Let's get this straight. This game has been called the worst immersive sim ever made, and rightly so. But I have seen worse, and I enjoyed Underworld Ascendant despite all its flaws. I don't actually recommend it, because people are vastly different in their taste, and Underworld Ascendant is extremely niche, while also being a bad example as an immersive sim. But it's my kind of niche.
The story is a non-existent confusing mess (maybe i'm dumb though). You begin by "waking up in a different place than you are used to", and there's some kind of ghost telling you what to do in the beginning. It took me a while to understand the structure of the game - and that there's this voice (the ghost?) - speaking after finishing a mission, which I thought was just some random commentator. He just wanted to let me know that monsters have respawned, but I didn't get the message at first. Then there's the Tempus Modus which is self explanatory (joking, it resets the doom counter). Luckily, it all becomes clear as you finish mission objectives.
Jumping, mantling, and fighting all feels floaty and clunky. While that can seem like something bad, it also adds some charm. This game feels like a dungeon crawler, and as such you naturally take it slow. Everything is slow, and that's actually something I like. You enounter an enemy here and there, but never a whole group (well, they become more plentyful later on, but you can take them on one by one). You can figure things out at your own pace and plan accordingly.
The atmosphere (including audio design) and the level design is great, and I love fooling around in an underground world like this. Exploration is at the core of the gameplay, which is a quality I love and cherish, and extremely rare in video games. It's that important to me, that it's the main reasons why I give this a positive review.
There are plenty of bugs, and here's a list of what I've found:
1. The thread that runs the script for all monsters seems to crash during some sessions (this is a wild guess from my part regarding the technicalities). It results in idle enemies that don't react to anything you do. They just stand there, while you punch them.
2. Something with the culling of objects... There was one doorway which I couldn't see again once I went through and turned around - it was just a wall. There were objects like traps, doors and such that glitched and disappeared/reappeared depending on my perspective.
3. After accepting my second-to-last mission, I traded and bought some arrows, health potions and stuff. Suddenly, out of nowhere, I got a Steam achievement for aquiring a key item without being detected, and I finished the entire mission. Just like that.
So there you have it. Buy it and play it only if you want to enjoy the atmosphere and have the cozy experience of exploring dungeons. Other than that, I would stay away from it.
