I loved that game so much as a kid. It started with a murder mystery, which was a first for me. Also, the "twist" about the bad guys was pretty awesome for a teenager.
One of my favorite parts came from the very beginning of the game. If you went south from the first town, the VO would say "Avatar, you are going the wrong way!" Naturally, I continued forward and found some fights. They were way over my level, but I did the "inch forward, throw something, back away" for a half hour to defeat them.
We get to the end of that area and the NPCs start talking about some lady's baby, which we could pick up. We (my brother and I) had no idea what to do, so we went back to the plot and kept going. My brother found out that the baby did pretty sizable damage for a thrown weapon so he used it.
About a week later, I'm in the other room when he screams in rage. Apparently, he finally found the mother, but it had dropped the baby off in one of the dungeons when he ran out of space. So we spent three days regoing through every dungeon looking for the baby he had abandoned so we could finish the plot.
We had a lot of fun with this game and it's probably the the first we bought add-ons (Serpent Isle, Forge of Virtue) and finished each one.
RE: Ultima VII - The Black Gate