Part 1 in particular has enough frustrating limitations to justify a modern engine port even with DOSBox available.

I seem to remember inventory management was a total mess in the original U7 (nothing like trying to find the correct key from under dozens of other items), and something was done about it in the expansions... Any others?

Feeding, inventory sorting, window management, characters sitting on nearby chairs instead of vehicles, characters losing all their stuff while retreating, Iolo shooting everyone in the back, boomerang weapons failing to return, countless little bugs, list goes on and on. And that's from memory, not recent playthroughs.

LOL! I seem to remember that too:

"Everyone aboard? No? (sigh) Ok then, everyone out of the vehicle, let's try once again...".

Do you know if these bugs you mentioned fixed in e.g. Exult? Apparently they have incorporated at least some of the inventory enhancements from later parts to base U7.

I do not know. Probably not all of them. But an engine that fixed all that would be an improvement for sure.

Feeding your party by hand because party members couldn't just root around in their own inventory and feed themselves...noooooo. I am glad that Origin didn't expect me to chew the food beforehand for my party members as well.

I would bet my buns that the next game is Lands of Lore, but Ultima VII is a possibility. Either way it isn't going to be IX and the next game is the last EA release of this run.

It will surely be in the next EA batch though.

I agree

I loved U9. Despite all the criticism leveled at the game, I think it was a rough diamond.

Every Ultima game has some serious flaws - some worse than others. Ultima VIII was more arcady and a bit too short. Ultima VII suffered from an engine that was far from smooth and quite a few other flaws. Ultima IX ... was buggy as hell. After all sorts of patches, it's well completeable though - except for a certain bug which means you'll have to cheat and fly through the air to get to certain items. But other than that, I could play it and enjoy it just a few years ago on Vista. Had a real blast, too.

I think the complaints about U8 and U9 have less to do with their standalone merits and more to do with how much they discarded from their predecessors. U8 was meant to be a shocking challenge to the Avatar's values, but along the way it lost scope, ease of use, character personalities, and non-reflex gameplay, to highlight a few things. U9 was meant to bring the series to a fitting conclusion, but by all accounts it reduced the complex world of U7 to a handful of key characters and locations and one-dimensional, cliched, cobbled-together plot points. U7 was buggy and unfinished in many ways, but it transcended its limitations admirably. Discarding all that worked from U7, including basic Ultima continuity, meant the games needed to be home runs to justify all the changes. They weren't anywhere close to that. People wanted a proper sequel of U7's caliber that never came.

ultima 9 is the only ultima i ever played. and i loved it. cant wait for it to be on here

@ Dosbox and U7:

U7 doesn't run that well in Dosbox. U7 is still pretty choppy in native DOS. Also it has its own game-breaking bugs that, albeit rare, WERE fixed in Exult. So even if Exult has some potential gamebreaker, it's still probably less of a risk than running the game natively. Also the Keyring mod has some great little expansions to U7.

I'm actually playing U8 right now. Not far along but my one big complaint is the relative lack of item interactivity compared to U7. Granted, it looks like NPCs still mill about and fiddle with stuff -- which is great, I'm totally glad that was left in -- but seriously, can I get a bread-baking, y'all? Anyway, it still seems pretty fun from what I've seen. Actually digging the light acrobatics. Reminds me of Gothic 1 and 2.

Reach your first jumping puzzle, and come back with tales of rage and monitor-throwing. :)

Yep, not having any expectations based upon what kind of games the predecessors were helps to take Ascension for what it is - simply a fantastic action-adventure.

I thought the jumping puzzles were more or less taken out. No moving platforms and targeted jumping and whatnot.

Also as much as the Crusader version of the engine improved thing, U8 still has a more reasonable camera, and Crusader needed targeted jumping. Crusader does the LBP thing where the camera doesn't really follow you smoothly until you get to like the VERY edge of it. Which is more annoying in LBP because running into stuff makes you lose health, but still.

That and LBP's jumping was the worst of the three. I mean, don't get me wrong, LBP is a very charming game with a lot going for it. But the jumping is bad.