Ultima I

The Good
This is simple and cute RPG released in prehistoric era of computers. Ultima use all resources available at a time to its limits and wants even more. Unlike Wizardry, there are world that you can see (sketchy, but still) and travel in any direction. The world consists of four islands filled with castles, towns, dungeons and monuments that increase player's stats. There are lots of options you can do like buying a mount (flyer and space shuttle is available!), saving the princess, questing for kings and others. If you want, you can just drink in the bar. The game is not looped to stats, classes and dungeon crawling. Instead it's more adventurous game and fighting is easy and simple.
Also I find saving system is simple and very handy.

The Bad
Some design choices are very odd. Most of the castles and dungeons are useless. There is no point to visit them all.
Space section of the game is kind of ridiculous. It's doesn't fit into fantasy world and looks very starwarsy (it's 1980, I can understand that) Gameplay in space is more spacesim rather than RPG, you have to scan space sectors and fight enemies from first person view. Well, at least they dropped space after second Ultima.

The Bottom Line
Good casual RPG. Oblivion of 1981. (Although I played 1987 version, but they should be almost the same) Works perfectly with DosBox.

The Good
For the time this was released, it encapsulates everything good about early RPG games. Exploration, character building, interrogating NPCs, dungeon crawling, a variety of weapons and armours to try, and even a bit of space exploration is all wrapped up in a game that originally came on a 360k diskette. The game can be conquered in a solid afternoon, but still there's enough randomness to it for repeated playing. Character building is quick enough to avoid getting bored, and challenging enough that you'll want to try and max out the character's attributes whenever you get the chance to do so.

The Bad
The story is a tad weak-it's boiled down to simply "build up your character and then kill the boss" but there is something enchanting about this type of tile based RPG that helps me overlook such a thing. I personally believe the addition of Space exploration and becoming a Space Ace is a bit of a bolt-on that the game simply doesn't need (and thankfully any Space references were dropped by the time Ultima 3 was released) Some will claim that the lack of music is a downside of the game, but I'm not a huge fan of music in RPG games anyway-entirely because of the length of time invested in an RPG, the music will end up being shut off anyway due to being too repetitive.

The Bottom Line
The top-down tile based RPG genre was a short-lived one. Grab this game and appreciate the depth of controls and wealth of landscapes to explore, then realize how incredibly early in the history of computer gaming this title was released.
Few other games, aside from purely text based adventures, provide anywhere near as many playable hours in such a small amount of storage space.

The Good
This was Richard Garriott's first attempt at a commercial game and the start of the epic series of Ultima games. The game incorporates a slightly enhanced version of the Akalabeth 3D dungeons with allegedly the worlds first tile graphics to create the outside world and towns.

The world is quite a decent size for such an old game, with four lands to explore. Each land has several towns and a couple of castles. The kings in each castle give you quests to either kill a creature ala Akalabeth, or to find a particular signpost on the map. This means you usually know what you are trying to achieve throughout the game.

The game isn't in a typical fantasy setting and the technology gets more advanced as you progress. Later in the game there is a space combat section where you get to shoot down little tie fighters which adds a bit of variety.

The Bad
I'm not sure all the technology and space section fit into a fantasy rpg although it does give it an epic feel.

Like most RPG's of the time, you spend most of the game raising stats and money. Raising your experience points fighting doesn't raise your stats however. Instead when you visit signposts on a map, your experience in a particular area is raised. You have to visit a different signpost and come back to raise the same stat again, but this means you just travel back and forwards between pairs of posts and raise your stats in no time. This is a bit strange and not my idea of role-playing.

There is no plot to the game and the towns are little more than a series of shops. There is no one to talk to in these towns beyond the storekeepers.

The final battle with Mondain is a bit of an anti-climax. It takes place on a mostly black screen and ends up with you chasing Mondain all over the screen until he stops moving long enough for you to hit him.

The Bottom Line
This was a worthy role playing game for the time. I still enjoyed playing it in 2008, but would have gotten frustrated had it taken longer than a couple of hours to get through the whole thing.