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49 of 50 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
An Incredible, but buggy game, December 23, 1999
I first played Ultima I on my Apple II back in 7th grade, and enjoyed it immensely. Since then (and the subsequent Ultima II - VIII games) I've always wanted to see a full 3D version of Ultima... and now Origin has released it. It's a mixed bag though... while the graphics and game-play are amazing, there are definitely some problems. Here's the good, bad and ugly of Ultima IX:The Good The game designers of Ultima IX spared no efforts in creating a rich world of fantasy and adventure. Every character you encounter has a story, and every town, hill, valley and beach has a unique feel. The game keeps you wondering what's around the next corner, and what new adventure might be lurking in the next cave. This is one of Ultima's strongest points... it really is tailored to someone who like to feel like they're adventuring and discovering new things. It'll take you right back to your dungeons & dragons days. The attention to detail that went into the plot/environment of this game is unparalleled. The world of Ultima is beautifully designed, texture mapped and rendered. Trees, hills, mountains, beaches all look beautiful and realistic! Thanks to the fact that the Ultima world loads as you explore it, you really do get the feeling that the world is huge, and that you can go anywhere. You can walk out of a town, into the hills, through valleys, into a cave, down into dungeons, and back out again without ever encountering a "loading next level" screen. The plot behind Ultima feels somewhat linear. While there are subquests, and small adventures you can embark on, the main plot to Ultima feels rigid. The Bad Unfortunately the visually rich world of Ultima IX comes at a high price. It's obvious from playing this game that the Quality Assurance teams at Origin didn't have enough time or people dedicated to ensuring the release of a quality product. Ultima IX fails when it comes to the details... characters are inconsistently animated (some move their mouths when they speak, some do not), character animation is poor (why can't game designers use real-time 3d motion capture for animated characters?-animating them by hand looks awful), and the game has tons of little bugs/quirks. You'll come across weird things like floating daggers, wolves hovering over the landscape, arrows that you shot at monsters somehow magically suspended a few feet from their bodies and other such annoyances. While these are minor, they detract from the game and decrease the quality of the product. There are also more severe bugs which you may encounter which may cause you to lose your saved games, or simply cause the game to quit on you unexpectedly. The Ugly Origin made some big mistakes when designing and implementing this game. Rather than create a game which worked well on all graphic cards, they chose to focus all of their efforts on creating a release for the voodoo chip set. This basically means that half of the people who have TNT2 cards are unable to attain reasonable performance levels when playing the game. I have a Viper v770 Ultra and have been unable to attain performance levels above 10-15 frames per second. So regardless of how beautiful the graphics may look, the game is almost unplayable. Origin continues to promise a patch to increase TNT2 performance, but has yet to deliver it (definitely check their site before purchasing to make sure they've delivered on that promise). So all in all, I believe Ultima IX is worth the money, but prepare yourself for performance issues and a myriad of bugs... hopefully Origin will learn from its mistakes and not rush the release of future software titles until it has done an adequate job with Quality Assurance.
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by Chris McCubbin
