Hi with just two hours left of the GOG sale I've been looking at the Ultima series and I am not sure if it really is as good as what all the reviews claim.

I think I remember playing a console port of Ultima 4 way back in 1993 on the sega master system but I can hardly remember it. Having a hard time on whether to get this series or not please help

Short answer: yes!

If you don't have any of them, you should start from buying Ultima 7 and Ultima Underworld 1+2 , there is really nothing better than this :-)

btw. remember that Ultima 4 and Worlds of Ultima are avaible for free.

edit: oh yes, the pundle pricing. With 75% discount on all Ultima games, you should buy them all. :-)

I might be a little hard to get into Ultima I - V today, but at least Ultima VI and VII are very good games that are still highly playable and which I would recommend to everyone with an interest for RPGs.

Also Ultima Underworld I + II are still among the best games when it comes to dungeon crawlers.

It's only $8.94 for 11 games in the Ultima series right now. That's a great price if even only one of the games is fun and gives hours/days/weeks of enjoyment so I'd have to suggest "yes". ;o)

I have trouble with I-V, but Ultima 6 and 7 are pretty boss.
I've heard the Underworld games are good, too, but I haven't played them.

Wasn't two or three of the Ultima spinoffs made free here, as well?
IIRC, they're based off of VI, in terms of gameplay, so you could check those out to see if you like them.

If you're going to pick and choose through the series instead of getting it all, though, definitely get Ultima 7.

Yes, "Savage Empire" and "Martian Dreams" were based on the Ultima 6 engine and are freebies here. They aren't really related to the main series in terms of setting or plot, although there are plenty of cameos by main-series characters.

The Ultima series is perhaps the most influential series of crpgs. If you like collecting games then it should be an insta buy.

However If you are an aficionado of modern rpgs that wants more games to play, then I probably wouldn't. The games made today are quite different from crpgs of the 80s to mid 90s. Ultima is famous for ethics, town schedules, and baking bread, and not so much story telling.

edit:
Beware, Ultima 8 and 9 are stinkers.

You should, and send them to me. *sagenod* >.>

I recommend you start at Ultima 5.

Well with just over an hour of the GOG Sale to go I got the entire Ultima series for $8.94 I figured at that price it was worth it even if I don't like all the games in the series. Thank you to all who recommended these games and helped me make this decision.

You have made the right decision *sage nod*

Very good decision! I wish you a wonderful time with those!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-_IlNbsILLE

I think you might like some of the early Utlimas especially since you grew up on the Apple ][ which most of the Ultima's(1-5) were originally made for, also if the graphics are a bit off putting at least Ultima 2 and 3(who's dos versions were made for Composite monitors which would smudge the 4 colours and turn them into 16 colours which resembled the apple 2 versions, DOSbox has trouble with at least for Ultima 2 and 3 anyway. So you may want to look into using PIX's ultima patcher which allows you to add a EGA graphics upgrade along with a planetary map fix(Origin had over written the data files for non essential planets the patch re-adds the orginal maps for those planets)



Ultima 3's patch allows for 4 colour CGA, 16 colour composite CGA, EGA and VGA graphics(though the Dungeons graphics don't change except with Composite which turn the dungeon walls to their intended Blue and Red colour) and adds the music missing in the DOS version but avalible in the other versions including the Apple ][(if you have a mockingbird of course)

Ultima 4's adds VGA graphics and the missing music, please bear in mind that at the time PC's only had PC speaker so they couldn't add music even if they wanted too, well they could but it would be painful to hear.

Ultima 5's adds just the music

grab Pix's Patcher here: http://www.pixsoriginadventures.co.uk/category/ultima-patcher/

also keep in mind that since GOG has changed the way their DOSbox config's work so you will have to change what file they load manually(previously the patcher would do that for you) just open "dosbox_game name here_Single.conf in a text editor like notepad and then
you should see something like this

[Autoexec}
@ECHO OFF
mount C "..\ULTIMA2"
c:
ultimaII.exe -change this line to the proper patched version(see list)
exit

For:
Ultima 2 - change UltimaII.EXE to Ultima2.com
Ultima 3 - change from Ultima.com to Ultima3.com
Ultima 4- no change needed
Ultima 5 - change from Ultima.exe to Ultima5.com Now if this doesn't work(you don't hear any music) then you may have to run setm and select a diffrent sound card and/or run u5cfg and check to see if you have music enabled. Both are found within your Ultima 5 folder(pending you installed the patch, note that Pix's patcher currently will not register it as installed) from within windows to get it to work though