Ultima™ 7 The Complete Edition

One of the all time greats. Cannot recommend this game enough.

Something about this game feels so vital. I never got into the dungeon crawling sort of games like Diablo, largely because the dungeons just felt pointless or aimless. Games like Ultima VII never feel that way. Everything you do advances the story, which is compelling and interesting and full of twists. Origin perfected their open world approach with this game. Certain areas are locked until you get to certain parts of the story so you never get completely overwhelmed, but of course you need to scour every drawer and every chest to get the best armor and weapons so you're not unprepared. The characters are easy to get attached to, and it starts right off the bat. Most games of this era, the characters in the game are so boring and 1 dimensional. Every character in every city has a role. That's always been one of the franchise's strengths. Sure a city may only have a population of 20 people but you need to talk with every single one of them and exhaust all conversation options in order to advance the plot. Sometimes this gets tedious but it speaks to how huge and well-thought out this game is. Monk Isle may be the only place in the game that has NPCs you can't talk to - and that's because they took a vow of silence! The only negatives about this game are the classic Ultima pitfalls - inventory management takes up more of the game than it should, and until you get the "magic keyring" in Silver Seed, managing keys is tedious. And there's also the idiosyncrasies within the code that make advancing the plot nearly impossible without having a walkthrough at the ready. (For instance - spoiler alert technically - you need to use the Hound of Doskar on Batlin's Amulet in order to get the password to Skullcrusher from the Gwani... completely unrelated tasks! But you cannot advance without doing that random action.) Have fun with this game! And remember, if all else fails, rub your face on the wall till you find an illusory one.

Game of my childhood. Super story, dialogs, graphics (they call it "pixel art" in these days ;->), ...

2 steps forward, 1 step back from U6. And, by today's RPG standards, hasn't aged well. +Inventory GUI better than U6 + Graphics are better (obviously) + Fullscreen dedicated to map - Constantly getting stuck on things while trying to move - Inventory mgmt is still painful. No shortcut key to open your backpack, so you waste time "drilling down" into your character paperdoll just to open their backpack (and, then, possibly, a bag in the backpack). - Containers have artificial limits on how much they can hold, which impacts you most with backpacks & bags. You'll waste a LOT of time shuffling inventory between characters just to get new items to fit some place, even though your characters have plenty of STR to carry everything! This shouldn't be this difficult! - Clicking on items only shows a name, not weight or any other useful info. How much do those moonstones weigh? Won't say. But, each person can only carry about 4 until their backpack is full. Wut? - World map feels smaller & cramped compared to U6 - Most characters in a town repeat the same dialogue, just a little different. So, it wastes time talking to everyone. - Abusive puzzles were standard RPG fare in the 90's, and U7 is no different. But, by today's standards, they feel like they were designed by a petty dev that hates their target audience. They feel overly-complicated in a needless way, not enough (or obtuse) clues/hints, etc. Petty enemies that one-shot you. Traps that obliterate your party in seconds. In one puzzle, you have to sit on a chair to trigger something. BUT, you have to know to sit and WAIT long enough for it to happen. How are you supposed to know that? Be prepared to alt-tab to a walkthrough. When everything works, it's fun. Trucking through a dungeon, killing things, and solving problems; it's fun. But, you hit too many roadblocks, and get jerked around too much, by both the plot and the puzzles. There's more frustration then enjoyment here.

That all other CRPG's aspire to live up to. This game set the standard that they will all be compared to forever after. Ultima VII deserves every bit of praise it ever received. The only downside to this game is how disappointing and bittersweet Origin's follow up efforts were.