Ultima VII: The Black Gate is the seventh installment of the Ultima series of role-playing video games, released on April 16, 1992. In it the player returns as The Avatar, a would-be paragon of moral virtue who faces down many dangers and deceptions in order to cleanse the medieval fantasy world of Britannia of assorted plots and schemes, monster infestations, and the undermining of crown authority. The Black Gate was critically acclaimed and commercially successful, being widely lauded as a high point in the series and as one of the best RPGs ever created. In an interview with GameSpot, Richard Garriott stated that Ultima VII "was the most masterfully executed of the Ultima series". He has also often stated that the game was, along with Ultima IV, his own favorite installment overall. Gameplay Game system Ultima VII introduced major changes in the Ultima series. The most serious alteration is that as far as the player is concerned, the world is no longer tile and grid-based; tiles are still used internally (in a largely improved way where the tiles themselves are smaller and frequently grouped), but they no longer affect character and monster movement or the item placement the same way. The maps are also more visibly multi-layered, and objects and things can be stacked on top of each other. This can also affect movement, and be part of puzzles; some places are inaccessible unless the player stacks items to form stairs. A striking visual change is that the gameworld now takes up the entire screen in its original DOS environment, while previous Ultimas used a substantial portion of the screen for text, dialogue, buttons, icons, and the like. The game is the first in the series that is entirely mouse-driven, with optional keyboard hotkeys for some common actions. This is in contrast to earlier parts that were entirely keyboard-driven, and to Ultima VI which supplemented keyboard commands with on-screen command icons. While in Ultima VI, the player has to specifically use a "move" command to move an item from place to place, or "drop" to drop it on the ground, in Ultima VII, items are simply dragged and dropped in their desired locations. While the game could be played entirely with a keyboard, doing so is very difficult, and in-game characters would recommend the player use a mouse. Ultima VII introduces Graphical User Menu Pop-ups ("gumps"), which are on-screen representations