Descent to Undermountain looks pretty good.

[eric__s]

This is the first good footage of Descent to Undermountain I've seen and it looks pretty good. I had no idea the game was an actual RPG, I thought it was a first person shooter that took place in the Forgotten Realms setting. The variety of NPCs and dialogue and quest options is pretty cool and you can tell immediately that this is a Chris Avellone game. There isn't really enough combat footage to tell whether or not it's good, but it looks comparable to Arena or Ultima Underworld. The exploration and dungeon design definitely surpasses Arena's.

Has anyone here played it? I see the game maligned constantly but I've never met anyone who's played it. What do people dislike about it? I've heard it's buggy - was this ever ironed out in patches? What are your thoughts? Is it worth trying out? It seems pretty interesting and way different from what I expected and I'm thinking of trying it out if I can find it anywhere.

 

[St Antony of Padua]

This portrait makes the game worthy of a playthrough.

 

[zwanzig_zwoelf]

And I've posted a shot a couple of hours ago.
The game is good, but bugged as hell. If you can live with crappy combat and poor performance - you will probably enjoy it.

 

[Zep Zepo]

I've played this to the end back in the day. Looking at the video, I remember almost nothing about the game. If you would have shown me that video, hiding the title, I would never known I've played it.

The only thing I remember about the game is, killing things they would just sometimes float in the air instead of falling to the ground.

Since I played it and don't remember anything good about it....



Zep--

 

[Deuce Traveler]

And I've posted a shot a couple of hours ago.
The game is good, but bugged as hell. If you can live with crappy combat and poor performance - you will probably enjoy it.

How can the game be good if the combat system is crap? NWN 2 does C&C well, has an interesting storyline, and a solid cast of characters, but I would consider it a bad game because the combat is crap as it is tied to the Aurora engine.

Is character creation and puzzle solving so outstanding in Descent to Undermountain that it overcomes the crap combat and makes the overall experience a good game? I was told to avoid this turd.

 

[zwanzig_zwoelf]

And I've posted a shot a couple of hours ago.
The game is good, but bugged as hell. If you can live with crappy combat and poor performance - you will probably enjoy it.

How can the game be good if the combat system is crap? NWN 2 does C&C well, has an interesting storyline, and a solid cast of characters, but I would consider it a bad game because the combat is crap as it is tied to the Aurora engine.

Is character creation and puzzle solving so outstanding in Descent to Undermountain that it overcomes the crap combat and makes the overall experience a good game? I was told to avoid this turd.

I was told so too, but I'd recommend to try it. The combat for me is crappy because of clunkiness, but as I told somewhere, those kind of mechanics are quite appealing to me.

 

[warmonger3]

I dug up a download link but its slow as molasses and its an .exe extension at 429 MB. If I am successful with the download and the .exe is clean, I'll post.
I believe I've played it (1998-99) and really wanted to like it but the collision detection drove me to murder if I remember right. I spent the next 13 years in prison dreaming about Grimoire.
23 hours remaining.

 

[villain of the story]

I was gifted this back in the day. There was a problem with the CD, driver could never read it. I replaced it with another game. Thankfully.

 

[Infinitron]

When will Hasbro finally put this and all the other pre-BG D&D games on GOG?

 

[taxalot]

Considering this game is supposedly a total mess, I am sure that'd be asking for more trouble than it is worth. Especially with today's customers who can't even stand a few bugs, bah, sissies.

 

[warmonger3]

Found the game if anyone wants. I am not sure if its a CD rip with no music or voice. I just got it running in DoSBox. Site is Russian but game is in English.
http://oldergames.ru/file.php?id=233&oper=d
Edit: Sound works as well in DoSBoX.

 

[abnaxus]

This game is a CRITICAL FUMBLE.

I tried it once, and it kept crashing at a certain point.

 

[warmonger3]

The controls are crazy, I need to figure out how to map some keys.

 

[tuluse]

These portraits are amazing. Someone needs to get these for the codex.

 

[Sceptic]

Mmm, if there is that much interest in the game I may put up an ISO image of the CD. Is it not on GOG?

Fake edit: it's not. TBH it's one of those games you should play just because. It's really atrocious, but not because of the content, rather because the engine was utterly unsuited to this kind of game, and the combination of collision detection from hell and stability on par with the Windows 95 alpha makes it virtually unplayable.

I don't know whether it'd run more stably with a custom DOSBox conf very carefully arranged, and with the DOS4GW extender replacement that's been floating around since the late 90s. At the time I ran it "vanilla", and god what a mess.

 

[warmonger3]

Mmm, if there is that much interest in the game I may put up an ISO image of the CD. Is it not on GOG?

Fake edit: it's not. TBH it's one of those games you should play just because. It's really atrocious, but not because of the content, rather because the engine was utterly unsuited to this kind of game, and the combination of collision detection from hell and stability on par with the Windows 95 alpha makes it virtually unplayable.

I don't know whether it'd run more stably with a custom DOSBox conf very carefully arranged, and with the DOS4GW extender replacement that's been floating around since the late 90s. At the time I ran it "vanilla", and god what a mess.

The rip doesn't work for more than the first area, as soon I opened a door in the Underdark it crashed inside dosbox, then it won't load at all.
So the download link I provided is pretty much worthless.

 

[Sceptic]

TBH this may be a function of the original game... I never got far enough into it.

As I said crash-a-minute was pretty much standard for it at the time.

 

[mindx2]

Don't know why but I always had a soft spot for this game even though I never got very far into it. I guess I liked that one of the programmers kept working on a patch on his own time that came out well after everyone had forgotten about the game. He was embarrassed by the state of the game and wanted to try and "fix" it. He never came close to that goal...

 

[warmonger3]

I found the iso and patches. I'm going to give them a shot.
Iso: http://cloudstor.es/f/3GL/
Patch: http://www.fileplanet.com/51556/download/Descent-to-Undermountain-patch-v1.1

 

[Deuce Traveler]

Don't know why but I always had a soft spot for this game even though I never got very far into it. I guess I liked that one of the programmers kept working on a patch on his own time that came out well after everyone had forgotten about the game. He was embarrassed by the state of the game and wanted to try and "fix" it. He never came close to that goal...

There are other ways to make amends...

 

[warmonger3]

Game is running pretty good. Crashes once and awhile. Not sure if it was the patch or the iso but they fixed the horrible keymapping. It's incline, I'm enjoying it.

 

[warmonger3]

Well, I managed to make it to Tier 2. The dungeons in this game were fun. However the bugs ended up stopping any forward progress. Too bad really.

 

[Lemon]

Undermountain was famously bad.

 

[St Antony of Padua]

I didn't know this game used the Descent engine.

 

[DemonKing]

I remember being excited about this before released but the reviews were so dire I never ended up getting it...and I picked up almsot any CRPG released back then by reflex!