Geoffrey's "options" are to attack or not attack. The specific weapon is irrelevant in this case. In U7, this applies to everyone but the Avatar, who not coincidentally is the only one you directly control. U7 combat requires nothing in the way of reflexes. 1. What series are you playing again? There have always been multiple places to buy reagents for as long as reagents have been in the games. There are also enemy mages that drop some of their reagents.
2. Guess what, mana is consumable too. Better not ever cast spells then. You might need the mana later... There hasn't been any micromanagement of reagents since Ultima 6 did away with mixing altogether. You either have reagents, or don't. If you don't, you can easily get some. There's no reason to ever run out.

...you don't organize your stuff to help make it easy to find?

meh too much work my man, it is fun spending hours looking for shit, even when my stuff is organized ;)

Ahh. More power to you, then. :D
Maybe UU is just a lot easier to manage than U7.

I know I've got dedicated bags in UU. One for keys, one for potions, one for misc junk (like bedroll), one for quest items, etc. Of course, I confuse the crap out of myself if I ever put something in the wrong place...

I know right, and some times when you have so much of one item, you have to make a new bag slot for a new set of food or keys. Just as fun side note, in Ultima 7 part 2, I named the avatar Mr. Baggins xD

The thing is that controlling only one character is a definite step down to controlling an entire party of adventurers. Games are generally a lot more fun when you can control what's going on. Taking away magic from non-Avatar characters is also a step down.

Also, there is the feeling that combat essentially "runs away" when it is running in real time and lots of things are going on (I had this problem in the Baldur's Gate series, for example). In turn-based combat, this isn't an issue; the game will wait, giving you a chance to study the situation and see what's going on.

With respect to reagents:
1. Mages do *not* drop reagents on defeat in my experience.
2. There may be plenty of places to buy reagents, but it is likely that the one I find happens not to carry the reagent I need, forcing me to do far more busywork than should be needed to find the store that sells reagents.

If running out of reagents shouldn't be an issue, why require them in the first place? The game would be a lot more fun if you didn't need to stock up on reagents to use there spells.

I don't have the same problems with MP for a few reasons:
1. MP is only one figure to manage. (Incidentally, the game I'm playing now, Wizardry 8, has 6 mana pools per character, but no spell requires points from more than one.)
2. MP regenerates on its own. Hence, I don't ever need to go back to town to buy more; I can just wait or rest and it will return. (In Ultima 7, I find the MP recovery mechanic rather interesting: Every hour, you recover half the difference between your current and maximum MP. Hence, if you use more MP, you recover more at the end of the hour.) This is actually significant, as automatic regeneration gets rid of the psychological issue that comes up with things like reagents.
3. Unlike reagents, MP is strategically significant. In other words, MP is something that needs to be factored into strategy; reagents are not because, with enough patience to go between cities and enough money, you can buy excessive amounts of reagents, but you can't buy MP this way. In other words, MP actually *matters* as far as strategy is concerned.

Let's also note that Ultima 7 also has the issue of micromanaging food. Basically, they decided to make food mandatory again (unlike Ultima 6 when you need it only when resting) and did so in the worst possible way: in order to keep your characters fed (and not have them die of starvation), you have to manually feed them by using the food item on the character. Combine that with Ultima 7's horrible inventory and the game ends up being far more annoying than it needs to be. (U7 part 2 dealt with the issue by adding a command to feed a character without having to reach into your inventory.)

It's not a step down when those characters' actions are very obvious and unlikely to change. It just cuts down on busywork. Taking away magic from the rest of the party was a downgrade, but since Origin did it anyway, it made the turn based system even less necessary.

Baldur's Gate is still essentially turn based though. It runs in 6 second rounds and you can pause at any time. You can even set it to pause at the end of every round, so it plays exactly like a turn based game. U7 also lets you pause at any time (just open the paperdoll). The issue is that U7 never has challenging combat or requires you to use any strategy other than swarming the enemy.

You can get any reagent you need by visiting only two shops, unless you're so desperately poor you have to seek out the lowest possible price, and I can't see that being the case with all the gold in U7, not to mention the infinite gold exploits. Perhaps reagents should have been a more limited commodity, but Origin obviously wasn't concerned with a balanced ingame economy, or even balanced combat for that matter. The game, and the entire series really, is all about exploration above all.

The point is that mana is the more limiting factor in your ability to freely use spells. If you want to play the Avatar as a mage, you will burn through mana far more quickly than reagents.

I can tell from your food comment that you haven't played Ultima 2, by far the worst offender in that regard. Anyway I'm pretty sure you can't starve to death in U7, rather they fall unconscious at worst. If you can put up with their complaints you can actually ignore them for quite a long time without issue. Or you can do things right and feed them quality food, which shuts them up for most of the day.

Actually, you can get the same "cut down on busywork" in Ultima 6 just by leaving the AI enabled. This way, you only need to give commands to the avatar. (I don't like to do this because it makes the AI waste arrows.) In any case, I feel like choosing who to attack and when to have a character fall back or switch weapons to be less busywork than having to manage things like food, ammunition, and reagents.

The Infinity Engine games (including Baldur's Gate) are really real time at their core, even if they have some rules that might approximate turn-based combat. For instance, the only reason you can't cast more than one spell per "round" is that the game has a rule preventing you from casting a spell for 6 seconds after you start casting one, and there is a spell in the Baldur's Gate 2 expansion that removes this limitation. (Also, note that, after casting a spell, you can perform other actions during those 6 seconds.) Also, note that the 6 second timer is separate between battle participants. There are other implications of the real-time system, like the fact that double kills (two characters kill each other) are possible, and the fact that you can block fire breath damage by timing Sunfire (which has the side effect of making fire not damage you for 3 seconds) just right.

Two shops for getting reagents is at least 1 to many, and I would argue it is 2 too many, especially since mana, which doesn't require any shops to recover, is the more limiting factor.

I have tried Ultima 2, but I didn't get far, and the game does not make it convenient to start over when you die (by running out of HP or Food). I have played Ultima 1, and after you get past the initial hump, running out of HP or Food becomes a non-issue. (Ultima 2 is the only one of the first 6 Ultima games (7 if you count the use of a "cheat" area to skip the entire game) that I have not beaten.)

Rather than start a new thread for this, figured I'd ask here. How do you heal yourself in Ultima Underworld? Is dying or sleeping the only way to restore your health and mana, or are there potions and stuff?

Looking online, it appears that there are healing spells, namely "Lesser Heal" at the 2nd Circle and "Heal" at the 4th circle. Using either of those spells (or Greater Heal) should allow you to restore health at the expense of mana.

-If you have planted the silver seed, then dying will return you to full hp/mana, though you'll be moved to the location of the silver tree. If you happened to be falling or something when you died, then you might take a few hp of fall damage as you finish dropping to the floor (YMMV, and a few points in acrobat should negate this).

-Sleeping will usually return you to full hp/mana. Be advised that sleeping while low on hp and while poisoned may instead kill you (the poison finishes you off in your sleep). Also, if you are starving, then you'll take damage while sleeping instead of healing (this is one way to suicide and get back to the silver tree if you are genuinely stuck somewhere).

-There are a number of potions throughout the game. Many of them will restore hp or mana. Don't quaff them as fast as you can, or the later quaffs may not actually take effect (space the drinking out somewhat). It is somewhat random how much restoration a given potion will provide (determined when you actually drink the potion). I think there is a bottle of water somewhere that will either restore a few hp or cure poison; I forget which, and this particular bottle of water is unique among its kind. Maybe it is a bottle of ale instead.

-There are a few healing fountains scattered throughout the game. When looking at your map for the first floor, there is a corridor that runs East and West near the very top of the map. There is a secret door partway down that corridor. Go through that door, go down some ramps, and there will be a fountain on the right (as you are going down). I think that is the first such healing fountain that you can find in the game. "Use" it (the hand with key icon) in order to drink from it and heal; there is no limit on healing by fountain (up to your max hp). There are a few other healing fountains that can be found.

-I think there are 3 healing spells. The simplest/weakest is cast by using the runes In-Bet-Mani, in that order. The spells will use mana to restore hp. There is a scroll on the second level that reveals the runes to cast the second tier healing spell. I might be wrong about the third healing spell, but if it exists then it probably uses the Vas rune.

-Mana will slowly regenerate over time, up to your maximum mana. Dying, sleeping, some potions, and a few other magical items can also regenerate your mana (ex. there is at least one ruby that can do it). All of the items have a limited number of charges unless you use a glitch.

Is there any penalty for dying, other than being moved?

Also, if you die while falling, is it possible to die again as a result of the falling damage?

Out of curiosity, what is the glitch, and is it in both UU titles or just the first one?

If you haven't replanted the silver seed, then dying means game over. If you have replanted it, then dying just puts you back at the tree's location. I think I saw someone mention there might be some minor XP loss, but honestly I've never noticed a difference; any such losses are negligible, and there is so much XP available that hitting the level cap is a non-issue.

I've only ever really replanted the silver seed back in the area where I first found it. I haven't bothered experimenting with the specifics of reincarnation, so I can't speak for that. I have noticed that occasionally when I die by falling (like missing a jump while low on hp and with no points in acrobatics) I'll spawn at the tree just above the ground rather than on the ground, then I fall and sometimes take a few points of damage. I'm pretty sure that re-dying this way isn't possible since you spawn with full hp, and even at level 1 you have more than enough to spare.

If I save while on the ground, I've seen similar things happen when I reload while in mid-air; sometimes the reload has me just above the ground and I occasionally have incurred a few points of damage from falling (at which point I just reload again while on the ground, with no problem). The easiest reload drop example is when I'm trying to make the jump over to the Ankh area beyond the secret door in the room with the silver tree, where the jump to the ledge with the door that leads to the Ankh is really finicky. I've done the swim/walk/jump loop more than enough; at this point I always save right before trying to jump over to the ankh room.

I don't know if it still works in the second one. PM sent with what I know of the glitch details.

Likewise you can easily make any party member retreat or switch weapons at any time in U7, and without having to enter a lot of redundant commands in between. There's no more management of ammo or reagents than there ever was, and barely moreso for food. You can play it exactly like a turn based game if you choose. Or does it not count unless you're telling each fighter precisely how many times they should swing their sword every round? If traveling to a couple of very common locations is too much for you, I don't know how you can play RPGs in the first place.

Items with a finite number of uses can be broken, becoming a pile of debris that still provides its usual effect, but can be used indefinitely. In Underworld 1 you'd have to cast spells at it to destroy it, but in Underworld 2 you can just throw the item at a wall repeatedly until it breaks.

Entering redundant commands is a non-issue with a good interface. If the command would indeed be redundant, simply pressing the attack key and the confirm key should be enough (and it is in Ultima 5 and probably 6). Sometimes, the command I need to enter would not be redundant, because, perhaps the enemy moved and attacking the same enemy with the same weapon would require walking through lava, for example. Plus, auto-attack mechanics are typically not fair to spellcasters, as spells don't auto-attack in these games.

For management of ammo and reagents, I find that even just a little required management tends to significantly discourage the use of a feature. In fact, I find myself having a hard time to get myself to use consumables in any RPG, even if they are common. Hence, such management should be saved for particularly powerful abilities that would be game-breaking if not used sparingly (think U6 Mass Death at 30 Intelligence), and not required for routine tasks such as casting Magic Arrow at the enemy.

Another thing: In turn-based combat, it is easier to follow what's going on. In Wizardry 8, if one of my characters suddenly gets killed, I can easily see what caused that to happen. That is not so easy in Baldur's Gate (made worse by the fact that you can't view the combat log once you've been killed).

One other thing: I find that turn-based games have a nice rhythm to them; the game alternates between command entry phases (where you enter commands) and command execution phases (where you get to see the results of those commands). I find that Ultima 7 and Baldur's Gate lack this rhythm. (In Baldur's Gate, when auto-pause options are enabled, the pauses tend to come erratically, ruining any rhythm the battle system may have had.)

Also, see this blog post (not by me, but I happen to agree with it, with the caveat that dialogue isn't important for me the way it is for this blogger):
http://crpgaddict.blogspot.com/2011/06/turn-based-vs-real-time-combat.html