Yes, of course. That is an issue. Enemy AI and ranged combat don't work well together. Nobody said it was a perfect game. It still is a pretty immersive dungeon crawler, though.

If that is a deal breaker for you, then go and play something else.

It was not a deal breaker for me. I just gave up on magic and just used melee for the rest of the game. It became too tedious to rest after every encounter, conjure food, recast light spells, etc...

I probably should have tried to find my manual. I was having trouble getting used to the controls with the mouse, after figuring out there was a keyboard option for movement, my brief experience with it so far makes me inclined to think that will be easier to get used to.

Yes, I remember there was a keyboard option for controlling the game in the first Elder Scrolls game as well. I remember trying both methods in that game and just found the mouse controls easier for me.

But before you get too comfortable with the keyboard controls, there appears to be a mouselook option for Ultima Underworld. Google 'mouselook ultima underworld' and you should be able to find it if you want to try it out. I have no experience with it myself.

I'm pretty sure that Dungeons of Daggorath would be one of the first un-textured based 1 person games in real time. It was released in 1982.

Everything was wire frame, real time, and commands entered by typing. Only 4 directions available.
(A game called maze was first and Alakabeth was before it as well)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RWQFxQjMDo4&list=PLAF5919C6F47B54F7

Will see how well the mouse look works, took a while, but got it installed for both games. Will see tomorrow, how much it improves the playing for me.

I think that there were 3D games even before that: Wikipedia mentions arcade flight sims in the 1970, an 8-bit flight-sim in 1980, and predecessors to Daggorath like Maze War and Monster Maze in the 70s and 1981.

I play it the same way stryx does but I will definitely give the mouselook patch a try if I ever play it again.