Ultima Forever: Quest for the Avatar - Review @ EuroGamer

EuroGamer has a new review for Ultima Forever: Quest for the Avatar. If the score of 2/10 is any indication it's not good.

So farewell then, Ultima. The title of developer Mythic and publisher EA's new entry in the series, an iOS-exclusive, free-to-play MMORPG-lite, is Ultima Forever. These words you can visualise chiselled on a gravestone. Make no mistake; this game has the surface of a vibrant fantasy, but it is a grasping and shallow product.

The free-to-play business model is entirely to blame for this, because Ultima Forever: Quest for the Avatar (to give its full title) is a game built around several principles that flow from it. Critics of free-to-play often focus on the money side of things, but really the specific amounts matter little. Ultima Forever rips you off with its keys, for sure, but it is their impact on how the game actually plays that ruins it.

This is a game built for idiots. The critic Ian Bogost once mocked up something called Cow Clicker to illustrate the banal absurdity of most freemium mechanics, and Ultima Forever is Cow Clicker with a beard. Everything is straightforward to the point of absurdity. Combat comes down to just tapping on enemies constantly. It really does. There are special moves, and you can move around to score backstabs or avoid attacks, but 99% of the time this is soul-crushing, mechanical drudgery. Go into a dungeon, tap furiously for 10 minutes, leave.

More information.

It's not good. I was foolish enough to pay for a discounted starter pack of keys early on with the expectation that I was going to give it a proper go.

Complete waste of money. Can't even be bothered logging in again to use them.

Ouch. 2/10 doesn't happen very often these days.

Took the words right out of my mouth, GBG, ouch indeed. *shakes head sadly for the Ultima name*.

Errr but the whole "cow clicker with a beard?" is a little odd. Quite a bizarre turn of phrase to say the least. Beards do not deserve such ignoble things!

Well, never fear the housing simulator will be here within a year.

Originally Posted by Pessimeister
Took the words right out of my mouth, GBG, ouch indeed. *shakes head sadly for the Ultima name*.

Errr but the whole "cow clicker with a beard?" is a little odd. Quite a bizarre turn of phrase to say the least. Beards do not deserve such ignoble things!

You're absolutely right!!!


pibbur dragon who is a greybeard and who doesn't have an opinion of "Shroud of the Avatar". Yet.

It's sad. The ultima brand used to scream quality. But these days, it conjurs up '99 cent store' and 'chia pet.'

On the plus side, as what looks like blatant promotion for this rubbish, Ultima IV has just been released as a free app for iOS. Lots of big, annoying ads for "Forever" but looks like as good a port as possible. Maybe now I will finally find the will to give it a proper shot, as it's just not the kind of game I can convince myself to play on a pc anymore.