Ultima VII: The Black Gate

I’ve already posted about Zelda, Sonic and other retro games. But my favorite game of all time is Ultima VII: The Black Gate.

I got to know the game as part of a disk with multiple games by Electronic Arts. I loved it because it’s an open world game with a good story and plenty of things to explore. You can move almost every object in the world. You had a full party, and the NPCs led their own lives according to a realistic day & night cycle. Quite something for a game released in 1992.

Typically, Ultima games come with quite a few goodies in the box. Next to the printed manuals, you normally also get a cloth map. Unfortunately, the compilation disk only had digital versions of everything.

But recently I managed to get hold of a second-hand copy of my favorite game! This contained all the goodies: manuals, cloth map, …

In order to play Ultima VII, you have to be familiar with the runic script. All locations on the map are mentioned as runes, but the previous owner has translated everything nicely.

Even though the game is already very old, it is still quite playable. You can buy it at a reasonable price at GOG.com. But I recommend using Exult as well to make it more playable according to current standards.