The best game ever.
Story:
In Ultima VII: The Black Gate, you play as the Avatar, the hero from the past 7 Ultima games, who has been given the task of saving an alien land called Britannia by the ruler Lord British many times. A while after the events of Ultima VI, you see a red moongate appear outside. You decide to enter the moongate because you believe that the land of Britannia may be in trouble. When your arrive, you find out that it has been about 200 years (in Britannia years) since you last left. When you left there a long time ago, you had just stopped a possible war between the humans in Britannia and the Gargoyles. However, Britannia was suffering from all the trouble that the Gargoyles caused.
Since then Britannia has made a very good recovery. Britannia is now in a time of peace. However, when you first exit the moongate, you discover that there has been a murder in the small town of Minoc. It is up to you to try to figure out who was behind the murder. This is one of the most interesting stories that I've ever seen from a game, and really picks up after the discovery of a religious group called the Fellowship. On top of that, there's a mysterious voice that is taunting you while you are trying to figure everything out. There are many misteries that you have to solve in this game which add to the greatness of the game.
Gameplay:
The gameplay in this game is very good. First of all, unlike the older games, you don't have to use the keyboard at all. This game lets you use the mouse for the whole game to do many of the different things. At the bottom of the screen, you will see a picture of the Avatar, and any of the members of his party. Below each of the pictures, there is a red bar, representing the amount of heath that person has. Under the Avatar's picture, below that red bar, this is a blue bar which indicates how much mana (which shows you how much magical power you have left). If you click on any of the pictures, a small pop-up comes up which shows you the stats and equipment that person has.
During the game, you go through the land of Britannia talking to the people in the towns and trying to figure things out about what is happening in Britannia. Each person has a lot of information to give you, but first you need to know what to say and ask. In order to say something, you click on a question or statement, which could be as simple as "Name?" or could be a longer question such as "Art thou a member of the Fellowship?" The response you get could lead to other questions, and you might even need to go back to somebody you already talked to based on the information that you got. Note that this game has a lot of reading, so if you don't want to read, this won't be a game for you.
As you go on in the game, you can get companions to help you out. However, you can only have a certain amount of people in your party at once, so if you have too many people in your party, you'll have to decide if you want to keep the party that you have, or if you want to get rid of somebody to get somebody else on your party. As you fight, the Avatar and all his companions level up. However, leveling up is not quite as important as it is in the older games.
In the game, you can take anything that you want to take to help you on your adventure. While you can carry anything that you want to, there is a limit. Each person can carry a certain amount weight that they can carry, and once you reach that weight, that person can't hold any more item. That's one of the advantages of having a big part, because if one person can't carry something, then you can give it to somebody else. This brings us to one of the few problems that I found in the game. In this game, you have a complex inventory system, where you can look through each person's backpack to find the specific items that you need. This isn't a problem at first. However, as you gain members, and add a lot to your inventory, becomes a pain to look through the inventory for small keys and other small things. Sometimes these things are burries under a lot of other things, and you have to move all those things out of the way to find it. Sometimes I just couldn't find where I put an item, and had to put everything which was in a backpack onto the ground in order to look for the item, and then place everything back into the backpack when I finally found it. When I played Ultima VII part 2: Serpent Isle, I decided to put similar items in a one backpack, so I could be more organized, which did help some. Despite all this, it is not a huge problem which takes away from the overall enjoyment of the game.
If you are outside of a town, or inside of a cave, there is a chance that some kind of monster will attack you. When this happens, you'll either have to take the coward's way out and try to run away (which is really difficult in the caves), or you could act like the brave Avatar that you are and fight them. The fighting in this game is much simpler than before. All you have to do is go to battle mode by double clicking either on the Avatar or on the his picture at the bottom of the screen and switching from peaceful mode to fighting mode in the menu that pops up. After doing that, you won't be controlling the fighting going on, the game does the fighting for you. However, there are some things that you may need to do while the battle is going on. You can give one of the people a different weapon if you think it would help. You can use different potions that you might have to help you. Some of these potions will help if you use it on your party, such as a healing potion, but others would be better to use on the enemies you are fighting, such as a poison potion or a sleeping potion. There are also many different spells that you can use to either help your party or hurt your enemies. If the Avatar is dying, but you still want your party to fight (or if you have to fight in order to get past the fight to another location), then you might want to try to avoid the enemies and hope to not get killed. However, if you do this, then there's also a better chance for your party members to be killed. Also, if your party members are all dying, or if they are not a high enough level to fight a specific creature, then you might just want to take thw coward's way out and run away.
While fighting can help you to level up, there is a much better way to level up in this game. Unlike earlier games, you can also level up by doing side-quests, and by getting further into the story. There are a lot of things to do on the side of the main story. There are some side-quests, which add a lot to the game and do a good job at letting you know the people in Britannia, adding to the realistic feeling of the game. You can also explore the land, searching the forests to see if there's anything hidden, go into caves to explore, and more. The land is so big that it will feel like an adventure to just explore it all. In fact, the land is so huge, especially for the time it was made, I have to give a lot of credit to Origin. The map that you travel on is one big area, including all the houses and caves. The only times a new screen loads is if you're in a cave and have to go down some stairs to a new level and then go back up to the first level. In addition to this, you can do some simple things in towns such as bake bread, collecting eggs, and other stuff. There are also some places that let you gamble, and do other stuff like that. These are some simple things, but they can easily make Britannia seem more real, making the game seem that much better.
While you can do a lot of side-quests and other stuff on the side whenever you want, this is not the only part of the game that makes it seem like you have a lot of freedom to do whatever you want. In the main game itself, while there are some parts which you have to go through before doing the rest of the stuff (especially at the beginning when you are not allowed to leave Minoc until you do some things there), this game is one of the most non-linear games that I have ever played.
There are a couple more thing which make the game more realistic. In the game you have to feed the members of your group every now and then, and you have to sleep. These things, while they do make it more realistic, also make it more frustrating. The sleeping isn't too bad, but when you have to keep giving people food, it does get frustrating. I even remember that while I was in the final part of the game, one of my party members actually said "I'm hungry." This made me laugh and made me almost hate this feature. I didn't have to actually feed that person because I was so close to the end and it didn't matter, but it was such a random place to say that, and broke up the excitement of the moment.
There are so many things that make Britannia seem more realistic than it has ever been, from the side-quests and other little things you can do, to the huge map you can explore, the many people you can talk to, and the non-linear gameplay. There are also many other details which make it seem very realistic. In past games, there has been day and night, which affected some element of gameplay. However, this is more true here than it has ever been. Now the people in towns all have a realistic schedule which they all follow. One person could wake up in the morning, eat breakfast, go to work during the day, leave work, eat and have drinks, go to a Fellowship meeting, and go home to sleep. Another thing that is realistic about Britannia is that not only does it have a good sense of time, it also has varying weather. Sometimes it is sunny, other times it is raining, and sometimes when it rains it doesn't have lightning, but other times it does.
Replay value:
There is some replay value based on how many of the things you've done on the side, and how much you want to explore Britannia. However, for the main game, it is so long that if you want to replay the game, you probably won't replay it at least for a few years.
Graphics:
Compared to games today, the graphic are not great. However, when the game was released, the graphics were very good. There are also a lot of good details considering the time it was made, and how big the game is.
Sound:
There aren't too many sound effects, and the music in the game only plays for about 10% of the game. However, the songs in the game are very good songs, and fit the mood for that part of the game. There are a few well-known songs, such as Rule Britannia. There are also some original songs in the game which are really good. My favorite song created for this game is the Fellowship song.
Overall:
Britannia is now much bigger than you remember it, with much more to do. The main game lasts a long time, and there's even more to do outside of that. If you're willing to take the time to beat the game, and don't mind reading, then this is a very good game. Unfortunately, the only way to get the game now is to either download it online or buy it on Ebay in the Ultima Collection. The attention to detail, the fact that Britannia seems so real, and that there is so much to do make this game my favorite game of all time.