Here goes nothing.
I will not bother defending Fallout 3. As a matter of fact, quite a few here have done a decent job of it. Fallout 3 isn't horrendous to play. Fallout 3 did some things perfectly right. I liked the exploration, for instance. Some of the destinations available sure were insane or absurd. The concept of Megaton has been mentioned. Yes. But then, so what ? Most games rely on the suspension of disbelief and Fallout 3 wasn't as bad in this respect as Fallout 2 with New Reno and space aliens. A lot of it felt uninspired, the story was just some a bad compilation of Fallout 1&2 with a horrendous ending, but still, after all those years, I was glad to return to this universe. I enjoyed the soundtrack, the 50s atmosphere on the radio, and the gameplay. Yes. I like turn based better. But I knew I wasn't getting that back. So in the end, I enjoyed it for what it was.
Just because I lamented on the death of classic cRPGs at the time doesn't mean I shouldn't enjoy the alternatives.
Ultima IX was a not so different issue.
I pretty much followed the development of the game online from the start. From the first isometric screenshots to the final release and the unveiling of the Bob White plot. I saw the Ed Del Castillo debacle, and I played the unpatched game on a Pentium 2-400 and a 8MB Voodoo2. Oh god, yes, the gameplay had absolutely nothing to do with Ultima and the story and dialog was horribly written.
Still, it had some good points. The graphics were gorgeous, the music was lovely and the atmosphere was pretty nice. It was one of the first games where you could explore a huge map without loading. There were some artificial barriers, but as you went, those disappeared and gave you access to more of that map. Ultima IX is a HUGE game, even if you just follow the storyline. If you want to explore everything, you can still find a lot of things too even though it's got nothing on Ultima 7.
Gameplay wise, while it was a huge departure from the Ultima series... Well... which Ultima, in fact, isn't a huge departure from the rest of the series (besides U4 & 5?). The game had left its rpg roots and has been compared a Tomb Raider clone back then. I strongly disagree : it was definitely trying to be Zelda OoT. The game is structured in the exact same fashion and features a lot of common gameplay elements.
And seriously, at doing that, it didn't that bad of a job. If I try to think about Zelda clones on the PC, not much comes to mind. And U9 did a pretty decent job at that. My eyes were bleeding each time any of the character did or say something, but eventually you come to accept that it's just different and that yes, you're not going to get that conclusion of the series that you were expecting (but isn't the whole Ultima series filled with plot holes ?).
So yeah, I liked U9. I had more pleasure with it than I had with many a modern game. I absolutely understand all the criticism it had, and would like to join you with it. But if I look back at it, was it a bad experience? Was it a torture to go through ? Did I bleed internally ? No, I pretty much had fun nonetheless.
