Ultima VII, a good place to start?

I've always loved VI, I thought it had one of the more unexpected and thought provoking plot-twists. really my biggest complaint was the playarea, especially in regards to lighting.

 

Also in u6 LB looks more like Macho man Randy Savage than Richard Garriott

 

I started with Ultima IV for the Sega Master System as my second ever rpg back in 1989, which was lucky as it's possibly the best non-PC version of the game... You may find that easier to play if you're seeking to experience the beginnings of the series, as it's entirely joypad controlled.

One thing I will add, that no one else has mentioned, if you're coming from Ultima Online, the Global Arcs have been largely based on the earlier Ultimas, with it's own spin of course. The game currently is roughly around Ultima VI, or at least the rise of the Gargoyles, with the previous events being specifically tied to Ultima V and the Shadowlords. The last global event was based around Captain Johne and his sunken ship, the Ararat, which in turn is from Ultima V. It was exploring the underworld for this, on the Commodore Amiga version back in 1994, that I noticed my family were paying an unexpected visit, and it turned out to tell me my grandfather had died. I'm sure you have a lot of memories tied to Ultima Online in turn, so going all the way back if you can will help deepen your own understanding of them.

Myself, I bought the Ultima Collection, which came with MoSlo back then. I've used DOSBox since to replay them all the way from Akalabeth, the technically Ultima 0, to Ultima Underworld... but if you just want the classic stories... Ultima IV should be your starting point. It's certainly an ideal beginning for understanding why Shroud today is determined to use actual conversation trees...

 

Ugh...poor word choice on my part, because I play everything in windowed mode. By "full screen", I was referring to the ability to shut off the scroll-like U6 interface and play the game...essentially in a U7 style, without any obvious GUI elements, with inventory gumps, and with the fancy new conversation overlay.

My settings are thus:

<video>
<game_style>new</game_style>
<scale_method>Point</scale_method>
<scale_factor>2</scale_factor>
<fullscreen>no</fullscreen>
<screen_width>320</screen_width>
<screen_height>200</screen_height>
<game_width>320</game_width>
<game_height>200</game_height>
<game_position>center</game_position>
</video>

 

Ah ok Thanks!

 

If you want a deep understanding of the world of Ultima. and hate reading and don't really want to play through them...
Just watch a bunch of Spoony youtube videos.
This is especially true for Ultima 9 ... I really think this game broke him lol

Ok. I would seriously start with Ultima:Quest of the Avatar
-its the first with the 8 virtues
-its the birth of the avatar
-first appearance of Iolo, Dupree, Shamano, Jana (and the forgotten companions like Jules the Tinker) <- not 100% on his name come to think of it.
-Takes place in Britannia (before this, it was Sosoria)
So really... Quest of the Avatar is THE BEGINNING of what we know to be the Ultima series

note: Ultima: Exodus was a good yet simple game. It has moongates, but to be honest.... its got THE ROUGHEST curve I've ever experienced. Ever.

I never played Warriors of Destiny for NES, though I heard it was amazing.
I did play the hell out of Ultima:False Prophet for SNES (I tried it recently on the PC version.... stick with the SNES... it's better somehow)

That would bring us to Ultima 7... the crowning gem of the series.
By now, you will have such a deeper attachment to characters in the game, and trust me... it will make the game so much more rewarding.
(at least play quest of the avatar before 7)

Next up would be Ultima: Pagan
I'd reallllly advise not playing this game. The whole feel changed as platform jumping became a serious focal point here. What's worse... you have no control over your jumps, so you have no control on making the jump. They did patch it later on, and its still as god awful as it was before.
Every platform is suspended over instant death water... so you will die. A LOT ... Like... save state every time you make a jump in a retardedly long series of jumps if you ever want to beat it...
And I havent even told you about the treasure chests in the game. They BLOW UP! no ****... every single effen chest is booby trapped, no matter what you do, they STILL blow up and they STILL kill you 95% of the time.
Luckily my pc died before I ever beat this game and my new one wouldn't run it so ... thats Ultima Pagan

As for Ultima: Ascension...
Don't bother... Seriously. It would take me a small book to tell you why but in short... EA took it over, rushed it, and I know in my heart Richard Garriot wishes he had never let them touch it.
Reflecting on this game just pisses me off

 

If you think U4 is a bit hard to grasp, I suggest trying U3. It's very much in the jRPG kind of game category and is not all that hard to complete (IMO). You will just have to reference some online guides here and there for some of the password puzzles to save yourself from having to try to figure them out on your own.

 

@trephination,

There's plenty of stuff to enjoy in U8 and U9 even despite the games' faults.

Ultima VIII was a good game, for the most part; it just mostly wasn't in the Ultima tradition. The game, in general, had a really rich sense of atmosphere and was more cinematic than the previous Ultimas. It was fun climbing into houses and searching them. The action elements even provided fun when they weren't frustrating.. you'd be walking in a dungeon and suddenly everything would start to shake and stalactites would fall, and you'd have to outrun them. You had a creepy feeling walking through the catacombs. It was also fun going after the hidden treasures mentioned in the books in the library. Some of the physics in the game were also fun to play with.

Ultima IX had so many things broken in it that I personally wouldn't call it a good game, but it had a lot of really good parts. I liked the dungeon crawls... and though a lot of the art was ugly and polygonal, a lot of the textures were still pretty beautiful. I liked the pools and fountains in the dungeons, for instance. It was nice to see small touches like frogs that added atmosphere.

 

Graceakain, did you already finish U7?

 

Jules the Tinker ?

 

Little known fact, that Bible verse is fictitious and doesn't appear anywhere in the Bible. It appears in a Sonny Chibi movie that QT was stealing from. Every QT movie is basically a collection of lifted scenes from other movies.