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So basically, I'm a teen gamer with an affinity for Infinity CRPGs, but i've never played any of the ultima games aside from ultima 9. However, when I tried playing Ultima 7, I immediately was stumped as to how the controls work. Any help on how to move, examine items and the like?
This question / problem has been solved by AquaBoarimage
As a fellow U7 noob and IE game fan, I understand your pain. There's a pretty good description of movement controls in this forum already (check down a few threads).

The only thing I would like to add is to absolutely make sure to download the additional documents offered by GoG. The cluebook is extremely helpful, and the quick reference docs are the ones you want to read to learn the controls. Don't forget about the hotkeys, especially "Esc," which closes all open windows. You'll be thankful for that when you have 6 characters' inventories and status pages open at once! The "s" key is the other one you'll want to use often. Other than that, single clicking on something tells you what it is, and double clicking interacts with anything.

Navigating the world was the hardest thing for me at first, but the cluebook helps immensely. I printed out and translated the map that comes with the downloads, and now I've found that I can actually read the signs (they're not written in English!) as well.

That's all I can think of for right now. Hope that helps!

AquaBoar
You'll do just about everything with the mouse. Buy or steal a sextant from the shipwright in Trinsic, and while you have on in any person's inventory and access your map (inside your bag) there will be a yellow cross at your location. Combat kind of plays itself, you'll just have to make sure that you don't get killed.
Left clicking anything will tell you what it is. Don't worry about finding secrets at all, if you can't navigate that well already you won't find any of them. The "main quest" starts by investigating the murder in Trinsic and then you're supposed to follow Fellowship members Elizabeth and Abraham, barely missing them each time
The Infinity games work on a "click the location to move to it" basis, but the Ultima games' mouse control is more like navigating with the WASD or arrow keys in most games - the direction that the mouse cursor is pointing is the direction you'll move when you press or hold down the right mouse button, and the further the mouse is from the center of the screen, the faster that movement will be.

You only command yourself this way - everyone else will follow along behind.
I would recommend playing in Exult:
http://exult.sourceforge.net

It's an engine replacement where you drop in the required files from the original game and play in the new engine instead of the original engine in DOS. It doesn't change movement, but it adds some nice improvements and niceer feeling interface.