Some people even call this game a 2D version of Oblivion, give or take some features.  For example, in Ultima VII, NPCs are very active in their shops, unlike the NPCs in Oblivion.  The NPC schedules in Ultima VII is by far still one the most detailed around still til this day.

One of the most satisfying features of Ultima VII over any other existing RPG game to date, is that there is no loading screens after you enter the game world.  You could in effect beat the entire game in one sitting without a single load screen(unless you die).  The engine does this by putting every single thing on one mega huge map.  Because of this, back in the day, when playing under pure DOS, one needs a Boot disk to play the game.  The engine takes all your 640K, and your 4MB of extended are for caching the map and graphics as you play.  Nowadays, people play it in Linux or Windows using the Exult engine.

Even though Ultima VI had no loading screens after you enter the game, the graphics and detail are on a lower scale.  Ultima VI does still have one mega size map for all Britannia, even the Super Nintendo version did this, which is amazing in itself.  However, the inside buildings on the Super Nintendo was a different map, and there were loading screens for moving to these places and even loading time for checking your inventory.