Ultima 8

It is fine. Not as good as Ultima VII but I did not find it to be terrible and actually enjoyed playing it.

>>4247384
It's fine. I was an idiot and needed a guide to beat it when I was younger.

And sometimes I even used cheats.
I didn't enjoy the game much I guess if I needed to get through it as quick as possible?

The worst part is the fire mage magic. You need to set 5-10 items in pixel perfect positioning. Absolute horse shit.

The final patch actually cripples all the jumping puzzles because people hated them so much. Jumping is now almost impossible to mess up, you just fly to where you are pointing.

File: LostV.jpg (133KB, 570x745px) Image search: [Google]

133KB, 570x745px

It's crap. EA released it way too early so the plot is unfinished and the gameplay extremely lacking.
They had to release a patch to make it even remotely playable by adding a quicksave button and simplifying the platforming.
They made an addon with some of the missing content but never released it.

>>4247559
Someone should ask Richard to leak the files. He's on social media.

>>4247568
I don't think he has them, his involvement in most of the later Ultima games was minor.
Maybe EA has a copy in their vaults.

>>4247384
The worst of the series. It was just EA slapping the Ultima label on a piece of shit adventure game. If you've played through the rest of the Ultimas, it's worth slogging through this beast just to see how far Origin fell after being acquired by EA.

>>4247603
Seems like a natural continuation of what they did with Serpent Isle.

What's the best way to get into the Ultima series?

>>4247631
It depends. You can start with 1 or 3 if you want some of the old school experience first.
4 is the cornerstone of the series everything except the side stories builds upon it and you will miss out if you skip it. Play it via xu4 or the SMS.

File: U8HAND.gif (23KB, 320x200px) Image search: [Google]

23KB, 320x200px

>>4247515
>>4247559
I finished the game unpatched, back in the day. I don't think I have the patience to do it again today. All that precision jumping with less than optimal controls earned it the title "Avatar of Persia". You also had limited uses of your teleport thingy so, being paranoid about it breaking, I took the long boring way home most of the time.
The story was okay, it often forced you to choose between bad and worse, unlike most of the Age of the Avatar (4-6) trilogy. It basically sticks you in this crapsack world that you need to escape from.
If you haven't played Ultima 4 through 7, play those first for crying out loud, each one is better than 8. If you have, go ahead and give it a try.

>>4247774
>it often forced you to choose between bad and worse,
There are no real choices to make aside from minor shit like which Wizard you kill first. The game can't really decide whether you are supposed to install a new order or just take the fastest way home.
5 and to some degree 6 handled moral ambiguity fine. 8 and 7 went too much for shock value.

>>4247384
Why the fuck did Lord British have to be so edgy and put a pentagram on the cover. Yeah just try getting your christian mom to buy this game for you, good fucking luck, especially after all the work convincing her computer roleplaying games weren't satanic because they were roleplaying like DnD.

>>4247972
>pentagram
>edgy
ur mum's the edgy one
it's not even pointing down...

>>4247384
It's a bad Ultima game by series standards. It nearly broke me fucking in DOS back in the day trying to get enough memory to get it to actually run.

That said, the ambiance and general doom and gloom feel of the world is cool. The creepy soundtrack and earth catacombs may have done some psychological damage to my young self back in the day. https://youtu.be/n-OrCU-2GOE

>>4247384
Crusader No Remorse / No Regret show the true potential of this game's engine.

File: 1363628521370.jpg (63KB, 640x480px) Image search: [Google]

63KB, 640x480px

>>4247384
> has anyone
I hate this phrase. Yes, anyone has. Someone has.
> was it good?
I'd only offer it to someone who's a fan of the series. and even in that case I wouldn't recommend it. If you're going to play Ultima IX I'd say play this first but I'd hesitate to recommend Ultima IX.

One of these days I outta Ultima IV in minecraft (by coding, not by hand, jesus)

>>4248351
Stupid sexy avatar

>>4247972
To get edgy teenagers by the game themselves.
For the same reason they advertised Black Gate as M-rated.

>>4248351
You can skip 8 for 9. What little plot relevance it had is largely retconned.
9 is recommendable. It's a fun game if you ignore the writing. Performance issues mostly a thing of the past.

You can always try to wait and see if EA gives it away on Origin for free again.

File: come_back_2_bed_babe.jpg (161KB, 960x720px) Image search: [Google]

161KB, 960x720px

>>4247384
Whats good starting Ultima game for somebody whos never played? Whats the appeal of them?

>>4249257
4, start with 4, and then play them in order at least until Serpent's Isle.

As for the appeal? At least for me, especially compared to other games of the time period, it's written extremely well. You have a world that is vastly reduced, towns usually only having 10-20 people in them, but you get the feel that there is actually a functional world you're stepping into instead of the entire planet being there to facilitate your adventure. You can explore down dialog trees where people complain about their neighbors, look for their runaway dog, (that you can't do a fetch quest to retrieve), talk about how money is coined, and other really irrelevant trivia, but it's irrelevant trivia that builds a setting instead of just a game.

>>4249257
Optionally 1 or 3. 4 is the basis for the rest of the main series.

The appeal is having a continuity and a world that exists beyond serving you.
It was the first RPG series to really go beyond dungeon crawling and the one that shaped the genre more than any other.

>>4249264
Why 4 exactly?
Is there any problem on just going chronologically starting from the 1st?

>>4250180
1-4 are only loosely connected. Some names stay but there's little link between them. The world map changes drastically between each part, 2 is set on Earth for some reason.
From 4 onward there's an actual continuity. You become the avatar and people remember you and you encounter your old companions over and over again.
Changes to the world are minor in comparison.
In 6 they retroactively extended the continuity to 1 and 3 but it hardly matters. Serpent Isle also borrows some names and maps but again it's more an homage.

There's no real issue in starting with 1, it's a short and simple game reasonably completable in a single day.
You may however consider skipping 2. LB tried to do more than he was capable of so the game is a mess.

>>4250197
>You may however consider skipping 2. LB tried to do more than he was capable of so the game is a mess.
It was more that what became Ultima 3 was the planned sequel to the first one. But there was enough demand for an immediate sequel that they decided to slap something together in about 4 months and ship it, which became U2. That's why it has basically the same engine, no coherent plot, and way more typos than the other games.


>>4250180
In addition to what the above anon said, they're also very different in tone. 1-3 are pretty much just dungeon crawlers writ large. You run around, you fight, you get items and XP and gold, and you eventually level up to the point where you can fight the Big Bad. The convention that made Ultima Ultima, of being something more than just a hackenslash, started with 4.

>>4250212
>That's why it has basically the same engineUltima 1 was written in BASIC while 2 was written in Assembly language. There various additions like the towns, moongates, cloth map or fixed dungeons that carried over to the later parts.
Ultima 1 was basically an upgraded Akalabeth with tile graphics and extras like the space combat.

>>4250197
>>4250212
I see. Thank you anons. I was kind of under the impression that they were grindy games.

>>4250373
5 is a grindy game, and 4 is to a lesser extent. The others, not really. You're immortal in all of the Ultimas from 4 onwards, and combat is often taking a backseat to plot. My very first Ultima was Ultima Underworld, and at the time I didn't realize it was part of a series. It used the DnD formula for player level to cast spell level; you need to be charlevel 2x-1 spell level to be able to cast it.

Then I played Ultima 7, which was the newest one out. And it has a much more straightforward, charlevel=spell level you can cast. You can get to level 9 if you REALLY grind, I only made it to 8, and consequently never cast a spell higher than 4th level. I never particularly noticed the lack. They're not difficult (mechanically anyway) games at all by the later incarnations.

>>4250373
They are.
In 1 you repeatedly travel around the world and lurk dungeons for training while 2 and 3 require large amounts of money to raise your stats.
As the series progressed it gained more things you could and had to do while stats became less important.