Just beat the game for the third time. I think it is an enjoyable game with pretty good graphics and I really enjoy the final jaunt through terfin!!!

I must disagree..

in order to play this game (original unpatched copy)

i had to patch it with 1.7 (i think) de patch with 1.5 then re patch with 1.7 just to play through the abyss section with Lord british and blackthorn.

My pc was well up to specs. and should have had no probs. But it was totaly shiped too soon

SHAME EA... shame shame shame

and .. im done..!

Yep. I bought this game as soon as it was released. I had a PC that was far above the minimum requirement. I had 5-10 FPS with everything set to low. And the longer I ran the game, the slower it got.

I just re-installed it now, and was happy to see the game running smoothly - finally! Until my new PC crashed with its first ever blue screen of death.

Ooooh well.

I agree it's actually pretty good as long as you realize it may have problems running and it's actually an Ultima-based adventure game and not an RPG like I-VII (VIII was more of an arcade RPG and the predecessor to the Diablo-type genre) and that the story does not really finish the story told in I-VIII but kind of makes it up as it goes along.
Many people who hate the game were expecting it to be a classic RPG that would heal the damage done by VIII as was promised. If you hit ctrl-M you can turn the game into first-person. I played through the whole game that way and enjoyed it much more than the native "Tomb Raider" type camera.

I had no problems at all when it was released. I played it on a P3 450 with a Voodoo 3 2000 (16 MB) and 128 mb ram.
It was really important to have a Voodoo 3 or Voodoo 2 SLI for this game, D3D didn't work well.

Well that's great for you. But I payed full price for this game... 60$ at the time. I understand that it was important to have a Voodoo 2 or 3 to play this game. But my PC was still well above the minimum requirements. It should have worked decently. It didn't.

I am sure this game is a great game. I sure enjoyed the game universe. I played Ultima since Ultima II: Revenge of the Enchantress. But Ultima IX, as good as it was, was a disaster. It featured very ambitious 3D graphics at the time, but the engine failed to deliver. This, combined with Ultima Online, killed the series.

Too bad, because am I sure this game is great. That's why I am very happy that I can play it now! :)

Cheers

I agree. I own all of the Ultimas' save Akalabeth. Of all the Ultima games, Ultima 3 and 9 are my personal favorites. Ultima 9 sucked me like no other game, past or present. With the fan-made patches, Ultima 9 is a absolute joy to play/replay.

I think it deserves about half the crap it gets.

They did an amazing job with building the world graphically. It was truly mindblowing at the time. Even today, I don't think I have seen a sunset or weather done better. They are simply beautiful.

The crap it deserves is the unplayability of it at launch and even after the first patch and the way they discarded so much of what made Ultima Ultima. If it had just been Random Adventure Game it would not have received half the flak it did, but as a capstone to the Ultima saga, it really was a let down for long time players.

I tend to totally agree with you. At first, I sandbagged Spooney after he lampooned Ultima IX, but after watching his whole retrospective on the entire series I tend to agree with him as well. I was just a casual Ultima player, at the time I only played Ultima 3 and 4. So when Ultima 9 was released I was not aware of all the massive plot holes and inconsistencies. I'm sure if I would have played the series from the onset I would have totally dissapointed as well.

I still have the collector's edition huge box full of swag. I was working at EB Games when it came out. It barely ran on my system which was a beast at the time with SLI and everything. So yeah, I was upset considering I've been a fan of the Ultima series since I was a kid.

Getting it fully patched up took far too long and they changed the gameplay too much.

To be fair, the creator of the series had initially planned to update all the Ultimas to the U9A engine. It never happened. but would've been interesting to see.

I also played it and I enjoyed it, however, the bugs that it had when it came out were painful.

I had to wait 3 months to be able to finish it, waiting for them to release the final patch that would fix the Shamino bug.

It is annoying because I played the game twice and reached the same issue almost at the end, so I had no other choice to wait for the final patch.

Other than that, I think the game was enjoyable and like you, I disagree with what some people say about the gameplay or the mechanics.