Ultima™ IV: Quest of the Avatar

Ultima IV was one o the first RPGs I copletely fell in love with. It was such an unusual take on the genre that I could not put it down. You do not fight some big, bad foozle at the end. Instead it's a quest of self-betterment. You must go throughout the land developing and upholding virtues. And then once you have secured them all, you must descend into the deepest depths to become the avatar of virtue. That was so unusual. It was also amazing at the time to be able to talk to just about every NPC. For its time the land was huge. In many ways it has not stood well to the test of time. Yet, it's an important and influential addition to the RPG genre that it is worth a play. If you do, consider getting the VGA upgrade and a fan-made patch to restore the music; it'll only improve the experience.

A game that attempts to make RPG more about playing a role and less about hack and slashing, making you grow spiritualy with it's (picked randomly out of all the smart wisements) chosen set of virtues to abide to, replacing the grand quest of fighting against villian with a grand fetch quest of wisdom words and uhs. Pretty much the first real Ultima game, which throws away the shaky canon of previous games. Ok, there is still some of it but it's merely a nightmare. Overall, I like how you improve you virtues and avatarhood through the way you interact with the world. Really like town exploration and keyword-based conversations are also great , especially for it's time. NPCs speak very short lines but those lines are punctual and have obvious keywords, thus it avoids the feeling of artificiality of having too many words that NPCs won't recognise. But then despite all the post-modernism (compared to hack'n'slashing of a day) it's still 80s RPG so that means grinding, exploring huge empty maps, encounters everywhere, clumpy controls that suck joy out, basic combat, lack of artistic pleasures for your ears and eyes, yada-yada-ya-da-da. Thus reading about game system is still a better use of one's time and energy than putting dozens of hours into actually trying to beat it. Just play to the point where you get a vision out of any shrine, that ought to be enough of a game feel sample. Verdict: while hidden genocide of fuzzies from Ultima 3 is an unforgivable sin which proves that Ultima's avatarhood was always a mistake, the skeleton NPCs inclusion does rustle my funny bones. Ask them about their health.

I wish modern RPGs were in this format. More about the world exploration and puzzle solving than adding cheap game play. I watched my older brother play in the 1980s, then became hooked using his notebook int he 1990s, beat it in the 2000s... and am now replaying it in the 2020s.

I haven't played this game back in the 80s so I am reviewing this game with modern standards and sensitives in mind. The graphics are actually decent and serve the game well. The old EGA graphics turned me off back when I was trying to play this game for the first time in the 90s. But with age comes wisdom (or so I hope). If you want you can mod the graphics, but it primarily brings more colours and (in my humble opinion) does not look better. The gameplay is mostly fun while above ground. I enjoyed exploring the towns and piecing together the information needed to complete the game. The combat however is so terribly designed that it makes exploring the dungeons and the sea almost a chore. I ended up giving all my party members long distance weapons (slings, Bows, and Crossbows) and combat morphed into a depraved version of shoot'em up. I didn't even bother getting any magical weapons or armor (other than a quest specific bit) and completely skipped using magic in combat. I regretted this choice in the final dungeon. The mythology, specifically the 8 virtues and the 3 principals is kinda cheesy and could have been done much better. Take truth for example, imagine what you could have been done with truth given modern fake news, conspiracy theories, and social network. Overall - I am sure I would have loved it to bits had I played it in the 80s. But it was almost a chore to play 40 years later.

I love Ultima IV, but on - any other version - than the IBM DOS one. No music? CGA graphics? Come on. DOSBox as a vehicle to preserve 1980s-1990s games is a questionable decision, given that the IBM PC with CGA graphics and 1-bit speaker or other pre-Soundblaster audio gives one of the worst experiences for games from this era. The Atari ST, Amiga and even the C64 versions of games like Ultima IV, when available, would give a much better experience graphically and sonically. Please, GOG, consider re-releasing these games as versions running under emulations of the more capable machines of the era. Emulators like STeem could be licensed for many games I am sure.