I'm familiar with and like Daggerfall. How does this compare?

How's character creation? Daggerfall allowed custom classes with insane amounts of customization. Then there was vampire and werewolf infections.

How's the story? Daggerfall felt a bit sparse in places. It let you go anywhere and do anything though so that was forgivable.

How much freedom do you have in this game? Like I stated, in Daggerfall I could go anywhere and do anything (climb, swim, fly, steal, fight, teleport, buy a house, a horse, a cart, a boat...).

Is it buggy (hopefully not)? Daggerfall apparently was really buggy at release. Even fully patched I ran into a pair of nearly show stopping bugs the last time I played.

Please feel free to compare any other aspects I didn't mention.

UUW isn't a lot like Daggerfall, its more of an action adventure lite rpg. Not open ended at all. But it doesn't need to be and its okay.

Character creation is pretty limited, you get to choose a couple skills, your name and what you look like thats about it. The story in the first game is pretty generic, the second it gets a damn sight better.

While you have a fair amount of freedom into how you do the quests and such, it is linear and there isn't a lot of spare stuff. Both don't let you buy a house or anything like that. As long as I've had it, it hasn't been buggy at all.

Ultima Underworld is well worth a look, especially if you liked the dungeon crawl parts of Daggerfall. You don't have as much freedom in terms of character creation but there are lots of places to explore and items to collect.

As an aside, Daggerfall was re-released as freeware a while back; [url=http://theelderscrolls.wiwiland.net/?title=Daggerfall_:_DaggerfallSetup_EN]Daggerfall Setup[/url] will get it up and running on Windows in a few clicks. :)

*coughs, shameless UU advertising incoming* This game was released well before Daggerfall. Even waay before Arena. Not free roaming, in the sense that you are in the same dungeon (UU1) or just have a handful of worlds (UU2). But it has a lot of freedom in what you do, awesome controls (can play with just the mouse) and for it's age, kickass graphics. Don't know if the main description includes it, but the guys at Looking Glass came up with a real 3D engine even before Wolfenstein...
It is a unique experience, and quite complex. It should be owned by every RPG loving enthusiast. Though I own the EA Classics version, I'll be sure to pick this one up.

I'll have to "dust off" my GOG copy of AF sometime I guess. (I never really played it before switching machines.) Oh I know.

I also know about changing the scaler in DosBox.conf so the game looks better. ("supereagle" is my preference.)

I also know about http://www.uesp.net/dagger/espdag.shtml which has couple points on vampirism that aren't mentioned on the updated version. (Recommended vampire build which I have only slightly managed to better. A way to regenerate spell points as a member of a certain vampire clan.)

I also know http://www.tesguides.com/tes2/ is also a decent source for information. The author has an illogical bias toward low hit point characters however. (He claims its easier to level scum them for higher hit points which is wrong on both statistical and "moral" grounds.)

I also know (sort of) how to use atlas.exe to locate dungeons that the game may send you to but not add to your map. (This happened on a main quest mission to me. Using a map cheat should be easier but I couldn't get it working.)

I also know how to clip into the blind god should he glitch and refuse to open his eyes (another main quest bug).

Oh I know.

For me, I think I liked Ultima Underworld better than Daggerfall, but that's because I'm a wimp. I liked the more limited and focused area than the wide open often empty feeling expanses of Daggerfall.

The dungeon crawling gave me more a feeling of being trapped inside a dungeon where still there were things to be found. Because of the limited size, the areas were better thought out with more puzzle like things.

As mentioned, do try to dust off your copy of Arx Fatalis if you have it on Gog already, it very much is like an homage to Ultima Underworld. As an example I bought Morrowind the day it was released, had trouble keeping attention on it but kept on going knowing I'd liked wandering around in Daggerfall. Then Arx fatalis was released, I bought it and that was the end of my attempts for playing Morrowind. I guess I ought to try to pick it up again, but now I'm going to be replaying UU again.

As a side note, UU was quite ahead of it's time, being released the year before Doom (1992 vs 1993), and featured more complex geometry and lighting, inventory system (including moving things around in the world), conversations and such.

Doom got more popular because of it's faster pace.

Actually as far as I remember Arx Fatalis started as Ultima Underworld 3 but the
Arcane Studios never could pitch it to EA so they removed all Britannia References from the game and gave the story a somewhat new direction. Nevertheless you can see clearly that it is an Ultima underworld, that starts from the Artwork where lots of things look Ultimaish and ending with the entire game and physics mechanics which are very close to what the Underworlds Prototyped.
I just wished those kind of games were made more. The games coming closest to the late Ultimas are currently the ones Piranha Bytes do. (Gothic 1+2 and Risen, Gothic 3 was a failed attempt of Pulling off a massive world Bethestha Style)

UW is smaller than Daggerfall. Then again, nearly everything is. Because everything in each UW game is there for a reason, the world feels deeper and more complete than Daggerfall's random, sparse environments.

The story is involving. In Ultima tradition, there is an overall goal surrounded by lots of unrelated local ones. The player is always free to explore and travel between levels. There's no enemy scaling, so difficulty depends on how quickly you want to push ahead. You can do almost anything in context of the environments, and there's usually more variety than in Daggerfall. Actual conversations with everyone rather than canned responses.

Character creation is similar to Fallout. A few core stats surrounded by diverse skills. Can't remember if core stats can be increased from what you start with. Don't think so. You can take your character in many directions; you're likely to use a mix of might and magic no matter how you distribute it. Low-strength characters have inventory trouble.

I don't recall hitting nasty bugs. Most of the time the games are flawless. Gamefaqs mentions a broken quest flag in UW2 that was apparently patched out.

Combat is a distant cousin to Daggerfall's. Interface takes some getting used to. Lots more to do than just look at something and click a button.

Same here. Daggerfall, for all the cool features it had, felt like a big, empty, barren waste of a sandbox to me. That's cool if you're into that sort of thing, but I like the more focused and well developed story and dungeon of Underworld.

I liked Morrowind better than Daggerfall, but I still prefer Ultima Underworld to any Elder Scrolls game.

Chalk and cheese.

Daggerfall is an RPG version of Elite - loads of random dungeons etc. (or at least seeded) - very samey...but equally lots and lots of flexibility.

UUW 1 and 2 are interactive stories.. So chracter interaction is much better, the game design is tighter etc. Nothing feelsrandomly generated (because it isn't). No outside locations...but then it doesn't matter - you are taking part in a scripted adventure...not a sandbox experience. As others have mentioned charcter creation is not that great - but good enough.

Basically - aside from the fact that they are 3D First Person RPG's - there is very little in common.

Both the underworlds are far better games IMO.