Ultima™ 8 Gold Edition

This game will always hold a place in my heart as one of the best, most innovative games of all time. I played it so much as a kid, and it still holds up.

Like many Ultima players I am an Ultima fanatic. I have played them all, and consider Ultima VII and VII Part 2 to be the best CRPGs ever. Needless to say I bought Ultima 8 the day it came out, and to this day I have never been as disappointed with a purchase. I understand that they wanted to do something different with Ultima 8. It's more action oriented. It's single player. It has a much darker story line. I think that the game fails on all of these levels. I just re-played the game last month, and time did not improve the experience. I find the story boring and un-Ultima. They were trying to put out a game where the Avatar must act in a very non-Avataresque way in order to escape a hostile alien world. What they produced was a story where you don't even try to make a difference. It would have been far more interesting to write a storyline where the Avatar overcomes a hostile alien world by sticking to his Virtues, but frankly I don't think the writers had the chops for it. In any case they didn't try. The game play is bad. You start the game very fragile, and even with magic armor and the best weapon in the game you can be easily killed in a very short period of time. On top of that there are a lot of instant-death jumping puzzles. The worst part for me was that navagating around the undergound maze that forms the world's main highway was a nightmare without a detailed map. This was the first game that I ever bought a hint book for out of necessity in those long lost days before you could look up solutions on the intrawebs. The only reason that I give the game 2 stars is that I like their experiments with the magic in the game. They created 4 new magic systems and you must master them all. Sorcerery is far too complicated, though, and the game engine makes preparing your spells the equivalent of a pixel hunt adventure game. Interesting idea, but hobbled by the game engine. I would rather play Ultima 2 again then play this game a third time.

Incredible bad controls, even for it's age.

This seems like another great RPG at the start. It's an RPG that sets the mood with a great story and greater responsibility. In the beginning after saving Britannia in Ultima 7. The Guardian banishes the Avatar to Pagan. Another world in which he (the Guardian) is their God. Everything the people do is mostly governed and respected by the Guardian. Make no mistake the Guardian is evil. In the beginning of the game you see the Queen beheading someone. An innocent man. The avatar also sees the cruelty of the guards of the city. The necromancers? Did I mention the necromancers. A lot of the town folk worship them especially a certain woman. This is why from the start the Avatar wishes to leave Pagan, but most of the residents do not know why, the think it is the perfect place to live. Anyways the story is good. (If you want to know more you will have to play it.) Oh yeah, the graphics, combat and music are also good. I think the platform jumping is great at least in the GOG version. Although a lot of people disagree with me. But where this game fails at is gameplay. It is cryptic as hell and that is where it drops and falls straight on it's face. For instance I have to wait till a certain time of day to talk to a woman to get a key to steal a dagger in the Queen's bedroom . The problem is the women's house is locked unless you show up exactly at a certain time of day. Therein lies another problem, there are hardly any clocks around and when there are they are in places like the castle in the Queens bedroom for the Creators sake! But she is awake and in her bedroom at this time so if you go in there you are executed and the game is over. This and Ultima 7 should have been very good games in my opinion unfortunately both suffer from bad programming and design decisions. I do not think I will buy another Ultima game again at GOG.

This game is super under-rated! I enjoyed it more than Ultima 7 and its the foundation of what became Ultima Online which is the greatest piece of gaming that was ever created. The world in this game is veru dark, fully open and you can do and explore anything you want. My only complaint is that the test is very hard to read.