Since reading The CRPG book and educating myself more about the origins of the genre, I've taken some time to sample the first entries of all the biggest long-running franchises - ULTIMA, WIZARDRY, THE BARD'S TALE, POOL OF RADIANCE, etc., and I think that this is the most immediately accesible iteration of that common experience they were all going for back then.

Really fun world to explore with just a hair more QOL than its contemporaries. Still brutally difficult and yet totally breakable, still byzantine yet overly simplistic in certain aspects, still ... just insanely old. But a good time if you're game for it!