Ultima 7 and it's semi-sequal, Serpent Isle, were great for their time. Amazing things, memorable times... I spent a huge chunk of time on that game... and then I found out this year that you can actually beat it in about 7 minutes using in-game box stacking abuse! The main theme is something I'll always remember, and the cackling of the Guardian... U8 was a sham, and THAT game is best forgotten, but u7 parts 1&2 are a great part of PC gaming history. (Don't look at the SNES port... please. it's terrible.)

To me, using Exult, it holds up quite well to RPGs of this time by sheer massive storyline and control. The music is great, and while the graphics aren't so 'hot' nowadays, they still are very memorable and easy to use.

So yes, It holds up as a classic- to me at least. I'll gladly keep my disk from the 'gold box', with a spare CD that is Exult, on my shelf og 'great games to waste time on'.

I'm actually really curious about Ultima 8. I used to think that Ultima Online was considered the 8th installment, given how the old "UO" symbol resembled an eight with the top cut off. But other than a handful of screenshots and a few people's testimony as to it's awfulness, I've seen nothing about it.

I think this will answer a lot... Junky graphics, a horrid experience system that was VERY abuseable.. It just looks painful. And playing it was worse. Do yourself a favor and ignore the existence of this one.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sLPwDYXVO0s

I remember one time in ultima i led a dragon, ettin and elemental into a guys house and locked them in there. so when he came home they killed ihm.

In Ultima Online? Or did I miss some really awesome potential fun in 7? =D

wait that was ultima online. sorry.

I played the shit out of Ultima 7 way back when. Ultima was my favorite RPG series of he time, and I loved it. Me and my silver sword tore the shit up out of the country side.

Random fact: back in the glory days of Ultima Online, I used to be known as "Counselor Saracen", one of Origin/EA's event lackies. =D

I've still got a notebook lying around filled with quest notes and reminders where I parked my ship and magic carpet. It feels archaic now, but I loved that you had to really pay attention to what was going on. Made you feel connected with what was happening. No automatic journal entries and map markers.

I played through Ultima 7 and Serpent Isle again last month, right before GoG put them both on sale, and yes they do hold up very well. I played for a 100% completionist run, using the clue book my parents bought back in '92 to explore every last dungeon and get every last bit of loot. It turns out that even without abusing the Easter Egg rooms as  chitter mentioned you can get all 8 party members full suits of magic armor and quality weapons. The Death Scythe however is ridiculously broken (max damage 50 plus Magebane effect and Curse), which is why it's a cheat-room only weapon. The Forge of Virtue also pimps out your Avatar to ridiculous power with very little effort, as well as giving you a free ship.

Did your clue book reveal how to make an apocalyptic sum of money?

http://it-he.org/ultima7.htm#gambling

Good stuff.

I figured that one out on my own, and it's retarded. I had to actually put a chest and barrel on the flying carpet to carry all that money, and what's worse, nobody sells the really good stuff (I think Iolo's South sells, at best, a magic bow for 400) so really the only use for large amounts of money is to buy all the spells in the game and ships. After that, it's rather useless. I used to buy food back when the game ran at clock speed and characters would get hungry every 2 minutes, but of course the fact that monsters respawn by going off-screen and back, and all beasts of burden in the game drop meat, you can just walk up to a deer spawn, kill it and get 5 free "meat on spit" items each time. Dump all the food on one character (I picked Shamino) and bam, problem solved.

Exult, of course, fixes the clock speed issue but I'll warn you, the newer versions of Exult have a weird bug where NPC's that normally make and destroy items (shopkeepers, tailors, bakers, etc.) will generate literally unlimited amounts of items without destroying them (piles of food, cloaks, etc.) and that ends up crashing the usecode just like the "goldpocalypse" bug did in native U7. The only known workaround is to edit their individual scripts to stand around the shops rather than bake, serve food, etc. and to use Ctrl-D to simply destroy all the massive amounts of copies they made before you could stop them.

I've actually never, ever touched an Ultima game and am slightly curious about the whole thing.

Should I make an effort to find and play some of them?

Well, Ultima 4 is free. It's very primitive by today's standards, but it paved the way for the later games. The first three are almost completely unrelated to the rest of the series. 7 makes a few references to 3, but 1 and 2 may as well have taken place in a different universe. If you do a little research into who the characters are you could easily start with 7. It stands well enough on its own, and has the most intuitive interface out of any of them. 5 and 6 are good but can be difficult to ease into. I've only heard hushed rumors of 8's wretchedness, and 9 takes wild unrestrained shits on the series' lore and history, but can be compelling if you try to not think of it as an Ultima game.

Dude... I have not playes an Ultima game since Ultima 4, and yes I played 1 through 4. Back when you still got a cloth map in the box.

Oh wow, you stopped right when the series started to really take off!

Why wouldn't you want potato chips with your NPCs?

It's the CHINS, man. Every character has the same rounded, bulbous chin and they all look like this guy I know. Half of them even SOUND like him.

There's that one elf guy near the beginning in that shop...something up with that chin. Probably where he keeps his secret stash.

Maybe I'll just kill him next time for being ugly.

Ultima 7 came out in 1992? wow, I was just a year old than haha.

Think someone who grew up with more "sophisticated" games would be able to get into them?

I think so. The only thing you need to keep in mind is that the game doesn't keep track of quests for you, so you'll need to make your own journal.

I haven't played U7 (the only one I've played) since the 90s. My brother and I spent wayyyy too much time running around with the Hoe of Destruction trying to kill Lord British. Never really got much farther than that, probably because the world was so big and we might have lacked the attention span.

Speaking for myself, I'd play it again, and am staring at the "Download now" page, wondering if it will eat my life. You know that it won't be as pretty as aything modern, but that's not why you're playing it- you're playing it to recapture the excitement of questing for the Black Gate, et al.

Do it!