Ultima™ 9: Ascension

This game is bad.....really bad. Bugs galore and it completely ignores all previously established canon. The story has no clue what it wants, and the Avatar has seemingly forgotten even the most basic of details that he should have known (his knowledge of the land is great, indeed!). This is the game that killed Ultima underservingly. The series deserved better than this, and with hope it may come back someday. I'd give this lower than a 1 star if I could.

They kept releasing patches they claimed would fix all the problems everyone but the developers claimed to be having, and then after the 4th patch was released, they shut down their forums so no one could post any additional problems. They said judge them as they were now, not what they were before. It still sucks. You could have an enemy rush up behind you and start attacking, and before you had time to turn around to face him, you'd be dead. They were auctioning off a terrified teenage girl as a sex slave in Buccaneer's Den, and you could hire a prostitute there, and if you used a drug you'd wake up in a bed with a male pirate there instead of her, indicating you got man raped. Things like that shouldn't be in the game at all. You had one dungeon which was the most horrible time consuming massive maze imaginable, you having to run back and forth looking for different color things to get through it, and it just ridiculously tedious. Not fun at all. The lag problems won't be an issue with modern computers, so no need to bring that up. The dialog and plot are lame. Eliminating the rest of my review, so its not too long to post. I'm sure you get the point.

This game generally gets low scores, but back when it came out, I LOVED this game. Perhaps it didn't live up to everyone's expectations from the previous games? I'm not sure. I had played the previous games, but I still enjoyed this. When it came out it felt more like an outdoor version of Ultima Underworld (also an awesome game). The sense of exploration is great, as you slowly unlock various areas of the map. I remember the spell system being a bit hinky, requiring you to carry around loads of reagents for each spell which cluttered up your bags, but keeping your bags orderly helped with this. It may not hold up entirely against modern day games, and it may not fit very well with the previous titles in the series, but it's still a fun game.

I actually never played another ultima game, so I can't comment about how faithful it is to the previous games, but to me Ultima IX is great fun, with nice immersive setting, rich content and awesome musics.

So much potential, so much promise. A return to Britannia and the promise of the return of things like baking bread and a living environment like VII, but in 3D. And the chance to wrap up the Guardian and the series in an epic. Instead, it was this. This tiny world where you are on a rail doing the same set of things over and over and your Avatar seems to have suffered a head injury and remembers nothing. I've definitely played worse games, but nothing really compares to how disappointing this turned out to be.