Ultima IV: Quest of the Avatar (1985)
Computer Gaming World
Ultima IV: Quest of the Avatar · DOS/Apple II · 1986
"Origin Systems has done the impossible. They've made a game where the challenge is not to defeat an enemy, but to improve yourself. Ultima IV is unlike any RPG we have seen. It is a moral document disguised as a computer game, and one of the most important titles of the decade." The review awarded the title a full score, noting that its philosophical ambition set a new standard for the genre.
Dragon Magazine
Ultima IV: Quest of the Avatar · Apple II · 1986
"Garriott has taken the role-playing concept and elevated it beyond the dungeon crawl entirely. The Eight Virtues system is not a gimmick - it is a genuine moral framework that makes the player reconsider every action. We have never played a computer RPG that demands this level of self-reflection." Dragon's RPG column devoted three pages to the review, unprecedented for the era.
Ultima VII: The Black Gate (1992)
Computer Gaming World
Ultima VII: The Black Gate · DOS · 1992
"This is the most elaborate, detailed, and morally ambitious computer RPG ever created. The world breathes - every NPC lives by a schedule, every object exists for a reason, every system interacts with every other. The Fellowship is a master class in antagonist design: a cult in plain sight, its manipulation visible only in retrospect. Ultima VII sets a standard that may not be matched for years."
PC Gamer UK
Ultima VII: The Black Gate · DOS · 1992
"What Origin has achieved is something we doubted was possible: a genuinely living world inside a computer. The characters in Ultima VII are not waiting for the player - they are getting on with their lives. This single design decision elevates the game above every contemporary RPG. The story, when it comes together, is sophisticated enough to shame most novels."
Amiga Power
Ultima VII: The Black Gate · Amiga · 1993
"The Amiga conversion suffers slightly from the reduced colour palette and loading times, but the game beneath is still extraordinary. Ultima VII's world design is an object lesson in how to build a believable society in pixels. The Fellowship plotline is more contemporary and more disturbing than anything else in the genre."
Ultima Underworld: The Stygian Abyss (1992)
Computer Gaming World
Ultima Underworld: The Stygian Abyss · DOS · 1992
"Looking Glass Productions have built something that should be impossible: a fully three-dimensional dungeon that moves at acceptable speed on a 386, with texture mapping, physics, and a complex ecosystem of inhabitants. The Stygian Abyss is not a dungeon in the traditional sense - it is a world, complete with its own politics, economy, and ecology."
PC Zone
Ultima Underworld: The Stygian Abyss · DOS · 1992
"This is the game that makes everything else look primitive. The jump from tile-based dungeon crawling to this - a fully 3D environment with light, shadow, physics, and NPC factions - is staggering. Ultima Underworld sets a precedent that the entire industry will spend the decade catching up to."
Retrospective Critical Coverage
Eurogamer
Ultima IV: Quest of the Avatar · Retrospective · 2011
"Ultima IV is one of the handful of games that genuinely changed the art form. Every modern RPG that asks you to make moral choices, every game that cares about the ethics of violence, owes a debt to this 1985 Apple II title. Its influence is so pervasive that most modern game designers have absorbed it without knowing the source."
PC Gamer
Ultima VII: The Black Gate · Retrospective · 2014
"Ultima VII remains, twenty years later, the most fully realised open world in RPG history. Not the largest, not the most graphically impressive - but the most believable. The Fellowship plotline is more relevant now than it was in 1992; the game's portrait of a cult spreading through society resonates uncomfortably with contemporary experience."
Rock Paper Shotgun
Ultima Underworld: The Stygian Abyss · Retrospective
"Underworld predates not just Doom but the entire first-person action genre as we know it. Playing it today, with its physics, its non-combat solutions, its faction diplomacy - you see the direct ancestor of System Shock, Thief, Deus Ex, and Dishonored. An entire design tradition flows from this 1992 dungeon crawler."