Pagan: Ultima VIII

The Good
The great atmosphere, nice graphics and dark setting gave the game a distinct and unique look. The Avatar now alone and in hostile territory, had to find a way back in Sosaria in order to defeat the Guardian, there are no virtues here, only nasty elemental gods to rob of their powers. The Avatar has no allies and needs to steal, trick, and murder in order to escape Pagan. The premise is great along with great story writing and general ambiance.

The Bad
The scrolling is atrocious, even on top notch hardware the background seems to shift behind the Avatar's feet and the animation lack frames and look bad. The rendered graphics looked good at the time but did not age well, when playing you can notice the repetitive "tiles" that form the backgrounds, some of them don't mesh well with the objects. Really annoying jump puzzles and lack of a party to speak of drag the game down to a watered down action adventure.

The Bottom Line
A good game with a huge heritage that falls kinda short of expectations