By the time I had discovered that Ultima existed, I think I had all of the sprite based Final Fantasy games under my belt already, so I understand and appreciate its historical importance. The problem here, just like with so many of these early progenitors of entire genres, is that the ideas which would go on to be refined over years and decades are still raw, unpolished and severely restricted by the computing power of the time. Couple that with an extremely sophomoric attempt at world building that amounts to basically a teenager throwing EVERYTHING he thought was cool into a single universe and you get a mess of a world.

Is a pretty enjoyable simple game. You can see a lot of elements that influenced the rest of the genre. There are really weird design decisions like the space ace part or the stats being grinded through walking to landmarks, but this game being so early on in the development of RPGs I can look past that. Combat is very simple but satisfying thanks to my satisfaction from seeing numbers change. It is a primordial ooze of RPG elements which still works on a certain level, but like watching an early silent film can only be enjoyed by being able to move your frame of reference backwards in time so you can fully appreciate its elements.