Ultima 4 was good story wise, but the combat was extremely tedious with each in your party only being able to take a single step per turn. This was particularly annoying when facing easy to beat foes. The SSI AD&D games which only came out a little after U4 had a superior system, where each character in the party could move multiple steps (depending on stats) and so could the mosters. That system, while also repetitive, was much faster for combat, not to mention much more strategic and fun.

Later Ultimas, like U7 instead went for a streamlined realtime battle which was much better. That went overboard with the at the time infamous U8