Addon for the original, expanding your journey
I love Ultima 7 for lots of reasons, for its minimalist esthetics, for its overarching (though fairly typical) story, for the stupid little things that drive you insane but then, when you figure them out (changing inventory items within the party, for instance!) it's like a small victory, for the simple yet engaging combat and for that feel of good old DOS RPGs, a feeling that is nowhere near as interesting or compelling for me, than on this one platform. I mean, if you look at these games from afar and only scratch their surface, you'd fail to see the difference between a DOS RPG like this and one made for the NES. But it is a very deep, essential difference, very hard to articulate. Which, I think boils down to the development process, one typical of consoles and one that was PC centric. And one advantage of the PC centric approach was the ease of deploying extra content, like is the case here, as well; Simply put, Ultima 7 part 2: the Silver Seed wouldn't have happened were it not to be released on the DOS, as console games of yore rarely got extensions, and if they did, they had to be standalone. So, Ultima 7 part 2: the Silver Seed is an expansion, ad if you play the GOG version you'll get the entire package, the original plus all the expansion packs, putting an extra expansive world at your finger tips. Be brave, embrace its quirks, its seemingly intricate control scheme, and I assure you, you will be more satisfied by the end of it than if you were playing Skyrim, Oblivion, The Gothic series (alright, maybe not the Gothic series!) and many other modern RPG games, which, compared to Ultima 7 are just unsubstantial. But you have to give it a bit of time, not a lot, but just enough to grow on you and to become accustomed to the controls. Afterwards it's a sweet smooth sailing (evidently with enough bumps to keep it interesting!) to the end. And then you'll so want more!
