Ultima Underworld Review

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An early entry from the legendary Looking Glass Studios team. Ultima Underworld is a classic dungeon crawler and landmark title in 3d first person gaming. Like many games I've reviewed before, it's influences are vast and mostly unknown to me. So we'll be narrowing down on "how well does this hold up?"

Gameplay wise, if you've played any Immersive sim or dungeon crawl in the grander Legend of Grimrock, Deus Ex, or even Elder Scrolls vein, you'll have a decent idea what to expect. Combat has a grand total of 3 melee attacks shared between ever melee weapon. Some ranged options, and spells using a rune system that itself has been copied and/or iterated on by other RPGs since. I would call it simple, but that's to the games benefit. Like many Immersive sims, there are multiple solutions to any given problem. Many including clever use of spells or items to skip over the 'intended' routes. I don't know how softlock proof the game is, and I imagine it's very easy to lose key items. But the game is so simple and honest about it's systems I can't really hold a technical/design issue like that against it. They were doing a lot when putting this game together and for the era especially, I don't feel the need to nitpick.

Especially when the dungeon design is so solid. Each level is memorable and fun to explore, dropping items and puzzles all over to create just a joyous labyrinth to adventure through. Up until the 75% mark you can also easily breeze through without needing any guides to help out, but like many games of it's ilk the final chapter will be significantly easier with a cluebook, or strategy guide, on hand. Still, even using master google it was quite fun to put the solution together, usually I only needed to double check a map or maybe use it to save myself some time on backtracking.

It also works well because the game isn't particularly difficult. It has some traps, most non-combat skills are a literal waste of points and it's not clear what weapon skills are even doing or worth putting points into. Plus Magic is overpowered as it almost always is, but eventually you'll dump all your stats into a single weapon skill and suddenly cleave through literally every enemy encounter from then out. Plus, in the early game only certain monsters pose a threat. This is no Etrian Odyssey where a single butterfly could spell doom for your party. You can happily cleave away at rats, spiders, and bats all you want. Making it a valid option to stock up and prepare for more dangerous battles.

Though, that does bring me to my singular critique. The inventory weight limit is just tedious. I understand the point is that you're meant to take notes and judge heavier armour vs more items. But at the end of the day if you're making gems, coins, and scrolls count for inventory weight? Just take the limit off or make it only count for "equipped" items. Still, the dungeon is small and easy enough to navigate that while annoying, it was not a turn off.

All in all, Ultima Underworld is a fantastic dungeon crawler and it's easy to see why it's so highly regarded to this day. I highly recommend checking it out if you haven't, it's a breezy playthrough and will give you some appreciation for the influence it had on other games going forward.

If only you could still call up Origin and hear them congratulate you