/vr/ - Retro Games

>>5533950
>Ultima VI: The Quest for the Avatar (1990)

>>5533954
fixed

I've never played an Ultima game. What's the best entry point into the series?

just play all of them in order

Black Gate and Serpent Isle are God tier. False Prophet and Underworld I & II are also good.

>>5533973
Akalabeth or Ultima I if you want to play the most historically significant games in the series.

Ultima IV if you want to play something different.

Ultima V if you want a challenge.

Ultima VII if you want an accessible game.

Ultima Underworld if you like Action RPGs and Immersive Sims.

>>5533960
Are you the one making the core vr chart? Also optimize your chart using pnqquant 256, better result and less weight than jpg.

>>5534108
>Are you the one making the core vr chart?
nope, I only made this one

>>5533950
if you value your time limit yourself with
Ultima VII
Ultima VI (+savage worlds +martian dreams)
UU I & II

those are the ones that are actually [somewhat] enjoyable to play
to my taste Ultima VII and UU I-II are actually really good

do not fall for nostalgia-rose-tinted-old-fags! Ultima I-V are not worth anyone's time considering you can spend it playing something better, those games only hold historical value

>>5534180
Isn't VI a huge waste of time? The world is enormous and ever npc has loads of text.

>>5534185
>is reading text in a text heavy rpg a waste of time?
Is playing videogames a waste of time?

>>5534185
Main issue with Ultima VI is that it occupies kind of an awkward space inbetween old-school and "new-school" Ultimas.

The combat and dungeons aren't as challenging as Ultima V, and the IMO, the UI has aged worse.

Yet the writing isn't as strong as in the Ultima VII games, and the world isn't quite as interactive either.

In my opinion:

Ultima Underground and Ultima Underground 2 are both good.

Ultima 4, as previously mentioned, is different, and great in its own way.

Ultima 1-3 and Akalabeth are... antique, with the cumbersomeness that implies. Akalabeth is a prototype of what will come after.

Ultima 7 is considered, to my understanding, the exemplar of the series; I had trouble with the frame rate. (Was it supposed to be choppy? I was never sure if something was wrong with my system.)

Ultima 5 requires a tanslation guide for Britannian, but offers a darker atmosphere than the other games - it's the Majora's mask of the series.

Ultima 6 is one I'm not familiar with.

Ultima 8 and 9 are trash, and show exactly what EA does to a company.

Ultima Online is one of the prototypes for the modern MMO; I don't know if it exists still.

Ultima Forever apparently got cancelled, and is as gone as (insert Marvel character here).

Beyond that, I cannot say.

In general, it's a classic RPG series, worth studying.

(I'd ask for links, but I'm worried it'd ding my Honor.)

>>5533950
4 (Sega Master System)
5 (IF you can stand the ridiculous interface/controls)
6 (with Nuvie source port)
The Complete Ultima 7 (with Exult source port and music pack)
Underworld
Underworld 2

Isn't there a 3D fan-remake of 5? Does anyone know how to get that running?

>>5533950
Look at this sexy sexy Avatar. How could you say no to this face? Give Ultima 7 with Exult a try.

>>5533950
And then when you're done that, buy a better game. A game like Skyrim

>>5533950
4 on Master systm
3-5 on NES
6-7 on PC

UW 1-2 from GOG

Savage and Martian on PC is you can find them.

>>5535451
You're thinking of Lazurus for Dungeon Siege. There's also an Ultima 6 remake but I've never heard good things about it.

They are all worth a try. 2 is kind of awful so don't spend too much time on it but it's interesting to see the progress.
The most important game is 4. Don't make the mistake of skipping it for the later titles. 7 especially is not that good on its own.
Exceptions are Ultima Underworld 1, Savage Empire and Martian Dreams since they aren't tied to Britannia.

>>5535493
>3-5 on NES
Are you serious? 5 on NES is practically unplayable. They tried to make it like 6 which was more than the hardware could handle.
There should be no reason to pick it over the IBM-DOS port with C128 music patch.

>>5535493
Ultima IV and Martian Dreams are free on GOG

also, mandatory: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jUQrU8KUExU

>>5534202
yep!

>>5534185
The large amounts of dialog are one of the best parts of the game.

>>5537705
You can even get full voice acting for it.

>>5533950
Just vii and more like worth a try

>>5533950
>Ultima IX

Why would somebody go to such great lengths to photoshop a box of a game that doesn't exist, and add it to the collection?

>>5533950
I'm playing Ultima IV (Master System version) right now for the first time and having a lot of fun. I'm almost an 8-part Avatar now, which means I will actually have to go into the dungeons at this point, which sounds like it's going to be a bitch to do. I'm thinking about grinding to buy a Magic Wand for the Avatar beforehand.

I think I will play all of the games in the series in chronological order after this (already played BG and SI before). Which versions should I play? Is Lazarus any good or should I stick to the original? Should I even bother with Pagan? I know it's ass but the soundtrack is pretty awesome.

Thanks in advance.

>>5538161
Use nuvie for 6. The bigger view and interface improvements complete the game.
Lazarus took too many liberties for me.
Give Pagan a try to see what it's like but don't force yourself to finish it.

>>5538161
>Should I even bother with Pagan?

The thing about Pagan that most people don't know is that there's actually two versions. The latter one came out about a year(?) after the first release, and is basically a bunch of bug fixes and controls and UI overhaul. To be honest all things taken into account it's....still kinda mediocre, but it's certainly better than the steaming heap of garbage original Pagan was.

So if you absolutely have to play Pagan, make sure it's the "fixed" version.

As for IX, we do not speak about *that* in polite company.

>>5535662
i watched it and i'm never getting those fifteen seconds back

or the other 45 seconds i spent re-watching it because it was fucking great

>>5538182
There's also the 9821 port and Pentagram.
Where can you even get the original version nowadays?

>>5533950
You forgot this book.
It isn't a strategy guide, it's written like a novel.

>>5538307
Holy crap. This thing goes for almost $200.
It was a good book, but not a $200 good book.

>>5534094
>Akalabeth or Ultima I if you want to play the most historically significant games in the series.
Ridiculous. That would go to Ultima IV. The only notable thing about these games is that they're the first.

>>5538675
Ultima IV's gameplay isn't that different from Ultima III's. The main thing that Ultima IV brought to the table is the virtue system and the weird post-modern story.

>>5538312
I've noticed Ultima merch prior to later UO expansions have gained huge amounts of market value in general. I guess people are that attached to the game world. Meanwhile, Wizardry games are comparably cheaper, despite being hugely influential during the same time period.

So with all the hacking that has been done on Ultima II-V, why has no one been able to fix the dungeon armor bug in the IBM port of I? That's probably the only remaining issue for the series on the platform.

>>5535573
>Lazurus for Dungeon Siege

How to set that up?

>>5533950
I just noticed that ultima IX is the only one up there without a date listed for it. Almost as if OP's subconscious didn't want to fully acknowledge it's existence.

"What's a Paladin?"

>>5539394
I'm not entirely sure...

>>5534225
I am thinking about picking up VIII because of its isometric perspective, but what makes it so bad compared to previous titles?

>>5541574
It was the first one where EA's influence was clearly visible.

People didn't like that it played more like an Action Adventure, rather than an RPG. When it was first released, it had some pretty frustrating platforming sections, although they have been nerfed in a patch.

>>5533950
>Ultima VII is about stopping EA. You chase E and A all over the land, and find out their old logo is corrupting the world
>Pagan is about a world that has already been conquered by EA, so everything sucks
>in Ultima IX Britannia has already been taken by EA, so it's a shell of it's former self
>the Avatar sacrifices himself to save us from more shitty games
Am I looking too much into this?

>>5541683
>It was the first one where EA's influence was clearly visible
I would say that is Serpent Isle. Great game, but you can already see that they were begining to be forced to cut shit to meet deadlines - like how the whole plot with the Banes of Chaos got removed.

>>5535480
U6 avatar is my favorite depiction of the avatar. i just love the idea of playing a burlyass paladin ready to deus vult shit up.

>>5538182
i got into ultima recently and i haven't gotten around to picking up 8 & 9 since i heard U8 ends on a cliffhanger and U9 is apparently so bad that nobody considers it canon. but i heard that as it's own thing U8 wasn't bad but it should've been a spin off or an original IP.

i thought about giving U9 a chance just to see how bad it really is but i have much better games on my RPG backlog to consider it a priority.

>>5541860
No, it's accurate because they were bought by EA at VIII and it seems EA were pissed so they did everything to piss the franchise

>>5538031
Ah yes, the professional stylings of Lord Rattail and his autistic playfight friends recorded through a tin can and string. What value!

>>5538178
>Use nuvie for 6. The bigger view and interface improvements complete the game.
maybe i'm an idiot or maybe i just got a bad install but i can't seem to get it working right no matter how many times i fiddle around in the configuration.

>>5533950
>The Silver Seed

>>5542282
U8's cliffhanger was supposed to lead into an expansion, but that got axed. They clumsily wrote the intro into U9 to explain it, and I would say that they did an awful job....except the rest of the game is written so horribly, it actually blends in with the rest of the garbage plot so you barely notice how jarring it is.

>>5533954
Ultima VI is False Prophet
Ultima IV is The Quest of the Avatar

>>5541860
>the Avatar sacrifices himself to save us from more shitty games
shroud of the avatar says hi

>>5542627
Dang you're right, Ultima VII was difficult to follow.
>>5538307
>An official collaboration between Prima and ORIGIN has produced the first book that "walks through" the complete Avatar trilogy (over 500,000 sold in North America alone). In addition, this is the first trade book of cover Ultima VII.
Sounds more like a strategy guide than a standalone novel, but I haven't read it yet.

>>5543341
>Sounds more like a strategy guide than a standalone novel
It's both. It details all the events of the game in novel form from the perspective of the Avatar, and them gives a "normal" strategy guide at the end of each chapter.

All of them but IX; VIII has some really good things about it even though it is very breakable in several ways.

100% required: IV, V
Worth playing: III/NES Exodus, early Online via server emulation (started going to shit around Third Dawn), Underworld/II
Sort of interesting: VI, VII and its spinoffs, Savage Empire, Martian Dreams, NES/SMS Quest of the Avatar
Worth playing if you've played all the above and want more: I, II
Only worth playing if you hate Ultima: IX
I'm A Fucking Masochist Tier: VIII, Runes of Virtue
Complete waste of time: everything else

>>5543341
so is the canon avatar in japan a girl? i bet that gets kinda awkward with the games where you can't change their gender.

Playing the original version of Ultima 1 was the point when I realized even I have a limit when it comes to tolerating old games. I'm generally patient and don't let a game's age bother me, but the limitations of the Apple II are horrendous and make the game almost unplayable to me. I won't dismiss the entire platform as a whole but I'm definitely not rushing to play any more Apple II games.

I tried 2 through 4 as well. 2 seemed worse than 1, minus the Apple II problems. 3 seems good but I'm too small brained for it. 4 was the one I actually got pretty deep into (but still didn't finish). I would recommend 4, bring a paper and pencil.

>>5543620
What do you base that on?
Clearly the one on SE is male.

>>5543623
2 was an attempt by LB to expand the game but he was too inexperienced to do it properly. There are a lot of cool ideas and interesting settings but the implementation is horrible.
Did you play the original BASIC version or the 1987 remake of 1?

>>5543620
No, but they gender swapped some of the companions.
>in the manga Iolo is a cute teenage girl

I've started with 6 and loved it but the annoying inventory system might make it harsh to play.
However it has a terrific story, I didn't expect where the story went and loved every minute of it.

>>5544004
Are you using nuvie? It allows you to use drag&drop as well as 7 style GUMPS.

>>5544005
Oh no, played on my pc back in the 90s, I was coming from my C64 and the concept of an open world full of NPC and lots of things to do just blew my mind.
I still remember the SPAM SPAM SPAM HUMBUG code

>>5544020
Are you >>5544004?

>>5542236
80's hair metal avatar is the best avatar.

But which is the worst? Autistic buckethead Avatar from 8, or handegg quarterback jock from 9?

>>5544512
9 ruined everything for me. I had three absolute miserable weeks in late 1999 not only buying the game with my own money and upgrading my machine, but also desperately trying to get into and liking it.

I didn't touch anything Ultima for the next 10 years and I say this as someone who was completely obsessed with the series.

>>5539718
>>5539394
Your knowledge of the land shall be great.

>>5543341
>All that jap shit
Gooks really liked this back IN the day huh?

>>5543532
As someone who doesn't have any experience with the series, why are IV and V 100% required? From the picture I got based on people discussing these games, I always thought VII and Underworld 1 are the ones that are 100% required.

>>5544558
Did you buy the collectors edition, get pissed about the plastic ankh, and apoplectic at the damaged soundtrack cd?

My brother. I even liked 8

>>5544512
buckethead avatar or the WoW inspired one from the phone game are clearly the worst.

U9 avatar looks ok as an aged version of U6's avatar.

>>5544558
>>5544875
My own experience with that game is just booting it up briefly since it came with one of the clearanced Ultima Online packs I picked up circa 2008. I thought it was whatever, figured I had eight other games to play first, and shelved it. Out of curiosity, I looked into the bugs this game had. Holy fuck, I am so sorry for the both of you.

>Thanks to the limited drawing range, Castle Britannia is big enough that the ceiling is not drawn and it can rain in the throne room.
I can only imagine all the other busted shit happening, then while you're inside, trying to converse with NPC's, it just rains on you.

Jesus FUCK this game is hard.

Does anyone have some tips? I just started and I keep getting killed by shitty skeletons and trolls, and everything poisons me.

>>5544004
i started with U6 and i wanted to like it but the whole main quest just felt too much of an elaborate scavenger hunt for me to care and i pretty much gave up playing legit when one of the NPCs i need to talk to in order advance the silver tome quest despawned on.

that said I'm really liking U7 so far since i started that up and was gonna jump into savage empire & martian dreams after that.

>>5542236
>>5544512
>And here I go again on my own
>Going through the only gate I've ever known
>Like a drifter I was born to walk alone
>And I've made up my mind
>I ain't wasting no more time
>But here I go again, here I go again,
>Here I go again, here I go
>Cause I know what it means to walk along the lonely street of dreeeeeeeeeeeams

>>5545426
I'm surprised that there hasn't been a "fix/restore U9" mod project.

if aliens colonial marine & daikatana can have a mod that fixes almost everything wrong with them why can't U9?

>>5545426
So the CD had no apparent damage, but every track had garbage clipping or noise or some shit, so it must have been on the master

>>5545457
It's mostly patched tp be okay. The biggest problem was it didn't run on anything but the best hardware when it was released. Anything else was garbage. I had a tnt2 and a k6-2 300 which ran like half life and q3 great.

U9 was just fucking garbage though. I got to moonglow I think and one of the houses had so many particle effects I was getting like .5 fps.

>>5534094
Immersed is a synonym for suspended. To be suspended in, to be immersed in.... typically a liquid.
Saying """"Immersive"""" to describe something that leaves you immersed in a liquid is like saying """""suspensive"""" for something similar. We can all agree on the non-wordness of the latter term. it's negro english that betrays a stunted mind.
in place of "immersive", the manchild community should should adopt "convincing" or "enchanting", depending on the scenario, to describe the ability of a game to successfully involve the player's mind in a secondary world.

>>5545457
There's plenty of U9 mods. Some that change the gameplay, some change the plot, some change the world.

>>5545487
i thought about picking up U9 to see how bad it was. is/was the mod scene worth it?

hell, do any of the mods even still exist?

>>5545504
1.19h is the only one you need.
http://www.forgottenworld.de/index.php/downloads/other-downloads
Try the rest after you played the game.

>>5544636
they produced an anime as well
http://wiki.ultimacodex.com/wiki/Exodus_Anime

>>5545651
Unless I see some Japanese sources I'm going to maintain that it's just the commercial.

>>5545430
Goto Minoc and find a guy named Shenstone and follow him, he leaves his shop every day around noon to hide some skull keys in a tree. Get a bunch of keys and then use them to rob LB's castle basement for all kinds of good stuff, keep what you need, sell what you don't.

This will turn your karma to shit, but you can fix it later. Also, if everyone in your party equips a ring of invisibility monsters can't do shit and take extra damage, this works really well with magical axes.

This game is a lot harder if you don't transfer a character in from Ultima IV.

>>5534180
>savage worlds +martian dreams
This so much. Is there a way to not have sound FX played over the internal speaker? The mt-32 soundtrack is so good.

>>5545918
I use a Sound Blaster Pro 2.0 with the onboard speaker header to route the sound effect audio for older games to external speakers. Be warned that a 10K variable potentiometer is your friend if you want to adjust the volume. You can also build a circuit to route the audio on your own but I always lose the link for that. Or, as I'm sure someone will chime in, just use DOSBox.

>>5545928
Thanks anon. I'm using a Soundblaster AWE 32 and I'll give it a try.

>>5545947
My nigga. My AWE32 arrived from Serbia last week after a three-month delay. I hear the DOS version of Dungeon Keeper will use some custom effects on it, if that's also your type of game.

>>5545483
I'm talking about Immersive Sims, the videogame genre

E

>>5534180
I very much agree with this anon.

I'd also recommend learning how to emulate roland midi to get the most out of these games -- they have really excellent music. You should be able to find a torrent for Sound Canvas VA plugin, use it with vst capable midiplayer of your choice, and get loopMIDI utility so you can feed from dosbox (don't forget to change midi config in dosbox.conf file to the new midi device). It takes some fiddling but the result is great and really enhances many games from that era. There are some guides on youtube and threads on vogons forum if you have trouble.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t-qHBXpYxmQ&list=PLUa-WwS_7GQxmqhcNodHQZfnt4hsRoXNi&index=4

>>5547717
How many of these games were designed with a Roland card in mind?
I've read that Savage Empire, Martian Dreams, and Bad Blood convert adlib on the fly to MT-32 with mixed results. I assume that the soundtracks for many other Origin games like Wing Commander or Strike Commander were composed to sound best on Roland boards, but that won't yield the best results for all Origin/Ultima games.

>>5543623
>>5543965
Original U1 was written in BASIC (with some machine language for graphics.) So yes, it was slow. Plus I endured it as a fighter since the copy I had, someone didn't make a copy of the character disk.
It was later redone in machine language and quite nice. There's also a playable IIGS port with unfinished monster graphics (or was when I played it maybe 2 decades ago.) Lots of fun was to play the remake via an emulator on the PC I had at the time.
>go to dungeon
>hold down Attack key
>monsters come flying into your sword
>exit, dungeon. regain thousands of hit points

U2 felt like BIGGER IS BETTER. MORE STUFF! Filled with all kinds of tools & gear for specific uses (ie boots so you don't poisoned by swamps) but only obtainable from random monster encounters.

>>5533950
I'd say the ones with sourceports so U6,SE,MD,U7 & the underworld games.

>>5548886
What about 4 and 8?

Hey kids,

Wanna buy a duck?

>>5545483
You autistic or something? "Immersed" has been used in that sense for centuries.

>>5548203
I don't really know, but in my experience the results have been great. What I've read is that many composers at that time were composing on Roland hardware, so you're often going to hear the music in its ideal form.

There is varation, as you say. I do know that the Underworld games and Black Gate/Serpent Isle sound much better with Roland banks (and most would regard these games as the best scored in the series, by a wide margin).

In some cases you even get better sound FX -- not just music -- from the Roland samples (Might and Magic 3-5 for example). You're not stuck with MT-32 banks either; I find that the SC-88 Pro bank gets consistently great results... Just pick General MIDI output and it usually sounds better than other options (Doom 1&2 sound much better played this way imo).

Anyway, just saying that if you love games from this era but aren't an original hardware aficionado, learning to emulate sound canvas will on average get you the best experience for those games. I must stress getting a hold of the Sound Canvas VA plugin though, it's far more accurate than any soundfonts you'll find.

Is it even possible to enjoy a game like ultima 1-5? They were so obtuse in design.

>>5549415
I enjoyed 4 and up, but never finished 4 5 or 6.

>>5549415
The only one of those I didn't have fun with is 2, the others aren't that obtuse.
5 is a great game and it's a shame some people don't seem to get it.
4 has its problems but its a nice experience.

>>5545430
I just got to deceit in my current playthrough. Just grind bridges next to towns when first starting out. Trolls have a chance to drop all kinds of goodies. Its a big grind which kind of sucks but its an rpg. When you get bored of that plan your party. Ranged is king and preferable to melee in everyway. Certain battles make melee completely nullified.

Y'know, glad this thread exists. Been an Ultima fan for almost 30 years now.

My actual favorite is Martian Dreams, Savage Empire below that, and then the entire U7-7.5 ecosystem.

But I'm going to shill for Ultima 8. (WITH THE PATCH OF COURSE FUCK STRAIGHT JUMPING)

It's arguably a very atmospheric game. Sure, it doesn't feel very "Ultima" - no familiar faces, no familiar places, no virtues, no familiar spells. But it does make you feel very very lonely, alone, claustrophobic, desperate, oppressed, and all that bad vibes that the combination of music, color palette, game tone, art direction, and even control system gives you. And that's a good thing - because you ARE the ultimate hero of another world, surreptitiously plopped into a foreign land that's been fucked over by the Guardian for millennia. It's perfect for the setting.

And despite the numerous alterations, cuts, and shitty decisions they did to the story to make EA's stupid deadlines, what we have is still a pretty good story. Especially when compared to the soulless shit we see in games the past 10-15 years. Pagan may be lacking a lot of things, but one thing it does not lack is soul.

I say, don't get discouraged by reviews and opinions of other people who have played Ultimas countless of times before. Try it yourself, and make your own decision.

You only need to play U4 to U7.5
U4 ia actually where the series begins
U5 has a nice, dark story and start the day night cycles the magic system
U6 is further advancement of U5 but the story is not as good as U5
U7/U7.5 are the pinnacle of the series

The U5 / U6 remake are also worth playing

there is no need to play U1 to 3 as they are really too old and do not add much to the main experience
U8 and U9 are crap so you can just ignore

>>5551069
U8 is fine.

>>5550674
It feels like a proto-Diablo in parts.
What bothers me about the setting is that it's more or less the same as the worlds you visit in Underworld 2. Pagan had been set up as the Guardian's homeworld but then it got delegated to another conquered world and the Guardian himself feels powerless.

>>5550489
Yeah, I figured the bridge grinding trick and I'm doing much better now. I also realised that death isn't really the worst thing early on, because even if you lose levels you get to keep your stats gains, meaning you could max out your party with some patience. I really dislike the ranged weapon bias, I would much rather be smashing skulls in with a 2-hander, but at least the magic is cooler in this game than it was in 4. The story and music are also top-notch and make me want to beat it.

I'm actually planning going to take a pause from this game and come back to it after I'm done with the rest of the series because I figure that it's going to be really long and difficult, and I really want to see what the others are like.

>>5551423
>I would much rather be smashing skulls in with a 2-hander
Play 9 for that.

>>5551476
I want to smash skulls in a game where the story doesn't make me want to kill myself, though

>>5551490
It's not that bad, just kind of bland.

>>5539718
>What's a Paladin?

>>5552374

>>5550674
You forgot to mention that even if someone hates 8, they should at least be grateful that it's engine was eventually used to create Crusader: no Remorse/Regret.

>>5552987
It would have been better with the Underworld engine.

>>5539718
>>5544631
>>5539394
>>5552374
...the Codex of Ultimate Wisdom?

>>5551501
No it is that fucking bad, for a thousand reasons that all go above and way beyond 'it' s bland', it's retarded, plainly bad, makes no sense and plays like shit. And the atmosphere is bland on top of all these problems.
If you just want to bash skulls with a two hander, there are hundreds of games better suited for that purpose than Ultima fucking 9.

>>5555516
You're just shitting on it for the sake of it. The gameplay in 9 is the best in the series.

>>5555898

>>5533950
I can play RPGs back into the NES/SMS days but I gave Ultima IV a try and it just seemed absurdly obtuse and archaic to me. Am I just too young/stupid to get into it? I played an hour or so of the SMS port and just didn't enjoy it at all.

>>5556136
No. It's pretty dated, even when compared to later games in the series. If you wanna play through a good remake for some of the titles, theres a few out there that play on different engines. This one was a lot of fun.

http://u6project.com/wp/

Theres one that runs on neverwinter nights as well. I was a huge fan of Martian Dreams just because the time period and how odd it was. Sadly no remakes.

>>5556136
What's so obtuse about it? It's a game with very clear, simple goals. It tells you everything you need to do right away and you can do it in any order you want.

So what version of IV is best for a first time player?

>>5558520
xu4 or SMS

>>5533950
Ultima 2 - 7, UU1 & 2, Savage Empire & Martian Dreams. I suppose you could also try U8 as well.

>>5559486
When was the last time you played Ultima 2?

>>5558520
Sega Master System

>>5555898
The bugs alone make it functionally unplayable.

4 through 8, with the caveat that 8 is on there mostly for the music.
Best game is either 5 or 7 depending on your tastes.

>>5560716
Most bugs are fixed nowadays.
You also aren't restricted to running it on a budget computer from 1999.

>>5560739
Betrayal

U9 is a huge letdown for fans of the series, stable or not. Fyi you rarely need retro hardware to run retro games these days.

Why the hell is dungeon siege not on GoG? I just want to play Lazarus

>>5533950
None. They all suck.

>>5561175
The biggest letdown are retards who keep parotting a shitty video series without actually knowing the context.

>>5561592
Explain why anyone should play it, then. Even without bugs and without the context of the other games it's a non-rpg with shit story and shit gameplay. And with the context it just pisses you off

>>5561665
Because it's nowhere near that bad. Just because you don't get XP for killing enemies doesn't mean it's not a RPG and the gameplay is a clear improvement over the Underworld games. It fits well with the Ultima tradition of pushing the limits.
I played it after all the other games and I didn't find it enraging.

>>5533950
Didn't Ultima IV had some console ports too? I'm sure it was on the Master System too.

>>5561795
Ultima 3, 4, 5, 6, SE, UW and 7 had console ports. 4 is the only one that got multiple.
The SMS port is the only one that did it right though.

Any other good console versions of the games other than IV SMS?

test

>>5561734
No, the fact that you don't have any roleplay in that gaping hole of a shitty story makes it a shitty rpg. The gameplay is mind numbingly bad and there aren't even entertaining dialogues to distract you from that sad reality and make it worthwhile. Also you might not find it enraging if you're not particularly engaged in the universe, but I was and I did. Sure, not to the point of making a 5 hours video rant about it, but still. I am pissed off that this fucking thing will forever be the only conclusion for these characters I've played and followed for quite a fucking while.
Moreover I absolutely can't even comprehend how anyone could consider it an improvement over Ultima Underworld when Ultima IX has pretty much nothing to do with those games, so if you're not memeing and baiting gullible retards for them sweet sweet (you)s, I'd really like to understand your shit on that particular point.
I would also like to understand how anyone who isn't a depressed semi autistic youtuber with a raging passion for the serie could actually bear to play long enough of this shit to complete it, because I sure can't.

https://www.it-he.org/ultima7.php

>>5561957
The PS1 port of Underworld isn't that bad if you can deal with the controls, the weird low poly graphics and the fact that it's Japanese.
The Famicom port of 3 is alright, the game wasn't that deep to begin with.

>>5561592
You're the one ignoring the context, clearly. Perhaps someone who hadn't played earlier Ultimas (or decent rpgs in general) could tolerate U9 as merely mediocre, but those who know the series and are expecting a fitting resolution to it are going to be disgusted. You're a strange anomaly in that regard.

>>5561734
Haha...Clear improvement over Underworld games? You're nuts.

>>5534225
>Ultima Online is one of the prototypes for the modern MMO; I don't know if it exists still.
It does, though it's basically dead (I really have no idea how EA even keeps it running). Up to a point it still maintained many strong themes of the original Ultima lore which peaked with UO:LBR, but then EA shit the bed with everything afterward.
Up to and including LBR (Lord Blackthorn's Revenge) the 2D bitmap graphics were beautiful. It was a super refined extension of Ultima VIII, with the charm of Ultima VII. Then all the remaining remnants of the original 2D art staff were fired, the game was handed off from one recently acquired studio to the next, THEN a slew of fucking terribad new 2D art was added that wasn't even to the original isometric perspective/ratio, PLUS the..what..the three fucking different attempts at a fucking "thwee-dee" client that only 5% of the playerbase wanted...
Customizable houses also ruined the landscape, but by that time almost no one was venturing out into the world map anyway; everything had become champ spawn/Doom/banksit.
Played from 97 to 2008.

>>5563319
Ultima Online was a beautiful game. It's amazing how much EA missed the point and couldn't understand the charm of the game and kept forcing in weird 3D shit. It just felt lazy as fuck.

I think I gave up on it after the weeb expansion. I know that past Ultimas mentioned oriental lands that were part of the original Sosaria, and it's a cool idea to explore that, but they introduced it in the worst way possible (most of the new items were weird 3D models that didn't fit in with the old stuff at all).

It's too bad, because there will never be another game like this.

>>5541860
>Ultima VII is about stopping EA. You chase E and A all over the land, and find out their old logo is corrupting the world
>Pagan is about a world that has already been conquered by EA, so everything sucks
>in Ultima IX Britannia has already been taken by EA, so it's a shell of it's former self
>the Avatar sacrifices himself to save us from more shitty games
>Am I looking too much into this?
Good god that made me laugh more than anything else on 4chan tonight.
Fun story: toward the end of my time playing UO, I created a character on Test (where so many of us began to play just to sit around and do unlimited crafting/PvP) named Larry Probst after EA's CEO. I gave him the exact same hair, and dressed him only in a grey death robe with as much armor/properties jewelry as I could that wouldn't be visible on him, and proceeded to rezkill/guardwhack EVERYONE I could at the moongates until I hit number 3 on the PvP leaderboard that the devs had put up for that particular period of Test (Test was wiped/reset on a semi-regular basis).
My guild abbreviation was [EA], my guild title was "Your Money Puts" and the actual guild name was "John Madden's Name on the Box," which was a joke among some of the playerbase as to where the bulk of the money made from UO actually went (Madden NFL).
Larry Probst [EA]
Your Money Puts, John Madden's Name on the Box

>>5543623
>bring a paper and pencil
I miss that type of video game.

>>5551069
>there is no need to play U1 to 3 as they are really too old and do not add much to the main experience
Other than establish the main original lore of the universe. They're also especially important if you ever want to understand the background of UO.
>U8 and U9 are crap so you can just ignore
U8 was actually a decent enough game, and it's worth playing. U9 was a total dumpster fire.

>>5563416
>U8 was actually a decent enough game

>>5563470
Dude. I didn't say it was "as good as" or "on par with" the rest of the series. It's actually an interesting game though. It's also fun to witness how many graphics were sourced from it for UO.

>>5535480
It's Fabio!

Is anyone in here from the UDIC (Ultima Dragons Internet Chapter)?

>>5560724
Totally agree with you !

5/7 are the best ultima games
but 4 started everything (virtue system)
6 is ok

>>5563025
>>5562850
It's practically Underworld 3, just no longer restricted to dungeons.
>The gameplay is mind numbingly bad
The gameplay is completely fine. Considering how many different iterations they tried it's astonishing that everything fits together. The controls and interface in particular are incredible, a great deal better than what you usually had to deal with in Ultima.

>>5564348
Just play Arx Fatalis if you want UW3.

>>5563546
Who

In Mani Corp

>>5533950
>Which games are worth playing?

4,5,6,7
Underworld 1
Online

Arguably 8 if you can stomache the lack of a party and general focus on hacknslash without the interactivity of 7

Avoid 9 unless you have some sort of nostalgia for early 2000/late 90s 3D aesthetics

>>5567636
What's wrong with Underworld 2?

>>5564379
This

Arx always felt like a straight up Ultima game to me. More even than Underworld 2. It's all there, from baking bread to killing lord british.

>>5567641
Eh... nothing in particular.
It's like UUW1 but trimmed down to the core elements and separated into these different worlds to execute a crystal clear vision in every single one of them.

You could say that's a good thing, cause UUW2 is definitely more streamlined and gameplay-driven from a design perspective, but as a result it also lacks this kind of connected dungeon crawling / open world feeling where everything seems like one coherent world. Even though the worlds are connected through a hub.

There is nothing really wrong with it. And it's really hard to explain, but Ultima Underworld 2 doesn't "feel" right. It's probably stupid, but that's how it is. And that was also the problem of a lot of folks with it.

It's a bit like comparing the hub worlds in Super Mario Galaxy to Super Mario 64. The latter is more experimental and leaves room for your own imagination, while the earlier is more concise and gameplay driven.

>>5567664
I like 2 more than 1, it may not be as innovative but it's a lot more refined.
You actually get some options how to solve things. In 1 you are typically given a choice between an obvious smart and an obvious dumb answer.