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Great game....suffers only from playability

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 1 / 1
Date: December 07, 1999
Author: Amazon User

U9 is currently like the most beautiful woman in the world...but with a big, festering, hairy mole on the end of her nose. You just know it is amazing...but its hard to get past the glaring faults at first.

On a P2-333 w/two 12 mb Voodoo2 cards (right now, 3dfx chipset cards seem to be the only bet, with the Voodoo 3's the best choice) with options turned down (but not all the way) I am getting pretty playable framerates, though. I am of the old school where Gameplay is the master of Graphics though...to some, my setup might be too "ugly" to be playable.

The game itself, is immense, immersive, fun....and definitely worthy of the title "Ultima." Unless you are a diehard fan of the series though, I would recommend waiting a bit on this title, for many of the problems to be cleared up.

Once things (graphic card support, AI, glitches, optimization, etc...) are fully tweaked, U9 will likely take the throne as "Best RPG of All Time."

Either suffer through the wait for it to be fixed...or suffer slightly while playing it as-is now. Either way, the suffering is/will be worth it.

Complete Disappointment

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 1 / 2
Date: March 17, 2000
Author: Amazon User

I don't know why people would give this game a good review. It is the buggiest piece of crap I have ever played. Who cares if the graphics are stunning ... the game isn't even playable! Bugs prevented me from going farther in the game at several points, forcing me to go back to old saved games. After the fourth or fifth time, I quit playing. After an hour of playing, the game slows to a crawl and needs a reboot. It crashes quite often. DO NOT BUY THIS GAME UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES. YOU WILL BE DISAPPOINTED.

A game that all RPG fans should play...

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 1 / 2
Date: June 16, 2000
Author: Amazon User

I'm not a long time Ultima fan, in fact, I wasn't even born when Ultima I was released. I was introduced to RPGs with Ultima VII. At the time I had my doubts, I assumed that anything with that many sequels had to be tackier than most horror movie series.
Ultima VII was a bad introduction to RPGs, not because it was a bad game, but because it is probably the best RPG of all time (or best two, I should say, as the game came in two massive parts). No other RPG has ever compared well.

Ultima IX promised to be fantastic, and in most respects it was. The graphics are great, the engine is unbelievable. Even after 100+ hours of playing the engine still had me in awe. This is the closest to a real world simulation as anyone has got, or will get again for quite some time.
The voice acting isn't the best, but its not painfully bad either, and the music makes up for it. The in-game movies are especially good.
I have two problems with the game. The first thing is that throughout all the other Ultimas it was stressed that the Avatar (the character you play) was supposed to be you. Therefore, the personality of the Avatar was left ambigious. In this game the Avatar has a personality, and its a pretty annoying one.
The second is the overall plot. It is quite a good plot for an RPG, but there were many questions raised and things implied in previous Ultimas that were either completely ignored or dealt with badly for my liking.
However, I was fully immersed in this game for several weeks and loved every minute of it. I only wished Origin still existed and Richard Garriot was still with them so that they could make an expansion pack. This game definately deserves one.

OOOO Thats not good...

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 1 / 2
Date: November 19, 2000
Author: Amazon User

This game would be SO GOOD if it wasn't so CHOPPY. It takes about 5 seconds to run 4 feet. It was difficult to do ANYTHING much less get deep into this game. It truly looks like a TON of fun, but a 400 mhz processor won't cut it. Maybe a 900 or a 1.5 Ghz. If you have a fast computer, this is the RPG for you. If you have a Pentium II, pass this one up, play Ultima Online instead.

Sucks

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 1 / 3
Date: January 25, 2000
Author: Amazon User

DO NOT BUY THIS GAME if you don't at least have a 3D FX video card. The DirectX support 'from the box' is non existant. You need to download at least patch 1.07 And even then, I got random ejections to the desktop, refusal to load a saved game, and when actually playing a SLOOOOOOOWWW framerate.

A final epic role-playing series

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 1 / 6
Date: February 01, 2000
Author: Amazon User

All at once the once proud quest of the avatar is coming to a close. This epic role playing game introduces descisions. If you want to give this guy money or kill him. If you want to run away from the troll or try to kill him and get his dough. All of you descisions in this game has an effect in the game. This is a must have for everyone who, like James Tiberious Kirk said," If only I could make a difference.", ultimatly wants to make a difference.

Forget the Flap-This game is great!

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 0 / 2
Date: July 21, 2000
Author: Amazon User

I know about all the flap about this game and technical problems that people have had with it. I just bought the game and realized that I didn't have any video card to speak of in my PC so sprung for a $50 (after rebate) Voodoo3 card and the thing is amazing. This is without a doubt the best role playing game I have ever played on a PC. The graphics are beautiful and the storyline is complex and interesting - I amtotally hooked. The only thing that I wish that they would add to it is a little more intelligence into the dialogue so that it doesn't give you the choice of picking a statement when youare talking to someone that doesn't actually make sense yet (you haven't gotten there in the game yet). Really amazing and well worth the price!

Good, but not like the series of old.

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 0 / 1
Date: April 16, 2000
Author: Amazon User

This game can really be very good,if you have the very latestin hardware, and down loaded all the patches it requires. Graphicallyand sound wise it is very impressive, with a real living breathing world and small touches like fluttering butterflys and the sounds and sights of lightning and thunder if a storm comes(this some times happens periodically in the game). My only complaint is that it is that it isn't the same kind of game as the Ultimas before it. It just isn't the same. The game actually plays more like tomb raider than a real role playing adventure, but fans of the genre and series should still enjoy this, and any new comer for that matter. It's all about the exploring, I hope you have a lot of time on your hands. END 0

aside from bugs(on patch 118f) it's not a total failure on a new machine(as of 07)

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 0 / 0
Date: June 29, 2007
Author: Amazon User

I once wrote saying this game would not work on newer operating systems and the only PC's capable WERE the new ones, yet XPPro still plays it quite well, you will need to avoid RAID however and ICD errors are more frequent. Some bugs are very bad even as of now but it is not a showstopper! Thier are unaddressed or unspoken except in a hushed wisper bugs not anywhere addressed online-much like microsoft's hiding there error message knowledge from the public. The Ultima bugs are not a big deal yet somewhat annoying if in the spirit of the game as Karma hits in uncalled for places jumping a chasm in "Despise" can knock you for a few points 1 if your lucky, 10 if your unfortunate! This can happen before getting the wurm armur in pit or after comeing back this way out. Defeats the purpose of being anything but a Ranger!(low Karma anyway). Also you are not SUPPOSED to be able to steal eggs from the Gargoyle Queen but you can just fly down her backside granny shorts(not a pretty site) and get one not incurring a Karma hit that LB made such a big deal about implementing in his clue book interveiw. more bugs-though more on laughable comedy but detracting, the avatar "kan sit in chairs" Kan? as in on the backs not the seat. I misspelled on purpose, herbert! The mines of My-nok also disengage your input devices(namely keyboard and mouse) and cause you to cntrl alt to desktop. Toolbelt disapearence possible(though unlikely). If Keagan doesn't sell you that third map, your seafaring days are over! Yep it's a bug without his charts(he must sell you Map 3 before hand) your captancy is landed and so is your game! Lubber! Freeromaing abilty is present but not a good idea, this game runs on a linear path of evnets if you traverse Magincia via swimming or "Yew' without the open pass you'll blotch up the plot as it isn't intelligent enough to accept this as an alternative! Very disney in game intellect! but most annoying is ICD error, a showstopper if you've reloaded as much as I have.(patch 1.18f and 1.19f unofficial). Makes your tired of playing. It happens more frequently as time goes on and eventually so often you don't have time to even save the game(once every 5 seconds at later stages). In Windows 98(another conspiracy bug) a white desktop cursor ackompanies your game gauntlet cursor(ugly) and the humility movie cuts out to a permanant condition of your PC(the white cursor shows up in ALL D3D/GL(non voodoo FX) games from then on!). I told EA of this in '99 and the punky boarish teen on the phone said as predicted, "well -I- ain't never saw nutt'n like that happen! What are you talk'n bout, dude?!..." the exact words! very evil.(EA is to games as Disney is to amimatinon TV! And Holiwood to moves and so on.)

Ultima 7 [was bad] at first, too

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 0 / 0
Date: May 13, 2000
Author: Amazon User

I pre-ordered Ultima VII: The Black Gate from Babbage's back when it was to come out. Its release was delayed for years, but I was a big fan of Ultima 6 and the wait didn't dull my desire for it. When I finally got the game, I couldn't get music to play, I needed a boot-disk, it took about five minutes to load and sometimes crashed before getting to the map, the save game slots were all broken (you could only have one save, and that took some time), and plot elements would randomly disappear (Namely, you are out to solve a series of ritual killings, but the bodies would disappear and everyone would seem to forget all about it! It made is quite difficult to progress.) Anyway, I ended up waiting until the add-on pack came out, and it fixed up the game, and Origin went on to make the best Ultima, 7 part 2: Serpent Isle, with the same engine. But U7 was by no means playable on my system when it arrived, and good luck getting it to work on modern machines.

Ultima 9 is a good investment, if you have a lot of RAM and a Voodoo. So, it might not be for everybody. But its high system requirements and bugs are by no means untrue to Ultima or a big surprise, given Richard Garriot's complete lack of good software engineering principles.

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