Ultima IV

Ultima - I - II - III - VI - VII - VIII - IX

Among the Ultima games, IV is one of the true classics. It was the game that introduced the virtues; it was the game where you became Avatar. The setting has changed from Sosaria to Britannia, where it remains till now. V is very similar to IV in graphics and gameplay.

The virtue system is a weird thing, it might be interesting to take a look at it, especially since it was to remain. There are eight virtues, each corresponds with a location in the game, with a character class and consequently with a potential travelling companion, and with a color. For each virtue there is a dungeon named after its opposite.

Honesty	Moonglow	Mage	Mariah
Compassion	Britain	Bard	Iolo
Valor	Jhelom	Fighter	Geoff(rey)
Justice	Yew	Druid	Jaana
Sacrifice	Minoc	Tinker	Julia/Julius
Honor	Trinsic	Paladin	Dupre
Spirituality	Skara Brae	Ranger	Shamino
Humility	Magincia	Shepherd	Katrina

You end up with a party of eight, one of each character class. The NPC with the same class as your PC will not join you. I guess I can say this is the most stylized RPG I ever played.

The name variations in the table above are due to differences between the computer and NES versions: Geoffrey was shortened to Geoff, while Julia became a man.

Updates and Remake Projects

Auric's Ultima Moongates offers a VGA update for this game, which includes MIDI music too. Usually I'm not a great fan of such updates and often prefer EGA over VGA, in this case, however, I admit it's a real improvement. The graphics of the original simply were not good, whether you compare them with those of Wasteland, which were EGA, too, or Final Fantasy, which, on the NES, had about the same technical possibilities. The updated version runs under Windows 95+ only.
xu4 - Ultima IV Recreated is a remake with the goal to make it easy and convenient to play on modern operating systems and primarily inspired by Exult, a remake of Ultima 7. Linux is the primary development platform but it gets ported to Windows and MacOS X regularly. It should be trivial to port to any system with SDL support. Ultima IV for DOS is now included with both the Linux and Windows binaries, since Origin allows it to be distributed freely.
Ultima IV - Virtue of Humility was rewritten from scratch using Dark Basic. It is for Windows only, requires DirectX 8 and runs at a resolution of 800×600.
Welcome to a rewrite of U4, a similar game with subtle differences, but playable like the one of old. Its title is Virtue of Humility, because of the optional module that was added. All the new adventures are in and ready to be played.
Ultima IV: The Dawn of Virtue is a remake project featuring 3D rendered isometric graphics. The project was cancelled on 2004-09-17:
The Ultima IV: The Dawn of Virtue project was started in 2001. After nearly three years of communication with Electronic Arts Inc. to seek legal permission for the project, they have told me they cannot grant it. Therefore, Ultima IV: The Dawn of Virtue is canceled and the project is closed.

Reviews and General Links

Ultima IV: Quest of the Avatar - Download Page: Origin allowed a few select sites to distribute Ultima IV. This is one of them.
Review of the Amiga version. If you don't mind fiddling around with emulators too much, I'd strongly suggest you try out the Amiga version. It had far better colors and, most important, the music.
Ultima IV: Quest of the Avatar is a collection of links to walkthroughs, utilities, music archives and so on. Some links are broken, but there is still enough to make it worth a visit.
Ultima IV Redux gives a short overview over the revival projects.
GameSpy Hall of Fame
Ultima Personality Test

Interviews with Richard Garriot

Interview 1 about the origin of the virtues.
Interview 5 about some of the thoughts behind the series.