The CRPG Addict has, over the course of three new blog posts, finished his playthrough of Ultima Underworld. In the first, he reached the seventh level of the Abyss…which he was not a fan of:

Level 7 was just an awful experience. I mean, more so for the character than the player, but still. In contrast to the openness of previous levels, it had a ton of sectioned areas largely inaccessible from each other and one-way paths and doors. Where previous levels were largely solvable from within the level, solving the main puzzles of Level 7 required me to dip down into Level 8 (which seems to be even more partitioned). And in addition to the lack of mana, there were plenty of places in the level where health just disappeared for no reason, often killing me. I think I had more reloads on Level 7 than the entire game combined leading up to it.

Oh, and he also encountered a rather bad inventory bug during his first attempt at the level, which necessitated a reload from an earlier save game.

At any rate, he happened upon Tyball and Ariel, much to his surprise; he had been expecting to encounter them on the eighth level of the Abyss. Instead, he ended up somewhat confused:

I don’t mind saying I’m a bit confused here. Tyball was trying to “save Britannia”–from a demon he freed in the first place? Why just, you know, not free it? And why go through all the trouble of kidnapping the princess to bind it? Why not just grab some poor fool who was already in the abyss?

The answers died with him. He left two keys, one of which opened the portcullis (again, how?) and freed the princess. She fortuitously had an “Amulet of Travel” that she could use to flee the Abyss and warn the populace to flee the island. After a quick speech, she took off.

All became clear soon enough as to what the real ending of the game would be, and the Addict was able to complete the game in his next play session.

He has also written his final review of the game, and scored it…quite well, actually:

That gives us a final score of . . . drum roll . . . 62. Ah, well. Not technically enough to unseat Ultima V (69), Ultima VI (68), or even Pool of Radiance (65). On the other hand I rated the “newest” of those games 4 years ago, and 62 is within the margin of error for how my rating approach may have evolved. I wouldn’t fret too much about it. It’s at least made the average for its year, as of now, the highest yearly average we’ve seen so far. Perhaps more telling, Ultima Underworld is one of only two games–the other is Ultima VI–in which every score is at least a 5. It could have done a few things a little better, but it didn’t do anything truly bad.

One looks forward to the next time that the Addict plays through an Ultima game. Though for now, he has moved on to other titles.