Under World (Land of the Dead)

Under World - Land of the Dead is a very old rpgmaker game made in 2010-2011, but somehow I missed it, and since the review made me curious I decide to try this game that looks like to be the first of a series (from what I see there are other three games and I have no idea if these are related to this one since this is the first), and the only one made in Rm2k3.

Under World (keep these words separated!) is an action rpg in which we play as Ron, the son of a knight that died heroically a long time ago that lives with . The story begins with Ron training in the forest, but his happy quiet life will be soon change. The first chapter or level is used to learn the basics of the game. There is an extremely useful wizard that will provide health regeneration (and immortality) for the first half, in exchange for some experience, but not much. And trust me this game is harsh especially in the beginning, so you will need every help you can get!


Whats the matter? Are these Kobolds annoying you? (hint: noticed the claw on the upper right? It's a weapon. The barrels may contain items, and the vase has some money inside!). The two red "Xs" on the side map exits indicate that this is a mandatory fight (no escape!).

The game is played using the numpad of the keyboard, to change weapons and items, attack, move and craft items. To attack you have to press both the attack button and a directional key, so that Ron will sprint, hitting everything on the way. Mind that some enemies are weaker to bladed attacks, some to bashing weapons and others to piercing hits, so it's suggested to keep one weapon per kind, and also remember to upgrade them buying the stronger version as soon as you can (this means as soon as you have the money, but some weapons can also be found during the game).

Item crafting is called alchemy: you will find some wooden barrels that you can break to find ingredients and empty bottles (but in rare cases you can also wound yourself): combining the right ingredients you can create some useful potions, BUT there's always the possibility that they will explode, so you have two choices: spending experience to learn alchemy and reduce this possibility... or exploit save points to be safe! But you can also rely on the potions you find or buy them at the shops, if you want to be safe!

Remember that when you select an item this is immediately used as soon as you press the action/attack button, and then it resets even if you have more one-use items of the same kind (potions or bombs). It's not a bad system even if having to use hotkeys would have made this simpler, due to the hectic moments of real time combat...


In this screen you can see two things: the simple but effective interface with health points, mana, items and weapons, and... Link from Zelda!

Oh yeah, combat is hard, especially in the beginning when you have few hitpoints and are basically a weakling with no spells and ridiculous attacks... then after a while as you complete chapters you have the possibility to spend the experience points collected so far to learn spells, increase strength and critical hits percentage, making Ron tougher, and so on.
I admit that the game became more and more a pleasure to play after the traumatic beginnings, easier but still not too easy and quite challenging. I spent most points on making Ron a perfect warrior, neglecting magic and alchemy... and it worked very well! So I am very satsfied!

Experience is earned killing enemies (in some cases you do not need to kill everyone and you can just run away) or found around in some places on the maps (looks like some bright green bouncing "things") often in optional locations or hidden behind some other objects, like trees.

But even if experience will let Ron become stronger and tougher, also the enemies encuntered will become more and more dangerous: the first you meet are able to damage you only touching, later there will be cratures that can attack sliding like Ron, some that will cast fireballs and attack from distance, and even necromancers that will summon undeads until killed! There's a good variety of monsters and beasts to kill, this is sure!


Here's the most interesting part of the game, where you can build Ron as you wish, spending experience to learn and improve skills! As you can see I created the ultimate warrior! (those green orbs on the right are extra experience points! Grab them!)

Besides combat the game offers cutscenes with dialogues, minigames where you can earn money and some other tasks like avoiding rocks and collecting cats.

I spoke of chapters but these can also be called levels: the story is a linear sequence of adventures, and every map, no matter if it is the interior of a house, a forest or a cave, but it is always a single screen, and you can exit from one of the four sides. Maps are for the most part average, well there are some that are pretty nice and looks good, others are average but no one is really ugly, even if the first village has some map imprecisions and errors like overlapping sprites, but no real game-breaking error.
The graphics comes from various sources and it shows: there is a certain mish-mash of different styles both for what regards charsets, chipsets and facesets, for example Ron's girlfriend looks bigger/taller than him... but well it's not a terrible flaw.

The story is simple but works well for this kind of game: this is the adventure of a young man that witness his quiet life destroyed by enemies that burn his village, he leaves with some survivors an his girlfriend, but these relentless opponents are going to conquer the whole world so there is no other choice than fighting back! It's clearly nothing original at all, but the theme of revenge is a classic and pretty good for a game based around combat.
And despite the grim and bittersweet story, there are also some funny parts like the encounter with Link or the house inhabited by the baboons... ok these aren't clearly part of the story but just some hidden easter eggs, anyway they are pretty nice!


Do you want to buy more potions and better weapons but you don't have the money? Here's a solution! Minigames!

Final Verdict
Under World - the land of the dead, is said to be a prototype for the other games of the series. It's old, rough and extremely challenging but I found no game breaking issues and bugs, clearly this is a game that requires a clever player that has to exploit everything, starting from the save points. The leveling up system is very well made and interesting, and while the story and the events aren't overly original and the plot twists are not really unexpected, I am sure that most players will be compelled to play and overcome every opponent just to learn what happens next.

For some reason at a certain point I believed this was a homage to The Way due to some similitudes like the use of rendered backgrounds, a player characters that is similar to one of the minor characters of the sixth episode of that game, and tons of ninjas that reminds of the Lyn warriors, but it's just a coincidence!

Ok, so taking in account that this is a very old game and the limitations of the engine for what concerns action games, and considering the final result, in my opinion this is still a good game. Clearly a bit imperfect and not a game for everyone, but I noticed other people liking it, and once I tried it I understood why! 4/5, pretty good indeed!