A major breakthrough back in 1985, but how does it fare today?
Ultima IV is often seen as being one of the most important rpg in the history of the genre, and is often included in top games of all time lists and whatnot. It's true that the game was truly incredible back in the day and it has surprisingly aged well, or at least some parts of it aged well.
Unlike the previous games in the series you don't have a big bad guy to kill, instead here you need to be an example to the people of Britannia and become an avatar, the perfect representation of everything that is right so to speak. So how will you achieve this? By talking to a whole bunch of people and taking notes. Ultima IV introduced the classic Ultima gameplay that is like a cross between a classic adventure game and a western rpg. It is thoroughly unique in the sense that you need to engage in conversation with NPC's, ask them keywords, take notes and use some logic in your decisions. This is what keeps the game fresh today still. The problem at this point is that those conversations are far too simple to be truly enjoyable, and the world is basically a huge landmass of nothing. There is a couple of towns and dungeons here and there but it generally feels quite empty. The core gameplay is interesting but is too simple to really enjoy, especially in 2007.
A good part of the game must be spent in the dungeons and this is where the game falters: the dungeons simply have not aged well. Unlike the rest of the game, dungeons have been made over and over again since Ultima IV's release and it really makes them really dated here. There's absolutely no fun to be had in there and since the endgame is spent mostly in the dungeons prepare to be bored out of your mind if you want to finish this game. This truly drags the game down which is sad considering it starts so well.
From a general gameplay point of view the game kept the battle system from Ultima III, a tactical rpg grid system, but sped it up quite a bit. That makes battles go by quicker but I have to admit that they're still not very exciting. Fighting has never been Ultima's strong point though so I guess that can be excused. Another thing I don't like is the fact that the more characters you have in your party the more enemies you will have to face. This encourages players to not recruit companions until the endgame which doesn't feel natural. It would have been better if they had used the experience levels of your main character to decide how many enemies you would face on the battlefield. The graphics in the original PC version are flat out horrible but you can download a patch that upgrades them to VGA. They are much better that way and I recommend it to anyone wishing to try their hand at this game. The original version also didn't have the music included in the commodore 64 version of the game and the patch also adds that. The music is pretty good in Ultima IV but the tunes are still far too short, you hear them looping all the time and they'll quickly start to grate on you. At the end of the game you WON'T want to hear that battle theme again, especially since it isn't that good. The game has some GREAT songs but overall i'd have to say that the base compositions are not as good as the ones in Ultima III. The overworld map theme is annoying and so is the battle theme and they're the two songs you'll hear the most. The rest of the soundtrack is pretty good though.
Overall Ultima IV is a good leap over the first three games but it isn't quite at a point where I would consider it a good game. The dungeons are simply too antiquated to be enjoyable and it drags the whole game down. Luckily this game has been released as freeware a couple of years back so it doesn't cost much to get going. It could be worth it as an history lesson on RPGs and games in general but not much more.
