Line #0 YMMV/Ultima


1	* AlternateCharacterInterpretation: [[WebVideo/TheSpoonyExperiment The Spoony One]] posits that Lord British is actually a totalitarian tyrant ruling a CrapsaccharineWorld. He lets the player mangle the space-time continuum into a knot to defeat Mondain and Minax before setting up himself up as a supreme ruler of the world which he declares united under his banner, and persons who disagree with his rule are exiled to Serpent Isle. He sets up the quest of the Avatar so you can prove yourself a worthy champion of his new religion, which involves you invading a shrine erected by the Gargoyles (though British didn't know it was their shrine) and stealing their holy book for yourself. That's also not to mention all the problems that Britannia is constantly dealing with that Lord British and his men are powerless to stop, forcing them to summon the Avatar for aid again and again. Spoony also notes that in the setting shift from ''Ultima III'' to ''Ultima IV'', which was when Lord British united the world and began the Virtue system, several races were written out of the franchise's lore; Spoony suggests that this is because as part of his OneWorldOrder, Lord British enacted a genocidal campaign of ethnic cleansing and exterminated those other races.
2	** In ''Akalabeth: World of Doom'', Lord British has the protagonist go on increasingly deadly quests (which includes killing a demon and a Balrog) to prove themself worthy of knighthood. Is this what all the knights have to go through to earn their titles or was this a SnipeHunt that British didn't expect you to complete and made you a knight [[IMeantToDoThat to save face]]?
3	* SugarWiki/AwesomeMusic: [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=x8R6M65d5NA The music]] of ''Ultima X'' was sumptuous.
4	* GeniusBonus: The Eight Virtues are the [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_set complete power set]] of the Three Principles.
5	* GermansLoveDavidHasselhoff: This series wasn't merely Big In Japan, it sparked the entire EasternRPG subgenre there.
6	* HilariousInHindsight:
7	** Lord British's name is uncannily similar to [[Webcomic/{{Homestuck}} a certain major villain with temporal powers]]. One could say [[ArcWords he was already here]].
8	** Original Ultima required you to become so wealthy you could just ''buy'' a spaceship. Fast-forward a few decades and Richard Gariott is so wealthy that he is buying a trip onto a space station for funsies.
9	* OnceOriginalNowOverdone: While definitely heavily respected, the franchise as a whole has not aged as gracefully as other early role-playing games. [[WebAnimation/ZeroPunctuation Yahtzee]] once described the series as "needlessly obtuse." He wasn't wrong, but there wasn't exactly much competition for a long, long time. In an age where role-playing games of all kinds are now much more plentiful and overall more streamlined, even the best Ultima games can seem much more quaint and cumbersome in comparison.
10	* {{Sequelitis}}: Whether the series started going downhill from ''[[VideoGame/UltimaVIIPartII Serpent Isle]]'' or ''[[VideoGame/UltimaVIII Pagan]]'' is up to personal opinion, but there's no denying that the series ended at a low point.

Context YMMV / Ultima