Ultima™ 1+2+3

And under "classic" I don't mean it's proper definition of a piece of art that kept it's worth over multiple eras despite harsh critism and rivalry with other pieces of art, without pulling any punches, staying relevant to the neo-modern audience not by what it did or related culture or tech progress but as a stand-alone art, but a modern definition of "classic" which stands for a piece of software made more than a few years ago and has someone with nostalgia attached who will not tolerate any criticism and believes that you are the one who should de-evolve in order to appreciate it on it's level. Pure classic. Ok, that was harsh, it was interesting to see (c)RPGs the way that they were done before anything was set into canon and people started to complain that you are not a real (c)RPG. I liked rather unusual progressiong through the game in Ultima 1 and 2. Well, liked seeing the idea and how it's different. Otherwise they are all three rather grind-based and have nothing much worth of art in them. No story for sure. Aside from manuals. It was before Ultima has found it's identify as well, randomly mixing sci-fi as well. Ultima 1 is simplistic and enjoyable if you only think about going around and increasing numbers. Though you only ever need to visit one dungeon of many. Ultima 2 is a shitpost in a form of game, too much in-game jokes and unfun puzzles. You may need a fan upgrade. For I remember that you couldn't edit your character in-game once it's created without some error message. Ultima 3 has party system so that's a nice step up from hack-n-slash. But eh, grindy grind there. Fan upgrade is a must there as well. I sure got extremely annoyed at movement keys getting glued if you press it for a while. Fan upgrade fixed it up, mostly, almost, just enough. Also, adds music like in other ports, I suggest you to change driver to Sound Blaster instead of Midi. Well, analyse it through articles, videos, peeking, history. Not worth anything as art pieces.

I played all of these (though I only managed to beat Ultima 1) on my Commodore 64! Tons of fun is to be had with these! I'm sure 4, 5, and 6 are coming soon?

I never played the originals back in the day and trying to pick them up now is impossible. These games stink compared to modern RPGs. I know it's not fair to judge them this way but when it's my time and I can choose playing say Dragon Age Origins, Skyrim, or even a dungeon crawler throwback like Legend of Grimrock vs these I'll chose the new games every time. The mechanics are just too difficult to understand. I had no idea how to equip stuff or do stuff without googling the action commands to type. Then I got in a dungeon and got completely lost and killed by a rat. That's fine for 1985 when you bust out pen and paper to draw a map cus your pc had like 4k of RAM or whatever, but in modern age I don't want to be bothered with such tedious things. There's also very little rpg stuff going on, not a lot of story or character progression. I guess this is like the skyrim of the 80s but it pales in comparison to modern games. It's kind of like holding a Model T up next to a Ford Fusion. The first is fun to look at and talk about and drive on sunday's for a bit but just mechanically inferior. Unfair comparison but true. (Note: I am in my 30s and love a lot of classic games. Master of Orion is one of my favorites and I did not play it until 2013 when I got it off Gog so I am not biased against all older games, just these ones)

I already own the complete Ultima collection, and the games run just fine. I never play them anymore, however. They just haven't aged well at all. By today's standards, I'd even call them unplayable. These were good games back in the day, but nowadays they're just hard to play.

All right, those games are the beginning of one of the greatest RPG saga in history (the second trilogy beeing the best). But honnestly, you could have the whole ultima collection for that price, and not just the first trilogy.