From Newsgroup: comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.action

On 1/1/2026 8:50 AM, Spalls Hurgenson wrote:

On Wed, 31 Dec 2025 14:04:06 -0800, Justisaur <justisaur@yahoo.com>
wrote:

And I got at least Arx Fatalis from you Spalls. Since I got it from you
I'll give it a try as soon as I can hype myself up to.

Oh great, now I live in fear of that game not being as good as I hyped
it up to be. Which... is probably the case. Don't mistake me; I think
"Arx" is a good game, and it's certainly a better experience for
modern gamers than "Ultima Underworld"... but it's also from 24 years
ago. It can't help but to have aged in that time.

Don't worry about it, if I don't like it, it's no big deal. I've at
least tried so many games I didn't like in the last couple years I'm
used to it. All the free an cheap games. I've literally got
thousand(s) of games now. That would've been unthinkable in my early
years, where I just had to suck it up and try to enjoy games no matter
how bad. Some were so bad I just couldn't. Now I can be much more discerning.

I had tried to get into one of the later Ultimas, Ultima IV (I think, as
I remember it had the virtues at creation) but just didn't. I only ever
really liked the original Ultima. I briefly played UO which I
absolutely hated. I'm surprised I ever got into EQ and other MMOs after
that disaster, I did enjoy playing with my friends in EQ, that's
probably the only reason.

Fun fact: eating a lot of garlic in "Arx Fatalis" and then talking to
NPCs right after will sometimes cause them to call the guards on you
for a 'garlic attack'. Bad breath kills. ;-)

Lol! Now if you could damage enemies with your breath attack. Maybe
vampires at least?

I can't help myself, buying a bunch of cheap games today on the Steam
Winter sale. Alan Wake got me started then I checked my wishlist. So
not sure when I'll get to AF.
--
-Justisaur

ø-ø
(\_/)\
`-'\ `--.___,
¶¬'\( ,_.-'
\\
^'
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From Newsgroup: comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.action

On Fri, 2 Jan 2026 11:51:24 -0800, Justisaur <justisaur@yahoo.com>
wrote:

I had tried to get into one of the later Ultimas, Ultima IV (I think, as
I remember it had the virtues at creation) but just didn't. I only ever >really liked the original Ultima. I briefly played UO which I
absolutely hated. I'm surprised I ever got into EQ and other MMOs after >that disaster, I did enjoy playing with my friends in EQ, that's
probably the only reason.

That is how I played EverQuest for the first time. With a friend.
Otherwise, I would not have bothered with it. I enjoyed it while
playing it together with him, less so without him. I tried World of
Warcraft when it came out and liked that so much more because it was
an easier, more forgiving game. Now that particular version of World
of Warcraft is considered hardcore! How things have changed.

As for Ultima, if you ever want to give another one a chance, try
Ultima 7 through Exult. The series peaked with that entry.
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From Newsgroup: comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.action

On Fri, 2 Jan 2026 11:51:24 -0800, Justisaur <justisaur@yahoo.com>
wrote:

On 1/1/2026 8:50 AM, Spalls Hurgenson wrote:

On Wed, 31 Dec 2025 14:04:06 -0800, Justisaur <justisaur@yahoo.com>
wrote:

And I got at least Arx Fatalis from you Spalls. Since I got it from you >>> I'll give it a try as soon as I can hype myself up to.

Oh great, now I live in fear of that game not being as good as I hyped
it up to be. Which... is probably the case. Don't mistake me; I think
"Arx" is a good game, and it's certainly a better experience for
modern gamers than "Ultima Underworld"... but it's also from 24 years
ago. It can't help but to have aged in that time.

Don't worry about it, if I don't like it, it's no big deal. I've at
least tried so many games I didn't like in the last couple years I'm
used to it. All the free an cheap games. I've literally got
thousand(s) of games now. That would've been unthinkable in my early
years, where I just had to suck it up and try to enjoy games no matter
how bad. Some were so bad I just couldn't. Now I can be much more >discerning.

I had tried to get into one of the later Ultimas, Ultima IV (I think, as
I remember it had the virtues at creation) but just didn't. I only ever >really liked the original Ultima. I briefly played UO which I
absolutely hated. I'm surprised I ever got into EQ and other MMOs after >that disaster, I did enjoy playing with my friends in EQ, that's
probably the only reason.

As much as I love them, the Ultima games really were products of their
time; while they have great historical value, its also really
difficult to recommend people go back and re-play them today. What
made them so special was how advanced they felt compared to the
previous generation of games (and, indeed, even to their
contemporaries)... but now that they are so old, all the things that
once made them stand out are taken as de rigueur features. The fact
that a game has a day-night cycle once was an amazing idea, but now?
The idea that a CRPG doesn't have it is almost unthinkable.

I can see people still enjoying "Ultima I" because it's just a
bog-simple action/RPG; run around and smack things to death, go back
and get XP from Lord British; eventually accumulate the magic tokens
necessary to kill the evil foozle (if its presentation wasn't so
primitive, I think "Akalabeth" would fare even better in this regard. Similarly, "Ultima III" can scratch the itch for a simple 8-bit CRPG
(although I think more people would prefer the early Final Fantasy
games, which play very similar but look better).

"Ultima IV" was revolutionary in many ways. It added the
aforementioned day/night cycle; NPCs started moving around rather than
just be immobile quest-givers. The moons above moved across the sky,
there were animated tiles that made the world look more alive, and the
story tried to be more than just "kill the evil foozle and save the
world". But that complexity also demands more engagement from the
players, and I think most people facing that say, "Well, if I'm going
to play something that demands so much of my time and brainpower, I
might as well play something that isn't quite so primitive". The game
is paradoxically both TOO complex and TOO simple at the same time.

If I had to recommend an Ultima for modern gamers to play, it would
probably be either "Ultima VII", or "Ultima Underworld". Those are the
two games that have held up the best. "Ultima VII" has its own
problems (the story is a bit repetitive, the inventory management is a
pain, and the combat is pretty pointless) but it feels closest to a
modern top-down CRPG. "Underworld" is, mechanically, more playable,
but its clunky interface and controls still make it a hard sell.

[That said: there was a port of "Ultima Underworld" to
Playstation sold in Japan... but fans have added an English
translation. It can be found in the usual dark corners of
the Internet and is arguably more playable than the original
PC version. Certainly the full-screen view window makes it
feel a lot more modern.]


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From Newsgroup: comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.action

Mike S. <Mike_S@nowhere.com> wrote:

As for Ultima, if you ever want to give another one a chance, try
Ultima 7 through Exult. The series peaked with that entry.

I'd have a hard time recommending Ultima VII to anyone. I don't think
it's really held up at all. Compared to the earlier Ultimas it had
amazing graphics and presentation but its gameplay is and was crap.
It's basically a long plodding adventure game. No one today is going to
be impressed by the fullscreen presentation or the ability to bake bread.

(Also playing the game with Exult at a higher resolution can make it much
more obvious just how much Ultima VII's scale transformed the world of Britannia to a theme park imitation of itself.)

I mentioned this before, but Ultima III is the game I'd recommend
to people who want see what Ultima was about. It has all the basic
mechanics of the of the first five games without the pretense of telling
some groundbreaking story that's just going seem threadbare and trite
to anyone whose played a CRPG released in the last 30 years.

Ultima VII and its predecessor Ultima VI were evolutionary dead ends and
were probably resonsible for the CRPG slump that lasted until Fallout,
Diablo and Baldur's Gate showed how good RPGs could be by basically
rejecting every inovation the Ultima series made after the fifth game.

I think few people would enjoy playing Ultima III today, but it's
what I'd recommend as the one Ultima game to play by anyone wanted to personally experience what it was like to play the Ultima games that
were actually influential.
--
l/ // Ross Ridge -- The Great HTMU
[oo][oo] rridge@csclub.uwaterloo.ca
-()-/()/ http://www.csclub.uwaterloo.ca:11068/
db //
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From Newsgroup: comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.action

On Sat, 3 Jan 2026 17:35:59 -0000 (UTC), rridge@csclub.uwaterloo.ca
(Ross Ridge) wrote:

I'd have a hard time recommending Ultima VII to anyone. I don't think
it's really held up at all. Compared to the earlier Ultimas it had
amazing graphics and presentation but its gameplay is and was crap.
It's basically a long plodding adventure game. No one today is going to
be impressed by the fullscreen presentation or the ability to bake bread.

Admittedly, I have not played 7 since it was new. I loved it then, and
I think I will now. But maybe the gameplay has not held up. Maybe you
are right. I won't know until I play it again and that won't be soon.

I mentioned this before, but Ultima III is the game I'd recommend
to people who want see what Ultima was about. It has all the basic
mechanics of the of the first five games without the pretense of telling
some groundbreaking story that's just going seem threadbare and trite
to anyone whose played a CRPG released in the last 30 years.

I played Ultima 1 through 5 a number of years ago for the first time.
I did not like 1 through 3 very much. But since Justisaur did like 1,
he may like 3 more than I did. 4 and 5 I loved. I still need to play
6.

I think few people would enjoy playing Ultima III today, but it's
what I'd recommend as the one Ultima game to play by anyone wanted to >personally experience what it was like to play the Ultima games that
were actually influential.

I would personally recommend 4 over the earlier entries. And if that
one were too old-school for them, I would say skip to 7. And the most influential Ultima was likely Ultima Underworld anyway.
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From Newsgroup: comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.action

On 1/2/2026 11:51 AM, Justisaur wrote:

On 1/1/2026 8:50 AM, Spalls Hurgenson wrote:

On Wed, 31 Dec 2025 14:04:06 -0800, Justisaur <justisaur@yahoo.com>
wrote:

And I got at least Arx Fatalis from you Spalls.  Since I got it from you >>> I'll give it a try as soon as I can hype myself up to.

Oh great, now I live in fear of that game not being as good as I hyped
it up to be. Which... is probably the case. Don't mistake me; I think
"Arx" is a good game, and it's certainly a better experience for
modern gamers than "Ultima Underworld"... but it's also from 24 years
ago. It can't help but to have aged in that time.

Don't worry about it, if I don't like it, it's no big deal.  I've at
least tried so many games I didn't like in the last couple years I'm
used to it.  All the free an cheap games.  I've literally got
thousand(s) of games now.  That would've been unthinkable in my early years, where I just had to suck it up and try to enjoy games no matter
how bad.  Some were so bad I just couldn't.  Now I can be much more discerning.

I gave it a try, 2 hours and I couldn't get through the tutorial. I eventually gave up. It's the controls. I couldn't even light a fire.
It seemed like I was doing the spell right, though it took me about 20
times to get that far, but the campfire didn't light. Inventory
management was horrendous. The old low poly didn't bother me and it
looked like it'd be a fun game if I could get past the really bad
controls, but I couldn't.

I'm tempted to see if there's some mods that make everything better, but
I started playing other games. Maybe another time.

Speaking of mods, I see there's some that can remove or let you control
the time limit in Nightreign. Everyone's saying it'd be boring without
the time limit, but not playing at all seems a waste. Or just playing
that way until I feel more confident, I may be getting too old for that though.
--
-Justisaur

ø-ø
(\_/)\
`-'\ `--.___,
¶¬'\( ,_.-'
\\
^'
--- Synchronet 3.21a-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.action

Mike S. <Mike_S@nowhere.com> wrote:

Admittedly, I have not played 7 since it was new. I loved it then, and
I think I will now. But maybe the gameplay has not held up. Maybe you
are right. I won't know until I play it again and that won't be soon.

I think people were able to forgive Ultima VII's faults, includings its
many bugs on release, because of its technological innovations and the
general hype the Ultima series had back then. The dumbed down mechanics
also helped make it more accessable, drawing more players in, but that
just set the stage for the disaster that was Ultima VIII.

I think few people would enjoy playing Ultima III today, but it's
what I'd recommend as the one Ultima game to play by anyone wanted to >>personally experience what it was like to play the Ultima games that
were actually influential.

I would personally recommend 4 over the earlier entries. And if that
one were too old-school for them, I would say skip to 7.

Any of the Ultima games is going to seem primitive to anyone who didn't
grow up with them. Though I think the graphics of the first five games
are actually be more inline with the pixel graphics aestetic of today.
The 256-colour VGA graphics of the later games have a touch of realism
that retro games today don't try to mimic.

And the most influential Ultima was likely Ultima Underworld anyway.

Well, I meant of the mainline Ultima games. The first Ultima Underworld
game in particular was barely connected to the other Ultima games and
could have easily been transplanted into any other fantasy setting.
Ultima Underworld was also influential for an entirely different set of
reasons than the mainline games, so should be played in addition to one
of the mainline Ultimas.
--
l/ // Ross Ridge -- The Great HTMU
[oo][oo] rridge@csclub.uwaterloo.ca
-()-/()/ http://www.csclub.uwaterloo.ca:11068/
db //
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From Newsgroup: comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.action

On Sat, 03 Jan 2026 14:12:35 -0500, Mike S. <Mike_S@nowhere.com>
wrote:

On Sat, 3 Jan 2026 17:35:59 -0000 (UTC), rridge@csclub.uwaterloo.ca
(Ross Ridge) wrote:

I'd have a hard time recommending Ultima VII to anyone. I don't think
it's really held up at all. Compared to the earlier Ultimas it had
amazing graphics and presentation but its gameplay is and was crap.
It's basically a long plodding adventure game. No one today is going to
be impressed by the fullscreen presentation or the ability to bake bread.

Admittedly, I have not played 7 since it was new. I loved it then, and
I think I will now. But maybe the gameplay has not held up. Maybe you
are right. I won't know until I play it again and that won't be soon.

I mentioned this before, but Ultima III is the game I'd recommend
to people who want see what Ultima was about. It has all the basic >>mechanics of the of the first five games without the pretense of telling >>some groundbreaking story that's just going seem threadbare and trite
to anyone whose played a CRPG released in the last 30 years.

I played Ultima 1 through 5 a number of years ago for the first time.
I did not like 1 through 3 very much. But since Justisaur did like 1,
he may like 3 more than I did. 4 and 5 I loved. I still need to play
6.

I think few people would enjoy playing Ultima III today, but it's
what I'd recommend as the one Ultima game to play by anyone wanted to >>personally experience what it was like to play the Ultima games that
were actually influential.

I would personally recommend 4 over the earlier entries. And if that
one were too old-school for them, I would say skip to 7. And the most >influential Ultima was likely Ultima Underworld anyway.

I'd argue that. Ultima 7 has frequently been cited by developers as
one of the inspirations for many other CRPGs, ranging from Gothic to
Baldurs Gate 3. And its impressive-for-the-time crafting (that existed
for no other reason than to make the world feel more immersive and
alive) became synonymous with 'real' roleplaying games; if a game
/didn't/ include "baking bread", then it was just a pale imitation.
Developers started adding in crafting for no other reason because of
that, and I think that the excessive crafting trees we see in some
games can directly trace that design back to the success of Ultima 7.

"Underworld" was an excellent game, and it influenced numerous other
games since its inception. Certainly its attempts to be a 3D
open-world sandbox helped to birth games ranging fromn Deus Ex to
Prey. It was undoubtedly an influential game.

I just think "Ultima 7" was slightly more influential. ;-)



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From Newsgroup: comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.action

On Sat, 3 Jan 2026 20:34:43 -0000 (UTC), rridge@csclub.uwaterloo.ca
(Ross Ridge) wrote:

Mike S. <Mike_S@nowhere.com> wrote:

Admittedly, I have not played 7 since it was new. I loved it then, and
I think I will now. But maybe the gameplay has not held up. Maybe you
are right. I won't know until I play it again and that won't be soon.

I think people were able to forgive Ultima VII's faults, includings its
many bugs on release, because of its technological innovations and the >general hype the Ultima series had back then. The dumbed down mechanics
also helped make it more accessable, drawing more players in, but that
just set the stage for the disaster that was Ultima VIII.

It certainly was a technological masterpiece for its time. There was
/nothing/ on the market that was like "Ultima VII" on release. The fully-speeched introduction was positively mindblowing, with the (more
or less) lip-synced monster speaking directly to the player. The
full-screen, HUDless interface controlled entirely by mouse was
clumsy, but also fairly original. The world was incredibly detailed
too, with 'living' NPCs acting out their entire lives on a daily
basis. You'd even find animals hunting other animals!* It was a game
that made PC owners sure of their chosen platform's technological
superiority over pretty much any other home computer (or console).

But everything else about the game was built around that idea of
'world first, everything else' second; Origin had built the world
first and bolted game mechanics and story onto that framework
afterwards. But I disagree with the idea this was done to 'dumb down'
the game and make it more accessible.

Rather, there was also a significant move towards making the game more
about the exploration and interaction with the world than focused on
the combat (not a new idea: it had been something Origin had been
working towards since Ultima 4), which made the game less 'traditional
CRPG' (as it was thought of at the time, with games like "Pool of
Radiance" and "Might and Magic" being seen as the exemplars) and more
like an adventure game. The combat and plot were secondary to the
world design and ability to explore. (Bethesda would later advance
this concept with their Oblivion/Skywind/Fallout games).

"Ultima 8", made under the direction of EA, definitely was an attempt
to make the game more palatable towards a larger audience. But Ultima
7" was more about trying to do something different.

Well, I meant of the mainline Ultima games. The first Ultima Underworld
game in particular was barely connected to the other Ultima games and
could have easily been transplanted into any other fantasy setting.
Ultima Underworld was also influential for an entirely different set of >reasons than the mainline games, so should be played in addition to one
of the mainline Ultimas.

Well, it was initially developed as a stand-alone dungeon-crawler and
only gained its Ultima trappings after every other publisher but
Origin rejected Blue Sky's (ne Looking Glass's) demo. And even then, a
good chunk of the game made under Origin's care was done without a
producer to direct the game's plot... at least until Warren Spector
got assigned the job. The Ultima stuff was retrofitted onto the game afterwards. Even so, I think they did a pretty good job of capturing a
lot of the feel of the mainline series: creating an immersive
realistic world where exploration and conversation was as much a part
of the adventure as combat.

Ultima... the only game I'll happily talk about even than truck
simulation ;-)







----
* years later, STALKER would boast about its "A-Life" systems doing
the same thing and it made me smile because U7 had done it nearly 20
years earlier



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