Ultima™ 8 Gold Edition

I grew up with Ultima 8 and I really loved it. I never played the Ultima title before so I can understand every other post here. But for me Ultima 8 is a part of my life. I bought the double pack with Ultima 9 and Ultima Online right after that. Ultima 9 wasnt that good at all but Ultima Online was like a dream. We played it for 4-5 years till AoS hits.

To call this a RPG or an action game would be wrong; it is a puzzle game, and super Avatar Brothers is very apt.... the solution of the game exists by jumping, dodging and running away. Zombies will kill you at the beginning, and they will kill you at the end. Interrupting the Queen's lunch, repose, or just looking at her wrong will kill you. Falling in the water will kill you. Attacking the domestic animals of any form will kill you. Axe wielding skeletons will corner you and triple hit you to death like an old-school arcade game. You summon a demon, the enemy you were trying to kill wanders off screen, it wonders why the hell you summoned it, then it kills you. All ghosts will kill you and are essentially unkillable. The little green lizards are fair game, as are the tiny spiders, but you can't hit them with your weapon. Mimicks can be killed and efficiently, so kill them with absolute impunity. This game would have been more efficient as a fantasy novel and actually inspired MANY short stories of my own since my childhood. I loved it when it came out, I read and reread the clue book and swag that came with the box. I spent many frustrating hours casting various spells, and making your own True silver Stratos idol is a memorable moment. BUT.... on the coat-tails of the highly successful and one might say legendary Ultima 7 part 2, it just doesn't hit home. Dialogue issues, story issues, that as a kid I let pass but as an adult I'm like WTF. You literally saved Morgrim in Ultima 7 part 2, who had fled Pagan, and yet.... returns to Pagan, is elderly, and can't remember you. Arcadion, your pet demon from the black sword, has no idea who you are. The theme of the game is isolation, nobody knows or cares who the Avatar is....and yet they put story choices in there that make no sense and might have been hastily written to hit a deadline. It's great in its concept, yet is a gasping sucking wound of a failure compared to Ultima 7 part 2.

I must admit, I am not an Ultima (Underworld) fan. I got into the franchise rather late, Ultima VIII Pagan when it came out in 1994, Ultima VII and UU 1 & 2 just recently and the two Underworlds have aged really really bad. When Pagan first came out (on 8 floppy disks) I hated it due to its terrible platforming. If there is something I truly hate in games it is platforming. Compared to Ultima VII, part VIII Pagan was a major step backwards: the world size, the world interaction, the choices and oh heavens, the simplified gameplay! Platforming has become a MAJOR part of the game. Fortunately there was a patch - which is the version on GOG - that fixes the platforming, making it easy: where the cursor is, that's where the avatar will jump to (before the patch you could not aim the jump!). Another issue that will never be fixed is that Ultima VIII was rushed out in an incomplete state (which was not Origin's fault, but Electronic Arts'), which results in major plotholes and incomplete quests. What Ultima VIII does get right ist the atmosphere, just the way I like it: grim and dark. Combat and monsters are good, although the controls overall are a bit clunky. The story was not bad either. I liked the color pallet and the theme as well as the world design. I'd give it a 4 out of 5 were ther not two issues: the unfinished feel of the game and the heavy reliance on platforming (hey! Get the avatar a pair of bib overalls and a baseball cap and let him grow a mustache! No seriously, I hate Super Mario!). But 3 out of 5 it is.

This was the first Ultima I ever played and the only one I've completed, as such I have a fondness for Ultima 8. It shoves the Avatar into a situation where he can't rely on anyone; he is stranded on an oppressive, alien world and must get to know the people and their customs in order to get home to Britannia. What I think that this game does really well is atmopshere: it's dark and gritty, with death and fear seemingly everywhere, it truely gives a sense of fighting against the odds. Hell, one of the first things you see is a man being decapitated for treason. You'd better believe that stayed with me as a kid. Unfortunately there are many areas where the game falls flat. Firstly, it is a massive departure from anything the Ultima series had done before, mostly due to the vastly changed setting. There is no character customisation, no party members, no familiar characters at all and the virtues are nowhere to be found. If you grew up playing every iteration of Ultima then I can see why you'd feel rather betrayed by Ultima 8. Then there's its flaws as a game in its own right: The biggest is that the majority of the game is spent in grey dungeon after grey dungeon fighting (or more accurately, running past) zombies and ghosts. This is alright at first but eventually becomes very tiresome. The combat is very weak; there is only one attack and it takes a dozen or so hits to kill anything. Usually you'll find yourself avoiding combat unless absolutely necessary. Character stats are very shallow with no noticable difference when improving strength or intelligence. There are other things that I could nitpick but these are the main problems. Ultimately, Ultima 8 succeeds in creating a rich world with interesting lore and people but fails to create a compelling gameplay experience. Deep within it lies a nugget of brilliance but it feels rushed and it was obviously kicked out the door before it was truely ready. Whether you should buy it or not really depends on whether you have the patience to run through hours of samey grey dungeons to get to the enjoyable bits.

The most fun I've had being frustrated. For a game with several drawbacks, I managed to play through it twice, and help a friend through it once. You move around on an unseen grid, and it was very easy to be off by one grid space, miss a jump that you were sure you would make, and lose two hours of play. Why didn't I save more often, well it took an eternity to save on my PC at the time, a 486 DX, I think. The leap of faith, if you've played it you know what I'm talking about, cost me at least 4 hours of lost gameplay before I made it on my 3rd try. Going on my wishlist, interested to see how the gameplay holds up, and how the quick save and load times may add to the fun.