As did many of you, I bought this game at launch after several weeks of counting down the days till I would once again find myself trolling the streets of Seattle. What I found once I did was a mildly atmospheric adventure with very little substance. The engine is sound. It works about as well as the story doesn't. Which is completely. And when two essential elements like story and game engine are so drastically opposed, we start looking harder at the things that matter less. Like animations, and how much we can dress up the digital dolls, and loot, etc... But the simple fact is that if the story were even half as engaging as the game system is functional, all of the window dressing would have fallen to the wayside and this would easily be one of the best RPGs of the last ten years. Having it available here on GOG -- on sale next to some of the best examples of the RPG genre ever created -- really only serves to highlight just how boring and poorly done the story elements are by comparison. I just can't recommend this game. If you are a lover of functional game engines that accurately mimic mostly forgotten pen and paper game mechanics, this is the game for you. If you want to play a good game that draws you in and entertains you for hours and hours, then no. Just no.
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.
