Ultima IX: Ascension



Ultima IX: Ascension is the tenth (and most likely final) installment of the main series and the fourteenth in the entire series, if Worlds of Ultimas and Ultima Underworld I and Ultima Underworld II are counted. It was released and published by Electronic Arts for the IBM-PC in 1999. It is the final part of the "Age of Armageddon" saga.

In many ways, Ultima IX is the most controversial of all the Ultimas released. It was released incomplete and buggy, requiring patches immediately to even function with Direct3D. Also, while the game's graphics and music were praised, many other aspects were harshly criticized by fans of the series such as the lack of a party and the inclusion of action or platform gameplay elements. The game also faced criticism for its simple story and allegedly poor voice acting. The team that worked on it also seemed to have had little experience with previous Ultima games meaning that almost every detail of Ultima continuity is either ignored or wrongly interpreted. It was, in short, an extremely large disappointment for some fans. And while Ultima IX will always remain the official conclusion of the Ultima series, some of those fans tend to consider this game non-canon and disregard its story.

Included with the game
The release of Ultima IX included these things with the game:
 * The Book "Journal".
 * The Book "Spellbook".
 * A cloth map of Britannia
 * The eight Cards of Virtue (same as in the game)

Differences between the ports
Ultima IX was exclusively produced for the PC, therefore other official ports of the game do not exist.

The Story
The Guardian creates eight huge columns, which start to rip Britannia apart and corrupt the virtues of the people. At the same time, he plans to let the Moons crash on Britannia, thus killing all life on it. The Avatar returns for the last time, to prevent this disaster and destroy the Guardian once and for all. In the end, the Avatar casts Armageddon on himself and the Guardian, forcing their energies together and creating a new life form of energy, saving Britannia for a final time.

Music
Ultima IX music has two distinctions. One is that the technology is not based on any kind of innovative synthesis; it is wave-based, which provides the highest quality of sound that the human ear can perceive. The other is that while previous Ultimas would saturate gameplay with constant music, the music was restricted mostly to scenes in towns, castles and FMVs. It was also less conspicuous, and remained more in the background unlike the imposing scores that would dominate the scene in previous games.

Trivia

 * The story was radically altered many times. Remnants of the old stories can be found in the game and it is typically referred to as the Bob White Plot. Remnants of it can be found in the game, see Ultima IX Plot Remnants.
 * Electronic Arts dissolved the development team of Ultima IX and pushed them all to Ultima Online, effectively killing the development of Ultima IX to that point. More about the rather long development of Ultima IX here: Development History of Ultima IX.
 * Originally the U9 would have used perspective similar to U8 with possibility to zoom in and out and rotate the view full 360 degrees.

Upgrades
Due to a rushed release, Ultima IX more or less an official patch to version 1.18f for improved D3D performance. There is also an "unofficial" patch to 1.19f (rumored to have been written by one of the original developers in an act of frustration) that provides increased performance, bug fixes, and removes the SafeDisc copy protection from the game.

Fan-made economy, dialogue, and monster patches are also available as a combined patch. These patches address economy issues, re-work the dialogue and plot to some extent to make Ultima IX more cognizant of previous Ultimas, and tweak monster settings. See the external links for downloads.