Ultima™ Underworld 1+2

I just recently played this game for the first time thanks to GOG. and from a modern perspective I have to say that this game not only holds up, but is still better then most action rpgs made today. I had so much fun with this game. My only complaint is that the story can be difficult to follow and the hints for the clues can be obtuse at times. all in all Both games are ridiculously engaging.

In a time before Doom and even before Wolfenstein3D, there was already a game with 3D graphics superiour to both: Ultima Underworld. A game where you could actually look around freely and with terrain that was not restricted to rectangular blocks. So, graphically Ultima Underworld was a few years ahead of its time and it had an early phyics engine too, for interaction with the world. Of course nowadays these tech-marvels are outdated. But what remains is an enchanting world, great stories, many very believable NPCs to talk to and generally hours and hours of roleplaying-gameplay. So it still stands as a legend among computer games and still is very captivating.

If I had to rank all the games I've ever played, these two (Ultima Underworld I and II) would be numbers one and two at the top. Simple as it its: go get 'em!

This review is for Ultima Underworld 1, but any review I did for UW2 would have just as much praise. Quite simply, this is close to the best CRPG/dungeon crawler of all time. This game was revolutionary for its time and I spent many a long night playing this in the early 90s. It's old and it creaks, but its gameplay, story and immersion are rarely rivalled, even 30 years on. Not all is perfect though. Jumping is still a drama, and you get caught on walls and ledges a lot, but there are mods out there that make these things easier. But why is the GOG version of this game bundled in a Windows wrapper? To play it on Linux requires you to unrar the .gog file and run the installer that way - why was this even bundled as an .iso to begin with? It's not difficult to deal with, but it's annoying you have to at all.

The game play is good, graphics have been preserved, lots of great nostalgia; however, the audio/music port is awful, I hope there's an update to fix the sound.