1. Ultima V - PC2. Ultima VI - PCI noticed that Ultima VI was one of the games for AGDQ this year, so I decided to try and knock it out before they got to it tomorrow night. Ultima VI is the most advanced of the Age of Enlightenment trilogy, and yet somehow I feel like it is the least of the three games. It ends up being like early 3D platformers; crazy awesome advanced when it first came out, but in hindsight it hasn't aged as well as the older games.
So first off, you will notice that this game got an insane graphical update. You're now rocking VGA graphics (whereas the previous two were EGA), and the sprites are huge compared to Ultima V's. It's still an overhead view so you have this weird perspective to give you just enough of a 3D effect like you'd see in an isometric. I'd call it an 85 degree isometric aesthetic. Characters now have portraits, and the dialog system is much richer. People have more to say, they have unique dialog for their "I don't respond to that word" response, and keywords are highlighted so you don't have to try every word (though they frequently respond to more than just the keywords). Characters now have a paper doll, compared to the implicit one in Ultima V, and there is individual inventories for characters and a weight limit system; you can wear gear equal to your strength and can carry a total of twice your strength (where you carry what you wear).
The game also gets back to the emphasis on morals that Ultima IV had. I don't want to go into more detail than that for spoilers, but the end game involves solving a conundrum and the solution doesn't involve swords. There is a karma system like Ultima V, with the same level of impact; you need to have enough to do the final quest, but it's mostly just don't steal, don't murder people, do the main quest. You don't have the full virtue system. Still, it's much better story-wise than Ultima V was, which was basically just beat the big bad guys and rescue the princess (king).
Now where the game falls down: first, the graphics. Like Metroid II, everything is too big compared to the viewport, so it's incredibly easy to get lost in towns without a map. The towns are also massive compared to the size of the world, without actually being larger compared to Ultima V in terms of buildings and residents. As an example, Lord British's castle and Britain takes up the entire area under that crescent shaped mountain range that is the nothern border of the land it's in in the previous two games. This makes the whole game seem a ton smaller. It's really a step backwards; zooming out the view would help a ton. Combat is also now done on the map, which means the already clusterfuck combat gets even worse, as most of the time you're in areas that aren't designed for fighting like in the previous games. This makes party sizes greater than three a mess in combat, but you definitely want a party that size to carry all the shit you need to beat the game.
I mentioned the story is better than V's (though the idea of turning virtues into laws being bad was an interesting one). But there's a big piece in the middle that just sucks. You know how much everyone hates the the Triforce treasure map part of Wind Waker? Well, Ultima VI did it first and did it worse. It's a huge busy work quest that isn't even necessary if you know the piece of information it reveals. It doesn't do a quest trigger, and it's possible for you to stumble past it if you just explore the world and do some dungeon diving. It's basically a super long quest chain to tell you to visit a particular dungeon. So if you visit it on your own you'll end up doing the sequence past this asinine quest chain, making it completely useless.
For it's narrative faults, Ultima V had a good engine and was considerate with a player's time and energy. So I'd say the trilogy ends up being IV > V > VI, when approached in hindsight. Of course, at the time you'd definitely rank them IV < V < VI, because the technical advancements will utterly blow you away.