A great game to try and speed-complete, my fastest time is 3 days.
The game created world is well sculptured to portray a selfish society. The plot although long is interesting to those die hard Ultima fans however lacks for those unaware of the Ultima universe. Game play is fairly traditional style, people who are not addicted to the Ultima universe I can understand that the transition to this style of gameplay is difficult but I recon it’s well and truly rewarding.
Is not your typical Ultima game and varies from the popular Ultima 6 and 7 game styles.
A great game to try and speed-complete, my fastest time is 3 days.
The game created world is well sculptured to portray a selfish society. The plot although long is interesting to those die hard Ultima fans however lacks for those unaware of the Ultima universe. Game play is fairly traditional style, people who are not addicted to the Ultima universe I can understand that the transition to this style of gameplay is difficult but I recon it’s well and truly rewarding.
Is not your typical Ultima game and varies from the popular Ultima 6 and 7 game styles. In that you no longer control a party (only a single non-modifiable player) although you can get followers you do not control.
Once we have got this distinction out of the way it is quite a nice game that I devoted hours of game play to as a kid.
This being said when I revisited apart from its linear game play, it holds up as a great standalone game. You start off in the new dark world of Pagan still full of magic and medieval fighting, however in this world there are more quirks than ever before, you no longer have the option to steal and kill as this means that you get sentenced to execution automatically no questions asked – no fighting your way out this time.
The advantage of Ultima 8 is that it has gotten rid of the confusing parts of the previous games:
- You no longer need to remember the colour of the key to open a chest as they have invented key rings in the pagan world.
- The magic system is easier to learn and magical items are not prevalent through out the world although do exist in obscurity.
- Great graphics.
- Unfortunately the start can be boring for those not used to the game style.
- No more hidden magic carpets to whisk you around a flat world (Ultima 7).
- Less strategy in fighting more key bashing – both a blessing but a nuisance.
Many of my mates did have problems running the game without dosbox but I managed to get it running on windows XP using compatibility mode for 95 with some configuration changes.
All in all the game is well worth downloading and spending an afternoon adjusting to its bizarre culture – after this point make up your own mind if the in depth storyline is for you.
