the functionality is so antiquated that it is hard to want to play for very long.

This game is a must for anyone who likes dungeon crawling, quest completing, troll killing D&D style adventures. I can remember spending hours in front of this game completely in awe of the story line and dreaming of the day Skyrim would become a reality. Well played GOG.com, I think I created 5 new customers for you because of the promotion.

for those of us who were fortunate enough to play this when it first came out, it was one of those formative things that helped show what was possible