Exodus: Ultima III

The Good
The packaging for this game was unlike any other that I'd seen at the time. (early 80's) A cloth map, spellbooks with textured covers, each printed on heavyweight paper. The ultima world was HUGE for a game that came on 1/2 of a 360k disk. (the other half was the character/user disk)

The Bad
Considering the timeframe this game was released in, absolutely nothing.

The Bottom Line
There was so much attention to detail in this game. From the above mentioned extras in the packaging, to being able to have a party of adventures, each separately controllable in combat scenes, to the scale of the ultima world itself, with dungeons and towns and castles to explore. The game is somewhat complex at first, with each key on the keyboard controlling different elements of the game, but the learning curve is fast enough that the keyboard control seemed natural within a few hours.

After reading the other reviews of this game mentioning the lack of music, I honestly didn't even realize it was missing on the PC version. Like the other reviewers, this was my first RPG game, and I was so engrossed in the storyline and building up my characters that I actually played this game consistently for over a year. I just couldn't get away from it. I played this game so much in fact, that I was depressed that Ultima IV used EGA (16 color) graphics. It just didn't look right to me!