Realms of Antiquity (PC)
With apologies to Pillars of Eternity and the other isometric "throwbacks" (term used lovingly), the true CRPG renaissance is now upon us with three full-fledged, deep CRPGs released for actual retro hardware (but playable on modern PCs through emulation of course)—Realms of Antiquity (TI-99), Nox Archaist (Apple II), and Realms of Quest V (VIC20). I played each briefly to decide which to complete first, and decided on Realms of Antiquity as it struck me as having the best balance between depth and playability.
You could call RoA an Ultima clone, and you'd be right in many ways. The setup involves you darting into a cave to escape a storm, and then finding yourself in a medieval land upon exiting. One nice touch is that you can choose to start the game solo as the powerful Hero class, or choose to create up to three additional companions (which locks you out of selecting the Hero class).
You'll do the typical CRPG stuff you'd expect. Explore the world, gather information in towns, explore dungeons for treasure, and get into a lot of combat. Luckily, the combat is quick but offers plenty of depth with weapons and armor rated for certain types of attacks (slashing, bashing, etc.) and enemies being more or less susceptible to certain weapons.
Magic is also handled in a unique way. Uniquely-named magic books contain certain spells, and in order to cast any of them you need to equip the applicable book. Spells come in seven "schools" designated by color, and each class capable of spellcasting starts out with a favored color of spell. It's not a problem early on, but I could imagine that having to swap out spellbooks just to cast a certain spell could get annoying later in the game.
The UI is quite nice with a sensible keyboard layout. You make most use of the cursor keys (for movement) and the number keys (to select choices), but there are a handful of other keys used to access party stats, etc. I got used to it immediately.
Overall, a fantastic game so far that I am really enjoying. I put 3.5 hours into it over the weekend and had a blast exploring, gathering info, and leveling up. I ended up purchasing the physical version of the game, and exploring the world with the included cloth map on my desk brought back some very fond memories of playing the Ultima games back in the day.