Ultima™ 8 Gold Edition

I would suggest to anyone to cut off the core Ultima series after the brilliant "Serpent Isle", because "Ultima 8" is the perfect example of a big-name corporation coming in a destroying something it had no hand in creating. This game is some sort of horrendous blend of Ultima 7, point and click adventures, and a platformer. The controls are atrocious, the gameplay tedious and pointless. It's only redeeming grace is that it isn't "Ultima 9", but that's just saying it isn't one of the worst games ever made. I have no problem respecting and enjoying flawed games (as most are) but this is not one of those games. Avoid.

This game could of been great but it got rushed out several months early with lots of plot and mechanic slashed and taken out. The controls are bad, subplots and important conversations are incomplete avoid this game.

This is a huge step away from the traditional Ultima series of games, which made no sense anyways. The only merit you can give this game is that it was ahead of its time in trying a top down 3/4 perspective for an adventure/rpg game. Horrible controls and if anyone remembers trying to actually get this game to run at the time, that was a feat in itself. Hell that may even warrant an achievement nowadays. Maybe for whatever the price is it may be worth a try, but the Ultima series has never made much sense. This game is like the Final Fantasy series.....it just shares the name.

I often heard a lot of hate for this game growing up and didn't quite understand it. Sure it wasn't as good as its predecessor, but I thought it was still a pretty good game for the time. Turns out I'd only ever played the Gold Edition here. The original (not available as far as I can tell) had a whole bunch of content cut in order to get pushed out for deadlines. Ulitma 8 Gold had basically all that content restored, although the expansions that were planned never got made due to the critical failure of the original release. You can basically blame EA for that. That said, the game is still ok, kind of fun to play, and has some pretty memorable music. The worst part about it is the combat system which seemingly requires an invincibility potion or rockskin spell for you to kill anything stronger than a changeling--which is the second weakest enemy in the game.

Ultima VIII Pagan was my very first contact with the Ultima series and knowing nothing better I was smitten by this game on sight. The freedom to do anything and go mostly everywhere was what hooked me up, but its chilling, almost creepy atmosphere, some surreal elements coupled with the realism I perceived in the cities and game systems made me stay in pagan forever. My avatar never actually left. I actually had the manual for the game and the story contained there is what made this game stick to my mind for ao long. I picked it up again in the hopes of sending my avatar back to britannia and that's when this game lost a star in my review. It doesn't meet the seeds placed in the manual, the awesome illustrations for each element's area are replaced with bland, placeholder areas containing characters speaking butchered dialogue, convoluted magic system and monsters too powerful for The Avatar. Even still, what this game has o athmosphere and backstory impressess me a great deal. Its worth a purchase for those who want a game hard as nails and wanting to contemplate the difference between what could have been and what it is. I highly recommend a read through the manual before playing as it will inform you of the world, but will also activate your imagination, which might affect your experiece of the game, making it like my first brush with this that I consider the best game of my childhood.