Ultima III: Exodus

With the money made from Ultima II, Richard and brother Robert founded Origin Systems. Ultima III: Exodus was Origin's flagship title, and Richard approached it as he approached Ultima II: by rewriting all the engine code from scratch and applying everything he had learned from before to the new title. The new engine had the ability to support a party of four characters, requiring the player to shrewdly plan the composition of its members, since each character would not only have to take care of himself, but also have to support the others.

A terrifying CGA squid assaults the four heroes

The story in Ultima III centered on Exodus, the daemon offspring of Mondain and Minax, and was the largest, most popular - and certainly the most sinister - Ultima to date. The player guided his party through treacherous parts of Sosaria, improving each character's abilities enough to take on the daemon in his fiery home. With the destruction of Exodus, the Triad of Evil was vanquished and Sosaria was never the same.

Beefy guards protect the throne against would-be assassins

In Garriott's Own Words: Ultima III
"I knew that if I just scrapped Ultima II, I could write a much better, much more efficiently programmed game..."

Take me to The Age of Enlightenment Trilogy:
Ultima IV-VI