Reply To: Final Thoughts

[patrick_wd]

#9285

I’d heard of Ultima Underworld and vaguely knew what it was, but had never played it before now. I thought I knew what to expect from this game, and dungeon crawlers aren’t usually my thing, but my actual experience turned out quite different.

At first it felt like a survival game, just gathering food and light sources, but once I discovered the goblin settlements I started to suspect this game was more than it seemed. There are FAR more NPCs than I was expecting, with a reputation system and detailed dialog trees. Luckily, around this point I was tipped off that this game is easily soft-lockable. I went looking for a guide to make sure I wouldn’t make any fatal mistakes, but what I saw was a very long and detailed document filled with elaborate quests and puzzles that I was not expecting to see.

I avoided reading too much (at first), but seeing that was the point where my idea of what this game is started to shift. I was expecting “fight your way to the bottom floor and kill the bad guy.” Turns out this game is also a complex linear puzzle adventure game. More specifically, it has subtle “riddle” puzzles that involve gathering clues and making an intuitive leap about some obscure action you can take to make progress. I actually LOVE this kind of puzzle and am a huge fan of games like La-Mulana with similar puzzle design, but I struggled a bit with it in this game because I realized too late what kind of game this actually is and hadn’t kept detailed enough track of the things I had done or seen.

I’m actually fine with aimless wandering in a puzzle game like this while I search for clues, but the controls in this game (while actually quite modern relative to the time) were still a bit clunky and added just enough friction to exploration that retracing my steps constantly became increasingly frustrating over time. Even still, I found many of the puzzles quite enjoyable. Most notably the quest for the knight order where you find the golden plate. It offered just enough clues to keep me on track, and all the pieces fit together neatly. After some doing I managed to find the plate without using a guide at all, which was very satisfying!

The infamous “Cup of Wonder” puzzle was a bit of a different story. Honestly I actually really like the concept of the puzzle and how it’s constructed, but it felt almost like it was in the wrong game. It would fit right in as a mid game La-Mulana puzzle, but here I kept underestimating its complexity because I just wasn’t expecting that kind of thing here.

I managed to find about half of the talismans myself and the other half with the help of the guide, and eventually made my way to the evil wizard and took him out, made my way down to level 8 and got to the final door of the game. Unfortunately, I was stopped dead by a new key that I needed and had no idea what it was or where to look. The dramatic pacing had really pumped me up for a final confrontation, and the sudden screeching halt spiked my already substantial frustration and I just went to follow a guide for the remainder of the game. Turns out the game had the last laugh when I got hit with the object list corruption bug, so I just youtubed the ending. You win this round, UUW.

Even though I didn’t manage to actually finish it myself, and things like inventory management and general movement could be quite annoying at times, there is definitely something special to this game that kept me going for as long as it did. I can easily see how growing up with this game would smooth over the rougher parts and leave a mostly positive memory. Coming into it late with 30 years of hindsight makes it difficult to overlook some of the considerable flaws, but the spirit of the game still shines through I think. This is definitely my second favorite “never played it before” DGC pick after Gateway. Just be prepared to refer to a guide to keep you on track if you’re going in blind; you’ll need it.