Ultima II is pretty cruddy as far as story goes. It's further crippled by the fact the PC-CD version was broken for YEARS without anyone at EA or Origin noticing because the galaxy and world disk shared the same filenames for map files, and they accidentally over-wrote the galaxy maps when copying it to CD. A fan patch fixed the issue and restored the maps.

However, Ultima II does have an oddly-fun combat system. After you have decent weapons and armor, or even better a ship with cannons, you really start getting the XP and cash going. But the amount of useless stuff in the game (why would you EVER need the plane?) and oddball elements like paying an innkeeper at a random interval to raise an ability score is just dumb.

The end actually isn't too bad, with Minax teleporting to different rooms in her castle after you've hit her, creating a bit of strategy to it. You do need a full 9999 hit points to take her down, as every time you get close she's blasting you with everything she has. Plus there's one indestructible monster in the castle you have to trap and keep an eye out for while running around after her.