Akalabeth: World of Doom

I loved the history lesson, hated starving at the beginning, enjoyed delving into the extremely few/extremely many RPG choices offered, thrown off by the inaccurate manual, confused by the Lord Brittish overworld objective, laughed at the gremlins (the most deadly monster by far), and relished in pride and joy at the ending. Overall, several hours of my life were well spent.

It was an interesting experience. You will probably need a walktrough, unless you have the patience. Once you read any walktrough for this game, you will soon discover how this might be the most broken CRPG ever. I only recommend this to anyone interested in CRPG history or huge fans of the Utima series.

Although very primitive by today's standards, Akalabeth still works as a dungeon crawler and is especially accessible to younger players if you play the 1998 DOS version. Yes the graphics are basic, the audio is basic and the game is played using the keyboard only but by playing this game, you can see the groundwork that paved the way for later dungeon crawlers, even Diablo. You'll also get your first introduction to the character of Lord British of Ultima fame. Oh and if you want to ramp the difficulty up, make sure you don't play a mage with a magic amulet: it's an overpowered combination!

This game, which came out in 1979\1980 is the primary example of some of the earliest Crpg design ever created. In of itself, the game play akin to an offline version of the Plato Mainframe of the late 1970s, which is to say that the story is reduced to an introduction, some paragraphs and finally an ending, the later being a departure from the Plato design. The gameplay is rather simple, you create a character and roll their stats, choose between two class and off you go. The specificity of these two classes is that the fighter can wield better equipment while the magic user can use magical items and spells which basically make the fighter a suboptimal class for a few reasons which will be explained later. The game is divided in two major part; the overworld, which allow you to travels between the villages, the dungeons and the castle. Villages and the castle are simply an interface and all villages are the exact same since there is no unique products for some town. All dungeons are also, quite literally the same, the only difference being their location on the overworld map. The dungeon itslef is procedurally generated, with sometime some error in the making of the seed( your lucky number) as sometime the only way to progress is through magic and\or items, making the fighter a literal dead end if your seed is bad. The rule of the dungeon is simple, the deeper you are, the more dangerous it is. as you progress through the quests, which is a bounty on a type of monster, you are naturally sent lower down the dungeon. The character progression is rather limited as your only way to get stronger is to get the best weapon for your class, which is done by the end of your first expedition, to finish a quest ooooooooor... Use a magic amulet if you are a magic user. doing so as a magic user make you able to request a particular action which allow the character to either become a frog, losing most of your stat permanently, or becoming a reptilian, which double your stats.

Good Old Games should serve up the better original Apple II version. Meanwhile this DOS conversion is okay, but not as good as the Apple II version. I know, I've played them both. Just play the Apple II version and forgo this conversion! 'Akalabeth: World of Doom' AKA "Ulima Zero: Akalabeth"