[pixelpoet]

The even more shocking thing is that it was worth every cent; it was the first real experience many of us had in some medium to large scale world with day / night cycles, long term social interactions (I think I even got married at some point?!), ye olde English, ...

Young me figured out the rune writing after a few minutes of scribbling on paper, and after that did it purely visually (I didn't have the cloth and manual etc, got it with Creative Sound Blaster 16 CD and sadly never looked at the documentation). There were many puzzles I figured out alone and was super proud of. Those were super formative times, and Ultima 8, while cool in its own way, didn't have the same realtime speed and party control etc.