YMMV / Ultima VIII

• Anticlimax Boss: Despite his being built up as the deadliest and most powerful of the four Titans, the boss fight against Pyros is the most laughably pathetic of the bunch, as all he does is summon a couple of low-level mooks to battle you, before dying the instant you use the Tongue of Flame on him. The other three Titans likewise die as soon as you use the appropriate sacred artefact on them, but at least they do something to make the fight against them harder — Stratos requires you to clear a bunch of finicky jumping puzzles before you reach her, while Lithos and Hydros hit you with unavoidable earthquake and lightning attacks respectively as soon as the fight begins.
• Big-Lipped Alligator Moment:
  • If you wander to a certain spot near Tenebrae, a mob of children attacks you, and if they surround you, you have no choice but to kill them. No explanation whatsoever is given for this.
  • One of the Titans turns out to be evil once you free it. Wherever this was going is a mystery due to the game being rushed out before the rest of the story was added.
• Designated Hero: The Avatar. The virtues are tossed out the window, there's no Karma Meter, and you have to commit several reprehensible acts, such as assisting in a murder and taking away the Theurgist's healing powers. There's also a lot of optional evil things you can do with no consequences such as murdering children near Tenebrae.
• Fan Nickname: "Super Avatar Bros.", due to the amount of jumping puzzles, and having to constantly leap over what effectively amount to Bottomless Pits.
• Good Bad Bugs: Ultima VIII carries over the bug from Serpent Isle that all items with identical graphics also function identically. For example, any northwest-southeast aligned altar can be used to empower Theurgist foci.
• Inferred Holocaust: Given what a Crapsack World Pagan is, it would be a perfectly valid question how human life can survive without the aid of the Titans, selfish as they might be. The cancelled Expansion Pack would have addressed this by its quest line involving freeing and restoring the old and much more benevolent Zealan gods.
• Obvious Beta: The game features several useless areas and doors you'll never open due to being rushed out.
• Scrappy Mechanic:
  • The jumping puzzles in the release version caused many gamers to Rage Quit the game early on, since it was impossible to tell exactly where you'd land when you jumped. Subsequent versions allow you to target a specific point to jump to, though the Avatar can still get caught on seemingly invisible objects.
  • Also, the consistently trapped treasure chests. They explode even if you have the key!
    • Even the empty ones!
  • Exploding red mushrooms.
  • Water kills you the instant you land in it.
• So Okay, It's Average: While the game has been criticized for unwelcome gameplay changes and being rushed overall, it's still remembered a lot more positively than the absolute bugfest that was Ultima IX.
• Suspiciously Similar Song: ''Lithos'' sounds a lot like the theme from Basic Instinct.