Combat:
Honestly this depends on the game, early ultima games suffered from extremely simplistic combat. But as time moved on, combat became increasingly complex. With some of the later entries having enjoyable combat (didnt like the combat of 7 though). Combat in TES has always been bad. With Oblivion suffering from severe HP bloat being enough to make me uninstall.
World interactivity:
Ok, sure, modern TES is more interactive than the earliest Ultima games. But it never got to U6 or 7's level. And the interactivity is pretty shallow overall. Not just compared to Ultima (where people kept devicing clever solutions for killing lord british). But also other contemporary games like Breath of the Wild or Dwarf Fortress.
Focus:
Bethesda games in general are pretty unfocused. Both from a narrative and gameplay standpoint. From a narrative standpoint Bethesda games, tend to push urgent narratives on the player, while then simultaneously encouraging to take their time and mess around in the overworld. From a gameplay standpoint, they add so many features that mess up the balance of one another. Leading to a mess of features that dont exactly provide a particularly coherrent experience.
In Ultima, the gameplay, the feel and the narratives are often intertwined, everything you did in Ultima 4 contributed towards your quest of becoming an avatar. In Ultima 5, the plot impacted the gameplay quite a bit, Day and Night Cycles were a thing, and this impacted not just whether shops were opened or closed, but also tied into the storyline, as it was when resistance members would be active, nazgul might be in towns driving people insane, and there was an active curfew (all adding to the oppressive feel that game had).
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