Check out free retro-RPG Moonring, made by an industry vet and Fable designer in classic Ultima style

pcgamer.com:

A veteran game designer has gone and released a full-on top-down dungeon crawling, open world, old school Ultima-style RPG with a boatload of modern conveniences for the low, low price of absolutely free. Moonring is a really simple to get into retro-RPG with some neat systems and a fun world to explore where five moons represent the five gods, each of whom chooses and guides humans—except for those like you, the dreamless, who must choose their own destiny.

It's a pretty real-deal thing. Open world, tons of items to collect, open-ended character building with neat skills, and even some wild and strangely obtuse systems to learn. It even uses somewhat-divisive keyword conversations, like a lot of old games did. For all that it also has merciful features like automatic note-taking of keywords and a great system that autosaves as you start each dungeon—if you die, you just pop back to the start, making each one like a mini roguelike expedition.

It also has naval exploration and boarding actions between ships, which automatically earns it my approval.

There's other really interesting game design in here, too. Your character has health, but also a regenerating poise system that acts as a buffer of hit points before you take health damage.  Thus stealth, and retreat, are very valuable. There's a dynamic fire and light system, and I think there are other elemental interactions that can appear on the map as well—getting wet makes you fire resistant, for example, but weak to Rot effects. There's also a system of magic around the five moons and their phases, with each god's powers changing depending on which moon is in what phase.

Dene Carter, the creator of Moonring, is a long-time game dev whose credits include co-creation on