Mass Effect and Oblivion into one huge classic.
Sound/Music: No music in this. Sounds consist of beeps, zaps and bloops, expected from an early game.
Difficulty: The entire game is somewhat hard, you not only have your eyes focused on your health but food as well. The only place that food is not consumed is caves/dungeons and space. Yes, you can go in outer-space, I'm getting there.
Gameplay: One of the very early PC RPGs that is quite massive and open. You can play the role of both good or evil, doing quests and/or killing your own people! Have a grudge against jesters? You can crush him. Hate the law? Take down the guards. Got something against authority above you? Hack away at your king. Or, you can accept quests from him and explore the wide lands, sail the seas, explore the underground, or even save up, buy a shuttle and jump to the vast reaches of outerspace itself. You can buy a varity of things and unique weapons/armor from shops, or just steal them. The steal command attempts to steal a random item, so you don't have a pick of what it is. You can get some really good stuff that the shop doesn't show in their sale list even. This is what some would say to be the origins of Oblivion with a twist of Mass Effect; fantasy with a blend of futuristic sci-fi. The beginning of a long line of Ultima games.
Controls: Most of the controls are easy to catch onto, but some are strange, such as Z to go to Stats, X to exit a ship/horse/etc, R to equip weapons, spells and armour (known as "ready" in the game), and a few other keys. You may want to look on Gamefaqs or elsewhere on the internet to get some sort of instruction on what does what.
Overall: Really you can't be a true RPG'r unless you've at least attempted this game, being it's the tippy-top beginning of a legacy of RPGs; an entirely unique and, for it's time, highly advanced gameplay along with the whole timeline mixture. It seems there's no set time in this game. Playing it, you would believe it's in the very early ages, but once you get a spaceship and fly off, you don't even know anymore. I would recommend this. I went to a thrift store and found a compilation CD from Origin, Ultima I ~ VI, plus along with that I got a 2-game disc: Wing Commander 2 and Ultima Underworld. Very good games all in all, but if you can find this by itself or on a compilation, you won't be disappointed. I would suggest using DOSbox when you play it, it's the only way I could get mine to work.