dtgreene: I'm not quite who you are looking for (I grew up mainly on older JRPGs like Dragon Warrior 1), but my personal opinion is that Ultima 7 is overrated and not as good as its predecessors. Here are some problems with the game:

1. Combat is atrocious. They decided to make the combat real time, and in doing sol took away the ability to control your companions and any semblance of strategy the combat might have had. While the Ultima series isn't known for spectacular combat, Ultima 3-6 all had better combat than Ultima 7.

2. Food. The Ultima series has always required you to keep your characters fed, but in Ultima 4-6 it was generally a minor concern (especially in 6 where you only need food to rest, and you don't need to rest because MP regenerates on its own). In Ultima 7, however, not only do you need to feed your characters, but simply buying the food isn't enough; you actually need to go into your inventory and manually use the food item on the hungry character.

3. Inventory management is really poor. Ultima 1-5 had unlimited inventory size, and even Ultima 6 at least kept the items in your inventory clearly separated so it wasn't hard to select a particular item. Ultima 7 throws that out the window; you need to hunt for the item you need to use, which in turn makes problem 2 even worse, as you, again, have to manually feed your party members.

Incidentally, I have found that every Ultima game except the first has one serious flaw or annoyance that the previous game in the series did not have.

Gengar78: I am curious too. I wonder if it is better than wizardry 8 continuous mode? (It's not, nothing ever will be(expect maybe Freddi Fish 2(I hope two people argue vehemently over this(I'd pay to see that))))

dtgreene: From a combat perspective, Ultima 7 is not better than Wizardry 8's continuous mode. In fact, I believe Ultima 7's combat is even worse than the combat in Planescape: Torment.

dtgreene: I'm not quite who you are looking for (I grew up mainly on older JRPGs like Dragon Warrior 1), but my personal opinion is that Ultima 7 is overrated and not as good as its predecessors. Here are some problems with the game:

1. Combat is atrocious. They decided to make the combat real time, and in doing sol took away the ability to control your companions and any semblance of strategy the combat might have had. While the Ultima series isn't known for spectacular combat, Ultima 3-6 all had better combat than Ultima 7.

2. Food. The Ultima series has always required you to keep your characters fed, but in Ultima 4-6 it was generally a minor concern (especially in 6 where you only need food to rest, and you don't need to rest because MP regenerates on its own). In Ultima 7, however, not only do you need to feed your characters, but simply buying the food isn't enough; you actually need to go into your inventory and manually use the food item on the hungry character.

3. Inventory management is really poor. Ultima 1-5 had unlimited inventory size, and even Ultima 6 at least kept the items in your inventory clearly separated so it wasn't hard to select a particular item. Ultima 7 throws that out the window; you need to hunt for the item you need to use, which in turn makes problem 2 even worse, as you, again, have to manually feed your party members.

Incidentally, I have found that every Ultima game except the first has one serious flaw or annoyance that the previous game in the series did not have.

yoshino: Just now I'm playing and struggling food management in Ultima 7.
Clearly Ultima 6 was much more friendly game.
Perhaps, Richard Garriott thought that the 7th system was more 'realistic'. but that was wrong realistic for RPG game.
It is a bit easier by using 'F' key though.

yoshino: Perhaps, Richard Garriott thought that the 7th system was more 'realistic'. but that was wrong realistic for RPG game.