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A Finer Role-Playing Series You Will Not Find...

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 3 / 3
Date: October 12, 2000
Author: Amazon User

Of all the ways in which Ultima is great, the stories you will experience are by far the best part of this series. You will go places you had never thought possible. These aren't simple hack-n-slash RPGs, or even the somewhat stale, high-polish epics of Final Fantasy. Instead, these are tales of corruption, predjudice, redemption, and virute. Through this series, you can watch an entire world and hundreds of people grow and evolve. The individual games are mostly what you would expect - they get richer and deeper as time goes on, with a fewer gems in the beginning, and a few stinkers at the end.

I & II - musuem pieces. Load these up just to see what they were like. Hardly any story.

III - the game that taught the japanese everything they know about RPGs. Turn-based party combat. A deep and complicated world. If you enjoy playing Nethack, you'll love U3.

IV - The first truly great ultima. Garriot abandons pure hack-n-slash for a quest of virtue and personal excellence.

V - A story of political corruption and intrigue. Not my favorite, but not bad. The last black & white ultima.

VI - The best story in the series. Play this one, if any. The world is beginning to reach epic proportions now. The graphics are color, but will seem outdated at first.

VII - the 2nd best game in the series, behind U6. The world is huge and detailed, and the plot is wonderful. Even the graphics are pretty good, and the game uses a mouse-interface - always a plus.

VIIb - a bonus, for when you finish U7 and wish for more. Same basic engine.

VIII - a mixed bag. Parts of this game plain stink. You will get frustrated. The basic plot seems like a rehash of U7b. Still, the graphics are the best in the collection, and the story can be good at times.

THE ONLY BAD THING ABOUT THIS COLLECTION - The Ultima Worlds games were not included! That stinks!

There is an easy way to run Ultima VII

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 3 / 3
Date: May 17, 2004
Author: Amazon User

If you look up Exult on the internet, you will find a platform designed specifically to run Ultima VII and Serpent Isle.

I just found at sourceforge.net a way to run Ultima VIII but I haven't tried it yet. Can't wait!

I LOVE these games. They really are in depth and entertaining. I spent forever playing Ultima VI on my old 386 computer, never finishing it!!! Now I can finish it on my new Dell. =)

A must-have collection of a truly groundbreaking series.

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 3 / 4
Date: November 10, 1999
Author: Amazon User

No serious computer gamer should be without this collection. Nine of the most important and influential CRPGs ever to be released in one collection is something that should not be missed. And nearly all the games are excellent. Though the early Ultima games don't have the depth and complexity of the later entries in the series, the continuing fabric of the universe and the tapestry of the story progress and grow as you move from game to game. The games also serve as a highly entertaining window to gaming industry, allowing you to see how technology grew and changed over time. Whatever your reasons, there is no excuse for not getting this marvelous collection of important--and extremely entertaining--games.

Fairly Good

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 2 / 2
Date: July 09, 2000
Author: Amazon User

I recommend buying this because it's a compilation, and it's worth it to get all those games. It's even cooler because it has video interviews with the creator of the games, and I like to see stuff like that.

There's only one real downside about the games. If you want to play Ultima VII (both parts) you can't be running an Expanded Memory Manager and some sound cards require Expanded Memory Managers to work so on some systems (mine included) you cannot have sound in the game. The audio in the rest of the games work fine.

Excellent Games, but not quite complete

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 2 / 2
Date: April 15, 2000
Author: Amazon User

The Ultima Collection contains some of the best role playing games every seen on a computer screen. The games themselves are above reproach(except for the slightly misguided Ultima 8) unfortunately the entire series seems to have been slapped onto a CD without much thought to the gamer.

While the installation program seems strait-forward each game must be tweaked before play. Using the slowdown utility moslo is fairly painless for Ultimas 1-6, the problems begin to crop up when running Ultimas 7-8. These games require a system reboot with a bootdisk. I remember the good ol' days of trying to manage multiple configurations and boot disks. An expereinced gamer won't have too much trouble setting this stuff up, but a novice may not be able to play the games at all! Perhaps now that Ultima 9 is finished Origin will give the series the treatment it gave to Wing Commander and tweak the games for speed and allow them to run under windows.

The manual is little help dealing with these issues, but does provide copy protection and basic keyboard commands for all the games. The actual manuals to the games are contained in Windows help files on the CD. The manuals attempt to reproduce the design and graphics of the orinal docs. The result is a difficult to navigate and often impossible to read. A set of PDF files that could be easily navigated(such as in Myth:The Total Codex) and pritned would have been very welcome.

But the greatest problem with this collection is what isn't here. While the collection does include Alkalabeth (Richard Garriot's precursor to Ultima 1) it lacks some of the other excellent games to bear the Ultima name. The Ultima Underworld series broke new ground in how roleplaying games used 3D, and the Worlds of Ultima games took the Avatar to fascinating places beyond Britannia.

Judged on the strength of its games, the Ultima collection deserves a 5. The docs and configuration problems knock this down to a 4. If you have ever had an interest in Ultima, this package is still worth your time and money.

Ultima VII Reborn - (No) Thanks to EA's Shovelware

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 2 / 2
Date: December 15, 2002
Author: Amazon User

Of the included games, the worthwhile one is Ultima VII; the others are too dated or broken, and Ultima 8 is just pointless. Thankfully, Ultima VII has now been ported to most major platforms, so you should be able to run it on any computer with minimal hassle. Maybe I'll try to play the older ones someday, but I'm in no rush.

This was certainly not true when it came out. Written for DOS, it required editing the autoexec.bat and config.sys by hand. Designed to run on a 386/33, the game engine included in the box will requires the included 'MoSlo' program, which only lets the game issue a command to the CPU one out of N cycles. However, the Exult game engine, an open-source Ultima 7 interpreter, is freely available. If you google for "exult ultima", it should be the first hit. It has much higher system requirements than the original (about 10x), but given that most people have computers 100x faster than in 1994, this is no problem. And it even runs in different systems, like Macs or handhelds.

This package is a bunch of shovelware. Ultima VII, even with its dated graphics and Midi sound, is still fun. This is certainly a niche product; it is only recommended for computer role playing games fans who are feeling nostalgic for the early 90's, back when Origin still created worlds.

The games are excellent but...

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 5 / 12
Date: September 26, 2000
Author: Amazon User

I have had problems with not only the Ultima 7's but EXODUS and Ultima 2 as well. They barely work on my computer and are a mess to start or deal with so I don't play them. As for 7 and serpent Isle, these were very good games even graphic wise but now that my old SBPro card has been damaged I can't play them despite the fact that I have a SBLive. I warn you, there are NO cards that use ISA slots(required for these games) You can't buy them, you can't special order them, and half the "tech-heads" I talk to don't even know what they are! You'd better have a good ISA card if you want to buy this product. Or Roland Daughterboard which cannot be purchased anywhere these days.

The Best of All

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 2 / 3
Date: March 15, 2000
Author: Amazon User

First, let me say that I do not own the game, nor have I played every single one, but, in my oppinion, Ultima VII is the best game of all time. I don't mean best Ultima game, I don't mean best RPG, I mean of all time, and unfourtunatly this is the only way to get the game. True Ultima IV is considered a clasic, which should make you want to get this more, and I think don't dissagree, but Ultima VII, at least the first part, is the greatest. I've been shoping around, and I've also seen that no where can you get this game for a lesser price. Ultima: Collection shows the evelution of the RPG, get it for your colection.

Edit: I now currently own the Ultima Collection. The Greatest RPGs ever made. Check out some of the remakes of the clasics out there.

Great RPGs, but how do you run the programs?

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 2 / 3
Date: May 04, 2003
Author: Amazon User

The Ultima Collection include what could possibly be the best RPG games of all time. UC includes all of the Ultima titles from Akalabeth (the game the Ultima series was based on) to Ultima VIII.

In order to run these games, you literally have to be a computer expert. You have to run these games from the DOS prompt. Before you get to play any of these games, you have to fix a lot of settings which an average computer user would have no idea how to set them up, or even what they mean (I'm still trying to find out what an "IRQ" is.) Also, many of the new computers do not have a PC Speaker, which all of the games require to play any sound effects and music.

By the way, do not expect Ultima I: Exodus to look anything like its NES counterpart. In Ultima I through IV, graphics are very poorly defined; everything consists of plain colored squares.

If you can actually manage to setup and execute the programs smoothly, then have at this game. Otherwise, I would recommend playing the NES and SNES Ultima titles.

This has nothing to do with a Review

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 3 / 7
Date: February 21, 2001
Author: Amazon User

I know that the Ultima games are awesome but I can't play any of them.

This title has been on backorder since early January. Don't waste your time ordering. I will get my software the day after never..!!

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