Ultima VII: The Black Gate by Origin Systems
Reviewed by Mark Bylander

Once again, you, the Avatar, find a moongate in your backyard.  Again
you enter, knowing it will take you to the lands of Brittania.  Upon arrival,
however, you find that much has changed.  There is much to explore in order to
unravel the mysteries awaiting you.  Ultima VII is VGA only, requires a 386SX
or higher machine, 2M RAM, and fills a whopping 21 MB of hard disk space.  The  
interface is all new.

First off, we should discuss bugs.  Ultima VII has several problems in 
this respect, which may have more or less effect depending on your hardware
configuration.  Ultima VII will not run in the presence of EMS.  You must 
either change your configuration or boot from floppies to use it.  If you
have the minimum memory, you may have problems running Ultima in the
presence of HIMEM.SYS; I had to disable HIMEM to run on my machine.
Several users of disk caching software have reported lock-up problems, so
be wary of this.

Another bug/feature is the implementation of keys.  Most keys are found
near where they are used, so Origin figures it can get rid of old keys while
you sleep.  The moral is, "Do not sleep while carrying an unused key."  
You can sometimes put the key in a bag which is not on your person to avoid
this problem, but save before you try it.

That said, Ultima VII is a very interesting game.  The window on Brittania
takes up the whole screen, and the images on the screen are much larger than
on previous Ultimas.  The graphics look very nice.  There is an occasional
problem with save games and invisibility, in that they sometimes mess up the
pallettes on the screen.  You can usually restore the pallette by quitting
and then saying, "No, I don't really want to quit."

The plot is fairly intriguing.  There is a new group, called the
Fellowship, which is doing good works in Brittania.  A huge head of some
sort of demonic creature keeps appearing to you and offering sometimes
helpful advice.  Several towns have crime sprees, which you can solve.
Since it has been many years since the avatar's last visit, you will find
that many things have changed.  Britain is a huge, sprawling city.  The
gargoyles have moved into two cities on the surface.  (Continuity bug: the
world is again toroidal instead of flat.)  Magic is failing and wizards are
going insane.  Lord British remains in his castle, uninformed about his realm.

You begin in the city of Trinsic, where a grisly murder has just been
discovered.  (Warning: the graphics here are, well, graphic.)  You must
get sufficient information about the murder before the mayor will give you
the password to leave the city.  

The interface is new.  You can play entirely from the mouse.  (I use the
mouse and the escape key, personally.)  As a result, many things are simplified.
For instance, attacking, talking, and using are all accomplished by double-
clicking a creature (while in combat mode), a creature (in peace mode), and
an object, respectively.  I was disappointed in the new talk interface.  
Since it is fully mouse-driven, you must select your responses from a set
of canned replies.  If you have figured out who the vandal is, but have not
had a confession or accusation by an NPC, you cannot report your findings.
Furthermore, the new talk routine all but obviates the need for notes.  When
you meet someone you were sent to talk to, Ultima includes the topic you
were supposed to mention, sometimes before you even know who you're talking
to.  In fact, one character tells you a secret to keep from her husband.  When
you meet him, the subject of the secret appears on the list.  If you select
it, the game asks you if you really want to reveal the secret.  I find it
annoying to get this much help in the game.

The new combat sequence is very hard to play manually.  I recommend that
you put all the characters (including the Avatar) under computer control.
You can put your spellbook in the space directly above your weapon.  This 
makes it easy for you to cast spells, but prevents the computer from using
up spells in combat.

The moral aspect of earlier Ultimas is still present, although sometimes
poorly implemented.  Iolo, Shamino, and Dupre may leave the group if you
steal within sight of an NPC, but won't say a word if you sneak into a
house at night, close the doors, and start rifling through the drawers.
Twice in the game, I have had NPC's attack when I revealed their role in
foul deeds.  Based on previous Ultimas, I am reluctant to kill them, but
this game seems to leave little choice.

The 3D perspective is very similar to Ultima VI and the first two
Worlds of Ultima games.  As in Ultima VI, the perspective seems to make
cities seem huge and wilderness seem small.  There are some vertical scaling
problems as well, for instance, Lord British's castle is taller than the
highest mountains of Brittania.  Ultima VII lacks the mesas of Worlds
of Ultima.  It merely has mountains.

All in all, although Ultima VII has several problems (which hopefully
will be cleared up in later releases), I have found the game to be quite 
entertaining.  Because of the new talk interface, it can be very frustrating
to have to repeat sections of the game, so be sure to save often.  Also,
the game appears to support only one player, so if you have multiple game
players in the household, you may need much more than the 23MB of disk space
normally required by the game.  I recommend Ultima VII to all fans of the 
Ultima series, and fans of fantasy games in general (Although the game is 
playable without it, it would probably be immensely beneficial to play
Ultima IV-VI before playing this game, as many characters and places have
changed, and only a veteran of the previous games will notice these   
differences.)  I suspect that this game will take even the most expert player
a great many hours to complete--I've played for many hours and I don't think
that I am even close to the end!