I didn't play enough to get to a segment where RNG makes or breaks the game like the other negative reviews said. The game is just boring to me. Presentation is generic fantasy, combat is uninteresting and navigating your inventory is tedious. Everything about the game is mediocre at first glance. I understand that some games take time to get better but when the start is so dull, I have no desire to try to get to the good parts.
I played a fair bit of this game in the Ultima 4+5+6 collection. I also beat Ultima 1 and 2 and played plenty of Ultima 3. While Ultima 3 and 4 do a lot of things better, the combat in these games is atrocious. When you touch an enemy, you get thrown in a grid based combat arena. Each character can only do one action per turn. So you can only walk in one direction, do one attack or cast a spell. Your party and the enemies also are far away from each other. Needing to spend so much time to get close makes melee weapons not worth it. The amount of hits you miss makes it that much worse. Then think how by the end of the game, you'll control 8 party members. If you see anyone complain about basic turn based combat from NES/SNES games being slow, show them this game. Gameplay wise, it's a slow strategy RPG without strategy. Sadly, this greatly overshadows the best parts of Ultima 3-4. Asking for information. Going around looking for clues means the open world is actually well implemented. Many modern games don't benefit from it but still throw it in. Crazy to think how such old games do open world better than most modern RPGs. The story is something different and for it's time, the way they built it is really good. I know a lot of people recommend Ultima 4 for people looking to try the series out. But if you don't really have much of an CRPG background (like me), it's not a great start. I still recommend trying it but giving up when you start not having fun. It's great for a while. I'm sure the newer games are amazing since Ultima was really ahead of it's time from the first game. So it might be best to start with 6, 7 or Underworld. CRPGs are generally hard to get into. If anyone who isn't an old fan reads this and wants to get into CRPGs, try lots of games. Something's bound to click. They're really cheap on sale on GOG. Currently struggling with this myself but CRPGs have a lot of things going for them. I say they're worth the struggle.
This whole package is a really mixed bag. Ultima 1 is fun enough for most of a normal playthrough because it's simple. Ultima 2 is a grindfest. Ultima 3 has the most tedious battle system I've seen in an RPG. I finished Ultima 1 and 2 and played some Ultima 3 and 4. Ultima 3 and 4 especially are super fun to talk with people to gather information. If Ultima 1 and 2 had more of that without the awful battle system from 3 and 4, they would've been great even by today's standards. But since talking with people isn't much of what you do, mixed with confusing hints, you fight more than anything else. Ultima 1 and 2 have a super simple battle system, which works alright. You press A and a direction and attack monsters on the world map. You either hit or miss. In Ultima 3 and 4, you enter a new screen when touching an enemy. The gameplay is a grid based strategy RPG. But... without the strategy You can only do one thing every turn. Moving one tile or attacking once or casting one spell. Enemies are pretty far away from you so you waste a lot of time getting close. With melee characters. It's a must to mainly use ranged weapons to not waste too much time on one battle. Missing your attacks makes the battle system even worse. Ultima 3 has 4 characters you control and that's tedious enough. But imagine starting with Ultima 4, like most people recommend. Where you control 8 characters by the end of the game. With the same horrible gameplay. The only true qualities these games have is talking with people to get information and the fact it's an open world game that makes use of the open world. And there's not enough of that to keep you engaged even in Ultima 4. Let alone Ultima 1-3.
I don't usually write a review before finishing a game but I doubt these issues will get fixed later on in the game. The core gameplay is fun but the way the maps and camera are designed don't really work in harmony with Jazz's movement. The camera is really close and you don't really have how to react in time to a lot of stuff if you speed through levels. Without memorization of enemy placement that is. The game is clearly designed to be like the Sonic games. Speed is crucial. I often found myself shooting while moving to not get hit. You can hold up and down to look in those directions. After waiting for a pretty significant amount of time, you look below or above and the camera isn't put much higher or below Jazz. If you play it slowly not to get hit or try to use the camera controls, the game loses it's momentum. Weapon variety is there but most weapons shoot the same. The Toaster and RF Missile are just upgrades over the standard weapon. The Bouncer is inferior to all other weapons. It's a situational weapon. The TNT just wipes everything on screen. I had to use that a few times just to not get hit because of bad enemy placement. The monster placement isn't great. It just feels like they're put there to slow you down without having ways around them often. You see them and know it's not designed around thinking up smart ways to jump past them. It's not designed to make you shoot them on reaction since most take multiple shots to kill and you run pretty fast. You might run into them by the time the bullets hit. I had to just jump, shoot a few bullets and do this again multiple times to clear a path. Reactionary shooting wouldn't have been an issue if the camera was more zoomed out so that you can see more around you. With the bad out of the way, I need to praise the look of the maps and the music. They're great. Maps are diverse and complex. The visuals are top notch. The enemy design and gameplay is great as well.
