Rating: 
Summary: A final epic role-playing series
Review: All at once the once proud quest of the avatar is coming to a close. This epic role playing game introduces descisions. If you want to give this guy money or kill him. If you want to run away from the troll or try to kill him and get his dough. All of you descisions in this game has an effect in the game. This is a must have for everyone who, like James Tiberious Kirk said," If only I could make a difference.", ultimatly wants to make a difference.
Rating: 
Summary: Great graphics, OK bugginess, poor role-playing
Review: First off, this is without a doubt the best graphics I have seen in a fully interactive game. There are times when you will actually stop and find a place to watch the sun come up. Be prepared, however, to have a lot of hardware. At times, the game becomes unplayable when it is trying to load terrain. It is especially bad in cities. Running a 350 with 128 of meg and plenty of hard drive space (oh, only a Vodoo 2), I would say I have a sixty percent playable experience. The worst part of the game, however, is the role-playing. As Avatar, you have no character generation and little customizablity. The game does not remember earlier encounters, monsters regenerate at exactly the same spot, and you can do things like walk into a jeweler's shop, pick up a gem off his counter, and sell it to the guy without repercussion. The same thing would get you killed in Fallout/Baldur's Gate type game. But the graphics are GREAT!
Rating: 
Summary: Sucks
Review: DO NOT BUY THIS GAME if you don't at least have a 3D FX video card. The DirectX support 'from the box' is non existant. You need to download at least patch 1.07 And even then, I got random ejections to the desktop, refusal to load a saved game, and when actually playing a SLOOOOOOOWWW framerate.
Rating:
Summary: Buggy, but Good
Review: While not as complex as previous Ultimas, still an engaging game. The game itself however, requires a lot of Hardware to run reasonably, and a Glide compatible video card to run well. To their credit, the game's authors have been working diligently to make the game more accesible.
Rating:
Summary: The Good and Bad
Review: First off installation of the game was easy enough for me. The game however, will be prone to crashes if you don't have enough virtual memory which is about 580 megs. The graphics are stunning to watch and the world of Britannia looks fantastic. I've been running this game on minimum requirements and it runs pretty good. The only time it will slow done however is when it tries to hide the fact that it is loading the terrain. I think it would be wise to run this game under Voodoo3. So all in all after the patch, I think that the game is fun to play and will keep you occupied for many hours.
Rating:
Summary: Beautiful, frustrating, but worth it?
Review: This would be five stars if not for the very buggy play. Patch 1.07 is out, and helps alot, but having a saved game handy is a must for the times the app will close for no reason.(once every 2 hours). The game though is impressive, and fun. I recommend it for those who can stomach the crashes.
Rating: 
Summary: An unsurpassed virtual world
Review: Ultima IX in my opinion has the largest, best looking virtual world of any game.Everything can be interacted with and you can go anywhere. Climbing to the top of a mountain peak to get a better view of your surroundings, or swimming out to a small island in a river are just a couple of examples. Graphics are outstanding as is the design of the land. Your character is viewed in 3rd person, ala Mario 64, and you control his movements with your mouse and keyboard. I just thought I would add that, because the game box does not really explain that. Every other character you come across has his or her own problem which you can choose to solve or not to solve. Because the world is so huge, you better be ready for hours of hours of exploration. There are no linear paths to follow and you can go about your quest however you see fit. The downside of this game is the occasional crash, choppy frame rates in some areas where there are many trees and objects(but not unplayable), and I had problems installing it on my computer. The auto install feature does not work very well, but theses problems are minor compared to the overall greatness of the game. My system is a 300mhz Pentium II, 160 megs of ram(more would be better), a Voodoo 3 3000. I am running the game in 640X480 with 16 bit color.
Rating: 
Summary: An Ultimately Sad Finale
Review: First, let me introduce our computer: Pentium II 400 128MB RAM Matrox Millennium G200 AGP Creative AWE64 Gold Running Win98 w/ latest drivers & versions of Direct-X We've had this machine for awhile and have never had any problem running anything until we tried to run Ultima: Ascension. Very nice opening sequence (we've seen it about 100 times, but that's about all we've seen), wander around the Avatar's house until CRASH. No problem. Go to web-site and get the latest patch. That will fix it, right? WRONG! Run game, CRASH! No problem. Go back to web-site, to message boards this time. Lots of solutions, but guess what: NO ANSWERS! So what do you have to do to run this game? You got it! Buy a computer designed especially to run Origin products. Right. Bottom line: do not buy this game until every virtual Dick & Jane can see Spot run when they load it up. Otherwise expect that you will more than likely be the proud owner of a very nice box. Yes there are others who seem to be running the game just fine. If you know one of them play it on their machine. It is a pity that the last game in this lovely series should be such a bug-ridden wreck, especially considering the loyalty of those who have played these games from first (C-64) to last (Cray? ). I am really hoping that Origin makes the effort to resolve the problems because, frankly, I'd like to see how it all ends (and so would a whole lot of others). This is only my opinion based on my experience.
Rating:
Summary: The Ulitimate Ultima
Review: This game rules. I've played all of the Ultimas and this one's my favorite. Simple fun. Those are the only words that describe this game. Those who have anything but a Voodoo 2/3 will crash and burn, I have a special edition Voodoo 2 coupled with a GeForce 256 and this game kicks flaming butt with them. I like this game because it is an Ultima, everything is simple and non-cluttered, and the graphics RULE! , but only with a Voodoo 2 or 3. I hope they will release a patch for this so you can use all types of hardware on it but the patch might weigh a hefty 50-150 mb. Please buy and enjoy.
Rating:
Summary: A new low for Ultima-lovers
Review: If you're like me, you (unfortunately) put lots of faith in brand-name awareness. Having spent hundreds if not thousands of hours in this fantasy world throughout my high school and college days, it was a no-brainer to buy the grand ending of a great group of games. I mean they wouldn't burn us again, right? (Can you say Ultima8) Wrong. This game is pretty much unplayable, even with the best hardware. You are guaranteed to see a crash with this game even after the 2 patches available (after roughly 3 weeks in the market) are applied. I've got tons of memory (256meg), tons of processor (p3/500) and a voodoo2. It leaks memory and crashes a LOT. Still, I give it a 2 for the nice graphics, but that's it. The game play is very basic and non-imaginative; the puzzles are a joke (ahhh I see match the colors); the quests automatic... I'm wondering if this is the death of the RPG.
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