Ultima Forever: Quest for the Avatar Reviews

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Written by WorstUsernameEver on August 15th, 2013

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There's a definite pay-to-win feel to Ultima Forever: Quest for the Avatar. You'll get further into this expansive fantasy world much faster if you invest heavily. It wouldn't be a big issue if the reminders weren't so prominent every time you open a chest; every time you open your inventory to see the condition of your equipment.

But somewhere beneath the pile of golden keys you shouldn't buy, there's a quite good homage to a role-playing classic, waiting for you to rise to the challenge. You can enjoy Ultima Forever: Quest for the Avatar without paying for it. It just takes a little patience, and hey patience is a virtue.

It's not very fun to avoid opening up a chest for new items because you're afraid of exhausting your repair currency -- which is basically the exact kind of trap the IAP system wants you to fall in. At this juncture, I'm not sure how Mythic could make the game more appealing given these issues. I don't think eliminating microtransactions entirely is an option for them -- but sincerely, I wish it was, because this will eventually destroy the game's community, and create ghost towns over the next few months.

Beyond the bugs and pesky purchases, Ultima Forever is actually a pretty solid touch RPG. The controls work far better than you'd expect, and there's a ton of content to explore. It's also really, really simple to jump into a dungeon or two if you have some free time and grab a few friends along the way. That setup is exactly the way mobile games should operate -- but unfortunately Ultima Forever forgoes a fair premium price in favor of greedy microtransactions.

This title is particularly difficult to score because it is a truly excellent game when you take the repair element out of it. The issue with Ultima Forever, and I'm guessing many other titles we're going to see as (mobile grows up) to take advantage of tablets, is that this element overshadows all else.

This is a big Ultima adventure, and it just so happens to be free. The technical shortcomings drag the score down, but Ultima fans and anyone who enjoys a good role-playing game should struggle through these issues to see what's on offer.

For optimal enjoyment of Ultima Forever, it's best to play on an iPhone 5. Party members may still lag out and disappear, but you'll have less frame issues. For the freemium price, I'm all on board for this Ultima MMO. When I'm in a solid party, I can't put this game down. There's too much to do and tons of reasons to go back into old dungeons and farm for better loot. Hopefully, with subsequent patches the frame issues will slowly disappear.

Mythic has said that the purpose of the soft-launch is to optimize and fine-tune the game's performance so they can deliver the best mobile Ultima experience possible. It's safe to say that this is a good move because the game requires a lot of power to run and it is prone to freezes and crashes. The game is currently optimized for and supported on 4S, fifth-gen iPod Touch, iPad 2, and newer devices. You can download it on an iPhone 4 or fourth-gen iPod Touch, but do so fully aware that it will not run smoothly. I have been playing on an iPhone 4S and across several hours of gameplay, I experienced severe lag twice, a bug that prevented me from moving to the next room, and five or six crashes. The dungeons have checkpoints that save your health, Virtue, and inventory, but not your progress through the dungeon. Whenever the game completely crashes, you will have to start your most recent dungeon over from the beginning, though the loot you found before will be saved. This is not exploitable for extra loot and Virtue, as dungeons can be replayed anyway. However, it is really frustrating to have to start a 15-minute-long dungeon several times in a row.

Despite the flaws, I think that Ultima Forever is still worth taking a look at. I just hope that you don't expect it to be anything like the original Ultima Online, or to get far without the use of silver or gold keys for epic loot. It's a fun time-waster, I'll give it that, but not worth pouring a ton of hours into if you're a serious gamer.

While I think I'll wait until the game actually launches before assigning a score to it, I can safely say that Ultima Forever: Quest for the Avatar is poised to make a splash on the mobile gaming scene. It's the first attempt at bringing an RPG to the platform that actually feels like a game I'd play on my PC. My main worry about the game is its monetization, but there's still time for Mythic to rein this in. There are more classes to come, tons of places on the overworld map that are yet to be unlocked and populated, and loads more story to uncover. I've played several hours with my Fighter, and yet by all counts I've just begun my adventure. If Mythic wants to make more money in a righteous fashion? Charge for more classes and content packs, and leave the convenience features like fast-travel and repairs to the regular free bronze key currency. If they can rein the greedy money-grabs in, and fix some of the bugs like pathing and performance slowdown, U4E could very well be the iPad game to convince a lot of people that mobile gaming can be core gaming.

There's a lot of potential for Mythic to support this game and build it out into interesting new directions. Ultima Forever can be the perfect MMO for the iPad format. It's just a matter of whether the developers can find a way to encourage some player interaction, because until that happens, this game might as well not be an online game at all.

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