Ultima Underworld: The Stygian Abyss (MS-DOS)

Developer:

Blue Sky

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Release Date:

1992

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Systems:

DOS, FM Towns, PC-98, PlayStation

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This year on Super Adventures, I'm celebrating 10 years of the site by playing games that have earned their place on a 'top 10' list at some point. Maybe I found a game on a 'Top 10 Best Game Over Themes' list, or perhaps a 'Top 10 Most Underwhelming Sequels' list, it doesn't matter as long as they made it there.

In this case I'm playing Ultima Underworld: The Stygian Abyss which I found at #5 on PC Gamer's 1994 'Top 100', and at #3 on PC Zone's October 2000 'all-time classics' list. You could probably find it all over the place though as it's a bit legendary. It's part of the foundations that some of the biggest franchises are built on, as series like Deus Ex and Elder Scrolls can trace their lineage right back here. Tomb Raider and Minecraft too actually. Though there's a more direct link with Looking Glass's System Shock series, seeing as this is the first game by Blue Sky Productions... later known as Looking Glass Studios.

I haven't played this myself yet though, even though it seemed like an obvious choice for Super Adventures, and the main reason for that is that it looks like an absolute bastard to write about, and I'd want to do it right. Plus I haven't really played the other Ultima games and I know nothing about the series!

I checked Wikipedia however, and it turns out that Underworld was released just before Ultima VII, in 1992, and the Ultima series was 11 years old at the time. So this was a bit of a Resident Evil 4 situation I suppose, as it's an inventive and influential successor released about a decade after the original. Except here it's a spin-off, not a change in direction for the franchise, so fans of the classic gameplay weren't faced with their series making a genre shift. In fact it wasn't even originally an Ultima game at all, and they had to rewrite it during development to fit the lore and really turn up the 'ye olde English' dial.

I should mention that I'm playing the GOG version, which is presumably the CD release, and I should also mention it may include cartoony low-res spiders.

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Nothing all that interesting going on with the menu screen, there aren't even any graphics or sound options, but I couldn't resist making an animated GIF out of it because I'm a sucker for shiny metal text. This isn't the most epic fantasy RPG music I've ever heard either, though it suits it I suppose.

I do have an 'Introduction' button to click and I suppose I should, seeing as I get the feeling I won't be seeing it otherwise.

The intro doesn't start with this guy, but I figured he'd be more interesting to look at than the blank screen I got.

There aren't even any subtitles to look at, just the voice of the narrator and then eventually this purple ghost bloke talking. I checked to see if the floppy disk version was any different and it seems to be all voice and no text there as well, which surprised me.

Anyway the narrator explains that you, the person who keeps making trips to a fantasy world called Britannia under the alias 'The Avatar', have been struggling from nightmares for the last three days. So this ghost turning up in your dream is actually less horrifying than what you're used to.

"Treachery and doom!" the ghost exclaims in an theatrical echoey ghostly kind of way. Then he reveals that his brother will unleash a great evil upon Britannia. Fortunately he has the power to bring you over there to sort it out, as you've got a good track record in sorting out RPG quests. I mean, there's been six Ultimas so far.

You appear in a cavernous stone bedroom just in time for the ghost's evil wizardy brother to use your arrival to his advantage. Now the guards think that you're the one responsible for kidnapping the lord's daughter Arial. The fact that you clearly aren't holding anyone captive isn't going to sway them as they believe you threw her out of the window to your accomplice.

The captain of the guard drags you to Baron Almric and tells him that they tried to rescue his daughter but she was dragged down into the Stygian Abyss. I gotta say, the captain sounds a whole lot like the narrator doing a voice and so does Almric. He's apparently played by Richard 'Lord British' Garriott himself though, and the guy's really going full "what sayest thou?" with his dialogue.

And the captain's apparently played by sound director Martin Galway who also did the theme for the game Comic Bakery, which I'm mentioning just as an excuse to link the song: Comic Bakery theme (YouTube). Put that on if you want to completely ruin the mood of this intro.

Anyway Almric comes up with a sensible way to test if you really are the Avatar: he's going to lock you in the Abyss and if you manage to rescue Princess Arial then you'll have proven your identity and your innocence! Oh cool, it's been ages since I've gotten to use the 'princess rescue' tag on an article.

I guess I can use the 'start as a prisoner' tag as well, even though you would've come down here anyway because it's your quest.

The Stygian Abyss is apparently an important location in Ultima IV, as the Avatar had to go there to become the Avatar in the first place. Before then they were just The Stranger. I've never played Ultima IV, but I have to imagine a player would've levelled up and found some decent gear before going down there the first time around, plus they would've had a whole party of well-armed veteran badasses to back them up.

This time it's just level 1 you in your pyjamas. And by 'you' I mean 'me'.

First though I have to create a character, starting with their handedness, which is unusual. (I went with left-handed).

Next it asked me to pick my class from this list of classic fantasy hero archetypes and also a shepherd. I haven't read the manual but to make this a fair test I did cheat a bit and look up which class is most fun to play as. Apparently the Druid is what you want, so that's what I'm picking. I'll also want to make sure they have around 30 points in strength as that determines how much you can carry.

After choosing a class I got to pick from three skills: Track, Lore and Search. It seems like different classes get a different set skills to pick from (some more than others), but those are my options. I could check in the manual to see what they do, but I'm just going to go with Lore and move on.

Now I get to pick a face, from that row of five on the top. I already know what the Avatar looks like though, they showed a picture of him in that last screenshot!

This isn't a proper screenshot by the way, I just put all the male and female faces together in one image to save space. When I saw there were only five to pick from I figured that you must get a different set for each class, but nope. These are all you get. Picking male or female has no influence on your stats by the way, even if you pick a woman with an eyepatch.

After choosing a face I got my toughest decision of all: picking a name. This is one bit of old school difficulty that you still get in modern RPGs.

Speaking of difficulty, the game's final question was whether I wanted to play on 'Standard' or 'Easy'. That makes it sound like Standard is going to be hard mode! But I always play games on the default normal difficulty, so I guess that's what I'm going with.

And this is what you see when the game comes on: a bag, a bit of a wall, and a lot of darkness. That's actually a sloping floor in front of me though, which is a feature Doom didn't even have when it came out the following year. These real-time 3D texture mapped graphics were absolutely cutting edge at the time, seeing as it came out two months before Wolfenstein 3D.

Though Doom wasn't stuck with 45 degree angles for its walls. Plus it wasn't contained in a tiny little window, its 3D filled the screen, and I'm guessing it still ran quicker than Underworld on the PCs of the time. I'm using a nice fast virtual machine in DOSBox however, and now that they've given me an 'options' button I can make sure the detail's cranked up to full. And the music's set to 'on'. Not a whole lot else in there for me to change to be honest.

Might & Magic IV: Clouds of Xeen (MS-DOS)

Here's an average first person RPG from the same year for comparison. It's got tile-based movement, a party of characters, and a button you have to click to make them attack things. It's also got creepy faces either side of the window frame. Ultima Underworld's window is a little smaller, but the heads are much less creepy by comparison.

Plus you don't just get free continuous movement in Underworld, you can also tilt the view up and down! That's another thing Doom can't do.

Unfortunately the camera isn't tied to the mouse so I have to use keys to turn. Though if I switch to 'pick up' mode I can use the mouse to swipe things from the game world. Seems like this sack I've started off next to is basically an adventurer's starter kit, with food, a weapon, and even a map.

I can also use my mouse to check my stats... wait, hang on, it's just occurred to me that I didn't get a chance to adjust them or re-roll during character creation. The game's just given me 22 strength and that seems a lot smaller than 30. Okay hang on, I'm going to make a new character and get this sorted out. Shouldn't take long.

FOUR MINUTES SPENT CREATING NEW CHARACTERS LATER

Alright, now I'm back the game with at 29 strength Druid, which is close enough for me. I've also managed to get my dagger equipped, though it took a while. I tried dragging it to the left slot near his hand, then I tried 'using' it, then I tried dragging it to the tiny slots underneath the hands. Turns out he's left-handed, so I have to put it in his left hand, on the right.

I also accidentally ate a fish, and he thought it tasted kind of bland. Seems I'll be getting Snake Eater-style food commentary as I go, though I can't tell yet if he's eating to fill up a hunger meter or to regain health. Anyway I need to venture forth into this darkness already.

It's nice to play a classic first person dungeon crawler where I can run around freely instead of having to zigzag around narrow passageways making 90 degree turns at every corner.

You wouldn't expect a game this old to use WASD keys, and it doesn't. It uses something like WAXD, with X being walk backwards, and A and D being used to turn (Z and C are used to strafe). Not ideal, but I've used worse.

The door wouldn't open for me, so I'm going to knock.

That gem on the left turns from red to green as I hold the mouse button down so I'm thinking that I want to charge my punches for a second for maximum effect. It reminds me of how Secret of Mana asked me to wait between attacks and I kind of hated it there too.

It seems like every weapon in this game has durability except for my dude's fists, so if I de-equip his badly-worn dagger I can beat on this door all night without even feeling it. Fortunately I didn't have to wait long before the door gave in and opened for me.

Inside I found a bit of wood, a broken mace, and another sack! I was thinking of using the mace as a expendable door opener, but it seems to be really broken, so I backed up a bit from the wall and threw it away into the game world.

On the plus side the sack contained two half-burned candles, a green mushroom and a worn cudgel!

Anyway, there's another door in here so I'm going to get back to punching.
 

Door #2 led me to this dead end, with a silver tree and a dirt floor.

There's also a plaque on the wall, saying that if I plant the seed of the Silver Sapling I'll be granted a new life when this one doth end. So it's a bit like one of those resurrection stations in the System Shock games then I guess.

I can just save the game any time I want though, so I don't see myself using it.

I'll stick it on the map though, just in case.

Look at this beautiful automap by the way! Okay there's not much on it to look at right now, but there will be. It seems like it expects me to write all my own notes though, and I'm really not complaining about that. It's definitely better than the Metroid or Castlevania map system which forces you to rely on memory. You can use it as notepaper as well, the game don't care.

Right, nothing else to do here. Time to go back out and find another door to defeat.
 

Hey I've found a goblin! My very first opponent. I decided to test out my new cudgel on him, but he stepped backwards and fell off the ledge! So he's gone now.

I don't think I get any XP for that, though I did get some battle music at least. The game's got a dynamic soundtrack and it's really reminding me of Wing Commander. In a good way.

The fight music's not over yet though as it turns out the goblin has a friend. Time to practice all the different ways I can swing a cudgel.
 

Oh damn, I was not expecting the skulls. Or to see the dragon wrapped around my interface flinch.

Well that doesn't seem fair. If that red blood splat appears every time I get a good hit, then my hero must have the accuracy of a level 1 Morrowind character. The weapon seems to take damage just fine when I miss though.

Anyway I've just had my ass thoroughly handed to me in my first proper fight and the game's kicked me right back to the menu screen, so that could've gone better.

I loaded my save and decided to head in a different direction, which worked out a lot better for me. There aren't a whole lot of enemies over this way.

Plus I found a bag of magic runes, a bedroll to sleep on, a red key, and a bloke called Bragit. He seems like a nice chap and he hasn't tried to reshape my skull with a club at all, so I've decided to click the lips button and hope that it means 'talk' and not 'kiss'.
 

Good news for people who like words in their RPGs: this game definitely has them. I've got a handful of dialogue options as well, and they all seem fairly sensible so far. No comically evil choices.

Anyway, Bragit gave me some useful information about the locals, and some good advice about not swiping things from the floor next to people. Turns out that's stealing.

Unfortunately this path seems like a dead end, so I guess I'll have to go back to where that belligerent goblin's lurking. I'm going to have to be smarter about it this time, out-think him. In fact I should probably wait for this mushroom to wear off as well. I accidentally ate while I was sorting out my bags and now my head's spinning and my vision's blurred. Apparently.
 

Magic, that's what I need! I checked the manual to see if there's anything I can do with these runes I've been picking up and it turns out I already have enough letters to spell out an armour incantation. The combination for it's in the book, I just click each symbol to add it to that box on the bottom left, then I click the word to cast the spell.

The word doesn't disappear from the shelf after casting so it'll stay handy for when I want to cast it again. It would be nice if the game remembered all the spells I've cast though. Maybe even put them in a list so I didn't have to keep alt-tabbing out and bringing up this PDF. I suppose I could write them down, but they're all awkward symbols!

I killed the goblin! Not the tough one, I mean the first one that fell off the ledge first time around. He was actually easier than I expected, and he even dropped a bit of food for me.

Next I went after my arch-rival. I was careful this time to keep my distance while I was charging my attack, then I rushed forward when I was ready to strike. I even took a bit of food out of my sack and had it ready in case it gave me back health. But the fight dragged on forever, I took too much damage, my dude wouldn't eat the food because he wasn't hungry, and I eventually had to run away. Then the goblin killed my dude while he was retreating by throwing a rock at him!

So that's death #2 then. Back to the menu screen. I'm really starting to get the feeling I shouldn't fight this goblin.
 

This time I ran from the goblin and found a new door, tougher than the others. In fact it took something like 36 punches to get through in the end. A whole minute of door punching. In retrospect I probably should've tried the red key first.

Behind the door I found a scary spider.

Man I'm glad I remembered to cast my armour spell again... at the end of the fight. Better late than never.

I actually managed to beat the thing without much trouble and got some heroic spider-slaying music while I did it. I can't be complacent though; I can still hear the ominous jingling of my goblin nemesis shuffling around in the darkness somewhere nearby.

A little further on I was beset by a swarm of poisonous rats while I was trying to open another door! Actually I there were just two of them and I think it's only the grey one that's poisonous, but that's enough.

I did a strategic retreat and managed to draw one of the rats away to slay them, but I was taken down by the poison. Death #3. If there's a magic spell that cures poison I don't know it yet. I don't even know how to recover health!

Next time around the rats weren't so lucky, but I walked away with it covered in tiny rat bites and next to no health left in my red flask. Hang on, I'm carrying this bedroll around with me, maybe one of these areas is safe enough for me to sleep in now. I don't know if it'll restore my health and mana but it's worth a try.
 

Sleeping did the job, but it also let the purple dream ghost back in my head to send me a message. Or try to anyway, his dialogue's a bit garbled. Hey there's subtitles this time!

Killing the rats got me a level up, but I didn't get any character building choices to make afterwards. No skills tree to navigate, no points to allocate. I should probably check my stats to see if they've even changed at all.

Well, uh, my max vitality's gone up! And that's pretty much it. My skills remain unchanged and most of them are still 0.

This is a fake Photoshopped image by the way, you can't compare stats like this in game. Even the arrow's fake! I am really at level two with 6 extra vitality though, so I continued onwards down the dark passageways of the Abyss with new confidence... and got my ass handed to me by another goblin. Death #4.

EVENTUALLY

I've made a bit of progress now, even found some tattered armour and a shield so I'm not just walking around in my pyjamas. Plus I've found a door leading down to floor 2!

Most of floor 1's still unexplored but I don't see any harm in going through and having a quick look what's down there. Unless it's full of goblins, then there'll be a lot of harm.

Aww it's just a rubbish little slime! It's not worth much XP but I don't mind a few easy victories.

Look at how the graphics are getting warped by the way. Things get a bit weird when the walls are too close, or I try looking down. Apparently this is the exact same issue that PlayStation games have: it's using affine texture mapping even though it's not perspective correct. That's because doing the textures the correct way would've involved a lot of division, which took longer to calculate at the time, and it would've really slowed the game down.

Oh, that 'Move how many?' text in the text box is there because I was moving piles of items around my inventory. If there's more than 1 in the stack it asks you to type in a number, every time. I couldn't be bothered checking to see the actual number so I just typed in something huge and it accepted that as meaning 'all of them'.
 

This seems like a door to remember for later. I'll write 'Banner of Cabirus' on my map and then carry on as there's nothing much I can do about it now.

I've levelled up to level 4 now by the way, but my skills are still a bunch of zeroes. I really need to do something about this if I want to take on goblins. Apparently I need to go to a shrine to improve my skills, so I need to be on the lookout for one of them. Whatever they look like.
 

Crap, a pair of hostile skeletons got me this time! That's death #5.

I wasn't going to let some reanimated bones scare me off, but I decided to change my tactics entirely and equipped a sling I'd found. Now it's my turn to throw a rock at someone else's head!

So I kept backing away and firing slingshot ammo at them, but they just ignored it! I fired off every stone I'd picked up so far and it was like throwing pebbles at a Terminator. Also I kept walking too close to a wall, which causes the camera to suddenly twist around for no reason. Anyway, that was death #6. It's a good thing I'm saving so often.

This seems like as a good a time as any to stop and ask: how does this compare to 1994's Elder Scrolls: Arena?

The Elder Scrolls: Arena

There's two years of graphical advancement for you. The 3D fills the screen and the walls don't wobble so much, but the skeletons don't quite have the same charm anymore. Also this dungeon's all procedurally generated I believe, and Ultima Underworld has hand-crafted levels. At least that's what I have to keep reminding myself.

SOON

Man, it's a good thing there's no 'ink' meter in this, because there's a lot to sketch down. I feel like I've been everywhere on level 2 but I've only seen maybe a third of it.

I've also found a bunch of stuff, like a mandolin and a note that told me I can better gauge the quality of a deal by chanting 'HUNN' (not sure that works in real life). I've also gotten my dude killed twice by rats (deaths #7 and #8) and I've found a bloody Goblin army! I did not linger long in the Super Goblin Zone.

Plus I've discovered that I can click the compass to learn how hungry and tired I am (better to not go to bed hungry if you want to recover all your health). And best of all, I've found the path leading down to floor 3!

I've found a bloody shrine down here! I can finally level up some skills!

There was a mantra on the wall to improve my unarmed skills and I found some more in the manual:

Summ Ra - Improves some of your attack skills.
Mu Ahm - Improves some of your magic skills.
Om Cah - Improves some of your other skills.

Alright, that's given me points in sword, attack, mace, appraise, lot of points in axe... hang on, I want points in sword. It seem like I get four points to distribute each level up and this is just scattering them around randomly! That's not what I want.

Okay, I'm going to reload my last save, and then I'm going to go on a new quest: I'm going to go find the shrine on floor 1 and I'm going to check the walls for a mantra to improve my sword skill specifically. I'll just have to make do with 0 in all my weapon skills until then.

I made my way back up to floor 2, but as I was heading to floor 1 I ran into this dwarf who has an actual quest for me. This is the first task I've been given in the game so far, I can't just run off and ignore it. Especially as the game has no journal and I'll just end up forgetting about it.

Right, Ironwit here really does have a brain as dense as solid iron but I think I get what he's trying to say. I need to follow the golden path without straying onto the poisonous floor and get a key to open the spiral room. There I'll find a flying potion I need to use to get him his blueprints. There's also a poison potion in there just for a laugh and he's forgotten what colour they are, so I've got a 50/50 chance of bad times.
 

I made a running jump to reach the room with the golden path on the floor... then creatures jumped out of a door and I accidentally stepped backwards onto the poison bit. That's death number... man, I don't even know anymore. I'm pretty sure I'm getting a little sick of being kicked back to the menu screen at this point though.

After loading my last save I returned to the path, got the key for the potion room, drank the flying potion, flew over to the storage room, recovered Ironwit's blueprints and returned them to him for a reward: a flying potion. I really hope there was some XP in it for me as well.

Right, now that's done I can get back to floor 1 and get myself the mantra for some sword skills.

Actually first I need to sort out my inventory. Bags let me carry a lot more than I can fit in my 12 item slots, but they're not an ideal solution. All these sacks nested inside other sacks are a pain in the ass and I'm going to have to throw them out and move stuff around or else I'll never be able to find anything. I thought sorting through bags in Baldur's Gate was a little awkward, but this takes it to a whole new level.

I also need to lighten my load, because even with 29 strength I can only haul so much around with me. That 21 on the right side of my inventory is showing how much capacity I have left, so I'm going to try to make that number go up as high as possible by offloading anything I don't need. I've heard that items left on the floor stick around so using a convenient room as my storage room. It's just a shame that finding anything again is so awkward.

The whole inventory system is awkward in fact. It's making me miss nice sortable lists of words.

SOON

 

I'm back on floor 1 and I haven't found the shrine yet, but I have found a friendly goblin settlement! I even had a chat with the green goblin king and managed to glean a bit more about what's going on down here. Turns out that there are eight great Talismans around for me to find, so I should keep an eye out for them. Eight Talismans, eight floors in the game, might not be a coincidence.

Oh by the way, I've decided to stop hoarding all my torches and candles, and maybe try using a few of them occasionally, and it actually helps visibility a bit. Trouble is I keep forgetting to extinguish them before sleeping and they keep burning out. In my defence, how many other games have torches that burn out when you're asleep?

Alright I've cheated very slightly by checking an online map to find where the floor 1 shrine is and now I'm on my way there. I just need to stop falling in this bloody water. I don't know if Ultima Underworld invented first person platforming, but it's definitely an early example of why it's not always ideal. Especially when I bounce off walls. That's just not fair!

Oh, it turns out that the door to the shrine won't unlock and can't be punched open. Well that's just bloody great. All that jumping was pointless!

Right, I've added that to my map: "Unpunchable door".

You can see here that I've discovered an underground river with a few bridges over it, which finally solves the mystery of where that goblin fell when he walked off the edge at the start of the game! The game doesn't generally have areas above other areas though, and this is a good thing, because on the rare times it does the 2D automap starts getting a bit confusing.

The game originally came with a proper map of this first floor in the box, which is cool.

My GOG version has it too, but they've made it black and white for some reason! It's supposed to be sepia-tinted with blue rivers.

I went off exploring the level again, trying to find clues of how to get through the locked unpunchable shrine door. Turns out there's a human settlement full of people to talk to not far from Bragit, so I don't know how I missed that. I even found another town of goblins, there's a lot more friendly people living down here than you might expect. But no one was any help, so I gave up and finally looked online to figure out what to do to get through this bloody door.

There's a switch right here on the jumpy bit in front of the door! I totally didn't notice because... I don't know exactly. Might have been the awkward controls combined with the lack of visibility. There's no mouselook so I'm not really looking around much as I walk. Or jump.

Anyway I got into the shrine and found three mantras on the walls! They're the same three printed in the manual that just raise random stats. So that was all a total waste of time. Though hey at least I've filled in a bit more of the map now, which is what really matters.

LATER, ON FLOOR 3

Floor 4, that's where the sword mantra is! I just looked it up on the internet because I haven't got all week here. I don't care if I've only barely explored floors 1, 2 and 3, I'm going down there to get it... just as soon as I've figured out the combination to this door.

At least now I know where Duke Nukem 3D got its switch puzzles from.

I've found that a lot of the doors around here are actually unlocked, which works for me as it means less time spent rummaging around in my bags for the right key. Rummaging is rapidly losing its appeal for me.

Also, I've learned that when I haven't got any of the talk/pick up/use cursor modes enabled the game is in a 'default mode' that lets me grab items by just clicking and dragging. This trick also works on doors, so I've been opening them all with a flick of the mouse. It feels very natural, I'm surprised more games didn't copy it.

Oh shit, I just turned around and found these guys standing there. Looks like 5 or 6 of them crept in all around me. Is this my punishment for getting the switch puzzle wrong?

Funny thing is, even without putting skill points in swords I've gotten a lot more dangerous in combat for some reason. I took on all these skeletons without breaking a sweat (after backing off down a hallway so they could only attack me two at a time). The heavy armour and extra vitality probably helps. In fact I've been building up some proper momentum now and it's been ages since I've lost a fight.

PlayStation version

Here's the same fight in the same room in the 1997 PlayStation port, and you can see technology had improved a bit in five years. The level actually fills the screen, the skeletons are all 3D, and the action is continually interrupted by textboxes full of Japanese text I can't read, because the game only ever came out in Japan. I bet it says 'your axe has been damaged' though.

The game actually works very well on a PlayStation controller I reckon, as you control the character with the d-pad and switch to cursor mode by holding down a shoulder button. The only problem I've had with it is remembering what button is 'use item' and which is 'move item'.

It has exact same inventory as the DOS game, it's just been redrawn slightly and relocated off in its own swirly inventory dimension. Unfortunately it also has the same item bug as the DOS game, where items will start disappearing once you have too many on a level at once. It's weird, because the CD version I'm playing apparently fixed that.

FLOOR 4

I've lost the momentum again. It's hard to make steady progress when I'm at 0 inventory capacity and I keep finding interesting things. Like this book for instance. It looks interesting, maybe I'll need it. But I can't carry it without dropping something else. This is the choice I have to make every time I find treasure now. It hasn't even been that long since I last dropped things off at one of my store rooms.

I can barter with people, but that's the same thing, trading stuff for other stuff! I could really do with a proper shop. It'd also be nice if I could find the blacksmith, because my shiny new gear isn't going to last forever.

I've been playing for like 6 hours now; I just want to improve my skills, find an enchanted weapon, and maybe get slightly closer to completing my quest so I can turn the game off already! I could just look up the mantra needed to improve sword, in fact I did, but I'm not going to type it in until I've learned it in game. I'm doing this properly.

I found Doris, the woman who can teach me the art of the sword... but she's not offering any sword training at the moment. She asked me if I wanted to be a knight though. I said 'sure' and she told me to go find Dorna.

So I went off to look for Dorna. Even without a handy quest marker I was pretty sure that he's on this floor but I ended up getting sidetracked exploring floor 5, 6 and 7 before I came back and finally found the guy. Lots of lava down there, it's nasty.

The way the game's split into multiple floors like this reminds me a little Hexen's hub based levels, but this is far less annoying so far. It hasn't had me hitting switches and then wondering what I just changed for one thing.

Dorna had some tests first before I could become a knight in his order, but I basically had to say 'yes' to every question he gave me. Like "Art thou willing to sacrifice thy life to join our Order?", "Dost thou submit to our Justice?" and "Will you now drink this cup of actual poison?"

Uh... what?

Why would I willingly drink deadly poison if I wanted to join an order of knights? If I accept the drink it either means I'm suicidal or I'm willing to bet my life that the leader of the valiant knights is a liar.

Though I've been poisoned so many times so far I figured it probably wouldn't affect me even if it was genuinely lethal, so I immediately said 'yes'. If I have to drink swift and deadly poison to earn my sword skills then the poison's getting drunk!

WHAT?

Don't tell me what I did! I'll tell you what I did! I chose to drink the poison!

I tried it a few more times, picking different options, picking the same options, but it nothing worked. If I can't join the order I can't get my skills, and I am bloody determined to get these sword skills at this point. Trouble is I don't know what I've done wrong! Maybe I haven't got the necessary skills, maybe I'm not the right class, maybe the game feels I'm lacking in virtue after I stole cheese from a mouse at the start of the game, I haven't got a clue!

He did have another quest for me though, which might be an alternative path to winning him over and getting into the club. I need to speak with a guy called Biden about defeating a force of evil that's been plaguing everyone for a while now. This Chaos Knight needs a good killing and I'm the one to do it.

There he is, lurking in the dark with all of the bugs and spiders up at the top of the map (I told you I'd done a bit of exploring while trying to find Dorna).

I wasn't sure I could take down a knight with 0 skill, but I figured it worth a shot. I've gotten a bit of practice now at running backwards and forwards, timing it so I'm only near an enemy when I'm fully charged and ready to swing the blade, and I was soon raining blows down upon the Chaos Knight. The man didn't know what hit him... because nothing hit him, everything missed. Either that or it was absorbed by his armour. And it wasn't long before I got another game over.

So okay, fine, I've tried to play fair and virtuous, but I've had enough. I'm level 10, I've been to 7 floors, and I think I've done enough now to earn the right to level up my bloody weapon skill.

Damn, you can really see a lot more when you use a lantern instead of a candle.

I used the mantras I found on the internet to raise my sword skill up to 26 and my defence up to 23; partly to see if it makes a noticeable difference in combat, partly to see if I can join Dorna's order, and partly because I want to kick this Chaos Knight's ass.

Turns out that it does make a difference! I did kick the Chaos Knight's ass and went back to Dorna to tell him that his problems are over. He didn't let me join his club, but he did give me one of the eight Talismans as a reward! I honestly didn't see that coming: I've accidentally made some real progress in the main quest!

But I'm still annoyed that I basically had to cheat to do it, so I'm turning the game off now.


CONCLUSION

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Ultima Underworld: The Stygian Abyss isn't really anything new if you've played an Elder Scrolls game, or something like Prey. It's a big non-linear interconnected world you can play in, with a bit of simulation going on to let you come up with improvised solutions and make things more immersive. But I can see how it would've blown people away in 1992 (well, the people with a machine capable of running the thing anyway). I mean, this came out a year before Doom. It came out two years before Super Metroid!

But is it any fun 30 years later? I'm leaning towards... yes. It's definitely much slicker on modern hardware, though the archaic interface takes some getting used to. A bit part of the fun of these kinds of games comes from finding new loot, but that's a lot less fun when you have to rummage around a bunch of unsorted bags to find things again afterwards. It'd help if it showed more than eight items in a bag at once. Plus I'm not sure about the item durability. Weapon degradation rarely fails to bring a frown to my face, and the game kept bothering me with messages about things wearing out, but they rarely ever actually broke. The biggest effect the feature had on gameplay was that it got me hoarding duplicates of all my gear, filling up all my inventory space, just in case.

Once you've built up an inventory full of shiny things and snacks you have to keep having to make difficult decisions about what to keep and what to throw every time you find new treasure. I ended up making store rooms on each floor to dump stuff in so I could free up a bit of space in my inventory, and I had near maximum strength so I had it easier than most. You can trade with people for things, but the barter interface kind of put me off. That, plus there fact that there's no protection for key items. You really want to make sure not to lose things.

The interface also discouraged me from experimenting with magic, because of how awkward it is to use. You have have to note all the spells down yourself for one thing, though that wouldn't have been so bad if they weren't all made up from two or three weird glyphs. When you do have a spell prepared it stays there on its rune shelf and you can keep clicking it until you run out of mana, but you can't then switch to another spell without putting in the a different code again. So I basically stuck to using the armour spell for most part, switching to a weak heal spell later on. But there's a ton of spells in the game, which probably do all kinds of interesting things. You can even magically create food. Or you can go fishing instead, which basically involves pressing a button next to water a few times until it gives you a fish.

There may even be magic to teleport around, but for all the time I was playing it I had to live without fast travel. That means getting between floors involved a lot of backtracking as the stairs leading up are generally some distance away from the ones leading down. All the hiking I had to do got me worried that there might be a time limit to the game, either because of a deadline or a finite amount of resources, but it doesn't seem like there's any need to rush. It does seem like there's finite enemies though; at least I was clearing places out pretty thoroughly. Once I'd gotten a bit of momentum going anyway. It was pretty rough for the first hour or so when I was getting kicked back to the menu over and over again though.

One part of the interface that absolutely works is the automap. I love filling in maps in games like Symphony of the Night, so Underworld kept me exploring just for that. You really can just about go anywhere right from the start, running past enemies that are too hard for you, and even locked doors were rarely an issue for me. You're going to want to hit some of those enemies though if you've got ambitions of getting XP and improving skills, and the combat system... is about as good as you'd expect. It's not a game you'd play for the joy of hacking your way through monsters, though the simulation aspects let you get a tiny bit more creative with how you do it sometimes. Things can get a bit emergent. Plus you can save anywhere and it's instant, so you're not punished all that much for trying something and it failing hilariously.

Anyway, I wouldn't say this has the timelessness of something like Doom, it's clearly an awkward ancestor of Morrowind, plus there's not much of a story here and the gameplay isn't great, but you can still spend find some fun here exploring in the dark, harassing spiders and stealing boots from goblins.


Oh by the way, if you want to see a legitimate CRPG expert go in-depth on the game, CRPG Addict covered Ultima Underworld a few years back, and he's probably got a lot of interesting things to tell you about it. I didn't read it at the time (because I wanted to go in clueless and blind), but the guy reached the game the hard way, by fighting through every CRPG that came out before it, and he'll probably tell you precisely how revolutionary it was.

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Congratulations, you've done it, you've reached the end! Except not really, as there's still a comment section below. My apologies.

At least now you get to be the one inflicting words on people for a change. You could share your own thoughts on Ultima Underworld for instance. Or take a guess at what the next game will be. Those are just a couple of suggestions, you've got all kinds of options here.