I played The WORST DnD Game of the 90's | Descent to Undermountain Retrospective Review

[@JTHMsonicfan]

Idk why but Interplay making a dungeon crawler out of a space combat engine, and then Bethesda 30 years later making a space combat game out of a dungeon crawler engine is really funny to me

[@fonesrphunny7242]

It's not a space combat engine, it's an FPS engine without gravity.

[@RickMoren477]

​​@@fonesrphunny7242so a space fps engine got it

[@zensempai7371]

Perfectly Todd Balanced

[@t.adamcollins2162]

What "space combat game" has Bethesda made? They made a space dungeon crawler. They haven't made a "space combat game."

[@JTHMsonicfan]

@ This is my favorite thing about Starfield hate is how stupid and pedantic it is. I sure have spent a lot of time dogfighting other spaceships in a game that apparently isn't a "space combat game"

[@keremmadran]

Did they seriously name a game Dungeons & Dragons: Forgotten Realms: Pool of Radiance: Attack on Myth Drannor? Wow

[@WilliamSRD]

It's LEGITIMATELY hilarious that someone thought that was a good title

[@DerRotSpassvogel]

Sweet mother of Bahamut! Yahtzee would have a field day with all those dry heaves

[@skuarf]

& Knuckles (featuring Dante from the Devil May Cry Series)

[@Bloodlyshiva]

It was at the time where D&D had a lot of subdivides in content.

[@mercster]

That wasn't like, "The Title" that everyone called it. It's like Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask. Does everyone say "Legend of Zelda" first? Back then D&D players were smart types who liked organization, and liked to know the specific settings and categories involved in a single game. Today, people prefer graphical novels with quick-time events and snappy, Hollywood-esque titles that make them feel like they're headed to the Sunday matinee. That's fine, but don't laugh at what you don't understand.

[@Dropbearded]

Watching this also reminded me of an old, Finnish games magazine's review of this back in the day. For some reason, their description of the godawful monster models as "Mangled messes of random polygons even an opium-crazed H.P. Lovecraft couldn't dream up" has been stuck in my mind since.

[@valivali8104]

Pelit?

[@Dropbearded]

@@valivali8104 Jep!

[@XenosImplyer]

Even the most infamous games deserve to be remembered. Thank you for suffering through the jank so that others may experience these games.

[@Trashloot]

This is the same story as what happened with Mass effect Andromeda. They were also forced to use an engine (frostbyte) which was never made for rpgs and had to hack together everything on the fly.

[@markussmedhus9717]

It's not really a great engine if you can only use it for one type of genre but maybe it was a bigger constraint back then. MGS5 and PES Soccer 2014 were both made using the Fox engine for instance. Not that I've played either.

[@Daktangle]

The signs were there that it was a terrible choice for RPG's in DA: Inquisition. As much fun as I had in that game, it played real janky at times.

[@bloeckmoep]

Lets not forget that uhh flying game, uhh Artjom... no, Anesthetic... no... Anthem. That was the same story for bioware. Anyway since bioware was swallowed up by ea, there was not really anything good from them. Mass effect was decent, mass effect 2 felt comparably boring, mass effect 3 i could not finish. Andromeda was a mess. Lets face it, last good bioware game was jade empire, prior kotor and prior to that nwn + sou + hotud. I heard that ea has the policy that every studio they own is forced to use the frostbite engine.

[@Hart501]

Hehe on the fly

[@SlowerIsFaster139]

Supposedly bioware was forced to use frostbyte for anthem and by the time the development really started ramping up it was to late to start on a new engine.

[@Zulk_RS]

They used the engine for a 3D shooter that has no gravity, no NPCs, and you can move in all directions... for a Dungeon Crawling RPG. Not just any Dungeon Crawling RPG; a Dungeon Crawling RPG based on the rules of AD&D. At this point I feel like they would have had more success if they tried hacking the Doom engine than hacking the Decent engine.

[@PosthumanHeresy]

Honestly, that's a given. Sonic Robo Blast 2 is an entire Sonic game in the Doom engine and then someone made a total conversion of _that_ to Persona 3. So apparently every game can be made in the Doom engine. If the universe is a simulation, it's probably a heavily modified Doom engine. Somehow.

[@Chinothebad]

An engine for a 3D shooter when there were other engines such as the Doom engine you mentioned as well as Bethesda's Xngine and the Build Engine that was used 3D and Monolith to make their iconic FPS games. Literally all of those would of made the game more successful.

[@planescaped]

@@Chinothebad Now I'm imagining a build engine D&D first person ARPG...

[@plasticflower]

When Descent came out, the freedom of movement was somewhat ahead of its time, but from this video it doesn't look like they didn't incorporated a lot of verticality into their title.

[@Jolis_Parsec]

Don’t forget about the total conversions of Half-Life and the N64 version of Goldeneye for the Doom engine, with the latter even having objectives you had to complete before moving on to the end of each level alongside Bond’s iconic gadgets.

[@CrowePerch]

Absolutely glorious. My favorite part was when the Avatar of Lolth said “It’s Spiderin’ Time” and Lolth’d all over the games physics engine

[@user-gj7lp5iz6k]

epic, epic for the win xD

[@mikeoxlong1395]

I clapped, i know what it is so i clapped.

[@andreboden1437]

I Lolth'd.

[@jagoob]

Imagine your a kid in late 1997 your friends are all playing stuff like Goldeneye Final Fantasy VII Diablo and Ultima Online and you've finally saved enough allowance to get a new game. With no foreknowledge from online reviews to check you get to your game store and decide maybe you can finally brag to them by getting a new game none of them have yet and this one catches your eye. I have to imagine this happened to at least one person my heart forever goes out to whoever that poor child was.

[@Lucifronz]

That's when gaming magazines were actually useful... but even back then they didn't know what the fuck they were talking about. We have it so much better now. You can see gameplay footage, watch Let's Plays and Walkthroughs to get an idea of the game, listen to critic and fan reviews and get a real sense of what the game has to offer. Back then you had to listen to Nerdy McFucknuts the entitled "gamer" looking for a quick game to shit on so he can write a snarky article for his boss and get back to day-drinking. Now, sometimes they were decent. A lot of the time, even. But there were more than a few crap reviews that shit on good games. Kinda like how The Thing (the film) was critically panned for so long and was basically a flop despite it being one of the most beloved horror movies of all time (and my personal favorite horror movie). Critics are just assholes with a platform to project their nonsense even further. I do not miss those days and I have never relied on a critic to make up my mind on a game since the advent of the modern (relatively) user-friendly internet.

[@victorfrankenstein3636]

@@Lucifronz you ok?

[@kirtknierim3687]

@@Lucifronz 🔨💅'd it.

[@CaptainRufus]

Could be worse. Battlecruiser 3000 AD or Jurassic Park Tresspasser. And 80s kids had it worse. LJN and Acclaim titles on the NES seemed created solely to make kids cry. Games so bad even as a weekend rental it was ruining your Sat n Sunday!

[@CaptainRufus]

​@@Lucifronz ok... you sound like the average Nintendo fan online mad when a Zelda or Mario only gets 8 out of 10. Or you grew up in the UK and your dad worked at Tiertex or Ocean or US Gold inflicting bad games on bad UK computers...

[@robintst]

Jim Cummings, Jennifer Hale, and Kath Soucie are pretty par for the course for cartoon and game voice acting in the 90s. And Frank Welker is an industry legend, the man of a thousand voices, he's been at it since 1969. Look up all their IMDb credits, they read like a who's who of popular franchises.

[@Idontevenwanachannel]

I was shocked he didn't notice Frank Welker

[@EmergencyChannel]

Between Jennifer Hale and Jim Cummings, they have literally 1000 credits. Most of our childhood was voiced by them. (if you grew up in the 90's and 00's.)

[@booradley6832]

Honestly I was very surprised because Jennifer Hale seems like the Junior partner in that lineup. Obviously she's still very good and important but the rest are just absolute stalwarts. also interesting is that Jim and Kath are the two voices that make up The Master from Fallout.

[@anthroposmetron4475]

Dungeon Keeper 2 (Released just the year after this) has a 3D first person mode which activates when you possess one of your creatures. It's basically a novelty mode of a game which is primarily a top-down strategy game and it's still better in every way than this entire game.

[@hicknopunk]

So true

[@Lucifronz]

Not *that much* of a novelty mode because it's actually incredibly useful. When your minions are getting the shit beat out of them, controlling one of them for strategic attacks on a tough enemy can be invaluable. On top of that, imps work much faster when *you're* the one digging instead of them (especially since you aren't going to get stuck with bad AI planning or carry gold back, etc.), so if you want some walls cleared up faster, it's not a bad idea to possess one and get to work. I realize that detracts from your point, but I love that game and found that spell remarkably useful and fun to use, so I can't help but defend it.

[@neoqwerty]

@@Lucifronz Defending obscurely useful mechanics that get overlooked (and thus not talked about) as novelties is honestly doing Todd's work-- the amount of times I've found out about a thing no one talked about that made the game SO much easier because of a stray nerd post on GameFAQs or a lavishly documented breakdown of enemy AI in pseudocode (shout outs to that FF7 madman who looked in there, figured out what was bugged in the AI and quirks no one had known until then and his 35MB monster of a text file documenting it all).

[@MultiLimpet]

Dungeon keeper 1 had that

[@itmademesignup9508]

​@@Lucifronz I believe possession (in DK1 and 2) also significantly buffed the attacks and health of any monster you possessed, making them super tanks.

[@SeithonJetter]

In fairness, the re-make of Pools of Radiance in it's initial release would break windows if you uninstalled it. I think that's a special level of bad :D

[@netsdanita]

It's the only game I know of where there was a patch for the __demo__, specifically the uninstaller -- a typo meant that the uninstaller would try to delete the entire drive it was installed on...

[@IronShaman81]

@@netsdanita What? Holy crap, that's kinda nuts.

[@Kenshiro3rd]

Ruins of Myth Drannor wasn’t a remake. It was just another adventure in the setting… and basically had nothing to do with The Pools of Radiance. It was just called that due to the setting and licensing… as the license was for a Pools of Radiance game… but simultaneously they were basically barred from continuing the story. As such it’s basically just connected by setting & name.

[@lokalnyork]

@@netsdanita There was also Myth II that did exactly that if You installed game directly on hard drive. It basically deleted main game folder AND everything one "level" above it, with default installation folder it worked as intended. And it was not the demo. The actual CD version of game before 1.1 patch would brick your PC. It almost bankrupt Bungie (the Halo guys).

[@wonkehcheetah1138]

For a brief moment I misread and thought that instead of bricking your PC, it instead would cause your computer to release a loud sound that would cause nearby windows to shatter lol.

[@LightStreak567]

Hey, guess what? From one Jennifer Hale fan to another, she also voiced a couple characters from the first two Baldur's Gate games: Dynaheir the human sorceress from Baldur's Gate 1, and Mazzy the halfling fighter from Baldur's Gate 2.

[@WilliamSRD]

Oh no I'm gonna lose my life to Baldur's Gate when I finally get around to them

[@Palmieres]

The "Go for the eyes!" joke you hear in the Citadel DLC (after Shepard discovers what was done to 'Major Nibbles', the hamster) went over a few heads who had not played Baldur's Gate :D

[@LightStreak567]

@@Palmieres And Tali saying "Go for the optics, Chitikka, go for the optics!" in Mass Effect 2. Tali's combat drone is named after the raccoon friend of the gnome god Baervan Wildwanderer who the wingless elf from Baldur's Gate 2, Aerie worships because she was adopted by Quayle the gnome

[@darkmantlestudios]

@@LightStreak567 faster than chikita vas paws !

[@LightStreak567]

@@darkmantlestudios Yes! Exactly! And Baervan's giant raccoon friend is named Chiktikka Fastpaws!

[@SnowyFoxFox]

Fun fact: Elite: Dangerous's engine - the Cobra engine - is shared by Planet Coaster. It's not actually that much of a stretch to adapt an engine developed for one game genre into another, though it's not necessarily ideal, depending on how the engine was originally built. Doom's engine was also used to make first-person action RPGs.

[@neoqwerty]

Add 3D platformers, Sonic Robo Blast 2 sends its regards

[@angelriverasantana7755]

And Robo Blast 2 Kart and the Robotnik Ring Racers game, for karting

[@TheAdmantArchvile]

"I know some people have nostalgia for this game." No, no one does. If someone does have vague emotions like nostalgia, call a therapist because you were most likely abused as a child. Mainly by this game.

[@nickcarroll8565]

Playing this game as a child qualifies as a child abuse

[@alexandrahawke8594]

thank you for suffering for our entertainment, this was a beautiful train wreck.

[@WilliamSRD]

it hurts it hurts so much

[@johnsanko4136]

You forgot to mention the other huge voice actor on that list, Frank Welker. While you could argue that Hale was just at the beginning of her voice acting career when this was made, but Frank Welker was already a legend in the field when he was in on this. Most notably, he's been the only voice of Fred from Scooby Doo, and also the original voice of Megatron/Galvatron of Transformers... along with literally dozens of other characters.

[@Ryu1ify]

I didn't even notice Jennifer Hale on that credits page until he circled it, I was so sure he meant Welker

[@bloeckmoep]

Ironically, they probably would have done a ton better if they would have used a proper fps engine like the older but very robust and versatile id tech 1 engine. By the time they started this project, qake 2 was probably out, that would have been the ideal engine for this project. Anyway, here my entry, probably not the worst but definitely one of the most boring dnd eye of the beholder for gba. Started it, invested some hours, never played it again.

[@PenguinDT]

One correction on the mouse aiming; the modern standards were already set by 1998 - arguably done so by Quake back in 1996. Better yet, the first ever FPS title with modern style mouse aiming was... drumroll... Descent. Many people just don't count it for it being the '6 degrees of freedom' FPS. My guess is that they just wanted to imitate the Ultima Underworld / System Shock control scheme, which was basically tossed to the side by '98.

[@billvolk4236]

What made Descent special was that you moved freely in all three dimensions - there was no gravity. Who the hell thought that would translate well to people walking in a dungeon?

[@thecappeningchannel515]

TSR struggled with its company direction. Like really struggled.

[@LegalKimchi]

Fantastic. I actually wanted to buy this game as a kid. Glad I missed it.

[@WilliamSRD]

Somewhere in the multiverse is a dark version of Kimchi who played this game and never became a lawyer

[@tomc8157]

I have it on a nice new CD-ROM, in its jewel case. Want it? I'll send it to you free of charge.. in fact I'll send along 20 bucks too.

[@RuSosan]

Wow, you weren't kidding about the soundtrack. A proper banger that one. Added a lot of those tracks into my Oblivion's music folders. The dungeon music does wonders for the atmosphere.

[@MegaVirus700]

Idk, I'm kind of interested in this curse of strahd flight sim. You're flying over the mistlands surrounding Barovia. Ground visibility is near zero. Your compass turning lazily even though you fly straight forward. You tap your altitude gage. Are these readings right? Suddently your radar goes off. A bogie is flying in the middle of your squad's v formation. Was it following you this whole time? No, the radar would have gone off sooner. And then a voice rings out from your comms.. This airspace is restricted by air Sargent Strahd.... what do you do?

[@neoqwerty]

I think there's a WW1 London type Realm in there, Masque of the Red Death or something? Could fit planes and stuff there, though not as modern as ours (not with a little technomagic at least-- Thief 2 proved it can work so why not, a Ravenloft flight Sim please!

[@WilliamSRD]

More like Descent to Kill Me idk i haven't slept in 2 weeks.

[@Empowerless]

Probably not the intention of the review, but as I love cheesy janky first persons slasher's like Elder Scrolls: Arena and Witchaven I wanna give this a try!

[@WilliamSRD]

If you like jank, then this one's got exactly what you're looking for!

[@Empowerless]

@@WilliamSRD Hehee could be. Probably not fun enough to finish the whole game though. Also the bit with the CTS was unexcepted and really funny as I also have it (mild enough case so I only need to use wrist protectors on my mouse-hand during work days though). Pro tip: logitech's vertical mice and keyboard are a godsend.

[@Mattaffect]

This is an awesome review. Did anyone else notice the sword and shield kept changing hands in the cutscene of the soldier guy walking to the flaming sword? Shield on the Left hand then the right then the Left again.

[@silvermknight]

Lord Kelbin seems like he just wants to tell me to deploy SWAT Bots to defeat that pesky hedgehog.

[@Idazmi7]

I had the same thought 🤣

[@ShinoSarna]

I love that the entire intro cinematic is just different angles of the same walk cycle.

[@BigALittleARon]

The short version of Protection from Evil is that it makes you 10% harder to hit, and adds a 10% bonus to resist things like spells or dragon's breath. Technically -2 AC, +2 Saves, (both are bonuses, don't ask). But it only works against evil things. So evil dragons are in, kind-hearted dragons are out. Handy, but it would help the player to know it's not a superpower. Why include spells without documentation, since you'll never know what calculations are being made or why?

[@neoqwerty]

I guess they expect you to have D&D spell manuals to check?

[@KopperNeoman]

Old-school D&D had really weird ways of saying "Physical and magical evasion". Better than modern D&D telling you what to think, mind.

[@langoost9905]

Thank you for video! And special thanks for your brilliant english pronunciation. I think you're couldn't imagine how it helps to watch video if you learnt English two decades ago as foreign with a lack of audition practice.

[@rikklestips1954]

"The vast majority of my 20 hour game time was me running into walls and hammering the action key in hopes that they would open." Well it's not _necessarily_ that bad, but that should be an integrated mechanic. Like in Deathlord, except for the absolutely evil your-chances-of-finding-the-hidden-door-are-40-to-50% thing. Which I had to fix for Deathlord Relorded.

[@mercedesplay_more_kof8488]

I love how they couldn’t decide whether the player character in the last cutscene would be left handed or right handed so they just switched which hand was holding the sword every time they cut back to him. 😂

[@GatsuRequim]

"Friends don't let friends decent into Undermountain" has me laughing

[@InternetTAB]

Woaaaah, is that Chair Scoot from Homestar Runner I hear?! 1:25 ish or is it The Geddup Noise?

[@WilliamSRD]

SOMEONE FINALLY NOTICED

[@deltasaves]

Bro, you brought me back; unlocked a deep seated memory for me watching my dad play this game. I haven't seen this in close to 30 years. Gives me the feels. My dad passed some years ago and every few months since I have been finding let's plays of stuff I remembered, thank you for this. You got a new subscriber.

[@FeelingShred]

there's an excellent channel out there of a guy that goes by the name of Nametag (he's also on Twitch... TheNametag) He played this game "blind" (1st time ever) and pushed to finish the entire thing, it's glorious 8 or 9 parts of 2 hours each, it's more exciting than any cable TV series out there currently 🤣🤣🤣I like this guy because he provides excellent in-depth commentary about the game's mechanics, no nonsense commentary 👍

[@FeelingShred]

sometimes youtube deletes my longer comments.... in short: guy goes by name The Nametag, he recorded footage of finishing this entire game with excellent in-depth commentary

[@FeelingShred]

honestly, the only "bad" thing about the game I could see is the broken Stairs... apart from that it looks like I game I would thoroughly enjoy

[@KantiDono]

"I'm starting to think that the writers of these listicles just read the Metacritic score and the Wikipedia article and then they just, like, called it a day." Unfortunately, that's true of far too many 'journalists' these days, not just those for games.

[@Doctorfullerton]

Microsoft Vechna sim, just a lich flying around the forgotten realms, no combat, no story, just flying.

[@SimonAshworthWood]

😂

[@DustinBarlow8P]

Funny story Pools of Radiance 2001 formated my HDD. It was a but I was not aware of. Very fun times.

[@themichaelthing]

Its cool they got Jenifer Hale there, but man, that was Frank Welker in there! Also known as the God of VO.

[@dorpth]

I remember reading that a big part of the problems was that the Descent engine didn't have gravity, which wasn't an issue in their space ship game. But when it came time for Undermountain, it was a huge pain. It's why they had to make nearly all the levels an extremely flat experience with low ceilings, in order to minimize the number of things taking place on a single flat surface, which they simply stuck everything to in order to fake the illusion of gravity. That's why you get so many floaty glitches whenever an enemy is caught moving off that surface.

[@danielcrystal3943]

I remember getting this when it came out and deleting it from my hard drive after the first dungeon. Also, pretty sure Frank Welker is the voice of Megatron and a bunch of other 80's cartoons.

[@vxskud]

Jim Cummings and Frank Welker probably cost a big portion of the budget

[@Liquidcadmus]

I wish Square Enix would make a D&D game in the style of their tactical games like tactics ogre or final fantasy tactics. that would be a great formula.

[@kultur-vultur]

How did you not mention the legend that is Frank Welker when talking about the wasted voice actors? He is Optimus Prime!!! (and many more)

[@charlesgrybosky1916]

Interplay seriously hid an apology for the game in Fallout 2? Now that's funny!

[@joeyj6808]

Ah yes. Memories of the Golden Box D&D games on the potato-puter! I loved them and hated them in equal measure. Most we so clunky and flawed that they had be screaming in frustration. But at the time they seemed so cutting-edge!

[@ianperley233]

Aye! Shambling Mounds were what first broke me in the those. I just could not seem to kill them, and they seemed endless. Pretty sure that was in the second game of one of the trilogies, I remember skipping to the third and final game and getting absolutely -destroyed- by the Drow in the opening battles. Just gave up at that point. Loved the first game in the set though.

[@boileripoika]

Thank you for reviewing my childhood :)

[@WilliamSRD]

Oh man, sorry bout your childhood, bruv

[@boileripoika]

@@WilliamSRD Cheers mate, keep it up! :)

[@bizznick444joe7]

Sorry about that. Roll up some Arx Fatalis and Gothic games to cleanse that palette.

[@mccallosone4903]

However bad this is, Heroes of the Lance is much worse. it is unplayable broken dreck, especially the NES version

[@xcar0982]

An Undermountain game where the final enemy is not Halaster? WHAT?!

[@Awakeandalive1]

No comment on the inimitable Frank Welker who has defined childhoods for nearly forty years now? Also, I loved Descent! It came with my father's brand new Win95 work computer...

[@WildFungus]

I played Pools of Radiance on three different systems and I will fight you it's decent for it's time. no worse than any other goldbox games and it was one of the first. Hillsfar is the worst one. Also resting is supposed to refresh your healing spells it's dnd.

[@qwopiretyu]

Wow, you played some stinkers

[@oxtcn]

3:44 Ayyy Red vs Blue was my jam back in the day.

[@SARRIMAVEA]

Very nice and entertaining review. I picked "Descent to Undermountain" from a budget bin centuries ago for 10 Euros, I installed it and uninstaled it the same day. It was simply so bad that I'd rather be playing Eye of the Beholder. The only good thing about the game is the manual which is very good, so good that it deserves a better game!

[@Revener666]

It looks like Daggefall but with 3D creatures and that was released in 96.

[@i010001]

Aha, I'm glad this is becoming a series! I shall eagerly await Dark Dreams of Furiae, which you said seemed interesting last time. For now, onward to one of my favourite topics: Obscure D&D minutia

[@WilliamSRD]

It's on the list! I'm still trying to figure out how to approach it since I've not played the base game, but I'll for sure get to Dark Dreams once I've solved that obstacle

[@i010001]

@@WilliamSRD Oh, you haven't? I'll give you a bit of a primer. Neverwinter Nights is kind of a weird one; it's a classic but for reasons sort of irrespective of the base campaign. Neverwinter Nights itself is more of a really protracted engine demo than a really good WRPG, because what was really being sold is a campaign mod creation system. You are essentially paying to get a robust set of tools with which to play a lot of fan work and later expansions. The result is that the core campaign it came packaged with is itself considered a little overly long and awkward. It's functional, but typically considered kind of mediocre and bland in and of itself. If you want the basics of the system and to experience a pretty good game in the engine, all modern releases come with the two expansions - Shadows of Urdentide and Hordes of the Underdark. Those are both solid games, and much less of a time sink even played together, and Shadows leads into Hordes (Though Hordes does have to do with the core campaign as well.) So if you just want to see what a fun Neverwinter Nights game is, that's a good place to start - Though as it has had 20 years of modding, and so there are some mods out there that are these really great bastions of creativity; a few have since been released as official expansions, even. Good luck! It's a good engine, and there is a reason it has endured for 20 years.

[@Ludicollision]

Great video! It was nice hearing Pyre music in the background throughout, such a beautiful game

[@sambas9257]

It's hard to think that five years before this game there was Doom and five years after this game there was Doom 3. In these days we are stuck in the same graphic of 2007 Crysis

[@freespeechenjoyer]

The fade in from the inn lute music to Roundabout is so perfectly done lmao

[@georgesiv2082]

If you want a blast, try watching the credits from the main menu option on an unpatched version.

[@rudeboyjohn3483]

I'm so old that I remember pirating Descent on the Yearbook Room's computers back in high school lol

[@Khilkhameth]

Heh heh, those characters' heads bobbing back and forth as they talk...😄

[@DanteTCW]

Oh...Can we get Vecna Lives for Flight Simulator from 1994? :D Seriously, really liked the video, I applaud your patience with shitty 90s 3d games (Yeah, games like these are the reason first gen 3d games have aged POORLY compared to 2d efforts). Now, please...plaqy one of the good old school RPGs...like Planescape: Torment...you deserve it!

[@WilliamSRD]

So glad you liked it! I actually am playing a GOOD 90's game right now to recover from this one, but not an RPG related one. I've also now gotten very interested in the 90's 3d arms race, so I'm doing some preliminary research on making a video essay on the topic since I can't find much about it on KZbin. Loving the whole process!

[@lopezalehandro1666]

I love it when at 02:00 he says "...my community..." and shows a clip of Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway presenting an Oscar. Those two aren't even "Boomers", they're Pre-WW2. Are we really THAT old in your mental picture? You Sir deserve an Upvote, or in KZbins's case a Thumbs Up.

[@mindmagemethin1550]

a little surprised you didn't mention Frank Welker in there as well. Dude Megatron himself was in this game!

[@Kannakomi]

Heck yeah, new William SRD Video! :^D 💜

[@Kai-tn4yx]

I liked Ruins of Myth Drannor. It way basically an early version of Temple of Elemental Evil, great turn-based combat. It's important to note that it was the first 3rd edition videogame, while 3e was still being finalized, and thus I don't fault them for some mechanics being a bit underdeveloped.

[@FeelingShred]

I was re-playing Ravenloft: Stone Prophet game, from what I read it's based off DnD 2nd Edition, right? I like the "tactical" and "survival" feeling of 2nd Ed ruleset... But there's this quirk with combat in the game: the heavier weapons (although having higher damage numbers) don't work as well as lighter weapons because of Weight (takes longer to attack with them, less Damage Per Second) Is this supposed to happen in DnD 2nd Edition as well or is it a bug in the code of the game? I notice the weapons miss much less in the sequel Menzoberranzan

[@asafoetidajones8181]

In 2e, weapons have speed ratings, yes. They're used to determine who strikes first every round- initiative rolls happen every round. So for example every round you roll 1d10, add the speed of your weapon (a dagger is 4, an axe is...uh... ima say 7.. subtract if you have initiative bonuses from a high dexterity. Whoever gets lowest goes first. Now, spells work like that too. Usually the spell speed is equal to its level, so a dagger is as fast as a 4th level spell. It matters because if you strike first, yes, you might kill opponent outright and thus avoid being subject to their attack, but also because spells can be interrupted and ruined. See a wizard? Put down the heavy weapons and pick up something light that you can get a quicker hit with to potentially block their casting. But that doesn't translate to "attacks faster" because opponent still gets their normal number of attacks every round. It just means "hits first more often".

[@FeelingShred]

oh that's interesting, thanks, specially the part about changing to lighter weapons when facing a spellcaster

[@FeelingShred]

I wonder what PC RPG games make use of all these 2nd/3rd/4th Edition rules for its combat calculations

[@asafoetidajones8181]

@@FeelingShred a less niche and more relevant example of why a combatant might favor a lighter weapon would be a fight with weak but numerous enemies. Say you have a +4 to damage from STR bonus, a dagger, and a battleaxe. You dagger damage range is 5-8, axe is 5-12. Dagger speed is actually 2 (i looked it up) and axe is 7. Say you're facing a mixed mob of 1 HD and 1/2 HD monsters, like goblins and kobolds with pet snakes or something. You know for a reasonable fact their HP's are something like 3, 5, 4, 2, 6, 3, 8, 1. Most of them will go down to one dagger hit, the extra damage range from the axe is wasted 90% of the time. Given the choice, you'd rather have a greater likelihood of striking first and possibly securing a kill, thus avoiding their attack entirely, than to probably strike later but harder, risking their attack, but getting a slightly higher chance of a kill. In either case, it doesn't mesh well with a realtime game. Time is being modeled twice. A fair amount of games used the basic mechanics of AD&D, the gold box, baldurs gate etc but usually modified if it wasn't turn based.

[@auellaitaela8035]

After all those hours doing crazy keybind arm-crossing arcane gestures just to hit the right keys to even play the game in a playable state, at what hour did you notice you had a G-600 that you could bind any and all keys you wanted to to make the controls easy and smooth and think "...fuck"?

[@briannelson27]

THE SCENE WHERE TANIS GETS BONKED IS PRICELESS!!!

[@Mister_Clean]

3:16 My man's got that Oblivion walk cycle

[@Jolis_Parsec]

Funny you should mention Jim Cummings, as he’s partially responsible for bringing us Be Prepared from the original 90s Lion King film due to Jeremy Irons apparently straining the heck outta his vocal cords when he snarled out the line “you won’t get a sniff without me!” Apparently the rest of the song is Jim Cummings singing as Scar, yet if you don’t listen closely, you’ll never notice the change in voice actor since he does a terrific job of sounding like Scar to the point I still thought it was Jeremy Irons singing.

[@Kriizikaan]

@1:29 was that the get up noise?

[@Kijinn]

@ 26:45 Could someone please tell me what this web-comic is and/or where I can find it? Googling the text didn't help. Note to William SRD: Giving credits for the author/artist would help both, them and their potential audience. It's also the right thing to do when you use their content in your video.

[@WilliamSRD]

Whoops! I missed a credit, I'll add that in as an annotation, thank you for catching it! That's Dark Legacy, a super long-running World of Warcraft comic.

[@booradley6832]

Also you know your side buttons on your mouse function as the arrow keys? Number lock turns it on/off. You could just move your character using the 2456 buttons I believe. I know ive done it before for other games, and I certainly do not have those buttons mapped to WASD

[@user-a5Bw9de]

Why is there Steve from Minecraft in the Opening cinematic? At least we've got NWN:HotU after this, although I'm not sure if there are any same dev member involved between the two products (they are not even same dev team to begin with.)

[@pp-zj1mv]

11:14 well, fromsoft realized that trying to build a sci-fi mech game with an engine that was used for fantasy action RPGs is an amazing idea

[@josephvanorden6373]

you got that fancy gaming mouse, set those buttons to the ones you need on the keyboard?

[@ArchieRatsworth]

"Haha. You got carpal tunnel!" Seriously had me giggling with that one.

[@z.s.7992]

Totally had to subscribe. I played pools of radiance and I remember in the earl game getting attacked by a bunch of gargoyles...no magic weapons, no silver weapons....party wipe. That combat kept triggering where I had to go. It was so "what the christ" I also completely agree about the hidden doors and whatnot from the nineties. I remember playing Simons Quest on NES and in one of the castles there is a jump that is an extreme pain in the ass to make and if you miss it you have to keep going a really long distance around to get back to it. Real time waster.

[@vtheofilis]

In fairness, Blue Sky Productions made Ultima Underworld by combining elements of Space Rogue and Car & Driver with new code. But they had the devs of those games in house, while Interplay had licenced Volition' s engine.

[@AztecCroc]

11:49 Elite Dangerous uses Frontier's COBRA engine, the same engine used for Planet Coaster, Planet Zoo, and the Jurassic Park Evolution games, you could probably make a perfectly functional DnD game with it.

[@bubblecat7827]

Now making a dragon riding game in this engine…

[@KnightShade4]

That first 3 minutes got me to subscribe. Great presentation dude. Cant wait to see your channel grow

[@ZemplinTemplar]

You mentioning the two Ultimate Underworld games is especially funny, given that both were developed by Looking Glass Studios in the early 1990s (though they had a somewhat different name back then), and by 1998, Looking Glass Studios had published their first Thief game, which already had much more modern-looking 3D and more intuitive controls than this D&D game. It's as if the several teams that worked on Descent to Undermountain were still playing catch-up with early 90s game design for RPGs, including those earliest 3D RPGs by Looking Glass, whereas Looking Glass had long since moved on to far more contemporary and ambitious tech and design. What a contrast the two 1998 end products were. Looking Glass wasn't even some huge company, they were basically a little indie studio staffed mostly by MIT graduates. I've often heard the opinion that they were stretching tech in their 90s first-person games to the limit and mostly making them appear far more advanced than they were. It was just that few others were trying design approaches as bold as their's. (They also had their share of bad decisions: Falling for the FMV cutscene craze of the 90s when they were making Terra Nova: Strike Force Centauri lost them a lot of money and was unnecessary. Thief arguably saved them from bankruptcy and they managed to limp on until 2000.) This 1998 D&D game is all but forgotten, as a largelly failed experiment to use the Descent engine for a wholly different work, while the original Thief helped launch a whole new genre and even considered one of the best games of all time and a design milestone (especially in terms of stealth gameplay design, sound propagation, but also its timeless art direction and presentation quality).

[@ssfbob456]

This whole thing is insane, but a Mind Flayer just hanging out in the Yawning Portal that actually offers to help?

[@MiloRaglan]

Having faith your faith based spells are working is one of the funniest bits ever.

[@StarshadowMelody]

"You may call me Infinite, in the brief moments that remain to you."

[@ogwillikerz5496]

I would have sat at that "loading screen" for an eternity. Thank you for suffering for us.

[@ryzekiv7147]

14:17 I’m getting, “Grandma found her olde stripper outfit, and it still fits” vibes from this. As animated by Seth McFarland.

[@ultimateninjaboi]

It blows my mind how many games (and specifically fantasy dungeon crawly ones) of this era were built in flight sim engines. Like... even knowing how and why, its still befuddling every time im reminded

[@yichlyichl4204]

Many things can change in D&D, but CoDZilla has a funny way of showing up (at least the Cleric part) over and over. Even in a flight sim. Now I want a wacky 1-2E-era story adaptation where the players are in Spelljammers having at it in space.

[@JoyZoneYT]

You reminded me of the struggle Bioware had when they had to use the FPS engine to do DA Inquisition as it was not made for it at all. Thing is, it helped the ME Andromeda team, as they needed tools to do their thing also. So, I guess history repeats itself.

[@hicknopunk]

Any old D&D DOS game with random encounters, in town, were the worst.

[@MrDalisclock]

I remember some review back when this released calling it "Descent to Blundermountain". Literally the only thing I remembered about it.

[@fahbs]

Is worst D&D game limited to the PC? Because it's really hard for anything to beat Heroes of the Lance for NES.

[@robinm1331]

Earliest game in this style that I remember is Dungeon Master from 1989... which was later a HEAVY inspiration for Legend of Grimrock, right down to how secret wall switches were rendered. Might be earlier ones I'm not aware of. Of course.

[@FeelingShred]

one of the most influential and technological impressive games of the genre... took some 3 or 4 years for other companies to achieve the same fluidity of movement of the 1st-person engine used in the game... Dungeon Master 2 is a very interesting game, survival mechanics etc... it's a shame the end game requires some exploiting glitches in order to finish, but very enjoyable experience overall

[@FeelingShred]

and you can always use Save Game Editors or trainers (cheating software) to give yourself absurd amounts of HP if you want to rush through the game, no shame

[@WTFisTingispingis]

I dunno why but the thought of hiring someone purely to make them go "ow" into a mic is gutbustingly funny.

[@nuclear_caliber-we3pc]

I asked for this game for Christmas and got it at release. I couldn't even figure out the controls or how to move. So I just returned it.

[@OmegaEnvych]

Elite: Strahdgerous sounds so stupid I legit want to see it in real life!

[@Slugger1990]

I absolutely adore anyone who includes their pets in their DnD videos.

[@Brainles5]

I cannot believe your videos are not getting more views! This is great!

[@patrickb6862]

I didn't see this bit of info here but It seems like this game was based on 2nd edition so priest is what the class was called and it was broken down into cleric and druid if I recall correctly. The other classes had a similar thing going on where warriors would include fighter, paladin, ranger, and eventually barbarian; rogue would include thief, bard, and eventually assassin; wizard who can specialize in a particular school; and if your DM had the book Psionics. These subclasses only had slight differences and were largely flavour choices. DM's were incouraged to make they're own list of subclasses in the DMG.