YMMV / Ultima III

• Anti-Climax Boss: Ultima I ends with the player facing Mondain. Ultima II ends with the player facing Minax and her army of monsters. This game ends with the player facing... some floor tiles. That's right, you don't even get to fight Exodus — he turns out to just a machine that doesn't attack and is defeated by inserting punch cards into it. It's made especially anticlimactic by the fact he was hyped up as a demonic abomination by the manual and the box art, and was given enough importance to have the game named after him.
  • The manual for the sequel attempted to make it sound more epic than it actually was in-game by describing the battle as "The very walls of the castle rose up against them".
• Genius Bonus: It may seem weird that the combination of thieving skills and magic is alchemy. Medieval attitudes towards alchemists were that most of them were conmen who claimed to have ways to make people rich or cure illness. Even the legitimate ones were considered to be bad news because their stated goals (transmutation of materials and immortality) were considered to be against God; Dante placed all alchemists in the same area of Hell as forgers.
• Growing the Beard: This is the point where Richard Garriott really got serious about developing his own consistent world, quietly doing away with the Schizo Tech of the previous games. A downplayed example, however: it solidified the gameplay mechanics and engaged in a lot of worldbuilding, but it was the next game that truly established the series as one of the classic PC RPG greats with the introduction of the Avatar and the Eight Virtues.