I'm not sure of how it fit in numbers wise but it was titled: "Ultima: Savage Empire".

That game is one of the Worlds of Ultima games. This game uses the Ultima 6 engine (and might even have Ultima 6's gargoyle world in the game files, but inaccessible under normal circumstances), but is not, strictly speaking, part of the main series.

Martian Dreams is a similar case.

Avadon 1/2 (and incoming Avadon 3) are Spiderweb games, so no wonder there are some similarities with Avernum.

When it comes to Ultima series and related games, GOG has Ultima IV and both Savage Empire and Martian Dreams for free.

I've played both all the Ultima games and Avernum games.

Ultima happened when I was in my teenage years. I remember playing and beating Ultima, Ultima 3, Ultima 4, and Ultima 5 on my TRS-80 color computer 2.
I had so much fun, especially with 4 and 5.
They for me had a mature story mixed with workable graphics and combat system.


I then went to college and did not have the time or money to play. After that was work and family with no time to play. It was only in the last few years that I've got a chance to buy the series again on GOG.

I always had hear how incredible 7 was but I was actually kind of disappointed as it went almost all story and the with the smaller screen you need a map to know where you are going. The combat was also very poor. I admit that the story was even better than 4 or 5. But it lacked balance.

I've also enjoyed playing avernum. It seems to take the best parts of 4 and 5. The screen is of the correct proportion so you can see enough of the world unlike 6 or 7. The story is pretty good and like Ultima makes a real effort to make the world seem alive and real.

I don't have the time to play like I did when I was a teen, but I've spent enough time and gotten quite far through them over the last year to two. If you like a balance of combat and story with older isometric graphics you can't got wrong with these titles. They may not be the masterpiece that baldur's gate 2 is but it is not far behind and a wonderful effort for a small independent firm like spiderweb.

This is all opinion of course, but personally I think the Avernum and Ultima series are both better than the Baldur's Gate series. Two reasons:

1) BG mainly delivers its story through a handful of major "turning point" moments -- big, sweeping cutscenes or major dialogues. However, they're also nonlinear. As a result, most of the time the player isn't really participating in the main story. I constantly felt like I was losing all immersion in the plot every time I went to do something else. In Avernum and Ultima, on the other hand, the story is delivered constantly through little details, so the immersion never breaks (even though they're also nonlinear).

2) The difficulty/leveling curve is a lot steeper in BG than it is in Avernum/Ultima. This means that as you progress nonlinearly and gain levels in BG, you become super powerful, and most of the fights that you haven't done yet become super easy (except for a few boss fights where the difficulty jumps tremendously compared to everything else, which I also don't like). The Avernum and Ultima games that I've played have shallower curves, so you can explore to your heart's content and still feel like you can get a decent challenge almost anywhere you go. To be fair, BG1 also did a pretty good job of this due to the low level cap. It drives me crazy in BG2 though.

Obviously BG is great too. This is just my 2 cents for people interested in trying out the older RPGs.

I'll admit, I played not that much of of baldur's gate 2, never came close to finishing it. I've played a lot more of Baldur's gate and that is where my opinion is centered. I did like the story telling for both though.