Ultima Underworld 2: Labyrinth of Worlds

The events of this part occur a year after Ultima 7: The Black Gate. Lord British celebrates a victory over the Guardian in his castle and invites the Avatar and his friends to a notable feast. The next morning after the triumph under the castle suddenly grows like a cobweb, an impenetrable wall of black marble and surrounds it on all sides like a giant shell. Upon waking, everyone who was in the castle will learn the terrible news that they are locked, black marble is indestructible and there is no way out. Then Lord British convenes everyone to the meeting, and it becomes known that this is another trick of the Guardian, who used powerful magic to sharpen his enemies, as a result of which they could not prevent his plans to conquer Britain. But there remains the hope of liberation - in the deep dungeons of the castle, now filled with various monsters, a massive gem appears, which is a side effect of Guardian's spell: thanks to it, you can remove the effect of an ominous spell. This stone is also a portal to alternative worlds controlled by the Guardian. The avatar will have to get to the stone, travel around these worlds and, finally, free the Lord British castle from the evil spells of the Guardian.

This game is a technical continuation of Ultima Underworld I: Stygan Abyss. The gameplay here is almost the same as in the first part: an advanced three-dimensional engine that served as the basis for System Shock, first-person view, good physics and damage system, an action-oriented combat system, a rune spell system, dialogs of several answer options and barter trade.

By tradition, the game begins with the generation of the character, which will become your Avatar. Here the player can choose gender, class, skills, and even appearance among several options. There is a choice of skills from combat, magical to social, although the social component in such an action-role-playing game is largely secondary. Having gained enough experience, the character will increase their level, health, mana and get additional training points that can be spent on skills. Unlike the first part of UUW, where you had to go to the altars and say something, you now have to visit different teachers, each of which teaches the hero some skills to choose from.

The interface also changed this part - the player’s action icons were moved to the lower right area, freeing up a little more space to the left under the field of view. Graphically, the game is perfectly worked out in VGA 320x200 mode. Patterns and textures are stylishly and colorfully decorated, creating the effect of being present in the gloomy dungeon of the Middle Ages. Almost all objects and characters are represented in the form of sprites, except stones, barrels and chests, which are low-polygonal three-dimensional objects without textures. As in the previous part, the advanced game engine gives a good physics of objects, it is possible to move most objects, monsters and even characters.

A lot of positive I want to say about the system of inventory and containers. The latter have several types: backpacks, boxes, bags, each of which can hold an unlimited number of items, but at a certain limit of their total weight. Each item has its own weight, and the player can place them in the inventory within their power, so extra items have to be stored or simply thrown out onto the ground.
The player has 8 basic inventory slots where you can place objects or containers, 2 hand cells, where you can put weapons and a shield to activate them, and 2 cells on the shoulders, where usually lit torches, lamps or a quiver for arrows and stones for slings. For spare parts armor player has as many as 5 slots located on the image of the hero on the right: head, body, hands, knees and legs.

Virtually all items have their own margin of safety: for example, if you smash glass bottles, scrolls or magic wands several times against the wall, they will fly apart into a tiny one (although this also creates an interesting bug — you can use them as fragments an unlimited number of times). Armor and weapons have their own margin of safety, but they are gradually damaged during the battle only if the damage status of the item has been triggered.

The game map of the area is conveniently implemented - it is presented as a separate item, which is only at the beginning of the game in a single copy. As we study the terrain, the map is filled with details: you can see where we are and which way we are looking, what floor we are on, and even switch between floor maps. A particularly useful element is the ability to make your text marks on the map when, for example, you need to mark important key points or place your own labels.

The spell system works here like the previous part of Underworld. To begin with, the player will have to find a special rune bag (it lies right behind the secret door in the hero’s private room) and then carefully collect all the necessary runes during the game. After collecting the runes for a spell, you can combine them in a pouch to get the appropriate spell and apply it. If the level of magic skill, the circle of the spell and your hero's mana allow, he will be able to successfully cast the spell. The level of access to the circles of spells increases as the hero opens access to new worlds. Accordingly, opening the last, 8th world, the tolerance level will be maximum, and it will be possible to cast spells of all circles from the first to the 8th.

The musical arrangement is beyond praise: the atmosphere of the dark Middle Ages, desperate wanderings in the dungeons, epic marches and crystal magic melodies are very strongly transmitted. The game has 16 tracks in midi-format, each of which changes depending on the situation: for example, when the hero pulls out a weapon or meets a monster and starts to win over him, the corresponding melody will be played. This technique of changing the melody on the situation in the future also more closely implemented in System Shock, and in the future began to actively use in their games and other developers. Historically, it is believed that this technology first appeared in Ultima Underworld. The soundtrack of the game is also greatly enriched by effects that are seamlessly and seamlessly combined with the atmosphere of the game.

Riddles and plot twists became much richer and more varied. Since we will have to travel to colorful worlds and unusual places, their design also differs from the traditional underground atmosphere of the Middle Ages. For example, the Talorus world is filled with alien technology, mechanical riddles; in essence, this is an organic spacecraft from Star Trek. The Ice World is colorfully decorated, in which the yeti run and throw snowballs, and since the terrain there is predominantly icy, movement is noticeably complicated by the fact that you have to slide to the snow-covered islets. But the Ethereal Emptiness, the black crazy dimension, may seem completely alien, in it you can only walk along the colored paths and meet many reflections of reality.

Noticeably more attention is paid to the characters. At the very beginning, we are waiting for an entire floor full of key characters, and if a player pisses off someone, starts to steal their things right under their noses and starts to fight them, they will certainly be defeated, since all of them are immortal, and the hero he wakes up in a prison cell, where he will have to ask for forgiveness personally from Lord British. It is logical that after many such tricks it will be useless to ask for forgiveness and the hero will always remain in prison.

As for the set of monsters in the dungeon - here it is very rich, although at first we meet only weak opponents: rats, slugs and snakes. In open areas you can encounter bats, in murky waters - with dangerous octopuses. Moving deeper into the dungeons, we will encounter much more dangerous enemies: headless, which will be difficult to damage with conventional weapons - usually the weapon itself will be damaged; beholders who shoot deadly magic bolts. Each dimension will have its own unique set of monsters: sometimes we will have to fight with thinking humanoid creatures - goblins or humans, if we can not agree.

This game can be called the second illegitimate son of the legendary Ultima. It also includes the historical events of the Ultima series, but with a somewhat unconventional approach for it - the events are transferred to the closed space of gloomy dungeons, the hero is always alone, without the party of his faithful companions, using a powerful three-dimensional first-person engine.
Both parts of Ultima Underworld were perceived extremely ambiguously by the fans of the series: someone immediately branded them because of the many minor inconsistencies, although many players appreciated its value for atmosphericity, graphics and a wealth of possibilities. The studio was created by Looking Glass Technologies, which spawned no less legendary games - System Shock 1-2 and Thief 1-2 ...

This game can be recommended to fans of the Ultima series, but first of all to fans of corridor role-playing games with wandering around gloomy dungeons and, of course, agoraphobes, since there are no excessively open spaces in the game.