Wizard's Crown is excellent, when it wants to work. Reaching 255 in some of the abilities has been a problem for me because it crashes the game. I'm not sure if DOSbox is causing it or if the DOS version has always been that way.

Never had to deal with this in the C=64 version.

Not really. Exile 1 doesn't limit you to anywhere, but you do need the occasional pass to get to certain key locations as to encourage you to start the story. Exile II does force you into a box as to give you urging, and Exile III has a very slow timer to resolve trifling issue.

Blades of Exile of course is a scenario maker, so the rules don't apply. To any point, it's a pretty vast area you can typically enjoy before you go down the critical path.

Pool of Radiance series (from TSR) brought the world of Tamriel to life.

Curse of Azure Bonds was one of my favorites back in the day. Love the way you explored areas and trigger journal entries. As close to table-top experience as I can recall. Made me feel like a campaign a DM setup.

I think we had to use a decoder wheel too or am I thinking of another game.

Those games weren't the best looking games if compare them to todays standards, but they had so much charm back then. Something about the world of Dungeons & Dragons was just so mezmorizing.
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I think you got your world mixed up. Tamriel is the world on which the Elder Scrolls series takes place, not the world of the Forgotten Realms AD&D setting.

Also, while TSR is the company that owned AD&D at the time (before Wizards of the Coast acquired the property), the company that developed the computer games was called SSI.

I think they all were the same. Variety is something what game industry has managed to improve from those times. Variety is great, I personally hope Witcher 4 goes with God of War 4 design instead of Open World stuff.

Oh damn, I loved this one. If I remember right it had some innovation. And it was released abit later. Maybe Graphical update.

What I liked about early WRPGs was complex character development. Like in the Realms of Arkania series or in Darklands.

And complex, living worlds. Like in the middle Ultima games or Albion.

The confusion came probably from the latter sounding quite similar (Toril). I think Tamriel is just a continent in the Elder Scrolls series, btw, not the world.

Oops, yeah, I got my world mixed up. Guess I've been playing Skyrim recently lol. Now I'll have to look up what the world was called.

Man, I am 0 for 2, you're right I was thinking SSI, but because I read a lot of Forgotten Realms series, I mixed the two. Doesn't help to post things when you're sleepy lol.
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If Tamriel is the continent, now I'm curious as to what the world is called. Both settings have such rich lore. It's truly amazing how peoples minds and imagination work. I love to possess even a tiny fraction of it lol.

The name Toril sounds familiar. I guess I've forgotten far more than I remembered. I truly need to exercise my brain lol.
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Apparently the world is Nirn.

While in D&D the world is Toril and the continent of the Forgotten Realms setting is Faerun.

And the most commonly frequented part of Faerun is the Swordcoast.

I liked how in Ultima IV almost each key had a function.

I also liked how... such games with minimalist symbolic graphics have, in a way, the best graphics. It's like chess pieces, so you can project anything onto them, and even vary it with you mood (epic, goofy, creepy, etc). You just have a hint, a general idea of what is represented and you go with it. Could just as well be simple floating words (I think a game has attempted this). As graphics got better, designers had to make, well, design choices, fixating a creature's shape and style, and possibly failing artistically. Abstract games (Ultima, but also Cultist Simulator) go way beyond, in terms of evocation.

(ASCII roguelikes went a bit too far for me, though. Because it's ASCII. I recognise characters as supposed to be something else.)

And the size of old RPGs. But now modern RPG are catching up. There was a period when better graphics and more detailed worlds did shrink the cRPG playing ground.

Also, the lack of voiceovers. I liked reading at my own pace, not having to skip a voice when "i got it", and this also allowed more flexibility (less bug, less awkwardly cut content) on the designer's side, with effect on the game's quality.

Actually, I was thinking how abstract graphics can better enhance mood rather than detailed 3D models, because there's a clear limitation, the brain isn't fixated on what's there, so it envisions what is described.

Are your player characters giants sliding across the landscape and walking over entire cities? No, it's just there to dictate your position in the world.

Your character shoots arrows with their flail? Nah son, that just means they're attacking.

Sometimes you get silly examples, like a radioactive rabbit whose portrait is just a generic rat, or maybe they rely too much on using a shotgun sprite as a use-all for two-handed rifles when they could've maybe made a different sprite set that depicts a higher tech weapon like a genericized M16 or some such.

On a different note, I kind of like the idea of having to refer to the manual for story beats, but I understand that's not to everyone's liking and even I find trudging through a bunch of text boring. Still, I like the idea of a novelesque description of events, especially if it's handled in a way that's natural without bogging down the game. Not that this hasn't been done in newer games.

Good info, now I recall Faerun.

Starting to bring back memories of those books and the stories within the games, though I can't for the life of me recall if I got into the books first or the games that were based on the books (or were they based on something else?). Either way, a lot of enjoyment to be had.
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The novel Azure Bonds served as the basis for the game Curse of the Azure Bonds, so you could say that game was based on a novel.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Azure_Bonds