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More about Ultima VII: The Black Gate (from Wikipedia):

Ultima VII: The Black Gate is the seventh installment of the Ultima series of role-playing video games, released in April 1992. In it, the player returns as The Avatar, a would-be paragon of moral virtue who faces down many dangers and deceptions in order to cleanse the medieval fantasy world of Britannia of assorted plots and schemes, monster infestations, and the undermining of crown authority.

The Black Gate was critically acclaimed and commercially successful, being widely lauded as a high point in the series and is also regarded as one of the best video games ever created. In an interview with GameSpot, Richard Garriott stated that Ultima VII "was the most masterfully executed of the Ultima series". He has also often stated that the game was, along with Ultima IV, his own favorite installment overall.

Ultima VII introduced major changes in the Ultima series. The most serious alteration is that as far as the player is concerned, the world is no longer tile and grid-based; tiles are still used internally (in a largely improved way where the tiles themselves are smaller and frequently grouped), but they no longer affect character and monster movement or the item placement the same way.[6] The maps are also more visibly multi-layered, and objects and things can be stacked on top of each other. This can also affect movement, and be part of puzzles; some places are inaccessible unless the player stacks items to form stairs. A striking visual change is that the gameworld now takes up the entire screen in its original DOS environment, while previous Ultimas used a substantial portion of the screen for text, dialogue, buttons, icons, and the like.

The game is the first in the series that is entirely mouse-driven, with optional keyboard hotkeys for some common actions. This is in contrast to earlier entries that are entirely keyboard-driven, and to Ultima VI, which supplements keyboard commands with on-screen command icons.

The gameworld of Ultima VII is highly interactive: virtually everything not nailed to the ground and not excessively heavy can be moved, taken, or interacted with in some way.

Ultima VII allows free exploration of the game world, featuring a main plot and several other major subquests and tasks for the player to complete. It is a markedly open-ended game, where following the main plotline is inessential to the purposes of enjoyment, exploration, and character advancement – once the player is free from their starting location of Trinsic, a walled city. The Black Gate is highly nonlinear; although there is a linear storyline, this is complemented by the ability to explore the map in any order when coupled with the many subquests.

Ultima VII was the first game where Richard Garriott did any sort of planning ahead for future games in the series, laying out a preplanned trilogy which would conclude with Ultima IX.

Computer Gaming World's Scorpia in 1992 praised Ultima VII: The Black Gate's "first-class" graphics, sound, and realism, called the story "engrossing", and liked the mouse- and keyboard-based user interface, but criticized the slow performance ("I estimate that the slow speed of the game added about a week to my playing time"), several serious bugs, and combat ("one of the least fun aspects of the game"). She concluded that the game gives "me very mixed feelings ... Getting through this Ultima will require a certain amount of patience and forebearance". In 1993 she wrote that "the game has its annoying aspects ... it is certainly worth playing". Charles Ardai acknowledged the widespread sentiment that after six installments the Ultima series had been done to death, but argued that "Ultima VII is not more of the same. It is daring and unusual, has a sophisticated interface and story, takes full advantage of both its own history and the conventions of the genre, and manages to be at once grounded in tradition and unpredictable". Ardai praised the plot as the best in the series, stating that it is highly original, evokes genuine emotion, and serves as an allegory for problems in the real world. He also generally praised the game's puzzles, simple interface, and pacing. Ultima VII: The Black Gate and Forge of Virtue were reviewed in 1993 in Dragon #191 by Hartley, Patricia, and Kirk Lesser in "The Role of Computers" column. The reviewers gave the game 4 out of 5 stars.

The Black Gate was listed as one of "The 50 Best Games Ever" in a 1997 issue of PC Gamer, and ranked number ten on the magazine's list of "The 100 Best PC Games of All Time" in a 2011 survey. In 1998, PC Gamer US declared it the 37th-best computer game ever released. The editors wrote, "If you're looking for the best of the greatest computer role-playing series ever, this is the game you want."