Ultima™ Underworld 1+2

First of all, this is an amazing game, and deserves to be played. But this version is not great. The CD version got rid of the inventory bug - this one has it back. It can literally kill your game. It would be better if the CD version was used, not this version.

This was one of the first games i bought for my pc back around 94/95 came across it in the budget section of the local game shop and figured i'd try it having been a fan of the Eye of the Beholder games on the Amiga, The 3D environment and game play sucked me in initially but for me the most memorable part was meeting the Lizard people for the first time, the speak to you in your own language, after a while you can translate and piece together words to understand them, this mechanic of the game just blew me away, i recently found an old notebook with pages of unusual words in it, took me a while to figure it out it was the Lizard translations i had used when i originally played the game. I recommend this game to anyone who is into rpgs, it's just such a completely entertaining immersive game and one of the best i've ever played

This first-person dungeon crawler, from 1992, predates A LOT of games in this exact sprite-and-vector style that I know and love - Arena, Daggerfall, Battlespire*, etc. The control scheme ... is bad. Patently bad. You're frequently switching modes from attack to pick-up and back, so I'm constantly entering "tilde function F5 right-click-drag function F5 tilde" just to pick up an item and then re-equip after a fight. You will also want to go to the hassle to patch the game file to allow mouse-look, a quality of life upgrade that definitely saves the experience at large from an otherwise System Shock level of "why am I using so many keys to try to look at this doorway". Honestly the controls being so, so antiquated are the only thing keeping this game from a perfect 10/10, everything else stacks so nicely and the design and exploration are so tight. There are eight floors of the dungeon and you travel back and forth between them, more frequently as you progress deeper, and it's appreciated that NOTHING RESETS, all enemies slain stay dead AND anything you leave on the floor remains persistent, which is a huge relief since carrying stuff gets very very heavy once you've collected some good gear. The in-game map is extremely handy, in that not only does it reveal where you go, but you can click anywhere on it to leave notes for yourself - including a sizeable empty space to the side of each floor, where you can write up about the puzzles and clues you find. I also appreciate that GOG includes the game's official clue book, because while a fair few in-game hints are provided, some things aren't very clear and thank goodness it isn't 1992 with no internet to talk about solutions. I had the most fun just after arriving at each new floor, exploring the unknown and getting my bearings, encountering new monsters and new NPCs and seeing what the story had to offer up next. Very excited now to try the sequel and the 2018 follow-up.

Definitely one of my most favourite experiences in the 1990ies. Hardly any games have been able to suck me into their worlds like these two. Ultima Underworld has set standards for decades to come, this was the first smoothly scrolling dungeon available in a maintream AAA product, the magic system was different from what you ever saw before and the variety of worlds (part 2) was amazing. I love those games up to this day. The combat music is in my ears right now. Gotta play. :)

What can i say, these games are near perfect. I you like to dungeon crawl, explore, discover secrets of the underworld deeps, then this series is for you. This was also one of the first "3d" 1st person perspective games, which boasted some impressive tech for its day. The GOG release is solid, but it is unfortunate that the default sounds and music patches aren't quite right on my Win7 system. This can be corrected but may require significant research on part of the player. Nothing beats playing this game using the an original Roland MT-32/ CM64L or compatable Roland sysex sound device. These old external sound devices are ideal as they can be plugged in to modern computers through a USB/Midi cable. Then is a simple matter of telling Dosbox to use the external device as default midi port. This whole process was much easier in WinXP byt he way.