Rating: 
Summary: A worthy attempt.
Review: I'm withholding the other three stars until the game is fixed. This game is a very worthy attempt at reinventing the RPG genre. Too much so... and due to a rushed release date the game is a woefull disappointment to Ultima fans. The game falls far short in many areas compared to the classic Ultimas of the past. The plot is very linear, not nearly as open as is traditional in Ultima games. The graphics are outstanding but the game suffers from horrible framerates (I get about 10FPS on a PIII 600 with a TNT2Ultra and 128MB). The game is also full of bugs, everything from NPC's getting stuck in ceilings and walls to the player falling through the map, crashes, corrupted save games, memory leaks and install problems. Worst of all, there are several plot stopping bugs that bring the game to a quick and complete halt with no solution except to use cheat codes. Patches have been released to address these problems but have added almost as many as they have fixed. D3D is horrible (though better in patch 1.07). The game simply isn't finished, stay away from it for now. Visit Origin's Ultima IX forum for a good idea of the general feelings about this game.
Rating: 
Summary: great game!
Review: okay, so i've read the reviews here 2 years after i've purchased this game--just to see what people think. i probably have the slowest computer of the this lot and have never had a problem with this game. i have a 466mhz celeron and no graphics card (bought the computer in 1999)and the game runs perfect for me. it's not choppy, it's never crashed, and no bugs. maybe i've just been lucky.as far as the game being linear, i rather enjoy it. one reviewer said that he did not go through the cave to get to yew, well, neither did i and i never had a problem with the game. yes, you do have to do things in a certain order, but that really never bothered me. i guess i'm not such a hard core RPG person. i recommend this game, even now, in 2003. it's a lot of fun. if you're just starting out getting involved with RPG, start with this game--that's what i did.
Rating:
Summary: Wow I liked this game a lot!!!
Review: First i liked this game on several levels. but it also had its cons.
pros:
1. The graphic are aboslutly stunning the best i have ever seen in a game like that.
2. the commands seem complex but they are really simple.
3. i like the story line, it is very stait forward but very in depth and full of suprises.
4. also the main quest may be very liner but that is helpful so you dont get stuck thinking what do i do now? also having a world that big makes it so you hardly notice the liner main quest, IF you explore.
5. also the game was challenging from all the puzzles, but it made it so it wasn't a hack'n'slash that gets old in 5 minutes.
6. finaly the game made me want to wake up at four in the morning to play it so i could play it for 4 hours before my brother kick me off.
Cons:
1. the 3-D engine left very small seems and i fell in a couple of them and, um... ended up under the dungeon.
2. the dialogue stinks they said they had profesional actors do it but i dont think thats true.
3. some off the game is "faulty" like the falling through seems, or doors that wont open that should, etc.... anyway i sujest you the fly code to fix those problems or you will have to restart several times.
4. the game can only run nicely on rather good computers or at least on my good computers.
5.the game was too short. now that may seem like a shocker to any who played the game before but i beat the game in 6 days!!!
with a tinker.
any way this is a really good game despite the draw backs and is worth every penny of its cost if you can play it on your comp.
Rating:
Summary: Tons of potential, but desperately needs finishing patches
Review: After playing approximately 1/2 of the game on a very powerful, fairly new system, I would like to reiterate that the game is visually stunning and the sounds (music and game sounds, including character speech) are done extremely well. Although I am not normally a fan of non-FPS (first person shooter) games, I got used to the look and feel and now find it a little more appealing. If you want to know what it looks like, it has a similar look and feel as Heretic 2 or the Tomb Raider games, in my opinion. As a fan of this long-running series, I was eager to play what has been billed as the conclusion to the Ultima line. I rated the game as 4 stars, but I feel that it has the potential to go to 5 stars, once it has been patched appropriately. There are numerous bugs (that have been acknowledged by the developers, to their credit) that affect basic gameplay (crashing to the Windows desktop and freezes, etc.) as well as bugs that affect the storyline. One patch has already been released and more are on the way, as of early December 1999. There is also a good user community that answers questions for novices online (this is also true as of December 1999) at the official website. Your experience with the game's performance will probably be dependent on how new and powerful your system is. I won't lie to you: there have been times that I have been very frustrated by the bugs I have encountered, but I am encouraged by the patch that has been released and the patches that are coming down the pipe. To summarize: if you are a fan of the Ultima series and you like games that are beautiful with deep, rich, immersing content that take a long time to play, this one is for you. I would recommend buying this game, but I would wait to start playing it seriously until after the second (or later) patches have been released. Just make sure you have a modern, VERY robust system!
Rating:
Summary: Is it worth it, 1 year later?
Review: Definitely. Most people will agree that Ultima 9 had the makings of being the best RGP of all time, if it weren't for the insane system requirements and the frustrating bugs. So, how does the game play now that technology and patches have caught up? Well, almost exactly the same. The game is still the most beautiful I have ever seen, even compared to today's standards. Some FPS are put to shame, and no other RPG comes close. The rendered backgrounds of Baldur's Gate are nice, but the 3D environments in Ultima 9 give you a sense of size and granduer that BG can never communicate. The story is also fascinating and deeply satisfying, one of my top 2 RPG favorites. The characters and themes are the most human I've ever experienced. To see the already rich world of Britania made deeper and more wonderful (by a factor of 10, easily) is fascinating. The system requirements are still steep. I have a P400, 256MB ram, and a Voodoo 5500 AGP. I like to run the game on maximum settings with FSAA x4 (stunning, BTW), and it still chokes in a city. Changing the resolution, turning off FSAA, or reducing the detail has no effect in the framerate. Only by shortening the fog distance can I play effectively in a town like Britan. I also tried playing with 128MB ram, and noticed no improvements when I moved to 256MB. I would guess that 800Mhz CPU is the minimum required to really enjoy this game. You can still play it on something slower, and still see the utter beauty of the game, but you'll have to fiddle with the settings often. Finally, unfortunately, the bugs are still there, although greatly reduced. The game rarely crashes, no more often than most other games these days. However, I did find a show-stopping bug where an NPC refused to acknowledge a quest I completed. I couldn't continue, and none of my saved games helped (I had a lot of them). I was forced to start over from the beginning, after making it halfway through already. Infinitely frustrating. I had the latest patch, too, and since Origin has stated that they will no longer be supporting the game, we can expect no more patches, ever. So now what? If you are a big Ultima or RPG fan, and you have a system similar to mine, definitly get this game now. Otherwise, wait another year and play it a 1.5Ghz machine with 512MB ram and a Voodoo 10000 - it will still be beautiful next fall. But definitely play this game!
Rating:
Summary: Incredible graphics, lots of potential, too many bugs.
Review: Okay, there are lots of discussions about the graphics of this game and whether or not they're too much for the average system. I don't know -- I'm playing at 1GHZ/512MB/GeForce2Pro so the game has never been slow for me, and the graphics are LIGHT YEARS AHEAD of any other 3D-accelerated game on the market, anywhere. Nothing competes with the scale of the Ultima IX world and the detail you'll find in it and I don't see anything scheduled for release over the next year that looks like it will compete, with the possible exception of Myst III:Exile. However, it's probably true that slower systems will experience major graphics slowdows... Some would say that this is an unfair marketing strategy that cuts out people with low-end computers, but what about me? I bought a high-end monster system because I wanted immersive gameplay, and it's nice to have a game [for a change] that will really let me see what it can do. The gameplay is great fun... Everything you could possibly want in a mix between questing and combat -- neither overwhelms the other. Ultima IX makes games like King's Quest: Mask of Eternity or Omikron: The Nomad Soul just look silly and underdeveloped. (Yes, I'm a fan of the much-hated action/adventure genre.) And the game's 3D engine makes it more immersrive than anything I've played. You're not limited to certain "paths" in the environment -- you can climb onto the rooves, jump off of the bridges, swim in all of the water, cut across vast meadows instead of staying on the path, wander through the forests and get lost... For a change, the map is actually a MAP that you can fully explore, rather than scenery surrounding a few pre-defined paths that you can't deviate from. So why not five stars? Because there are serious gameplay bugs. For example, if you don't finish a quest in exactly the way the game expects you to, the game doesn't realize you've finished the quest. At one point in the game, Lord British told me to go to the town of Yew through a tunnel under a mountain. However, I thought I'd already seen a better way to get there, so I climbed up a mountain (yes, in this game such things can be done) and wandered around until I found a place where I could slide down the other side into Yew. It was only later that I realized that when the game had told me to go through the tunnel, it MEANT that I needed to do so. I had played for many hours when I realized that the game hadn't registered my trip to Yew properly; I had to restore from a much earlier save and fight my way through the tunnel instead of traveling over the mountain before the game would recognize my journey. These sorts of gameplay problems proliferate in Ultima IX and make it much more linear and less immersive than it otherwise would have been. But even so, if I look past my criticisms for a moment, I am forced to admit that none of the other 3D-enhanced games I own come close to Ultima IX in entertainment value [and yes, I do own Q3A, UT, SOF and I've just ordered Tribes 2, so I do know about the FPS genre]. Buy Ultima IX if you have a nice system and ENJOY IT, but remember -- if lord British sends you on a quest a specific way, you'd better do it the way he says, or you'll be restoring from old saves later on...
Rating:
Summary: Excellent -- if you can get your hardware working right
Review: When I first got my Ultima IX, I set it to a resolution of 800x600, with the options set for 16-bit texture graphics, highest performance and highest quality. It crashed on me every 5 minutes. Then I changed my resolution to 640x480 with all the rest of the settings left the way they were, and it worked beautifully! I almost concluded the software was buggy, but I guess it was the gamut of graphic components in my CPU that wouldn't cooperate with each other. Anyway, I like the interface -- very easy to use. If you have played Ultima Online, you will find this game more interesting than people who haven't due to the similar objects in the game (e.g. backpack, pouch, music). I have played the latest of Might and Magic, a definite competitor of Ultima IX, but I feel Ultima was much more immersing due to the more realistic weather, lighting, and sound effects. I found myself oftentimes enjoying the sky and the scenery! It is an experience one should go through to appreciate! The dungeons were wonderfully made, and creepy! However, the manuals weren't very enlightening. For example, it says bringing up the map shows your location with a red push-pin. I didn't see a red push-pin for the longest time, causing me to get lost often in the game. I could've sworn I didn't see the red push-pin appear until I got a sextant, but the manual makes no distinction or warning on this. I have to tip my hat to Origin though. Despite the frustrations they caused me in Ultima Online, I have to say they did a superb job with Ultima IX! If their coming Ultima Online 2's interface will be anything like Ultima IX's, I will definitely play Ultima Online 2! I haven't finished the game yet, but I am certainly enjoying it immensely!:)
Rating: 
Summary: An open letter to 1Software
Review: To Whom It May Concern; On May 17th, I ordered a copy of Ultima IX from 1software through Amazon.com. I paid $39.99 + expedited shipping fee for what I believed to be a new copy of this game. Now, let me provide a bit of background so you can know something about me. I would rather just pay some $30, and download full versions of these games online, and skip the box, the cardboard, the frilly stuff, etc. However since 1software (among pretty much all other gaming software companies, this isn't a single company gripe) forced me to have the whole lock, stock and barrel shipped to me, I was obliged to do so. Now, as I began, on May17th I placed my order. Amazon told me the "delivery estimate" would be on the 27th latest. I've never seen this shipping estimate CENSORED before, although after waiting so long, I'm not sure why I even paid an expedite. Either way, I just received my long awaited treasure in the mail today, the 29th. As if the tardiness of delivery wasn't bad enough, the box arrived in a yellow shipping envelope, beaten like a red-headed step-child, missing the frilly "all cloth map" so boldly emblazoned on the front of the box which you people forced me to pay and wait for, there is no instruction manual, no paper cover on the CD jewel case, and the CD's appear scratched. um.... WHAT THE CENSORED IS GOING ON AROUND HERE?!?!?!?! IS YOUR SHIPPING DEPARTMENT HIGH?!?!?!? I do not see anything written on my order at amazon.com that says, "you're gonna get a beat up, CENSORED used copy of the game that won't even run in your CD ROM". I was able to get a brand, spanking new copy of DiabloII for only $15, took only two days to get to me, and wasn't beat up or missing parts! It even had paper manuals. As I said, I'd rather download, but not for $39.99, and to have spent the money, waited the time, and end up feeling so thoroughly fleeced is unimaginable, and has been an experience never duplicated at Amazon.com. Now, either you people are going provide me with a personalized, engraved explanation as to why I have been so misled as to what I was purchasing (and it better be a d@mn good one...), or you people are going to send me a brand-spanking new copy of this game, right fast chop chop stylie, or... #1 I never purchase a single piece of software even remotely associated with 1Software ever again, throughout the course of my mortal coil, and will actively and avidly campaign against 1Software whenever I have nothing better to do... #2 I will not print a retraction on Amazon.com to this letter which has been posted in response to my purchase prior to having been sent to you Sound like a plan? Does to me. Your's Truly, Honestly, Sincerely, and Peevishly;
Mr. Irritated A. Customer
Rating: 
Summary: An amazing game
Review: I have been a fan of the Ultima series since the first one came out, and I was thrilled to get my hands on this finally installment when it was released. This game is simply beautiful; the breath and depth of the world is simply amazing. The voices are very well done, and the characters are interesting and compelling. Very few games have a story that is as rich and rewarding as the one found in this game. I could go on and on about how great this game is, but let me just say this one thing: "Ultima 9" is probably one of the best RPGs released for a computer in recent years. I have noticed the complaints people have made about the game being buggy, but I have never had a single problem from the initial installation to the end of the game. If you are a fan of the Ultima series, this game is a must have for you.
Rating:
Summary: Doesn't do justice to Britannia and the Ultima series.
Review: Good: 3D graphics are amazing. You really do feel like you're walking around Britannia, spelunking through caves and dungeons, etc. Puzzles (mostly in the dungeons) are quite difficult. Bad: Game is ultra-linear. You must complete each quest in a more-or-less prescribed order, in exactly the manner you are told. Characters and plot are not very compelling at all. Your mission is very clear from the outset--cleanse the shrines, defeat the Guardian. Ugly: Graphics are choppy, even with a 1.3 GHz P4/128 MB/GeForce 2 Ultra (!). I've heard that this game really needs a 3dfx card to run well. I'm running this game on Windows Me, and for some reason, every time I save or load a game, Windows runs another copy of the game. With two copies of U9 running, the game is unplayable. It's really irritating to keep having to exit the game and restart it every time I need to save or load a game. I don't know if anyone else has this problem. Maybe I should downgrade to Windows 98 or something.
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