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

The immersion and depth (no pun intended) of these great games are astounding. I still recall as a 15 year old kid, booting up these 3.5 inch discs and marveling at everything I encountered. You FELT like you were in a cave when you were thrown into the abyss. The music, the drips of water, the scurrying shadows in the corners of the room; all amazing. 22 years later and I am STILL thinking about this game and comparing all modern games to the experience of this one.

UW1 was groundbreaking when it was released. There was absolutely nothing else like it. To this day it is still the most immersive game experience I have ever had. Yes, the contols are clunky, but with a little practice they work just fine. The graphics were state of the art on release but are now quite dated. The openness and immersiveness of this game are what makes it shine. Few games since have come even close to equaling that aspect of UW. If you have not played UW before, then it will give you a view of the birth of first-person gaming.

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.