Ultima™ 8 Gold Edition

It's hard for me to imagine that too many of the people reading this review right now are not at least familiar with that special time in PC gaming history where graphics and imagination seemed to meet in perfect harmony. There is no telling which game that may have been for you, but for me that game was Ultima VIII: Pagan. It's always important to note when a game has glaring defects in game play, and certainly Ultima VIII is full of these. And not just minor annoyances that require a small redo of the previous quest. No no no. I am talking severe game breaking monster ****-ups that require you to restart the entire game over from scratch because of something you did (probably entirely by accident) dozens of hours ago. And hey, I totally get that no amount of Scott Summers style nostalgic glasses inspired sugar coating is going to make someone affected by those kinds of things feel better, but hey, I'm gonna do it anyway. Wanna fight about it? So here you are, dropped by this giant demon dude into some podunk fishing community with nothing but the clothes on your back and a giant square metal head. That is his head, right? Anyway, the whole story revolves around trying to find your way out of this little burg of insanity, which happens to be run by the wicked bitch of the west, and to be honest none of what happens in the story makes a whole lot of sense. But does that have to be a bad thing? I mean, in a good story you might care that you got the captain of the guard murdered by the pentagram insta-kill dude that seems to be especially harsh on people that steal chicken legs from plates where they were only going to spoil anyway...what the hell is that dudes problem anyway. Is there any crime that doesn't get you exploded into bits and pieces? But yea, that crap might bug you in a game with a halfway decent story, where as in Ultima VIII its just freaking funny as hell. A special mention should also be made about the brilliant Mario Bros. inspired mini games scattered throughout the cavernous underground tombs. Who doesn't love using a mouse powered click to move (but with a once second input delay) double click to jump (also w/ delay) platformer? You thought Megaman 10 was hard? You ain't seen nothing yet. Looking over the community opinions, it's clear some people here simply did not have fun with this game. I think they simply didn't get the point. Seriously, who doesn't love spending hours looking for the reagents to a spell -- a spell required to advance the plot -- only to cast said spell in the wrong place, and thus forcing you to reload a save game. And yep, the only save you had was from just before the jumping stones of doom...WHICH YOU NOW HAVE TO DO ALL OVER AGAIN ARGGGGGGG! Ehem, sorry. Get this game. Play it. Learn to love your hatred for it. Oh, and all that crap I said about imagination and harmony and crap -- I lied.

many bugs ,many things are wrong or strange, maybe the Ultima VII is better but this is still a masterpiece. I love the world of Pagan, the graphics is just awesome... mosters and the titans are outstanding. I enjoy at the very begining the part when u´re finding the "slayer" mace. Just take the walkthrought if u´re not skilled enought , u´ll enjoy playing this game. Worth the money, buy it .) - if u want to play in hi-res use the !pentagram! software for this game to increase it.

This game is amazing, great world enviroment, nice storyline, good characters that makes feel you are really in the middle-age fantasy world. Absolutely recommended

Simply put into a short review, this game is worth the play. The controls are a little jerky at time, and jumping can be... interesting... but the game itself is a fun, darker individual story through a huge (at the time) world. This is a pioneering game in a pioneering series, and this title is what ultimately led me to such greats as Diablo and other games of the like. This is were it all began in the genre, and for this price, a definite good buy. Loved it when i was younger, still love it now

So we finally have Ultima 8 released so that means Ultima 9 is not far behind, and yet the two Ultimas that most self respecting fans want to see are still not out(Worlds of Ultima Savage Frontier and Martian Dreams) but this is not the place for that. No this is the place to talk about Ultima 8: Pagan. Personally for me out of the two conterversial and final Ultima's 8 and 9. 8 wasn't as bad, now don't get me wrong here the game is it self is pretty bad but I'm a little more forgiving of Pagan then I am of Ascension is because while Ascension was just bad because by that point it was being handled by people who had no clue what made Ultima well Ultima. Ultima 8 on the other hand was just a victim of being released way to early by EA(yes it was EA fault for that) so like Might and magic 9 alot of the more interesting stuff never got done, like a romantic quest line and a lot more that I can't recall off the top of my head but you can probably find it on various Ultima fansites, and alot of the stuff that is in the game is not very well fleshed out and just really buggy so we have a sloppy combat mechanic, every chest being rigged with c4, unfinished platforming mechanics, broken and generic level design, some massive bugs even after being patched(expect to get stuck, fall through floors and so much more) and so-so story. Oh and since this version is the speech pack enabled version expect to hear the gaurdian tell you ad nausem telling you "Britannia is burning Avatar!" Which is a shame because Ultima 8 again always struck me as a game that really could of been good if it was given time to be properly finished, you could, or at least I could anyway, see that this was going to be so much more but it didn't and what we got was just goes from so-so to bad to frustrating over the course of the adventure. So all in all do I recommend getting this game, it depends if your looking for a solid Ultima to actually play and enjoy give this one a pass and instead get the 4-6 bundle, Ultima 7 complete edition, or Ultima Underworld 1 and 2. If your just looking to get the complete set or just curious then yes by all means get it.