Ultima 4 is still free forever on gog.
the combats were incredibly simplified in comparison to most other rpg of the era but at least they're not lasting too long considering their lack of battle options (at least until you get companions that adds at least some placement fun).
My best memory was walking along the coast and seeing a pirate ship coming to attack, waiting and once the ship came close, went in and killed the lonely pirate ... and i was then the proud owner of a ship i could board to navigate around while hopeless land monsters were hopelessly moving around trying to get to me
the thing i really disliked was the dialogue system, as the game only know a very limited amount of word, so out of "job", "name", "look", and sometime a word coming from a reply an npc does (by example asking a lord about his job, he tells that he rules the province, so you can ask "province"), the npc will reply with tons of "can"t help thee" type of answer.
I wish they would have done the same as they did on the NES or Master System ports (the sega master system version had the best visuals) for the dialogues in which you select the words instead of playing the "hey game do you know that word ? no ? let's try this one ... still no ? and that one ? still no ? *sigh* "
That said, it's also worthwhile to try to play the nes/sega (the master system one is very recommended) version of Ultima 4 on some emulator, that version benefit from several "quality of life" improvements (and oddly replaced all those default "thou", "thee", "thy" ancient english text by their "you" "your" modern version ) .