UnderRail

What can I say – it's a great game! I can't remember how many times I started with different builds, on different paths, but on the hardest difficulty, the game really gives me a hard time...: Excellent combat, cool characters, a truly interesting and deeply developed world, plus an open world. A huge variety of builds – make a tin can, get acid-spitting snakes; make a sniper, get stalkers and tough melee. Overall, I'm really looking forward to the second part!

The easiest difficulty is insanely hard. If you don't stealth and surprise the enemy you're usually dead in the first round. A pig charges, stuns you so you can't take any actions, dead. A random thug throws a grenade or full auto's you, dead. Two frogs jump out of a puddle right next to you, dead. Walk into a random open shack in town with a guard next to it and no signs, they go hostile and you're dead. I honestly don't know why this game even has hp, since the rats are about the only thing you can survive a hit from. Probably a fun game if you're really into the stealth ambush style.

So the idea is great, but the problem is that the initial 10 hour hump to get to open world is too hard and too boring to really grind out. There's a lot of games out, and spending 10 hours in the initial caves while having literally NO help or guide, is kinda lame. Then you'll lock yourself out of an entire part of the game supposedly because you didn't talk to a certain NPC or do a certain side quest and that's too nerve wracking. The build thing is also cool but lame because you'll grind out that initial introduction and realize your build is junk. 2/10

I want to like this game, but the combat is onerous and painful. You're essentially always outnumbered, enemies will stunlock you from 100 to 0, and the system is obtuse requiring indepth online research to build a functional character. The tutorial doesn't touch on nearly anything relevant to the gameplay itself. Your most powerful tool is savescuming. After playing for a while you'll start to praise XCOM's shot accuracy after you miss 10 80+% shots in a row while enemies turn you into red mush.

Amazing RPG which reminded me of old-school ones. If you like Fallouts, Gothic, Drova (among the newer titles), definitely try it out. I've played it two times, and enjoyed both immensely. To go a bit into details, world-building and lore are fantastic. There is no voice acting, so you have to read tons of text, but it's definitely worth it. It also felt really good to progress; the game managed to nail the feeling of "from rags to riches". You have dozens of available builds, multiple possible approaches to any given situation, and ways to resolve a conflict. What I really liked is that there are some things you cannot do if you didn't build for them. It brings more meaning to other things you can do because you know a different character wouldn't be able to do the same. The music is pretty much in the background, but it's decent and adds to the atmosphere. The visuals are also pretty good for an indie game. Now, a couple of issues: 1. Traders buy certain types of items. Alright, it adds to "realism". However, they also have limited amount of money, so you have to constantly run between them to finally sell all your loot. It crosses the "realistic but understandable" and becomes a chore. Not a fan. 2. The visuals can be a bit unintuitive at times. Not all area transitions are obvious. Sometimes, it's reasonable and is more of a secret entrance or something. Other times, it's just clunky and feels irritating. 3. There can be A LOT of backtracking. I was fine with it since I took the game pretty slowly and savoured it, but it can certainly get old. All in all, Underrail is wonderful. It nails the atmosphere, the gameplay, and the overall feel of its world. Despite some shortcomings, it's an amazing game. P.S. afaik, the dev obfuscates the code and doesn't welcome mods, which, IMO, is a shame, but it has no bearing on my attitude towards the game itself.

Great game with insane vibes of classic Fallout games. For me it was like an adventure back in time to my childhood. A post-apocalyptic world where you explore and travel, trying to help people (or not), surviving and improving your character. It also has a lot of similarities with Fallout, but it is different - we have stats, skills and perks, but you can max out much more things than you could in Fallout, and the crafting system and psionic abilities were very cool to try. The story is interesting and has its twists, characters are great, but some systems were pretty hardcore which can let down some players. The idea that you can't sell everything in one place is interesting, but in the end I just had to run all over the world just to sell some stuff and buy slightly better gear for hours. Once I spent 4 hours just running from one vendor to another looking for better gear. Also at some point there are encounters with infinite enemies - there are some mechanics and conditions to play around it, but mostly it is just pack after pack after pack of enemies, which is very frustrating, especially when I was used to cleaning up every corner and checking every stone. :) Apparently the game was made by 12 people, so considering that - it is just one of the best indie games I have ever played. 9/10 from me and I am really looking forward to the next game - Underrail 2 is currently in development.

You got filtered 50 hours deep into your playthrough because your build sucks? skill issue, pipeworker

If you consider artifical difficulty and bullet sponge enemies whose defeat requires intense kiting and meta knowledge gameplay, then this is your game. How does this game get to call itself an RPG, when it punishes the player for playing anything besides a single meta trapping and throwing grenades build? (Not to mention the ridiculous RNG mechanics unnecessarily ruining certain playthroughs) Of course, this is my fault for picking Dominating, but hard difficulty should reward a good amount of builds, not only one. Just cause its the hardest difficulty, doesn't mean it gets to break the entire point of an RPG. The game forces you to play a certain way on hard in the early game, because it doesn't offer you early game feats to effectively fight in combat (on Dominating Difficulty) Not to mention the game has locked content behind RNG, meaning that certain quests and features require intense RNG and replays to access. Confused why anyone would consider this to be a good feature and not a dumb one that unfairly demands more player time commitment. Underrail is a neat project; it features a lot of questionable design choices that are protected from fair criticism because some maschochistic gamers think spending more time watching a bar go down is peak gameplay. On Normal the gameplay is decent. Although you are punished for not knowing that you needed an extra +1 to succeed a persuasion check, Information the game chooses to keep from you, forcing you to use the WIKI liberally as the game itself has a mundane tutorial that only teaches gameplay controls, not skill synergies. On Dominating it is borderline reta3ded. I mean; the only way is to play a very specific way. Deal with enemies as quickly as possible, usually through non combative means, because combat on Dominating is extremely punishing and costly, it means you only face fights you have to, and run or use tactics to get past the fights you can ignore. In other terms; it offers you a pretty solid hardcore experience that punishes you for not playing extra careful. It also heavily punishes you for not knowing META; the game does this on normal, but you suffer way more on Dominating. The games reliance on wiki use and elitist fanboyism towards valid criticism is nothing. Really its just the horrible game design; you are punished and it is all your fault! But in truth, the developer sucks at creating intuitive gameplay, and seems to free himself of this reality by delusionally blaming the player. Of course this is all my opinion; I've had a fun time writing this angry letter so hopefully you can have fun reading this hot mess. Really wanted to playthrough and enjoy this game; gonna uninstall n leave it to rot its such a nightmare to play and attempt enjoyment.

Good game, left my testicles completely destroyed.

wait, im starting to think this game isnt actually undertail that everyone talks about