Before immersive sims were a buzzword, there was Ultima Underworld. Dropping you into a massive first-person dungeon, it gave players freedom unthinkable at the time. Want to negotiate with monsters instead of killing them? Go ahead. Fancy experimenting with rune-based magic? The system’s yours to crack. It was revolutionary in design, clunky in execution, but undeniably groundbreaking. The Stygian Abyss is less a dungeon crawl and more a sandbox of possibility, the kind of game that made players dream of what the future could hold. Without it, we probably wouldn’t have System Shock or Elder Scrolls—a true genre pioneer.
PC Review - Issue 8 (1992-06): "But as a game (and not a philosophical issue) I can't find any major faults to Ultima Underworld. It may not look like a Rembrandt when up close (it's more like a Picasso), but you spend so much time moving you hardly care a whit. The size may be daunting, but it's more a challenge than a put-off. The controls are unbelievably easy when you get the hang of them and the whole system is very clever indeed. It's probably not the hardest game you'll ever play and despite the realism, it's easy to live without it, but I can see anyone that does venture into the abyss having a whale of a time. I have heard reports of people already claiming to have completed it, but I suspect these are the kind of people that can play te average arcade game with their feet abd still clock it. For the rest of us mere mortals it's a wonderful game and an experience not to be missed."
A masterpiece of an FP RPG. We played this game a lot back in the day, and even made our own strategy guide. We never had the original disc however; we had this game on a compilation disc to showcase the games of that time. With our computer, the slight disconnection between the introduction's video and the audio was akin to watching a dubbed Chinese martial arts film (audio dialog would finish just ahead of the graphics). The rest of the game played great. Despite playing with a lower frame rate, the NPC's in the game had enough fluidity to discern proper movement; a better computer system at the time would have improved the game's frame rate.
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