Ultima™ IV: Quest of the Avatar

Although not my first RPG, Ultima IV was definitely my favorite one. The depth of these games is just amazing. It is sad that today's games lack the depth of story and the truly open world feel that these old games had. Games have not improved, they merely traded content for snazzy graphics and shinny UI. Sidenote: When this game came out me and two friends set out to map the whole game on millimetric paper, one square=one step. It took days of relaying each other but we ended up with tons of papers taped together on the floor of my buddy's bedroom and a full map. Wish i had kept in now :) Thanks Lord British and thx GOG for this classic, (also thx GOG for my cookie at PAX)

If you are a hardcore RPG fan and not knowing about Ultima, you are a lost child. This very game is one of the milestone on RPG revolving history, the introducing of a free speech dialogue system has bring RPG forward and open a brand new chapter of game industry. I still love this game very much :)

Consoles had early Final Fantasy titles, PC had Ultima. Amazing lore, series have compelling stories and atmospheric gameplay that today’s games are having a hard time to match.

Of all of the games I played in my early computer days, this was by far the best. I first ran into it while stationed at School of the Infantry in Camp Pendleton CA. Our entire office got copies of this game and played it. Downloaded it this morning to try it out and wow, the graphics are horrible these days, but the game itself is still just as fun as it was back then. Thanks for putting this up for a free download.

So based on the first 4 Ultima games, I think they're for "D&D people", but I listened to the cassette recording with this new release of Ultima IV and decided to have one more try at it. So Richard Garriott was kind of responding to complaints about his games and about D&D in general from "religious extremists", when he decided to make the next Ultima game a quest for enlightenment, a demonstration of virtue and mortality etc. So it seems even back in the mid '80s people appreciated this new idea and today I think many view it as the best Ultima. Popular or not, I'm not sure that overall the game is such a great idea. Not to say that I think Ultima IV should have been just another "Beat the bad guy, save the world" theme, but Richard himself said on that cassette that he was concerned people might think he was getting on his soapbox(i.e preaching) or going off the deep end with his new idea. He admits of course that the game is a drastic change. When playing Ultima IV, I saw that its ideas of truth and enlightenment probably influenced later RPG game themes, especially in Japanese RPGs and there were some other things like questioning townsfolk like a detective, finding secret rooms and being joined new characters along the way that I think were good ideas, recognized as such by other game developers. So while I think the game's main idea was a bit too religious, there were some good smaller ideas, some related to the main idea, others incidental.