Ultima™ 9: Ascension

Ultima series thrived on innovation. The previous parts of the series practically invented everything we take for granted in CRPGs these days. Games like Ultima VII and U7SI set the standards for CRPGs for the decades to come. Ultima IX tried this. It succeeded on technical merits, and it was, indeed, an interesting attempt at making a 3D RPG. Too bad almost everything else failed hilariously. There is a lot to like about U9. The user interface with its "3D ragdoll" idea is interesting, and the dialogue system was a good attempt at making dialogues cinematic. The overall game system is pretty smooth and logical - the game basically takes Ultima VIII's concepts and improves them. It's a good attempt at transforming Ultima VIII-esque game system into 3D - which led to some unfortunate conclusions. But there's also a lot to dislike about U9. The most obvious problem is that there are a lot of bugs, and getting the game to run properly is an adventure, even with GOG's best efforts. The voice acting isn't very good, which obviously jarred people because *not* having voice acting in previous parts worked great. Dialogue gets a bit dumb. The quests aren't *that* interesting. Oh, and I didn't even mention the game basically contradicts most of the stuff in the previous games for particularly dumb reasons. While the 3D models and terrain sure were pretty at the time, the world is incredibly tiny. (Kids who complain about Skyrim haven't seen a darn thing, I say - that game is absolutely colossal compared to U9.) You don't need to play the game too far to get the distinct feeling that this just isn't a great big masterpiece of video games. Ultima IX stands in the point of video game history where the competitors just sped past it. Games like The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind basically came to the scene of disaster and fixed everything that was wrong. Origin was living in difficult times and they didn't manage to produce a great game, under so much pressure from both the gaming public and especially their higher-ups at EA. There's just no way around it: this game failed to do what it promised. The bottom line is that it's still a very interesting and even engrossing game to play, *if* you can get over the bugs. Don't treat it as a true Ultima title - it's better to just laugh at the plot in so-bad-it's-so-good manner, and laugh at all of the inevitable bugs and problems. Simply put, it's not bad enough to stop you from playing it and from enjoying it if you have the right mindset - the game parts actually work surprisingly well. If you want a *real* RPG from this era, with actual writing and everything, you can always go back to Morrowind. It's a good thing Ultima IX has been priced in the $5.99 bin, because at $9.99 you'd be horribly ripped off. At the lower price, however, I feel that you should *definitely* grab it for chuckles and fun, but only if you don't take things too seriously.

What's a Paladin?

I had only played Ultima Online so I did not know much of the Ultima background; hence, this game did not hold the level of expectation that others voice here. U9 remains one of the few games I played to completion multiple times. I enjoyed the game and had fun exploiting areas such as stacking items to climb a mountain, then remove the bottom item and place it on top to keep climbing even though the stack now rested in mid-air. Warning, this can break quests, since you may bypass triggers. I remember having over 2,000 saved games because the game could crash to desktop at any minute and it often did. In spite of this I enjoyed the puzzles and talking to each NPC. I was often surprised to venture into an area, thinking it would be barren, to find it had not just plants but other items to interact with, such as a sunken ship. While these were not part of any quest it was fun to explore. Even at the very beginning of the game you could use the stacking exploit to climb a gate and end up outside of the world looking in. Flawed – yes, but fun, as though you found something secret that no one else knew existed and the developers did not intend. I understand why so many people hated this game; I wish they could see why others enjoy it. If you rate it on its adherence to the Ultima series then it fails miserably, otherwise it can be fun if played without preconceived expectations. Maybe “What’s a paladin?” was the Avatar testing the NPC’s knowledge?

EA has left a trail of bodies in its wake and none are more legendary than the death of the Ultima series. By the time Ultima IX: Ascension was released in 1999, the series (despite already-declining quality) had maintained a degree of excellence and notoriety in gaming culture. However, this one game was enough to kill off the entire franchise and cripple the success and reputation of the Western RPG for several years. Ultima IX is a buggy, ugly, poorly-written mess of a game that most famously attempts to "reboot" the game by re-explaining everything that happened in the games before it while simultaneously expressing little knowledge of the events leading up to Ascension. Characters are inexplicably resurrected, aged or removed; story elements are changed; the Avatar is transformed into a laughably-poorly-written moron; character motivations make little to no sense; the plot is retreaded dribble and the game as a whole is just an unmitigated mess. The Avatar's ascension to the Titan of Ether (essentially God) is barely even considered in the progress of the game, forcing the player to start the Avatar off from square one with a weak weapon as if an established character were a level 1 noob. A lot of this is the result of the attempt to redesign the game in 3D with a new engine most designers were inexperienced in as well as the project development changing hands numerous times. Just like any project that is shuffled around for years, Ultima IX reflects this lack of cohesiveness. All-in-all, there is no reason to play this game. There are plenty of high-quality RPG's from the late-90's and early 2000's to pick up and this game adds nothing to the plot or experience of the previous games in the series. I do not think it would be a leap to call Ultima IX: Ascension one of the worst PC games of all time and, up until the release of the Sim City reboot (also from EA), could be considered the farthest fall from grace for any franchise in video game history.

I thought this game was very cool when it came out. In no way is this like any other Ultima, but still a very entertaining title. I liked how they made the world seamless without loading screens for every cave, room, building , etc. Here's looking at you Elder Scrolls. I wish more games would do this. Graphics were top of the line for 1999. The only other game that looked this good back then was Outcast, another fantastic action RPG and get that one as well here on GOG.