Ultima™ 7 The Complete Edition

While certain aspects of Ultima VII have not aged well (the animation on the NPC's comes to mind), this game was a monumental achievement of its time and overall is still a masterpiece. You will never find a more thought out, full world than the world of Britannia in The Black Gate. I still marvel every time I enter Britain!

Been around since the very first version of digger on DOS. Having played pretty much everything on PC for the past 20 years, I can safely say this game is an absolute masterpiece. Nothing has ever stood so far above anything it's peers could come up with like Ultima 7 (with all expansions!) This game is an absolute classic, a must play!! (get exult and play it on modern OS') 20+ years of gaming and this gets my nr 1 spot. Hail Britannia !

Disclaimer: This review is based on my experience playing the game in 20202, and is not weighted for nostalgia. This is another old game I bought when it was originally released, but never finished for one reason or another. Fast forward to 2020, and I discovered for reasons unknown to me, Ultima 7 is in my GoG library. The game really looked terrible on my 4k 55" monitor, so I installed Exult, which allowed me to sharpen up the graphics, and provide improved audio. After tweaking Exult, the game looks and sounds surprisingly well. The game immediately starts out with a fun murder mystery that quickly pulled me in. I was enjoying questioning the townsfolk of Trinsic, searching locations of interest, piecing the puzzle together. Eventually The Avatar determined he needed to travel to Britain to question to people of interest. "You just missed them, the went to Minoc!" Then to Vesper, Paws, Moonglow, Jhelom, back to Britain.. Clearly the game was more enamored with the concept of "you just missed them!" than I was. Yes, we can move The Avatar pixel around the map. Fascinating. When can we advance the story? I probably would have continued playing if there had been a major plot development after quickly catching up to the persons of interest. Along our many pointless travels, each and every animal the party encountered became hostile and attacked. Aside from this being a complete misunderstanding of animal behavior, it's tedious, unnecessary, and time consuming. I think I would have been much more inclined to slog through the "traditional RPG" elements of this game as a teenager back in the early 90's. Not so much in 2020.

It feels like a living, breathing world. You can interact with almost anything in the game. You can bake bread, you can pick up arrows after you've shot them. The npcs have their own lives and daily routines. Incredible. The music (the song 'stones') gives me such nostalgia when i hear it. Its really an amazing feeling playing this game and having that feeling that you really can go wherever you want and do whatever you like almost.

I know the game is old, but holy donkeys that font is atrocious. It's insanely hard to read the in-game text. I've played plenty of games from the VGA era and all had legible text. Maybe it gets better, but I can't take the eye strain.