LGR - Descent To Undermountain - DOS PC Game Review
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- Опубліковано 27 сер 2024
- Combine Dungeons & Dragons and Descent and what do you get? A first-person role playing adventure that was released incomplete, apparently!
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My favorite part of this whole thing was the Magic 8 Ball in Fallout 2 which would sometimes say "Yes, we know Descent to Undermountain was crap."
Was it by the same developer?
T Duke Perry Yeah, Interplay.
I vaguely recall reading that and not getting it as a kid... I thought it was a jab at some fantasy, LOTR-like book. XD
A little late but Chris Avellone was level head for Descent to Undermountain. He would work on Fallout 2 and later on be director (I think) of New Vegas.
@@guguy00 Avellone was a key developer on New Vegas but project director was Josh Sawyer. Chris A DID however direct all the DLC except Honest Hearts which again was J Sawyer.
That art was first used for a Forgotten Realms novel, Spellfire, which was published in 1987. So, the art was stolen twice over.
damn you, four years ago! At least I saw it before I said the same thing. I freakin' loved Spellfire.
I read this in the LGR dude's voice.
It was also used for one of the booklets inside the AD&D 2nd Edition Forgotten Realms campaign setting. Thrice.
9
Ah good to know 😊
I broke my foot and now I'm stuck behind my laptop watching UA-cam videos. I am so happy with your channel it really gives me great entertainment and makes this way more bearable. Thank you for that LGR! Keep on making awesome content!
I'm glad you're enjoying, and I hope you heal up nicely!
How's your foot?
5:25 "Hi, I am Zariel, High Priestess of Tymora."
Me: *pulls out my DnD books* Hmm, wasn't Zariel...oh, there it is: Zariel is one of the rulers of the Nine Hells, and one of the archdevils.
Yes zariel was angel turned demon
I was an external beta tester for this game. What a horrible mess that was.
Wait, really?
Did it get less crashy from beta to release, or did it just stay the same? Also, you should totally leak any pre-release materials you have to the Internet.
I’ve used to be a game/system tester...my sympathies to you.
we salute you, kind sir!
So, a customer?
The text on the box at 2:21 sais:
Based on the Engine of the incredibly successfull Descent, the Horror of the chasm, with 3D-Polygon rendering and state of the art graphics that show an alomst terrifying love of detail, is brought back to life. *Advanced Multiplayer Options allow you to risk the lifes of up to three other players* on your way into the ultimate abyss. The 360 Degree motion control does not forgive any ruthless attacks from an ambush. Develop your personalytiy with apprehension. Trust noone. Get a good therapist. May God be with you.
*Develop different personalities in over 20 magical dungeon levels
*The first AD&D roleplaying action with modem- or network multiplayer for four players
*Complete 3D-Action form first person perspective with 360° Motion control and the incredibly successfull engine from descent
* Gruesome 3d-monsters await you in greyish(!) detail.
At least they didn't lie about needing therapy after playing.
Greulich=horrifying.
It is sad to see great ideas like this game to fail so badly.
Very much so, it should've been great
Lazy Game Reviews
i wonder if anyone has thought to make a mod of it in another engine like the source engine or maybe skyrim?
Tony Arnold please make it happen
radio star Sorry, I know nothing about modding unfortunately. I would like to learn though if anyone's willing to teach me. :)
Tony Arnold I was saying somebody please do it
The box art was from a forgotten realms novel called "Spellfire." The novel has nothing to do with the game content but I recognized it right away. I just read it later year and still have it.
Your videos and reviews are awesome. Thank you for sharing them with everyone and keep up the great work!!!
Thank you.
+1
BG tavern song at the end, awesome.
It's actually from Undermountain! A barely tweaked version was later used in Baldur's Gate :)
Lazy Game Reviews Really? I never knew :D
Mansen That makes two of us, I played DtU, but I didn't have a soundcard at the time.
Lazy Game Reviews Whoa, plot twist. As usual w/o your obscure game trivia I'd be none the wiser.
Came here to post the exact same thing 2 years later, I presumed it was in Undermountain too though, would make sense.
As annoying as hidden walls are, they are kind of thematic for Undermountain, which is supposed to be a labyrinthine dungeon created by a mad wizard. If it wasn't infuriating and confusing, people might think Halaster had lost his edge.
There's faithful translation of the source material, and then there's game design that's fun to play. Sometimes, you can't have both it seems :)
True that. I thought Neverwinter Nights did a pretty good job with Undermountain. At least then the secret doors were optional (if I remember correctly) and marked once you found them.
Yes, hidden passages should have been revealed by character spot checks, as they are in Hordes of the Underdark. This game here was clearly unfinished and possibly just not well thought out to begin with. Probably more of a cash grab than a proper D&D game from the get-go.
@@desther7975 Exactly. If you had a high enough wisdom it should just let your passive perception reveal them, maybe some rules that change the DC like looking directly at it or moving quickly.
this is an old thread but... Undermountain was specifically a trap. The whole damn thing. It was designed to kill. Halaster has issues after he received a part of mystra. Elminister did better. After mystra came back and took that part of her power from him he returned to normal and his paranoia was far less.
The box art is actually even older, from a Forgotten Realms book called "Spellfire"
Why not use this engine to play as a dragon and fly around the world burning down peasants lol.
Go back in time and make this happen - that is not a request, it is an order. :D
Burninate
im no game developer and know little about game production but i always thought a game where you go to play as a dragon would be tons of fun, flying around and burning down villages or saving them, fighting armies, etc. maybe add a "transformation" mechanic where you can change into a human like in ancient Chinese mythology (or like the show American Dragon) so you could interact with humans.
Every once in awhile we get a game like Skyrim where you get to ride a dragon a little bit, but i'd love a full game where you got to BE a dragon.
Divinity II ?
@Pow3rh0use
I of the Dragon is a good game for playing as a dragon.
The Ultima Underworld games must have ran circles around this.
they were, play them now
They still run circles around so many games even today...
Frickin Stonekeep ran circles around this, let alone UW 1 and 2 which are on many GOAT lists 🤣
And hilariously came out years earlier
I still have my copy. I remember working at a software etc store that Christmas of 1997 and returning my copy because I thought it was defective. It was then, on the forums, that I realized it was the game. The official forums were a hellish mess. I remember impersonating Brian Fargo on the boards and apologizing for the game and people believed it too, fooled the board admin, Robin. Good times. Also uploaded the first bit of gameplay of this game on my old channel back in 2007. Then had a bunch of others steal the footage and claim it as their own.
welcome to fucktube.
"If you chose a mixed class you can classily mix things up a bit" -- I laughed on that one. Great video!
Ambitious failures are always interesting to see, and often far more interesting and educational than any regular success story.
On that note, I'd love to see LGR take on Abomination: The Nemesis Project sometime. Not well regarded or reviewed due to a whole raft of issues, but it has a special place in my heart for having one of the coolest aesthetics and concepts an action-strategy-RPG could have in the late 90s.
In short: X-Men + XCom + Lovecraftian horror. Eldritch biomechanical elder monsters eat a city, and a team of mutant superhero soldiers pick through the ruins in search of the truth and a cure.
Could make for an interesting video.
Sad. This one looked like it could have been good.
LGR, have you ever tried the King's Field series? I believe it is a bit of an ancestor to the incredible Souls series of today. KF carries that similar first-person action with the dark, dungeonesque esthetic.
It's even made by the same people who did dark souls
This game badly needs a remake! Maybe a modder could do it in the recent Daggerfall Unity engine?
Anyway, great review LGR! Love the humor, and the bit of trivia was very interesting. I actually had no idea it was related to Descent. Or maybe I forgot, because I was around at the time and was a big fan of Descent.
The box art is actually the same as the book "Spellfire" I believe.
Instant skeleton on a pillow...
Descent meets D&D *should* be a D&D game set on a labyrinthic dungeon that's a space prison and the gravity is wonky allowing you to move in any direction as you do in Descent. My mind tingles with the possibilities a game like that could have.
Decent 3
EyeRate
global total kills leader
mentioned in the credits portion of the manual
remember me ?
just like now in modern FPS games
the more I tried the worse I got
I just played a lot !
Man that Spellfire artwork has been used so many times for so many things.
2:31 - That 60 FPS page turning... soooo smooth!
BTW, if you're looking for an awesome D&D action-oriented dungeon-crawler, get *Dungeon Hack* instead. That game is great!
The splash screen guy is like "Damn, that intro blew me away!".
'Instant skeleton on a pillow'
I LOLed
Reminds me a lot of the old Might and Magic games. MM7 was my jam back in the day. It was very fun to play, and while I remember it fondly, I'll be the first to admit that it suffered from the usual complexity and obtuseness that many oldschool PC RPGs suffered from at the time, particularly going into the late game.
The cover art was also used on the cover of one of the Spellfire books set in the Forgotten Realms.
Was just rewatching this review and man it's so sad that it's so buggy/crashy, because it looks like a legitimately fun game with a nice engine (feature-incompleteness I can deal with). Few DOS games in that genre had such smooth cameras with mouse control, and nice model/texture work.
Cool I was searching for a game I played when I was little. Found out like a day before this video that it was Descent 3 on PC. And now you upload this video! Super cool!
Decent 3
EyeRate
global total kills leader
mentioned in the credits portion of the manual
remember me ?
just like now in modern FPS games
the more I tried the worse I got
I just played a lot !
Even Order of the Griffon re-used that Clyde Caldwell art piece. It had already been used as the cover art for at least one Forgotten Realms AD&D product (one of the booklets inside the Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting boxed set), the 1987 novel Spellfire, and I believe it was also used in one of the Forgotten Realms calendars that TSR used to release annually in the late 80s/early 90s. By the time Descent to Undermountain was released the box art was well over a decade old and this marked the fourth or fifth time it was used in a product.
It's pretty amazing they used the Descent engine to make a game that seems to be mostly flat corridors.
I really love that Odium (Gorky-17) box you have on the background at 0:20. First "horror" game I ever played when I was around 8 or 9 years old. Needless to say at that time, a tatical horror and stressfull game made me shit my pants and only finish it years later.
Can we get a review from that game?
I'd really like to see some reviews of the old SSI gold box AD&D games. I still play those.
I'd enjoy reviews of those. I had one where magic was broken and all spells always worked to the maximum effect. 6d6 fireball? 36 damage every time. Hold person? Worked 100% of the time, no one ever made a save. Healing always got max heal. A party of mages and clerics would demolish anything if they won initiative.
It's a shame this was such a broken game. There's some GOOD ideas in there...
I'd love to see more reviews like this. "This" being high profile games from name brand publishers that I somehow have never heard of.
Is this the game that shares the tavern music from Baldur's Gate (the music you played in the end)?
Correct!
Lazy Game Reviews Never had rats, no siree.
I knew it!
Damn. If it wasn't for the rush in creation; this looks like it could've been an amazing game. Everything perfect is there but it was executed horribly. The only thing that I can see that wouldn't be solved by a little more time is the hidden walls - which could just be bad design. Other than that; it really seems like the kind of game I'd have spent hours on as a child - but they rushed it so it never was.
Rushed? It took way longer than initially planned!
@@31leoceara Mostly because the original planned time was ludicrously short.
The cover art was used for the D&D novel Spellfire by Ed Greenwood as well.
So, was Descent 2 made on a brand new engine or was it developed from the original engine also?
I wonder if this project could have been saved back in the day or if the engine just wasn't cut out to be an RPG. Maybe if they'd stuck to sprites for the monster characters? I know the enemies in Decent were 3D but they were also very rudimentary space ship shapes.
The same engine, but it was modified I think.
Woah, 60 fps. I don't know if you switched to it as soon as it became possible but I noticed the smoothness just now. Seeing real life at such a high framerate almost reminds you of.. real life.
Unrelated to the game, I love the fact that you walked up "stairs" in the beginning of the review. lol
the hidden 1st floor of LGR HQ. ;)
LMFAO
So glad you talked about Descent. It was one of my first PC Games next to Jazz Jackrabbit... but holy hell I had no idea the Descent Engine could be used in such a terrifying manner lol.
It's disturbing what great damage can be done with great power used irresponsibly.
Lazy Game Reviews That's what Yoda Spider-Man would say! Are You Yoda Spider-Man!?
@@LGR
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br
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Can't wait to watch LGR's Descent and Descent 2 reviews now.
love watching your reviews. don't stop.
Not sure if you knew this, but the cover artwork for this game is also on the Forgotten Realms book "Spellfire" I have a feeling it was made for that book first, given it matches what happens IN the book. So I'm wondering if they just took it and decided to make it the cover art for two games.
It's incredible how many game companies went out of business just because business owners made bad and rushed choices.
With actual game devs at the helm, you get a reliable company that waits to release games until they are done, and generally aren't obsessed with expansion. With a business executive at the helm, you get people trying to extract as much money as possible from the --suckers-- customers, who will just move on to the next company when the current one inevitable bites the dust. Rinse and repeat; the parasites advance to their next host to bleed it dry in the name of anarcho-capitalism. For the best example of this sort of nonsense, you need look no further to the early days of EA versus today...or the early days of Activision versus today.
Wow I totally forgot about this game it has its unique charm of brokeness, I was always a fan of decent, decent 2 & 3 and the Freespace series even though Freespace only used source code from decent.
Speaking of Freespace maybe you should do that one next. I looked around your video archive and didn't see it.
5:14 ¡WOW!, from the bottom of your heart.
It's also the cover art for the novel Spellfire.
instant skeleton on a pillow
I was wondering what to watch and said to myself "I fancy LGR"
Then realised what I had said... xD
mmmm dont we all though ;)
Ain't nothin' wrong with that :)
I was really hoping for a happy ending about a magical patch that fixed everything years down the road. Seems like it could have been legendary.
box art is also used on the forgotten realms novel 'spellfire'
I absolutely love the graphical style on this. If it worked I could play it for hours.
I had an interview at Outrage Entertainment while they were developing Descent 3. I asked them if they had anything to do with Descent into Undermountain and the two devs put their hands up and said, "We don't have anything to do with that!" That was kinda funny. This is a great example of a game where someone really needed to think about the tech available and what a fun game made with it would feel and seem like, and aim for that instead of just satisfying the spec requirements without regular evaluation of fun value.
Decent 3
EyeRate
global total kills leader
mentioned in the credits portion of the manual
remember me ?
just like now in modern FPS games
the more I tried the worse I got
I just played a lot !
Remember being so hyped for this when it was first released. I loved the old D&D games, I loved Ultima Underworld, I loved Arena: the elder scrolls and this was going to beat them all! And then....
oh! OH! OH! that was baldurs gate music when your in a tavern at the end of your vid! i love baldurs gate
The box art was also used for the book Spellfire
This video actually made me look up the word "grundle" LOL biggest thumbs up to a video ever for the character name alone. I hope you don't mind me stealing it the next time I play Daggerfall.
9:45 "My inn is as clean as an elven arse!"
Aah, one of the classic eternity projects that was touted seemingly at every trade event but never seemed to materialize. Except it did, but so under the radar that you needed a microscope in order to find it.
All hail Grundlebutt of Ankh-Morpork.
+SegaCDUniverse From the city so great, they called it... Ankh-Morpork.
The music at the end is actually from taverns in either Baldurs Gate 1 or 2
That toilet paper gag is a milestone of this channel
Long wait before your first d&D reivew, excelent as always.
I have to admit I like this game too(read the page on TCRF)...have you finished this game?
Around the 8 minute mark I could've sworn a rubber chicken with green eyes was being used as a weapon!🤣
The BG tavern music at the end!
I suppose the (extremely) short bit of the intro which can be seen at 2:49 is part of the Interplay logo introduced sometime in the mid-90's. It's on UA-cam if you want to have a look. ;)
Digging the Baldur's Gate Inn music at the end.
fyi the translated version of the 4 catchphrases on the back of the box (funny as always ;) ):
- develop different personalities (I think they meant characters) in more than 20 dungeonlevels
- the first AD&D roleplaying action with modem/network support for 4 players
- full 3D-Action in Ego-perspective with 360°-movement and the extraordinary successful engine of Descent
- terrifying 3D-Monsters in gruesome details will await you
Allthough the lines are all grammatically correct German, it somehow sounds liked google translation.... or just marketing blah blah... :)
@0:04 There's no staircase there. He bent his legs to create the illusion of stairs.
I actually have a paper related to this game inside the box of Descent I and II: The Definitive Collection, which was released in 1997.
Decent 3
EyeRate
global total kills leader
mentioned in the credits portion of the manual
remember me ?
just like now in modern FPS games
the more I tried the worse I got
I just played a lot !
Sounds like a good really challenging hardcore game of survival and traversing deadly dungeon that doesnt pretend to be deadly.
Grundlebutt is gonna be my name in my next D&D Campaign.
My rose tinted spectacles recall this as being quite good. But then I haven't been back to it for years and years, so maybe that's just nostalgia....
To think this game had been released the same year as Baldur's Gate. Interplay managed to go from the worst Dungeons & Dragons game to the best Dungeons & Dragons game within the span of a single year. Top 10 Anime Redemption Arcs.
I have never heard of this game before.... maybe that is a good thing! On a more positive note I did really enjoy the jaunty little tune at the end. For some reason it made me want a tankard of Balor Ale...
Speaking of forgotten realms has anyone else read the Legend of Drizzt series based on it?
Basically, they wanted to make their own Ultima Underworld -- with blackjack and hookers (and D&D license). They should have hired Looking Glass Studios.
+Locke Silvrel No, otherway around. Forget the blackjack and the hookers; ultima underworld was great!
+Locke Silvrel Know; don't care.
It's entirely necessary. You do need to recall, Undermountain was built by a Lunatic Archmage with WAAAAAAAY too much time on his hands. Thus far it actually sounds like they did a splendid job of accurately adapting Undermountain.
Yeah, but they need to adapt the gameplay to that. It sounds like the skills to detect fake walls doesn't really help all that much. If there's going to be a lot of those fake walls, then the mechanics to find them should be intuitive to prevent progression from halting too often.
Halaster Blackcloak's magic is so strong, it can crash your computer.
I love the Baldur's Gate inn music at the end of the video.
This game is where that music originally came from, before they recycled it for Baldur's Gate.
Love your openings where you just casually appear on screen
Baldur's Gate Inn music at the end, nice touch ;)
The development story of this game reminds me a lot of how many modern games take too long in development yet end up being released in an unfinished state. And this was made back in the days when that was rare and most games always shipped finished and complete.
Sweet that you put in Tavern music from Baldurs Gate at the end of the video. Made me fire up and play BG immediately :)
Nope, it's actually the inn music from Descent to Undermountain. It was later re-worked a bit and included in BG!
Khelben Arunsun appears in every D&D game. It's like he is the guest role you see in every movie.
Speaking of Descent, I've never seen anyone give a review of the Descent series.
Now would be an opportune time now since Volition was just shut down.
Excellent review. I could never get far on those AD&D games. I thought it was me, but glad to see it wasn't.
I remember getting this game just because of the multiplayer info on the box... yeah...
I actually beat the game, despite its mountain of flaws; it was such a disappointment when I first fought the drow mages, they literally had no spells programmed on them, they just stood there floating while I cut them down.
There was, though, this amazing moment when I entered the temple of Nerull (if I remember correctly), and he spoke directly to your character, promising death for trespassing into the temple; that was creepy, in a sort of ominously pixelated way.
Damm son. Even I will rage quit. Haven't played it but thats because I never play shitty games.
Hahaha, awesome video. I remember reading reviews of this game in the gaming magazines my brother bought as a kid, and kinda wanting to play it as a curiosity.
It's worth noting that in an interview about the development of Fallout. Tim Cain mentioned he had to fight with Interplay over them trying to shift all of their developers onto the Descent to Undermountain project. Since they expected it to be their big money maker and predicted Fallout would fail.
And of course Fallout was a "surprise hit" for Interplay and Descent to Undermountain was quickly forgotten,
+DeadYorick Well what he said is semi accurate. Descent to Undermountain COULD have been a huge success if they would have gotten more people on it. Sadly people kept leaving the project or the company for months and months and months. By the time the final dev team got the game it was a producer, 2 coders, 2 designers / level editors and 5 QA members.Everything else was "Done" as in the placeholder 3D models and textures were deemed release code LMAO
It would be cool if you covered the descent and freespace games. Those are some of my favorite games
Decent 3
EyeRate
global total kills leader
mentioned in the credits portion of the manual
remember me ?
just like now in modern FPS games
the more I tried the worse I got
I just played a lot !
When I heard _"combine Descent and D&D"_ I thought you would play a flying fantasy creature, probably a dragon, and you are raiding enormous medieval castles. I guess there would have to be open outdoor segments too, to wipe out the forces outside before entering the castle.
*The plot is:* long ago an alliance of humans, elves and dwarves (maybe orcs as well) attacked a Legendary Dragon at it's home base, miraculously killing the dragon. What's leftover? A mountain of gold, silver, priceless gems and magical artifacts the dragon was hoarding. The races split the massive amount of loot resulting in a age of prosperity. Little do they know that the dragon hid her egg where they could not find it and one day it will hatch to seek revenge. Of course the dragon will reclaim any stolen wealth along the way. You fight wizards, shamans, archers, ballista, cannons and other medieval stuff. You also learn magical spells for attack variety and collect runes to open up magically-sealed doors.
What I am not sure of is if you can hover in place or not? Big winged animals hovering is stupid but it would make controlling the game a lot simpler. Then again it would be great to finally implement gravity and force the player to walk around sometimes, turning the game into a FPS but you're an overpowered dragon.
Too bad the game is what it is.
Kinda sounds like D&D DragonStrike en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DragonStrike_(video_game)
That game ... looks awesome. I'm glad somebody fused D&D with flight sim. Westwood make such nerdy stuff, I love it.
Lol, that Mystery of the Druids box art gets me everytime.
I remember seeing this in the store shelves many a moons ago, wish I could of picked it up back then.
it looks... interesting, even how bad it is. xD
WAH! 60fps Clint! I really need to get used to that.
That Baldur's Gate tavern tune though :)
Ohhhh, that silky smooth 60fps!
Another great example of how the phrase "Time is money" makes a potentially great game an utter piece of shit.
Even though Descent to Undermountain suffered from bad development and unresolved bugs, I'm already intrigued by the game based on your review. The decision to use Descent's engine for DtU sounds inspired, and I really like the visuals and graphics for this game. It's looks and plays like a Descent version of Ultima Underworld. But as you said, the game was incomplete, and that numerous bugs ruined the experience. I don't know if it can be fixed by patches, or if it can only work if remade on a different engine. I'm surprised that the D&D game developers didn't try to license engines like Quake and Unreal for potential games in the late 90s. I sometimes wish there were D&D games that used Hexen, Half-Life, and Deus Ex as templates. Even Dungeon Keeper would've made a good base for a D&D game. Still, I think DtU could inspire potential modders a game designers to do a better executed combination of D&D and Descent.
Decent 3
EyeRate
global total kills leader
mentioned in the credits portion of the manual
remember me ?
just like now in modern FPS games
the more I tried the worse I got
I just played a lot !