Download Ultima VII - Part 1 - The Black Gate

The black stone starts to shine. You know what it means: Britannia needs you! As you run to the back of your house, you see that there is already a red moon gate open. "What could it mean?" you think to yourself as you heroically step through the red mist into another world...

And so starts another adventure in the land of Ultima. A long time has passed since your quest with the gargoyles concluded and things have changed quite a bit; the user interface being one of them. This time you have a glorious full-screen view of Britannia and its inhabitants as they carry out their daily duties.

The graphics in this game are superb, although sometimes it might be a bit hard to see certain objects as they can be very small (keys for example). The world is now even more alive as people carry on with their lives cooking, working and sleeping. Each person has their own personality and you will see that most of them are important in your quests in one way or another. The world is also a little more intelligent in this game. You will not be able to just steal anything as your party members could get annoyed with you. Also attacking people in town could attract the town guard and then you’re in trouble.

It wouldn’t be an RPG without spells of some kind, and there are plenty. As in Ultima VI, you need reagents and a spell book to perform spells.

The sound in this game is also very good. I’m always amazed when such simple music can sound so wonderful and deep and keep me mesmerized for hours on end.

The game itself is very large and will take a long time to finish. You will have a choice of many side-quests along the way to solving the main quest and each of them can keep you occupied for ages.

The one thing missing from the game, in my opinion, is the character creation; which was brilliant in Ultima VI. You get to choose a name, a gender and a portrait. This to me is not enough as I think character creation is probably the best part about RPG’s.

Included in the download is the manual, copy protection answers and a map. Please read the manual to learn how to play the game and which keys are for what action.

The addon "Forge of Virtue" is included in the archive.

Optimal Settings

- cycles: 15000 so the game is not too slow or too fast.
- no EMS: type 'ems=false' inside Dosbox to disable EMS

Alternatively, run DOSBOX.BAT inside the game's folder which will set Dosbox to the settings above.

Known Issues

Some things still go too fast or too slow regardless but this is due to the sensitive nature of the game I'm afraid.

There's an alternative to DOSBox and that's Exult which will let you run Ultima VII (part 1 & 2) in Windows, Mac OS, Linux, etc. You will no longer have the odd slow downs and speed-ups mentioned above with the added bonus that combat is slightly improved and you can run the game at higher resolutions!

Part of the Ultima Series