This might be the most under rated and under appreciated game of the late 1900's. I feel like this series should have gone on and made many more in this series and I think they should re-release it on modern consoles. It is one of the most in depth games I have ever played. They took the time, back in the 1990's to make a game that your skills actually deteriorate if you don't use them enough. Now that may sound upsetting to some of the kids that play games today, but to me this was something that made the game that much more challenging. I tried for the longest time to find this game and a system that could play it because I played it back in the day before eBay and the Internet were really big. This game now would probably not challenge people nearly as much because you can just Google a lot of things about it. I remember spending days with a pencil and a piece of paper going through every possible spell word combination and writing down the ones that worked and the mana cost for each of the spells and what they cost at each level of power. When I told my kids about that they literally just asked me why I didn't look the stuff up on the Internet, and when I told them that we didn't have the Internet back then they asked me if I had electricity in my cave or not. Bottom line on this game, any nostalgia junkie should try it out because it will bring you back to the day when real nerds played real RPG's that focused on the story and how hard the game was and how much fun it would be to replay it over and over again. These days all that seems to matter to kids is how real decapitating someone looks and how well you can see the "princess's" bust. Somewhere along the line we lost the games with guts and we replaced them with superficial shells and replica's, this game reminded me of what it was like to be a real gamer and how games used to work your mind, not just your thumbs. I challenge anyone, yes ANYONE to play this game and give me a valid reason why it wasn't good if not great.  Ever since the original Final Fantasy was released for the NES, I've considered myself a pretty big fan of the RPG genre of video games. Since then, I've played through too many of them to count. Yet, after playing Dungeon Master II: Skullkeep, I see that I'm not quite the die-hard RPG fan I had always believed myself to be.
DM2 is -- without a doubt -- the most in-depth RPG I have ever played. If you had told me this fact beforehand, you probably would have gotten me all excited. However, my feelings toward the game are quite the opposite. I hate it. DM2 is one of the least pleasurable gaming experiences I've ever had.
Why do I despise this game so much, you ask? Oh, let me count the ways. First of all, the controls are entirely too complicated. While I can applaud the innovative idea behind a more skill-oriented way of fighting than the typical "tell them what to do and let them go at it" RPG style, it takes forever to master. Also, at times I had trouble measuring the depth perception of the game, so I would take a step forward, not realizing I could not move further. Instead of either nothing happening or maybe just a "bump" sound, two of my men would actually get penalized a hit point for doing this! Further, at one point I thought I was just in front of a door, so I pressed the button to let it down. It turns out I was directly underneath the door. As a result, my party was crushed.
The lack of depth perception is not the only complaint I have about the graphics. They're just plain bad. The enemies look terrible and your environments often resemble something straight from Wizardry -- an NES game! As bad as the graphics may be, the sound is even worse. Only on the rarest of occasions is any sound made that the regular Genesis is not capable of handling.
You're reminded, however, that you are indeed playing a Sega CD game when the time comes to save. DM2 takes up a whopping 100 blocks of internal RAM. You don't even have the option to use the external RAM cartridge. So say good-bye to any other games you might have saved if you even want to get DM2 started.
About the only reason I can give the game as high a rating as I did is that the game's developers were obviously some bright people. The game is long and complex, with some tough puzzles to figure out along the way. And I was quite impressed with the attempt at a new way to fight in an RPG. Too bad the game's tremendous faults take away from this. DM2 is for only the most die-hard of RPGers -- just don't be surprised if it makes you find out you're less of a fan than you originally thought.

marinefa : This is a decent review, but you should break it down into categories, explaining each one. The way you have it run together, it is hard to separate your sentences and paragraph structure. Other than that, it is good work. If you touch it up a bit for me, and then let me know you have done so, I will feature it for you. If you don't want to edit it, that is fine, as well. I just thought I would give you the opportunity to get it featured.

Ah man I remember shadow gate also, That game brought my whole family together to play and try to figure out all the little puzzles and stuff. I remember calling the help line too, man you know those guys made some money back before the Internet. That game was awesome and I'm glad you reminded me of it cause I am going to go download that from this site as well. good call dude.