The culmination of the Ultima games in many ways, it carries over much of the gameplay from the previous title, but improves upon or expands where it can within the limitations of the aging engine. The most significant aspect of this is that the world just feels more lived in due to the larger number of towns, more stuff to talk about, the daily routines that NPCs follow along the day/night cycle feature and the impact of the Shadowlords showing up in town.

While Garriott was able to improve upon the social and interactive aspects of the game, I think the combat is still riddled with annoyances. The idea to only give one character experience is just flat out stupid, and then making it take forever to level up seems like an intentional waste of time especially when you now lose experience if you die.

All in all, I like the concept of the enemy always looming around the edges of your adventure. It invokes a very Tolkienesque sense of danger in the world, but my ongoing problem here is that I just don't like the world Garriott has created all that much. The premise of the world becoming bad because the bad guy took over really doesn't astonish me in the way it apparently blew some people away, and when you combined that with the tedious combat, I just get back to where I started with this series which is admiring its technical inventions, while shrugging my shoulders at Britannia.