Ultima IX: Ascension | UO and Descension 

"your knowledge of the land shall be great" "What's a Paladin?" "I'm...not entirely sure"

"Your knowledge of the land will be great." "What a paladin. "

What's a paladin?

I am 49 years old, and I am French. I have played a lot of Ultima 5, 6, 7, and 8. Ultima 7 and Serpent Isle are my favorite RPGs of all time. I can replay them today with the same enthusiasm as when I first played them. EA Games turns everything they touch into crap. Ultima 9 should have been a great game; you could feel that the game engine was gearing up for something much bigger than what was delivered to us. Just look at what EA Games did to Ultima Online. They probably had in their hands the most advanced multiplayer game ever created up to this day. We still have a few players managing to play with those 4 pixel scraps where the original universe has been completely distorted.

the moral of Ultima is: don't ever sell out to EA

I remember pre-ordering the big Dragon Edition box for this and waiting excitedly for it to arrive. I was on some Ultima forum reading posts from people to see when they received their copy. I've still got the full game in that giant Dragon Edition box tucked away somewhere in storage. Good times!

It’s just so frustrating to me that U7-8 was building up to some big conclusion but then all the corporate shenanigans just destroyed all that and we ended up with a new team who wanted to make their own story and didn’t really know nor care about the various story details of that trilogy. It also makes U8 worse as the point of it was about what it was leading to. I kinda wish Garriot wasn’t so burned out on the mainline Ultimas and was more protective over the story. But it is what it is.

I've never played any of these games, and have no nostalgia for them, but I sure do enjoy watching you talk about them. It has been a blast going through this series through your eyes.

This was a strange time in videogaming history where, while the 3d graphics were impressive in one respect, they were massively less detailed and showed less things on screen than U7, for instance.

Garriot selling EA on the idea that you can sell an unfinished beta product explains so much about the company’s future business practices. It’s like a massive butterfly effect.

This was a really fun video! I will say, as a kid who started on Ultima V, I wasn't put off by the gold not being it's own item in the bag. "Back in my day, the gold was just a number! Not some item you had to move around your backpack!" lolol I didn't get a computer upgrade until well after Ultima VII had released. My next Ultima was VIII, and by god I loved that game. I know most people crap all over it, but I immersed myself in the world. I made dozens of necro... thingies. I preped so many sorcerer spells. I had a save game at the end where I was virtually a god and I would just cause mayhem with my magic powers. I took over a house in the main city. I had chests of gems, magic weapons, bombs. I collected every bomb I found in the game. I put them in a single chest. If I triggered one bomb in the chest, it would explode and ignite the other bombs. Then my 486 would lock up for about 5 minutes. Then all the bombs would slowly start to all go off. It took me like 4 minutes to save a game. It... was awesome.

I played UO when it came out and have yet to have as much fun in an mmo as i did that game.

Ohh Ultima 9. I was fresh to living in Japan at the time and bought a brand new computer right before this came out with the sole purpose of playing this game. I loved the first part of it, like you I ignored the earth part assuming it was a necessary intro for new players. The further I managed to get into the game the more it kinda grinded on me, and when it finally bugged out so bad I was essentially softlocked, I just put it down and never finished it.

I dream of a universe, where EA gives up the rights to Ultima and some industry veterans get together and start a crowdfunding project to remake (!) the entire Ultima storyline into a series of games, weed out any inconsistencies, integrate the story lines of both Worlds of Ultima and Underworld games (may be even the entire games) and give this series a new glorious purpose :) Also acceptable would be a remake of 7, 8 and 9. And a lucky find in some storage, with the code and assets for "Lost Vale". Yes, i am still dreaming ...

I love these longer videos you put out man. So excited to watch everything you put out!

Ironic how much Origin had hated EA from beginning that they even put a lot of EA reference (Elizabeth & Abraham are based on EA reference) in U7, only to ended up been acquired by EA later on

I wish I'd had the presence of mind to keep a copy when I saw it back in the '90s, but I got to see one of the original story bibles for U9. It was supposed to close off all the old plot threads. The rendered cutscenes were made with that original plot in mind. One thing I remember reading was the origins of the Guardian -- that he was his own world's equivalent to an Avatar, except that he used the Armageddon spell after getting it from the wisps. The spell rendered him immortal, and he spent centuries alone on his world until he figured out how to create a black gate, and his next move was to take over Pagan.

Oops just realized i was only subbed to your vod channel. fixed :) Really enjoy the videos you've made, thanks and keep up the great work!

I also remember U9 as a fun and visually impressive game. I really enjoyed the 3D environment and how the mood changed with the day & night cycle and the rain. I thought the dynamic lighting looked really nice with candles and lanterns. I encountered a few bugs especially when I accidentally bypassed a huge section of the game by finding a way to cross the mountains near Britain and went directly to Yew before even going to Ambrosia. I was very confused by the gargoyle's dialog there. Normally, Lord British is supposed to remove a magical wall in a cave near Britain for Avatar to pass but in my first playthrough I completely skipped that part by parkouring :) I never finished the game as I lost interest in the game loop towards the later dungeons which got way too weird but as I said I really enjoyed the visuals and the world and I was happy that we got to play another Ultima game. By the way, nice review as always. Hope you will post more stuff!

I'm new to your channel, but I'm hooked, keep up the good job!

Great work, highly detailed, enthusiatic and without hype.

Great video... this was actually my first ever Ultima game, managed to buy it and played it with the first unofficial patch (think an ex developer did it). I picked it up with an official Prima guide which had amazing developer interviews, maps and all sorts of notes about the series. Still worth picking up today as it was a fantastic add on for the game and series. People hate on this game a lot but I really enjoyed it when I was younger, completed it several times over and eventually went off to play through the rest of the series so was worth it for that alone.

While the slog of going to each town and cleansing each shrine was banal, I’m surprised there was no mention of Valoria, since it was a bit of a departure, where you had to convince three other knights to regain their courage to attack the Triumvirate demon, which was an inspiring scene to me

It was technically my first Ultima. I got this, then went to experience the others. I don't hate it, and I have a soft spot for it. Still hope 8-9 are remade properly one day, nearly impossible as it feels today.

This was a great vid! I never got to play the later Ultima games but am still curious and I may just do it now. Thanks and INSTASUBBED!!!

It's late, I'll finish this video later but it's nice and comfy

Good fun watching you play through this on Twitch.

Man i love your channel and i never played Ultima games

The exchange between LB and the Slasher of Veils is a reference to Bruce Campbell's exchange with a deadite at the end of the film Army of Darkness. Just FYI.

Thanks for video. I played Ultima IX only until approx Gargoyle City, after that my interest faded, because the crashes and some problems with my Voodoo2 card was nagging me.

Will say, for the museum, it depends on the premise that the museum is a reliable narrator. It'd make complete sense for a random tapestry weaver/painter to retcon the Avatars appearance in the first 3 game to match the one they're familiar with. And the artefacts could just be replicas. The Pagan references make no sense though, unless you really do a bunch of odd backend justifications that somehow his actions on Pagan were magically observed and noted.

My biggest problem with the game at release aside from the bugs and Crash to Desktop was the sense of scale. The world was WAY too small due to limitations in hardware at the time, and that took me out of it too much. I'd rather work in zones like Everquest than jog across the continent in about 2 minutes.

I've always headcanoned wolves and other beasts in RPGs carrying weapons, armor, gold, etc, as them having eaten an adventurer or the likr

Favourite part of this game was a lore book came with the game discs. 10yrs old me read it over and over so many times.

Instead of saying the Avatar was replaced by a Changeling, i am more to the fans theory of "the Avatar had his bang(s) so hard in Pagan, until he had lost his memory of his previous adventures"

If you said that in U9 that animals carrying gold is weird, in Fallout 4 I found a roach carrying a Fatman launcher.

Well... that answers my earlier question on your other video. And to think, all I had to do was visit your channel page and look around. Just the way games should be: exploratory.

I hate the contrived nonsense that The Guardian was in some way related to the Avatar or his deeds. It makes the game series feel small and predestined. I remember reading an in-game book in the Lycaeum in Ultima VI (??) where some wizard speculated about how moongates are completely unguarded wide open two-way doorways, that while benevolent Britannians frequently use them to travel between worlds, so too can other, possibly malevolent entities use them to find Britannia, and that we must use them cautiously at all times. It essentially was a warning that something like the Guardian might be coming, though in the context of the game the reader may have misinterpreted it to refer to the Gargoyles (as the game opens with them kidnapping the Avatar through a moongate). I like that impression of the Guardian better. He is simply a malevolent extra-dimensional entity, the Destroyer of Worlds, with no connection to the Avatar. He simply sees Britannia as the next random world to conquer (or destroy, whichever's easier), he needs no rosey rationale for his conquests. He is absolute and unrelenting, like a force of nature, and the goal of each game was not to defeat him but to simply weather his onslaughts. The only game that offers a peek into the Guardian's biography and history is Ultima Underworld II, in which the Avatar actually gets a firsthand look at other worlds the Guardian has conquered, and sees how they fare (for better or worse.... usually worse) after he is done with them. The Guardian being an instance of the Avatar's cleansed anti-virtues invalidates all of this. He is no longer the Destroyer of Worlds, now he's just a scorned aspect of the Avatar's split personality, which is less interesting. And if that's the case, why did he wait 200 years to come back if that was his intention all along?

Voidbrand great video I'm glad you got it out and it's so complete and descriptive... And I'm sorry for all the times I distracted you! Hahahaha.

The graphics and general look reminds me of Gothic.

Love your videos! Keep up the awesome work! Your channel is such a vibe! I’ve always been so curious about the Ultima games. I actually have quite a few of them on GOG but never got around to playing them yet. Are there any good recommendations to start my Ultima journey? Or should I start from the beginning? (I don’t mind how dated the gameplay on first few are)

Great job, as always! Do you plan to cover Underworld Ascendant? Or Shroud of the Avatar?

Nice work man. I remember being excited to get this thing home. It barely worked at the time. I think I only ever spent an hour with it. Awful disappointment. Interesting that it was actually playable with the patch and seeing how it played and how the story progressed, makes me think the game did me a favor by not working out of the box all those years ago. What could have been.

Skipping Ultima VIII seems to be a good solution to a lot of the plot issues! :-) I've played every other game in the series, but gave up on VIII after a short while because I just wasn't having fun, partially because of the jumping. There certainly are still plot issues in IX that are noticeable without the context of Ultima VIII. I think my experience got off on more of a right foot because I didn't notice the lack of continuity with the ending of VIII which I think made the other issues seem less significant to me.

Are you going to cover anything about Shroud of the Avatar? The last I heard about it was sometime after watching the Spoony Ultima IX review and that it had a successful crowd sourcing campaign.

"The Codex of Ultimate Wisdom?"

'What's a Paladin?' The world may never know

As a hardcore fan since Ultima VII, I felt mostly the same playing the game.

I feel like the plot outlined in the PDF is a bit more satisfying than the one that we got, but it does feel a bit uninspired and wrote. Maybe it's my bias, but I thought that the most interesting way to interpret The Guardian was as another player character: essentially being the version of the Avatar that did all the reprehensible things that the player is permitted to do, such as setting off the armageddon spell for the sake of it. Personally, I thought it could be interesting to see what another person from earth with the ability to cross dimensions would do if they were to treat the world like a toy and used their position to corrupt and undermine the integrity of the universes they passed through. If every person's game is a distinct instance of the world, then it's logical that someone would be just like The Guardian - crossing between dimensions and deliberately destroying them for the sake of their own amusement. Ultima is already chock full of third wall breaks and establishes the player character as a dimensional traveller and I feel like there's a really interesting way to play into that idea. How are you going to be able to do anything about The Guardian if it turns out that he's just some guy? Are you going to turn up on his doorstep? How would you explain it to the authorities that you had to kill him in order to stop him from committing genocide in a video game? I feel like there's so much you can do with that concept: in the game you're both near omnipotent, but outside of Ultima you're bound by a system of law that doesn't recognise what is going on as a legitimate issue.

Ascension was my first Ultima, I haven't even heard of the series before. It didn't run on the first computer we had, just after some upgrades later. Somehow, I got used to the crashes and the occassional extreme lag very fast. Later, with more expectations towards games, trying to make the game truly playable via all the patches was an adventure by itself. To this day, this is among the games I have played the most. Also, breaking it is very fun! Of course, other adventure was realizing how "not Ultima" it is. I knew right from the start that questions like "What is a Gargoyle" would flip long time fans of the game out, I just didn't suspect that the case was this serious.

If you’re willing to explore around, there’s plenty of interesting places to find in U9 that have nothing to do with anything and are completely optional. Things like the giant village and the magic mushroom.

Cool video.

Titan of Ether appears in the museum as seen at 24:10 (your point still stands tho)

Is it bad that I still want to play this game despite the story being lack luster? For some reason I think I'd find alot of humor in playing it, but I feel like I'd also still get frustrated from time to time. Either way great video thanks for covering these games its great to hear the lore of them.

I feel like I was too busy with UO to ever give this one a chance.

Ultima online has been my MMORPG first lovr and still is.Public Shards are still going strong.

I quit the game after the museum. It was really weird that the Avatar had no idea what was happening.

I remember being immersed in this game (and only had Bug in Britain so tried to stay away from there as much as I can). But after finishing the entire MoonGlow Arc and chatting with Mariah, I was pretty much tired of it. Constant weak quests/dialogue got boring fast, plus, how many more times shall we clean a shrine ? A bit of variety would've been nice. I soldiered thru, of course, but what a letdown the ending was. I preferred Ultima8 over it, no questions asked. But you're right, IMHO this game was "scrapped" to make room for UO. And it's a real shame. Not a fan of the original ending from Bob White either tho but IMHO it's better. I feel destroying/loosing Britannia after fighting so hard to keep it safe for so long is very sour. The only reason I'd ever agree with it would be if Ultima games continued well after that for quite a few titles and we help rebuild the New Britannia world. Like this time, we're the exiles, the refugies, and even tho we have a titan of ether and a few power characters (LB being one), we're on a strange land and have to survive... Feels very much like an early settler's feel in a fantasy/magic setting, now that would rock. Seeing how bad gaming turned after the early 2000's tho, we pretty much dodged a bullet. At least IMHO. Thanks for the retrospective, now I have quite a few more to watch from your channel. Also subscribed as I hope you will replay thru U9 with dialogue and other patches as I don't want to miss that ( I never ever played U9 again after this one time.) -- Enlightenment Dragon.

Ah, the joys of corporate overreach… As a side note: anyone who hasnt tried UO: Outlands should check it out! Its how UO *should* have developed, imho. Perfect addition if that classic pre-tram feel with brand new systems if progression and power gain

I made it to the dungeon after the gargoyle city and then it got stuck in a loop of crashing and I couldn't continue. I think the game did me a favour lol. My favourite part was the hooker, "want to party?" "Sure!"

The thing about this game, I kind of like the gfx and the style. This could have been so good! 😢

They super killed it .. Uo outlands is the best right now period. Imo

The other plot seemed 8/10 there, some refinement and I would've been a decent send off to the series.

Wait a second, i want to see more of Richard Garriott addressing "what's a paladin". Where did you find that?!

I find that its the same in novels, when they add extra dialog to fill in readers that may not have read the previous books, extra info to help then catch up. The same can be said for the Avatar being ignorant. Maybe the point is, if you know the answer in U9, If you know what a paladin is, for example, dont ask the question. I'm guessing nothing important was locked behind these ignorant questions.

46:54 Every other game combined has 343 entries, Ultima IX has 506 entries. I've not checked why U7 has 101 entries, but wow, U9 really ran up the numbers here.

Wonderful review. I was never that impressed with Ultima. There was something I hated about all the parts, up to Ultima 8. The reason was that I always had some other RPG that I considered superior. And then, during the early 3D era, when Ascension came out, there wasn't much to select from. The closest game I can think of is Sierra's Mask of Eternity, that creeped the hell out of me. Suddenly, Ultima didn't look so bad in comparison. It was more bright and friendly. Of course, Ultima Online was what sold me on the franchise, but I would disagree with most negative reviews regarding Ultima 9. For its time it was pretty good.

Ultima Online, is still, the greatest game I’ve ever played.

Props for getting the game to boot at all. The GOG version crashes constantly on my main PC, and trying to install the game from the original ISO images on my period-correct machine freezes at the installer on every attempt. It's as if the game is trying to save me from it.

Richard Garriot and Chris Roberts both got in over their head, as the complexity of the games increased, origin was no longer able to manage such large projects.

That was a great video, I wish the series ended the way it deserved unlike this

🤘🤘🤘🤘🤘🤘🤘🤘🤘🤘🤘🤘🤘🤘🤘🤘

Haven’t played the game but could those museum exhibits just be replicas?

There were screenshots of an earlier version of Ultima IX which was apparently scrapped before being rebuilt completely to be 3D and have the new perspective. I thought that earlier version looked awesome; more like your classic Ultima. What we got instead was just hot garbage.

Ever considered doing some of the old jrpgs from the Super Nintendo era like lufia or Breath of Fire

And why can you not smash the display case holding the Skull of Mondain, and then use it to end all life in Britania?

I mostly just like this game for it's gameplay, because it reminds me of how an elder scrolls game plays. But for it's story, yeah its more like a fanfic of ultima than it would be an actual installment. Someone should take the original story and make it into a skyrim mod.

Perhaps one day, someone will create the game that should have happened.

And then he dropped the same outro xD

Do you plan to review Ultima V Lazarus and Ultima VII Project by any chance? :)

In each Ultima game, you start as a zero, otherwise there would be no progression.

am I the only one that loved this game? but then again I havent played it since release and my only experience with Ultima before this was 8 and Underworld... And my english wasnt the best back then so I didnt really follow the story...

Strangely it still one of my favorite game.

Anybody else remembrers the crazy pc specs req for this game back in the days ? =)

5:50 What's a paladin?

i tried to do some mods for this

You need to play Moonring, by the way. If you can afford it.

One of the worst bugs, is the mine in minoc.

You had a miracle pc if ultima 9 did not crash constantly for you, it was literally unplayable on my pc at release I could barely get out of the tutorial.

I would like to have a path trscing mod for this game, like for Quake 2.

The whole Ultima 9 development cycle sounds a bit similar to what happened to FFXV in a way, due to the influences of FFXIV and how XV came to be. I guess some things in the game development world don't really change much, even across different nations and times. For some reason Ultima 9's graphics reminded me of WoW's, despite WoW's artstyle in the cg and wallpapers not even being close to that of Ultima's; yet 9 and WoW were about 5 years apart IIRC? Seems really baffling how Blizzard would have such "primitive" graphics at the time, when Lineage 2 existed. Or even have a style so different from their proposed artstyle on their promotonial material, unless their tactic was to bait Ultima Online fans, because they certainly baited the Everquest crowd.

i kinda understand why they made it that the Avatar asked that stuff, so that new players would understand the backstory. The way they did it was just so poorly made

Heh, the ONE time they use a graphics engine I can stand...

Whats a paladin?

What's a Paladin?

I never played 7 or 8. I played 6 and 4.

So this rather like a standalone game

whats a paladin?

Asking what's a paladin isn't really bad question. I would probably know this if I played whole Ultima series, but if U9 is your first game, you might want to learn as there is people who don't know the answer and there is people who might know paladins as religious fanatics. Big fully armored dudes with giant swords and shields or with maces or scepters. Or hobo slayers and evil child killers. Or whatever other fantasy games portrays them. The point is the player might want to learn what kind pf paladins Ultima 9 or series in general happens to portray. And this is question rise another problem with the series. The Avatar himself is treated in-game as the same person in every game at least since U4. I understand it was made for immersive experience, but I think it would be better for games to actually check if it's indeed returning player either by loading save file from previous game or asking some basic questions through the game. Then new player can learn some legends about "previous" Avatar. But it is pointless to think about it now.

Honestly? If the explanation for The Guardian had been "He was an evil brought into the world to balance the good that was created when you became the Avatar." rather than "He was the evil you cast off" or whatever, that part of the plot would be fine. Everything else about the plot of the game was just... not good.