Ultima™ 9: Ascension

good classic! it keeps you going.

I remember playing this back in 1999. the game is obviously outdated in many ways but its a good oldie.

EA destroys worlds, a satire on their jingle, but still give this game a chance if you are any part an Ultima fan; the 6 game series of the Avatar comes to an end, in more ways than one. Ultima X was cancelled and every Ultima spin-off failed. Please don't make this your first Ultima game though, start with 7 if you must, I'd go back to 4 all the way to 9 to complete the series, then play 1,2,3 just to see how it started. Look for the 'Bob White Plot' mod, a mod based on one of the original writers giving it a more complex story as it was oringlly written. As I said, EA really dumbed down Ultima after they bought it during Ultima 7 part 2 development to appeal to a broader audience, and the result was it alienated core players and with bad word-of-mouth, who is going to buy it,? Turned out few did. Enjoy Ultima, but be warned the last few are different.

As many on here have ranted about already, Ultima 9 had flaws.. it was rushed, plain and simple, by a company only caring about profits, causing Origin to suffer. We get it. You're ALL still salty about it. Get over it and look at the game for what Origin still was able to produce under the EA constraints. While it may not have the fully rich stories of the OG games, it was far better than 8 ever could be for its time. Its engine was a rennovation for RPGs and it set the path forward for games like Elder Scrolls, especially Oblivion which has an eerily similar story if you replace Towers with Gates, Guardian with a Daedra, and a King with a King's son.. Without Ultima 9, we'd have missed out on a lot of gaming tech in the RPG scene, so regardless of its flaws I still see it as a great game to experience at least once.

Yes, i know all the points critics have been bringing forth. They're all true. The story conclusion is worse than everything Bioware can think of, the US release version was technically an unfinished, buggy piece of crap. But my first experience with U9 was the german release version, which had most fixes included. I played the game on a Voodoo 3 card, so i had no issues with frame rates and glitches. It ran near perfect. Playing Ultima since Part 5 i was dissappointed when it comes to the story. In fact the story doesnt even make sense when you have no prior experience with the Ultima universe. But putting this aside ... The gameplay works, the landscape is beautiful and full of details. the dungeons are atmospheric und full of deadly traps to avoid and secrets to discover. You dont hassle with the interface like other early 3D-RPGs like Gothic, you just play! If you are able to ignore all the faults this game clearly have, you just might discover a beautiful RPG adventure.