The Great Ultizurkian Underland: Won! (with Summary and Rating)

 

I love how it offers no information on how to send news of your success to Dr. Dungeon.

        

The Great Ultizurkian Underland

United States

Independently developed and published

Also released as Great Ultizurkian Under-World

Several versions released for DOS, c. 1993-1995

Date Started: 1 November 2024

Date Ended: 7 December 2024

Total Hours: 12

Difficulty: Easy (2.0/5)

Final Rating: (to come later)

Ranking at time of posting: (to come later)   

       

Summary:

     

As its name suggests, this 16th entry (only the third with graphics, though) in a long-running series by "Dr. Dungeon" plays a lot like an Ultima title, with an iconographic interface, turn-based combat, keyboard commands, and keyword-based dialogues with NPCs. The game is set in a multi-leveled volcano in which the people have become restless and suspicious, sensing some new evil. The protagonist, a Guildmaster summoned from his world to this one, must investigate and make things right. The game has an inevitable amateurish quality, but it does a few things reasonably well and is a clear step up from Dr. Dungeon's previous graphical efforts in Ultizurk I and II.

    

*****

 

Trigger Warning: A screenshot later in this entry may trigger a seizure in people with epilepsy. The rest of you, it will just make you want to kill yourself.

    

Thanks go to commenter Showsni (who has been with us since 2013) for getting me unstuck after the last session. I had been moving around the dungeon with the B)link command, so I wasn't paying much attention to ladders. If I had been, I would have noticed that there were three ladders on Level 4, one up and two down. One goes to Level 5, which I had explored, but the other goes to what the game calls Level 11. 

   

Before I got Showsni's comment, I obtained the last two spells. To get "gossomar" silk, you have to T)alk to the gravestones that appear at night on Level 5, not try to dig them up. If you speak to them, a ghost will give you the silk. Spirit jelly appears copiously at night on Level 4.

     

I originally mistook it for a blob of something else.

        

Unfortunately, the last spells were worthless. "Ghost Kill" only helps if you're fighting ghosts on Level 4; I finished with that ages ago. "Magic Map" creates a smaller, less readable, less informative version of the same map you get with the M)ap command anyway. I'm completely baffled as to why it even exists.

        

There is nothing magical about this.

      

Unless I missed something, there's no lore in the game about Level 11. It has no enemies or NPCs, just some empty houses dispersed among some large, snowy areas that you cannot cross without a grapple. The game forces you to equip the grapple like a weapon and then U)se the ground, a rather counterintuitive solution. It also doesn't make a lot of sense. In the Ultima and Questron series, you crossed mountain ranges with a grapple, not expanses of tundra. You'd think that would be a job for snow shoes or spiked boots or something.

   

The only reason for this level.

Anyway, the entire purpose of the level is to bring you to a single magically-locked chest in a single house. It has an ice diamond in it.

   

I took the diamond to the smith on Level 1, who said he could "compress" it but the other smith on Level 8, Ben, would have to cut it into a sword blank. On Level 8, that's what Ben did, before telling me that to finish the sword, I would have to dip it into a magical well. I remembered a well on the back side of the palace on Level 2. I took the sword blank there, used it, and ended up with a magic "Soulsbane" sword in my inventory. Again, there's a chain of illogic here: diamonds can't really be compressed by medieval technology; they are compressed carbon. And how could one possibly be large enough to cut into a sword blank? On the other hand, I guess maybe it's not a real diamond but an "ice-diamond," whatever that is. In Icewind Dale, there's a dwarven smith who somehow forges ice into weapons, which makes about as much sense.

    

Yes. That's how wells work.

      

The bill-guisarme, the best weapon in the game, has an attack value of 30. The diamond sword has an attack value of 90. Ironically, I never used it as a weapon. I just needed it to get past the iron door on Level 9, where you have to have the greatest in offense and defense. I tried to use it as a weapon on the cyclopes, as one of the Lycaeum books questioned whether Soulsbane could allow a human-sized character to kill a cyclops, but the game still insisted the cyclops was too strong.

   

Behind the iron door was a ladder to Level 10, which turned out to be a series of disconnected corridors and rooms accessed by invisible teleporters. The goal was to reach the room with the rainbow pool with 5 magical orbs, all hidden in treasure chests on the level.

   

Finding one of the orbs.

     

Finding the orbs isn't the hard part; it's finding the teleporters that connect you between areas. Then there are a few switch puzzles, but  none of them are difficult.

     

Each switch in the lower right opened a different door in the corridor.

    

In the end, I arranged the five magic orbs around the pool and then used the rainbow potion on the pool. This kicked the endgame sequence into gear.

      

Just before using the potion.

        

The screen flashed a bunch of times, and then some text appeared: "You hurl the potion into the pool . . . too late! With all hope lost . . . you gaze into the pool . . . to witness . . . the arrival of . . . THE RAINBOW LORD!"

      

This is the most terrifying enemy I've ever faced. Gah! I surrender!

        

Now you might be about to object—as I planned to, in great length—that "Rainbow Lord" doesn't quite have the menacing connotation that the game intends. You might be inclined to say that he sounds less like an inter-dimensional villain and more like someone who would be perched in the lead float at a pride parade. Well, read on.

    

After solidifying his appearance into something metallic, with red eyes, the Rainbow Lord had a little speech, delivered one phrase at a time at the bottom of the screen:

    

The potion is useless, my friend. Just a legend after all. So . . . you are the one seeking my doom? Anxious to destroy? Why do ye this? Art thou frightened by my form? How knoweth ye mine purpose? Why dost thou think me evil? Behold! I shalt explain myself! I come from far off. I seeketh peaceful contact with new races. But the unknown can often breed fear and concern until one's purpose be clear.

             

The cyclops don't think it be like it is, but it do.

         

The cyclops feared that I controlled them. But a poison in their water be the true cause! I hath cleansed this for them! The spirit daemons fear that I come for war. So war they make! Sir John falls to the lure of magic power and blames ME for it! The people fear the unknown and guilds and legends art formed. The face of the unseen my friend is often an ugly one, until thou realize that every friend was once a stranger.

   

The game goes on to explain that the Rainbow Lord took on a more human form and he and the Guildmaster went up to Level 9. They met Lord Rockmasher of the cyclopes and brought him up to Level 8. They continued the parade all the way up to the top level, gathering Lord Henry, QUeen Melissa, and Lord Baldwin, and even the spirit daemons along the way. At the top level, they all had a great feast, and the Rainbow Lord himself—I swear I am not making this up—carved the roast beast.

       

All we needed here is Sir John saying, "And god bless us, every one."

       

Now lest you think I have no sense of humor at all, rest assured that I had the goofiest smile on my face as the game came to a close. I don't know how much of this sequence was intentionally silly and how much was accidentally silly, but either way, I like it. It turns Ultima's Guardian on its head and has a good message, perfect for the season in which I was playing it.

   

Obviously, there are some flaws. If the Rainbow Lord cured the cyclopes' poisoned water, why were they still attacking me? And his story about what happened to Sir John is still a little suspect. I half wonder if the next Ultizurk game isn't going to have us rescuing the Underland from the Rainbow Lord, who eventually threw off his kill-them-with-kindness approach and became a tyrant.

            

Maybe I didn't do such a wonderful thing after all.

            

As for that next game, Dr. Dungeon has a preview for it when you close out of this version of Ultizurk. It's to be called Ultizurk III: The GuildMaster's Quest. Judging by the screenshots, he has managed to create a passable clone of the Ultima VI interface and has at least improved his approach to character portraits. We'll see the first part in 1994, which I will eventually reach.

      

One out of two portraits being bad is an improvement on this game.

     

In a GIMLET, I give The Great Ultizurkian Underland:

    

• 4 points for the game world. It adopts themes from other games, but those themes haven't been adopted excessively, and it has its own twists.

• 2 points for character creation and development. There is no creation. Development is at times rewarding, but the need for traditional RPG development occupies only a small part of the game.

• 3 points for NPC interaction. I always like keywords. Dr. Dungeon just needs to work on differentiating his NPCs more and giving them more personality.

• 3 points for encounters and foes. The monsters are nothing special, but the game has some decent puzzles.

• 2 points for magic and combat. It gets most of that score for some of the unusual magic effects. Combat is relatively boring, with too few tactics, and Dr. Dungeon still hasn't figured out how to program combat spells.

    

Acquiring the final spell.

     

• 3 points for equipment. You get four equipment slots and lots of usable items and quest-related items. 

• 4 points for the economy. It holds up through most of the game. Only a lack of complexity keeps it from rating higher.

• 2 points for a main quest with no side quests.

• 1 point for graphics, sound, and interface. Definitely not the strong suit. The icons attempt too much detail; other graphics are howlingly bad; the sound is actively offensive. While the inventory interface works well and the map view is appreciated, there are continuous issues with buffering and timing throughout.

• 4 points for gameplay. It has limited nonlinearity and a modest challenge and length.

        

That doesn't tell me anything. I'm the Guildmaster. All of these games are my quests.

      

That gives us a final score of 28. That seems right. I can't quite recommend it, but it's a clear improvement over the first two games, which I gave 19 and 17, and there are times it provides a decent Ultima IV/V/VI-style experience: explore, talk, piece together clues, fight monsters, level up. So let's be thankful to Dr. Dungeon and his many odd games and remember that it really is a wonderful life.