Indie Swords and Sorcery - Underworld: Definitive Edition

[Riptides]

Still pondering. I'm fond of grid-based movement and turn-based combat, but want branching mage classes and a larger spell pool, similar to those of Devil Whiskey.

 

[commie]

Thanks Charles! Got my Steam key in the email along with a DRM free link as always. You come through yet again.

Now to fuck up that retard 'review' about getting killed by a Drake in the Tavern....git gud faggit!

 

[Jaesun]

I already had a copy of the old version, but I bought a copy of the new version just to support you Charles.

 

[Charles-cgr]

Still pondering. I'm fond of grid-based movement and turn-based combat, but want branching mage classes and a larger spell pool, similar to those of Devil Whiskey.

You'll have to wait for the sequel for something like that I'm afraid. It's nice that you're considering t though.

I already had a copy of the old version, but I bought a copy of the new version just to support you Charles.

Thanks Jaesun. Did you get the update email? I just saw it bounced for 5 people and someone with your handle is in the list. Jaesun isn't very common.

VentilatorOfDoom is in that list too.

 

[udm]

Still pondering. I'm fond of grid-based movement and turn-based combat, but want branching mage classes and a larger spell pool, similar to those of Devil Whiskey.

You'll have to wait for the sequel for something like that I'm afraid. It's nice that you're considering t though.

Does this mean S&S2 will use a modified system? Do you have a list of changes somewhere that I can read?

 

[Charles-cgr]

Still pondering. I'm fond of grid-based movement and turn-based combat, but want branching mage classes and a larger spell pool, similar to those of Devil Whiskey.

You'll have to wait for the sequel for something like that I'm afraid. It's nice that you're considering t though.

Does this mean S&S2 will use a modified system? Do you have a list of changes somewhere that I can read?

Magic system will be completely different, much more like MM6 where you need to go out there to earn or buy the spells. I haven't posted about it publicly yet. This old conversation with Rune_74 gives a pretty good idea though.

http://www.olderbytes.com/community/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=279

 

[udm]

Played about 20 minutes of it. Love the interface improvements over the 2nd edition of S&S. Portraits are sweet, as are the new music tracks.

Some feedback, mainly pertaining to interface since not much has changed with the game's mechanics:
- Auto-attack icon's text isn't in the box
- Would there be a better way to differentiate "active character" from "unconscious character"? Like maybe having a yellow box around the active character
- I always get a laugh out of the "BSSH OOF PLOP" sound when characters fail lockpicking attempts. Could there be something more suitable for it?

Also, out of curiosity, has the tavern map been altered to include more rooms as a training ground of sorts? I don't recall that many rooms in the previous version, but that was many years ago.

Thanks again for the awesome game, Charles!

 

[Charles-cgr]

Played about 20 minutes of it. Love the interface improvements over the 2nd edition of S&S. Portraits are sweet, as are the new music tracks.

Some feedback, mainly pertaining to interface since not much has changed with the game's mechanics:
- Auto-attack icon's text isn't in the box
- Would there be a better way to differentiate "active character" from "unconscious character"? Like maybe having a yellow box around the active character
- I always get a laugh out of the "BSSH OOF PLOP" sound when characters fail lockpicking attempts. Could there be something more suitable for it?

Also, out of curiosity, has the tavern map been altered to include more rooms as a training ground of sorts? I don't recall that many rooms in the previous version, but that was many years ago.

Thanks again for the awesome game, Charles!

The tavern hasn't changed actually.
I suppose I really should add CTRL-A... It's a big ugly blot but I suppose it needs to be consistent.
The active character's name is yellow. I suppose a box might be clearer. I'll see how it looks though before I decide.
But I like that unlock fail sound effect

Thanks for your feedback!

 

[Jaesun]

Oh gawd, I forgot how fucking BRUTAL the beginning of this game is.

 

[Charles-cgr]

Oh gawd, I forgot how fucking BRUTAL the beginning of this game is.

Naah i added endurance it's too easy now :D

edit - Did you get the v1.0.8 update email?

 

[commie]

Charles has fixed more bugs and microissues in the last 48 hours than Cleve managed in the last 15 years!

 

[RuySan]

Is this game more Bards Tale, Wizardry or Might & Magic?

There are so many good games being released on the lately that I must set my priorities.

 

[Charles-cgr]

Is this game more Bards Tale, Wizardry or Might & Magic?

There are so many good games being released on the lately that I must set my priorities.

Most like Might and Magic, definitely.

 

[RuySan]

Most like Might and Magic, definitely.

Right answer!

 

[Jaesun]

edit - Did you get the v1.0.8 update email?

Yes I did, thank you. Current email address is all good.

 

[Bubbles]

I'm 15 hours in so far (including a restart, high starting End is much more important than I thought), currently collecting glowing fish after pulling the sword from the stone.

I love the game so far; it's probably the best blobber of the past 15 years or so. The two biggest problems I have are 1) a recurrent bug where I try to cast a spell, get to the "target selection" screen, and the UI becomes completely unresponsive, forcing me to restart the game, and 2) the way temporary stat buffs are handled during level-up. I got the impression (possibly just a mistake due to the Luck factor) that temporary end/int/spt buffs improve your stat pool gains during level-up, which encourages a slightly boring item-shuffling game every time I level.

But other than that, the game is solid gold. It should have sold much better than MMX imho.

 

[Infinitron]

What's good about it?

 

[Jaesun]

What's good about it?

The combat is really well done. From what I remember (and what I enjoyed about it). Those first couple of levels are fucking brutal though, but END definitely helps though.

 

[Bubbles]

What's good about it?

Fun puzzles, very good sense of challenge (it's almost exactly the right difficulty level for me, where one wrong move can cause a party wipe - although it's started to get noticeably easier now), lots of tough optional encounters and bosses, good enemy variety, a strong sense of finding new types of challenges (for the first ~12 hours at least), plenty of hyper-powerful (but almost necessary) unique items hidden around or unlocked through solving puzzles (especially nice: mind reading enemies in combat can give you quest clues), item qualities that seem to be hand made instead of randomly generated (although placement seems semi-random), a good sense of trade-offs when choosing character stats and equipment, plenty of interesting status effects, a fun and intricate positioning system, and very little hand-holding in terms of quest and area design.

The game also takes a fairly nebulous approach to things like resistances and to-hit rolls: many important stats are not made explicit through numbers, but rather described in terms like "this amulet causes you to take less damage from the undead" or "this ring constantly distracts your mind, increasing your resistance to mind control effects by +???" I usually like to crunch numbers to optimize stats, but here I have to learn about the game by fighting battles, trying different approaches, and figuring out what works best; I think that actually works quite well.

Looking at videos of the original version, the Definitive Edition also seems like a enormous improvement in terms of usability; I don't think I could stomach playing the original for very long, but this version is highly addictive.

 

[Bubbles]

Alright, finished. The playthrough took me 19 hours, and I'm pretty sure I explored everything on every map. Final thoughts:

- the first 12 hours or so (until about the point when you can buy equipment at the Dwarf town) are by far the best part of the game; shortly after that point, I noticed combat difficulty drop dramatically, thanks to getting much stronger gear and unlocking a bevy of high-damage AoE skills and spells, as well as totally overpowered sleep/imprison abilities on my thief and wizard. Even when I made sure not to abuse the disabling abilities, combat became a total joke very quickly; most battles were over by the second round, with the party taking little to no damage. Monster difficulty improved a little in the boss battles of the final areas, but by then I no longer found the battles very interesting.

- One major problem - probably the biggest - with the current enemy design is that status effect resistances and immunities are far too rare. Hard disables had an almost 100% chance of working on the vast majority of monsters I encountered; that's just ridiculous. I could even stunlock the final boss to death. Similarly, being able to burn fire elementals to death does feel a little stupid; I would have preferred to see noticeable elemental resistances and immunities on enemies, forcing me to regularly mix things up a bit.

- To an extent, the problem with hard disables also applies to the party itself: when I ran into a battle that featured a lot of tricksters (by far the most challenging enemies in the final third), I often found my party would be completely locked down and killed without me being able to take a single action. My solution to these types of battle was to increase the Speed stat on my archer, which allowed him to take the first action and wipe out all the tricksters with a single AOE shot. That's typical for the later third of Underworld: either I steamrolled the enemy, or I got locked down by crowd controllers.

- I think equipment choices could stand to be a bit more varied and strategic, especially when it comes to resistances; it would be nice if, for example, you could buy a bunch of fire resistant gear somewhere before heading to the fire elemental plane.

- another problem are resource pools: after a certain point, they became functionally infinite. My casters could cast dozens of top-level spells in every battle - not that any engagement lasted that long, but still, nice to have -, then teleport the party straight to the inn, get everything refilled for free, and return straight back to the battlefield. Since battles in Underworld are generally short, I suspect that resource scarcity was never a core part of the design to begin with; unfortunately, this leads to a lack of complexity, where every spell caster just spams their two main AoE and single target damage options and (if available) their main healing spell with no incentive to ever use the weaker, cheaper options.

- my favourite element of the end game were the puzzles, which made for a nice diversion, although they were by no means difficult. It's to the game's credit that I could ignore how simplistic the combat had become and just march onward to see how the next level was designed. That said, I do have a beef with the sword-in-the-stone puzzle, which was a little too hint-rich; IIRC, there are three or four places where you can pretty much get the name delivered to you on a silver platter, and figuring it out by myself was much more fun.

- I do feel that Underworld was strongly above average for a modern blobber, partially because of the very good early-to-mid-game, and partially because the fast, auto-resolvable battles kept the endgame tedium to a minimum. LoX had similar issues with battles that basically couldn't be lost, but which could still take several minutes to chew through. In Underworld, it's rare that a late game battle lasts more than 30 seconds.

- about the next game: I read a comment from Charles that he kept the monster difficulty in Underworld's endgame deliberately low, so that people who rushed through the areas and avoided optional content could still finish the game on the "main path". I think that ambition may have been a bit wrong headed; looking at the mainstream reviews on metacritic and the negative reviews on Steam, I'd say that the relatively difficult early game already turned off most of the mainstream "don't wanna explore, let's just rush the main quest" gamers long before they ever reached those final areas. For the sequel, I think it would be better to deliver a consistent experience; an easy mode (modelled after the final third) for the people who don't like to explore and do side quests, and a hard mode (modelled after the beginning, possible even a little bit harder) for those who do.

- and finally, bug reports:

Spoiler

- in the Mausoleum with the ghosts, I freed the dude first, and then went to talk to the woman. She immidately considered the quest to be completed and gave me the amulet, even though I hadn't brought down her force field yet.

- I had a lot of interface lock-ups throughout the game, especially when I spammed the "U" key to unlock a door (by the way, this whole mechanic utterly pointless as currently implemented) and when I cast the chain lightning spell with my wizard and got to the "choose a target" screen. The game became completely unresponsive to keyboard commands, and had to be manually shut down.

 

[V_K]

What about encounter frequency, is it still through the roof?

 

[Bubbles]

What about encounter frequency, is it still through the roof?

I'd say it's high, but manageable; the high frequency fits the fast pace of combat. In the elf city, I had a random encounter about once every 10 squares or so. The end game actually features more hand placed enemies and fewer random encounters - some of the areas don't even have random spawns.

 

[Charles-cgr]

Thanks for the insight Bubbles . I'm out of town for a few days so responding quickly with a phone but I'll look into a final update (at least for the bugs) when I get back.

 

[Morkar Left]

It's a bit embarrassing but how do I enter the sewers? Yes, I mean in the starting town.

 

[Bubbles]

It's a bit embarrassing but how do I enter the sewers? Yes, I mean in the starting town.

Spoiler

If you mean the catacombs, it's the tavern in the west of town