Ultima™ 9: Ascension

Your knowledge of the world shall be great!

I got this game hot off the presses back when it was first released... and it's the reason why, although I have Ultimas I-VII here on gog.com, I do not intend to buy it ever again. Electronic Arts is responsible for the death and desecration of many once-great development houses (Bullfrog, anyone?) and Origin was not spared this fate. Already the taint could be felt in Ultima VIII, but it was Ultima IX that received the full love of Electronic Arts' kiss of the spider woman. The game is disrespectful to canon established in all of the previous Ultima games, is chock-full of plotholes and many familiar faces that return are grossly out-of-character. The story makes little sense and it was obviously hurried out the door. What Electronic Arts did to the Ultima franchise is not unlike what Achilles did with Hector's corpse in the Trojan war. Stay away from this albatross and go back to playing Ultima VII.

Ultima 9 is an awesome game that stands up to the series; when it first came out it was buggy, but the artwork and voice acting is phenomenal. This was (I believe) the first fully 3d version of the Ultima series; and though it received a fair share of mixed reviews, you'd be crazy to pass up a chance to play the final chapter of the Avatar and his journeys. Ignore the lower ratings; this game may not meet "AAA" standards you may expect, but it's a "AAA" title in my book!

Whats a Paladin?

Premise. I first played this game long time ago, and I was lucky because (1) I had a PC equipped with a Vodoo card (2) I hadn't played any other Ultima game before. I remember had really a lot of fun. Now. I purchased the game from GOG and I confirm that the game is far from perfect, but it's still a load of fun. The plus + the game world is not small, not huge, but is well done and interesting to explore. + the dungeons are good! they seems to be a bit Zelda insipired, rather than classical RPG,... but if you like the genre than they're pretty fun and with nics enigmas + the controls are good! the jump system is one of the best ever seen. the interactivity with the world is fluid. Combat hand to hand is average but not really bad, bows are better. And... I love the rituals... a lot more satisfaction than the 'modern games' click-a-button stuff! + technically it's really impressive. The graphics is excellent for a '99 game, there's no any transition between overworld, houses, dungeons. It's amazing that every item you drop around stays there + zero fetch quests (one of the greatest sickness in modern games...) On the minus side - the dialogues have huge mixed quality. I see some high peaks (Some of the storyles of virtue restoration, Trinsic first), but other dialogues are really badly written (oh God the love story...). Looks really like a semi-draft (and if you know the development and realease story, actually it is...) - in the GOG version I experienced a few crashes, altough nothing critical. Save often and you can have a decent experience, I think - RPG elements are a bit weak. Maybe the game is too much action oriented... it's something that somebody may not see as a problem, but a bit more depth I think would have been appreciated ps. all the "what's a Paladin " controversy is quite nerdish and I think also a bit sterile .. other great games franchises (see Zelda, again) have very little consistency among the stories across games... but who cares?