Ultima Underworld 2

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Ultima Underworld 2 (hereafter: UW2) improved upon the first game in nearly every way. Sprightlier graphics, deeper gameplay, a larger view window and generally more fun. The maker of the first game, Looking Glass, who sadly are no longer with us, made some landmark games in their times and this was the first of them.

This time around, the Avatar is in Castle Britain when the Guardian pulls off his evil nastiness. He’s surrounded the Castle with an inpenetrable blackrock cocoon (for want of a better word). It’s up to you, Avatar, to undo this and defeat Big Red’s plans. Like UW1, the game is from a 3D perspective and you use mouse and keyboard to move around and interact with the world…or worlds.

This time around, you aren’t limited to Britannia. Your quest to defeat the Guardian will take you to a myriad of locales, such as Talorus, Killorn Keep, the Pits of Carnage and the Ethereal Void to name a few. The game is a lot more puzzle-heavy than the first one and you’ll spend a lot of time solving them. This is one of the game’s few minuses IMHO. There’s a lot of going back and forward from places and it does get somewhat old. Still, it’s all very minor.

Co-operation with NPC’s in the world is important. Like UW1, you just can’t go and kill everything that moves. Well you can, but why bother? The story is event-driven, so things need to happen before the game proceeds. You will hit brick walls in the game occasionally as some of the puzzles are devious to high hell.

UW2 box

The spell system is almost identical to the first game. You begin with a certain amount of runes depending on the class you chose; the rest you discover in your adventures and some are a downright horror to find.

Some of the locations in the game are worth mentioning; Killorn Keep which seems to be a mirror image of Castle Britain, complete with a Dupré wannabe in Lobar and a Lord Thibris (British).

The Keep is actually a flying castle a la Laputa in a world thoroughly under the Guardian’s sway. Then you have Talorus, a weirdsville if there ever was one. The Tomb of Praecor Loth is an ominous place full of dire traps and difficult monsters. Anodunos, the ruined ice city laid waste by the Guardian with only sad Beatrice the ghost left.

Without a walkthrough, this game will take the average gamer some time to complete. The complexity of the main quest and the difficulty of the puzzles may throw off the action crowd a little.

I got a major sense of accomplishment when I completed UW2. The game is that captivating. It continually gets voted in all-time Top 10′s of best games ever made (as does UW1 on occasion). It’s easily the best CRPG I’ve played to date. Rumour has it that Arx Fatalis sort of picks up where this game left off, at least design wise. There’s a bunch of hearsay circulating that Underworld 3 was planned but alas the game never saw the light of day. No matter, we have System Shock 1 to make up for it!

British and the Avatar
Level design

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Games · Fantasy