Red_Avatar: And Ultima 8 was a very strong game in its own right - how you can say it lost its ease of use when it was easier to play than Ultima VII? Ultima 8 was more focussed and more arcade-like while keeping the interactive world alive. It was a different and new world to explore as well and while it was nowhere near as big as Britannia, and while there were far less means to travel, it was still a solid and atmospheric game. Yes, Ultima VII was better, but it was still fun.
U7 was straightforward. It had major problems with window and inventory management, but it was functional and consistent. You could go where you clicked and let your characters handle the details.
U8 forced you to spend time lining up the Avatar with his destinations, parrying attacks, timing jumps (and calculating jump distance before the patch), recovering from staggers, and performing complex tasks to prepare spells, none of which was in U7. And its inventory management was as bad as U7's without extra characters to spread out the pain. It's like dealing with Resident Evil controls in what should be a pure point-and-click adventure game.
I remember a bunch of instant death spots where slightly different ground would crumble away and dump the Avatar into lava. That's not the kind of gameplay U7 fans were looking for. U8: Pagan was more like Pagan: The Avatar Adventure.
Red_Avatar: Ultima 9 had a big world again, and a lot of interactive items - but the game's story became more simplistic. Its values became black & white and the story was as if taken out of a children's book. Best combat of all Ultima games so far, some excellent locations (especially the pirate port) and the atmosphere was solid as well (not to mention the music was brilliant - why is no-one ever giving it any merit there?) but the story is a bit of a let down. Having said this, it's still more fun than most console crap out there.
The simplistic story was the main reason I didn't try to play this game. U7 has such a rich setting, I didn't want to see it thrown aside. Same reason I never tracked down the Wing Commander movie or enjoyed Starlancer. When you're in the middle of a compelling fantasy epic, you don't want the conclusion to forget half of what's come before and dumb down what's left. Gameplay isn't enough to redeem that.
U7 combat was messy, but it was still in the overhead tactical tradition of previous games. U8 and U9 switched to reflex combat. Whether it was good or bad combat, that's a major departure, one that not all Ultima fans were hoping for.
Maybe the best way to look at it is how all the time and effort devoted to the arcade and pretty pictures could have been used to make a more traditional Ultima without so many other compromises. The last two games were incomplete hybrids instead of the pinnacle of everything Origin had accomplished over the years.
