One of the main drawbacks of Ultima Underworld: The Stygian Abyss (though arguably so, as it allowed its various successors to benefit from its experience) were the moments where the game thought it appropriate to mix innovation and ambition to a degree that ended up feeling rather impetuous by virtue of its flawed execution; in a way, Ultima Underworld II: Labyrinth of Worlds represents the sort of thing that might have come about if that trend had extended to cover the length of an entire game.

To start with, there's the story, which not only ends up feeling messier and more lackluster compared to that of its predecessor, but is also considerably more prohibitive to people with no prior experience in the Ultima series. Whereas the premise of Stygian Abyss was rather simple and didn't really call for any prior knowledge of the world it takes place in to understand, that of Labyrinth of Worlds is a direct followup to the events of Ultima VII: The Black Gate (though taking place between that game and Serpent Isle), and the game will expect you to be familiar with the plot and characters from that game if you don't want to be hopelessly lost. A year after the destruction of the Black Gate, the Guardian has once again reared his big goofy red mug and trapped you, the Avatar, and a host of characters from that game inside Castle British, which he has encased in an enormous blackrock dome. If I've already lost you, you're going to have to go ahead and read a plot summary for Ultima VII (or actually play it, as loads of old school gamers even more codger-y than I will no doubt urge you to do), because it doesn't get any easier to follow.

For me, while this plot is adequately consistent, it lacks a lot of what gave the original Stygian Abyss an edge with 'hooking' the player and keeping him or her intrigued, wanting to keep going to find out why the evil wizard had the troll kidnap the princess and why his dead brother was so panicked about it and adamant that he had to be stopped, as well as what kind of wacky and unique creatures were waiting on the next floor down, and what kind of shenanigans they would ask you to get into to earn their favor and/or gain safe passage (fortunately, at least some of the folks at Looking Glass, who by now had been fortunate enough to shake off the Blue Sky Productions name, clearly knew how gripping that sort of worldbuilding and discovery-based storytelling was, as evidenced by its fundamental presence in the Thief games). Some could argue that this kind of discovery is not entirely absent from Labyrinth of Worlds, but due to the nature of the exploration in this game which I'll touch upon more in a second, it feels a lot more scuffed and unnatural, and the plot progression never really goes beyond "find a way to solve the same big problem that you've been aware of since the beginning".

The gameplay is largely similar to that of Stygian Abyss as far as the controls, the combat, the magic system and character growth, with the significant difference that just as in Ultima VII, you no longer raise your skills at shrines, but must instead seek out someone who will train you in the appropriate skill (something that noticeably ended up bleeding over into the Elder Scrolls series, which began as Ultima Underworld clones). The graphics are also pretty similar, though the character portraits in conversations are larger and more detailed. The music is similarly comparable to that of its predecessor, with a recurring leitmotif you'll hear in a few pieces, though also with a few others that I wager will readily get on some people's nerves.

The exploration and the game progression is where the differences start to become really noticeable. At the start of the game, your exploration of the caverns beneath Castle British wastes no time making it abundantly clear that things are not going to work like in Stygian Abyss, where the world was neatly broken up into eight big levels that were sequentially connected. Instead, you'll soon discover a large blackrock gem after going down a few small and uncrowded levels, which serves as a gateway connecting the castle to eight other worlds, each with its own story and problems which you'll gradually unravel while trying to figure out how to solve the conundrum that brought you there in the first place. Though traveling between these worlds can be a conundrum in an of itself because of how selecting your destination works, which is by walking into the various "spikes" protruding from the gem at different angles, which because of how small and bunched together they are and how awkward the turning is in an early 3D title such as this can be a very tricky enterprise indeed. The first of these worlds, Prison Tower, serves as an introduction to the "emergent gameplay" aspect that's always talked about with im-sims right away, as whether or not you managed to discover the food voucher perfectly hidden beneath a box in the storeroom you first enter the world through will determine whether or not you'll be able to proceed through it by solving a number of simple puzzles and dialogue trees, or by wantonly slaughtering everything in sight. Though the part of Stygian Abyss that calls to mind for me is the very chance-based feeling difference of whether or not you can avoid immediately fighting everyone in Level 7, which feels like it really could've been done better. The other worlds are presented uniquely, but in a way that is not entirely disconnected; my favorite was probably the fourth world, Taloris, which almost feels like a preview of the sort of environment we'd see later in some parts of System Shock, or even certain parts of similar Japanese adventure titles like Hellnight.

Most of the variety in different approaches to solving specific situations though probably comes from the number of magical spells you can use, whether by casting them yourself as a mage or by making use of the various enchanted items and scrolls you can find (if you can identify them correctly, that is, which can be a total crapshoot even if your Lore skill is maxed out). On that note, there are certain parts of the game, mostly to do with the final world accessible from the gem, that all but expect you to have various kinds of magic at your disposal just for the sake of basic navigation. Said final world also feels like it was made under the pretense that people wanted more from the environment that the very brief escape sequence at the end of Stygian Abyss took place in, and it seems to me that the endgame of The Elder Scrolls II: Daggerfall, a game that came out three years later, took a curious degree of inspiration from that part of this game— by "curious" I mean it much in the same sense that Axiom Verge curiously decided to take inspiration from the original Metroid, and seemingly none of the later ones. As in, it makes me want to scratch my head. A lot.

Much like in Stygian Abyss, though, exploring every corner of these worlds won't quite be enough to net you a victory; you must also put together all the pieces of a big puzzle that'll enable you to finally get rid of that pesky blackrock dome— and just like in Stygian Abyss, not all of those pieces will be presented to you very clearly or conveniently at all. I recently came across a decade-old interview talking about how John Romero and Rand Miller, two critical figures behind the development of DOOM and Myst respectively (both of which incidentally came out after this game), had a rather averse initial reaction to their competitor, with Romero even regarding Myst as the "anti-DOOM", and a rival to be overcome once it knocked Wolfenstein 3-D off the top of the gamer fan-charts; I can only imagine what those two would have to say about Labyrinth of Worlds, with its blend of action and game-wide puzzles which encourage extensive note-taking and observation while exploring the various worlds. And also, its rather primitive 3D plane that was quite awkward to navigate in comparison to the worlds of those two titles.

In summation, while I think this game falls a good bit shorter of its immediate predecessor, it's still got a lot of what made said predecessor so unique, memorable and influential in the first place, even if a lot of it is executed in a noticeably clunkier fashion and the novelty aspect has obviously dropped by a noticeable degree. Still, if like me you think that a foray through the prototypical pillars of the im-sim genre is a worthwhile endeavor, then it's definitely worth your time to at least take a look at this title. Whether or how deeply you choose to dive into Ultima VII or any of the other mainline Ultima titles that precede it as a way to better furnish your experience with it is for you to figure out.