Following the defeat of the charismatic religious leader Batlin on Serpent Isle, the Guardian banishes the Avatar to a world that he has already conquered: Pagan.

The Avatar regains consciousness on the shore after being rescued from the sea by a fisherman (who turns out to be an important character later on in the plot).

He soon witnesses the execution by beheading of a townsman, ordered by the tyrannic ruler of the region, Lady Mordea.

Later, visiting the wizard Mythran, he learns that there are four Titans on Pagan, each one having one of the Elements as his/her domain: Water (Hydros), Air (Stratos), Fire (Pyros) and Earth (Lithos).

During his quests, the Avatar collects the four artifacts of the Titans, unleashing violent thunderstorms, hurricanes, earthquakes and meteor showers by doing so.

By entering the reconstructed gate, the Avatar is teleported back to Britannia, which is now ruled by the Guardian, who is revealed to also be the "Destroyer".

The interactivity and role-playing elements from previous Ultimas are greatly reduced in the game, partly leading to its mixed reception.

Despite being all but finished and ready for duplication, The Lost Vale was never released as it was canceled when the main game did not sell as well as had been expected.

[7] A patch was later released to correct game bugs, fix some of the criticized plot holes and eliminate most of the problems with jumping.

Being a DOS title, Ultima VIII has problems running on modern systems such as Windows 98 and later; however, it works reliably under the DOSBox environment.

An open-source project called Pentagram aims to create an engine capable of running Ultima VIII on modern operating systems, most notably Windows, Mac OS X and Linux.

[11] In 2000 a developer, who claimed to have the source code, helped the Pentagram project with information about the internal structures of the game.

[13] In May 2020, the Pentagram engine was merged into SCUMMVM[14] In April 2012 Pagan was re-released after years of commercial unavailability into the Digital distribution by gog.com.

She concluded that "Pagan is a disaster, and an embarrassment to Origin, Lord British, and Ultima fans everywhere", and that she was not looking forward to a sequel.

[4] Reviewing the game for PC Gamer US, Trent C. Ward wrote, "With its rich plot, superb animation, and great sound, Ultima VIII is one of the better action titles out there."

"[21] PC Format's Richard Longhurst praised its "incredible depth and detail", and called it an "immense and intense" game that was "beautifully animated".