YMMV / Ultima IV

• Character Tiers: The Paladin class gets access to the best armor, decent magic, and can use every weapon except the wand. The Shepherd... not so much. Possible to subvert in the NES version if you achieve Avatarhood as the Shepherd, which then rockets right to the top tier without sacrificing the Paladin's usefulness.
• Even Better Sequel: Along with Ultima VII, this is usually regarded as the best game in the entire series, not only further developing the gameplay mechanics and storyline of the previous three entries, but attempting something completely different to the "band of heroes defeat a bad guy" storyline used by most RPGs until that point.
• Fridge Logic: Why in the world did Lord British imprison a Reaper in his prison? How? A magical evil tree that cannot move?
• Game-Breaker: Use of the secret entrance to Hythloth inside Castle Britannia, followed by the Exit spell, allows you to quickly access Hythloth's main overworld entrance, which has a very useful magic orb nearby which boosts all three of your stats by five. It likely kills you and your party in the process, but you're transported right back to Lord British in Castle Britannia. Rinse and repeat to quickly max out your stats.
• Growing the Beard: This is the game that established most of what the series is known for today, leaving behind the Early-Installment Weirdness, introducing the concept of the Avatar and the ensuing moral questions, and so on.
• Hilarious in Hindsight: There is a "mean nasty ugly villain" in Yew's jail that, when asked about his job, states, "I eat people who bug me!" Hannibal Lecter?
• Memetic Mutation: "Thou hast lost an eighth!" The phrase even made its way into Doom, of all games.
• Nintendo Hard: Of all the playtesters, only Richard Garriott himself actually finished the game before it was released. If you can complete the game without using internet spoilers, you deserve a medal. Also, ironically, the NES port is a lot easier than the original.
• Once Original, Now Common: Ultima IV still has the reputation as one of the most important computer role-playing games, if one of the most important games period, of all time. However, several elements of it were greatly informed by the capabilities of the hardware of its time - meaning that, graphically, it looks dreadfully limited in the 21st century (to the point that initial versions, such as the Apple ][, C64 and IBM-PC versions completely lacked sprite transparency), initial versions of the game have no real music to speak of, and most infamously, players can find the exclusively keystroke-command-based interface and utter lack of in-game tutorials and guidance impenetrable and frustrating.
  • A particularly illuminating anecdote concerning all this can be found here. In summation the players were completely confused starting the game due to it dropping them in without explanation, giving them an uphill battle in terms of learning the game. Even after figuring out the game though it’s unsatisfying combat, clunky controls, and refusal to tell the player where to go made it more of a chore for the players. The article’s author quickly came to a conclusion that also works as a good summation of this trope: it does not matter how well-designed and artistically brilliant a game is, its playability can still be held back by primitive graphics, early controls, and archaic designs.
• Sacred Cow: To classic PC RPG gamers, speaking ill of Ultima IV is like flinging your excrement at The Mona Lisa. Even with Once Original, Now Common softening this over time, to this day there are people who insist that no other game ever has had such an ingenious and nuanced approach to morality in video games.
• Scrappy Mechanic:
  • Player-controlled characters can't aim diagonally, while enemies can aim in any direction.
  • You can't directly control the balloon. All you can do is land and take off; the rest is determined by the wind, and which direction it blows in (and for how long) is RNG. The best you can do is cast the Wind spell every so often. What makes it worse is that an item mandatory for winning the game is in a location only reachable by the balloon.
• That One Level: The sixth level of the Stygian Abyss is so obtuse to solve, the wiki provides a walkthrough. Even the clue book available at the time of release only showed that there were "encounter rooms" on the level, with no tips or advice at all for getting through the puzzle.

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