Underworld Ascendant

Six years old and still pre-Alpha at best. I'm sorry, like so many I wanted to like this and wanted to support a new entry in the Ultima: Underworld series but jfc, everything looks and feels so bad to play. Something as simple as swinging your arms causes them to clip out of frame, fire sources have no visuals, textures pop in and out of existence, the magic system is unintuitive, the enemies are dumb, the list goes on. What even is here that I can recommend? It's just unfinished. There are games with substantially smaller teams and smaller budgets who have produced much higher quality RPG's - what did Otherside hope to accomplish by releasing this in the state that it's in? Plenty of indie games that are visually and mechanically simple but make up for it with competence, and even buggy games like Masquarde: Bloodlines had charm and passion fueling them... what fueled this? Hell even notoriously bad sequels like Might&Magic 9 had the excuse that the company was literally going out of business and they had to wrap it up as quickly as possible before the lights went out. What can explain something like this beings created and shipped out other then just pure laziness and apathy?

I don't know what happened in development, but somehow the people behind Ultima Underworld, Thief, and System Shock made a really crap game. It tries to bring back some of that open-ended gameplay, but it's dragged down by a god awful physics engine that affects everything from the clunky character movement to buggy ragdoll combat. The art assets vary from maybe kind of pretty to cheap mobile game tier. And even the actual design ideas seem to boil down to them just thinking that stacking box puzzles and lore/hints scribbled over every wall are the pinnacle of creativity.

Starts with a lot of promising immersive sim stuff and then none of it comes together. - Stoopid AI that is sometimes also broken or hyper-aware of the player, and never a threat unless you decide to actually fight it - The bad AI makes sneaking pointless. You can run by most enemies, and no amount of sneaking will prevent some from seeing you from a mile away - If you do decide to fight, then the melee combat is boring, and both magic and stealth kills require some serious grinding to unlock the requisite perks to make them reliable - The magic system is expansive but not particularly useful due a ton of hyper-niche spells that clutter up a huge list of potential selections, a limited mana pool that is annoying to try to refill, and the entire system relies on the player doing a lot of time-consuming leveling and fiddling around to see what is even possible (I didn't even get all the runes by the end of the game, so who knows what I missed :/). - Physics that are so finicky that you'll step on a loose board and suddenly get catapulted somewhere not good, or a loose coffin lid that will flip up and crush you - The physics also lead to traversal that is frustrated by the results of every action being semi-unpredictable--ranging from fiddly climbing and mantling, to the player's slippery shoes screwing up a running start across the uneven surface of a wooden platform, which messes up the momentum when they jump and causes them to drop into the abyss - Tons of fire interactions with wood that are rarely a good idea to indulge in because it'll destroy platforms that you will wish still existed - Level design that ranges from Thief-levels of intrigue to Deus Ex: Invisible War-levels of tedium - Random sidequests that try to reuse the sometimes-great level design but end up being too rote and uninteresting to be anything but dragging you through somewhere you've probably already explored to do some boring crap - An economy that ends up not mattering - Loot that stops having a point around the third level - Lore that is told through a series of goofy graffitis on the wall and memos you can pick up and read, which rely on a bunch of fantasy names that are hard to keep track of and ultimately manage to only tell the player the same thing over and over - Annoying NPCs that have annoying barks that tell you nothing interesting about the game's world Respect to the team for trying to make something so ambitious, and sad to see all of its bits and pieces be undone by so many of them feeling so frustrating and unnecessary to try to engage with, to the point where it makes more sense to engage with as little as possible.

This games is not, and will never be, what the kickstarter promised. The only reason I even remembered it existed was because I scrolled to the bottom of my game list this decade. Shame on OtherSide.

Quite possible the least fun you'll ever have. Nothing feels good. Movement. Combat. Stealth. Art Style. The magic system. It's all awkward and NOT AT ALL fun.

I recommend this only for super-mega fans of old Looking Glass studios games (Thief 1/2, System Shock 1/2, Deus Ex) who can look past some jank. It isn't anywhere near the quality of their classic titles but there is an interesting and (barely) functional game here. Technical problems still exist but this is in a playable state and has some unique mechanics. I get that they were going for "realism" with the physics, but they are quite buggy and you can often take damage or die from things like running into a crate or door with too much momentum, and climbing on stacks of multiple objects usually sends the whole stack careening across the room. The leveling system consists of completing "feats" and/or side-missions which is rather un-intuitive but once I leveled a bit and collected higher-level equipment this all started to click. Overall this feels like an experimental Thief fan-mission collection with a rudimentary RPG system bolted on, it's not great but I've somehow been enjoying it.

I think this is the only Steam game I ever refunded. I impulse bought it while it was heavily discounted based on the pedigree of its creators and was unaware of its initial production woes/reception. But even after some updates, a lot of those issues were still present, and a lot of things that seemed to be in the description when I bought it were just not a thing in the game. The enemy AI really is interesting, the best way to fight seems to be to go up some stairs or around a corner, which the enemy will then get stuck on. Quite a few walls, you can kind of just glitchwalk up them like in Double Dragon 1 on the NES instead of solving their respective puzzles.

This game should not be bought. There are major bugs that block quests with no way out. This game was around $35 and after a few of hours of playing, some door was locked that shouldn't be and the game was bricked. I looked in the forum for an answer and everyone wsa complaining about this problem. The only known solution was to delete all you saves, make a new character, and go through the entire game again to that point and hope it doesn't happen again. The bug was 6 years old and the devs in the forum had no answer and then the dev abandoned the game completely. I tried to get my money back from steam and they said that it was past 2 hours so they wanted to keep the money even though they know and acknowledge that the game is unplayable and bricked. I got this because I love the older Ultima Series and it was completely different anyways. It's not an open world and it's more like an action game or a bad doom clone. Nothing to do with the old Ultima or Underworld series. I highly suggest not buying this one.

WORST DAMNED PHYSICS ENGINE EVER! I kickstarted this game and have tried time and time again to come back to this game to TRY and like it because I loved the original 2 Underworld games in the Ultima Series, which the idea and creators hail from. Many "puzzles" offer low reward prizes for insanely difficult solutions that should be simple "stack and climb" where you could drag a 220 lbs table across a room and stack a box on top of it to climb on, but while you drag the table, it throws you, the player, every which direction, including back and threw the table, opposite where you want to go. and then, if you do get the 220lb table and the 40 lbs box stacked up on each other, you climb up on the table and it slides IMMEDIATELY away from you while you stand atop it. Honestly, the game can be fun, the combat system isn't bad, but the physic engine RUINS the game. push up against a wall fighting a skeleton and then suddenly, you are GLIDING along the dirt floor like it is ice instead of stopping... oh and look at that, you air glide right off the edge into lava. Seriously have uninstalled and reinstalled at least 7 times WANTING to like this game... I can't do it.

I’ve always been a huge fan of the Ultima series. Although I haven’t completed every installment, I’ve played most of them extensively. So when I first heard about Ultima Ascendant, it immediately caught my attention. After reading a few reviews mentioning technical issues, I was still eager to experience it for myself. After spending some time with the game, I found that it has a solid foundation. The story and core systems are engaging, the graphics are impressive, and the physics and environmental interactions are generally satisfying. There’s clearly a lot of potential here. However, the experience is held back by some noticeable flaws. I encountered several bugs, particularly related to map clipping, which disrupted immersion. Additionally, the combat system felt somewhat dull and lacking in depth, making encounters less enjoyable than they should be. In my opinion, Ultima Ascendant feels like it could have been a great game with more polish. With continued developer support and refinement to address these rough edges, it could evolve into a much stronger experience.