Slashing Dragon has begun a playthrough of Ultima 9, and will evidently be blogging the entire experience.

I am a hardcore Ultima player; I have played and won almost all of the games, but there’s one I never got around to play: The dreaded Ultima IX. Hated by legions, said to be the most-evilest-thing ever to be created by mankind, I saw and laughed at spoony’s review, but in my opinion you have to witness with your own eyes what a game is before giving your opinion about it.

The only “real” 3D RPG I have played is Dungeon Siege back on the early 00’s (That is if you don’t count Ultima Underworld 1/2 for being pseudo 3D), and I only played briefly (I think I had a demo or something), so this may double as my first experience with “modern” RPGs.

Yesterday I checked my gog.com account and found it there, so I decided it was time to give it a shot.

Apart from the claim that the game was “hated by legions” — is it really so universally hated, or is it just that the minority that do genuinely hate it tend to be highly vocal about that fact? — Slash seems intent on giving the game a fair assessment. He goes on to describe the assumptions he is carrying into the game, which are largely optimistic. He at least gives the impression that this will not be a hatchet job.

And, indeed, his first day of exploration chalks up several positive remarks about the game:

I appeared on some mountain where I was attacked by a Wyrmguard and I saw Blackthorn talking with the guardian. Apparently someone saved me and put me on a place out of their reach.

I was sent into a cozy room with some equipment and books where training continued, specially on how to use the linear spells for puzzle solving. Once I got out of the tower it was beautiful: The statues for the shadowlords were cool! I couldn’t help look up the tower and see how it streched into the sky. Awesome.

I was startled by the Britannian night: Trammel and Felucca in all its splendor, the quiet night at Britannia, it was a great ambiance, albeit it would have been nicer if all townspeople were sleeping instead of just living their life in the dark.

Britain is awesome, I love how everything looks, definitively projects the same feeling I had on Ultima 5 while traversing the Britannys and Britain, may be it being night has helped.

He did encounter a few issues, none of which seem to have broken the experience for him:

Then I talked with Lord British who briefed me on the situation; in a pretty similar to Ultima 6 way he’s basically staying at his castle not doing much while Britannia crumbles around him. Fortunately I am here to help.

I jumped into a river and had some trouble trying to go back to the ground but after a short while I could get out of it.

One thing I hadn’t liked much so far are the portraits/paintings in the game, there seems to be too little of them and they look like pretty generic middle ages / renaissance stuff, plus some renderings of Lord British all around.

Of course, he’s still just getting started in the game…but already his impression of it is diverging rather notably from the opinions of those who despise Ultima 9. Look no further than his interpretation of the museum displays, which…actually makes excellent sense, given how those displays actually work.

Still, he may encounter issues later on in the game (Moonglow, for example, though since he’s playing the GOG version — which uses a Glide wrapper — he may get through there without issue). And his opinion of it may sour. But he’s off to a positive start, at least.