Ultima Underworld II: Labyrinth of Worlds

This game took me a long time to beat, but I think a lot of that has to do with the fact that I was avoiding it. I just didn't enjoy Ultima Underworld 2 all that much. That's not to say I hated it, either. I liked the first Underworld a lot, and they made some smart changes here. The trainer system for character progression is much better than having to memorize every ankh statue password, and this game has that Fallout/Deus Ex style of multi-solution puzzles. But there are some issues.

First off, they really expect you to wander around aimlessly and stumble back onto the critical path, something I don't remember being a problem with the first game. I remember having to look at the cluebook maybe once or twice in that game, and each time I did the answer made sense to me. Many puzzle solutions in UW2 just don't make a whole lot of sense. For example, at one part you need to get a key from some fighter dude. You can fight him for it but he's super overpowered and combat is based on die rolls so you just can't brute force it and win. Turns out the way you get the key from him is to go downstairs and befriend a troll. The troll doesn't say anything about the dude, and the dude doesn't say anything about a troll. Afterwards the next time you talk to the dude the troll wanders in and takes the key from him. Like, what? There's a lot of shit like that in Underworld 2. One level makes you play Q-Bert 500 times. There is a lot of jumping onto small platforms over pits even though the game has barely-functional collision detection.

Worst of all is that I've bumped up against some moments where I almost put the game into an unwinnable state accidentally. That just shouldn't be happening in a late-period Ultima game, especially if it can happen through innocuous carelessness-- it's not like I went around stabbing clearly helpful NPCs. But for instance there's a potion early on that looks exactly like a mana potion-- the only way you'd be able to tell the difference is if you have the skill or spell to Identify it and proactively decide to do so. If you accidentally drink this potion thinking it's a mana potion it's gone forever. You need this potion to beat the game, but you're not told this until the very end. Luckily, and only by luck, I didn't find myself locked out of the critical path. But I almost almost was, and that sucks!

Even without that sort BS the game just isn't as interesting as Underworld 1. The first one has this cool feel to it because it consists of one giant world to acclimate yourself to, and you learn something new about the whole on every floor. Exploring each floor was like mapping uncharted territory; you never knew what you were going to find.

Here they decided to split the game up into a larger number of smaller, more distinct worlds, and very few of them have that feeling of exploration-- many of them are just themed NPC hubs. Exploration and dungeon crawling has really been downplayed in favor of adventure game-lite puzzles that I've already bitched about. Plus, despite the 'multiple solutions' groundwork being laid here, there are quite a few useless ass skills. For shopping you have Appraise which lets you gauge value and Charisma which dictates buy/sell prices. There is ONE SHOPKEEPER in the game who sells anything of value. ONE. You can take lockpicking but by the time it's helpful to do so, you should already have a spell that allows you do the same thing. Later you get a magic cudgel with that magically opens any door you tap it against without limitations. There's a Search skill. I don't think it does anything.

I'm being really negative, but when the game works it works pretty well! There's some Ultima Underworld magic here but it's buried under some bad stuff. If I wasn't enjoying myself for the most part I would've stopped, but man. The good stuff was mostly on a per-world basis. I like the ice world-- no complaints. The computer world was a lot of fun. The mage world was a pain. The Ethereal QBert Plane was a migraine. And so on, and so on.