Yeah, Underrail, quite a bit.
Depends on what kind of gaming mood you have, if it works as a wonderful experience or not.
There are some nasty surprises if you're not into taking it slowly in games... But once the character is up a few levels, things become easier and lots of fun too. The development system of the character is excellent in my opinion, and the mood of the whole game is well done. It may seem that it's only about tedious battles and with no story. But there is a lot of dialogue and the story starts to unravel later on. I'd say it is an excellent RPG with lots of quality.
And the expansion is in the makes, shouldn't be long now.

Uhm, sorry, mate. I have no such tools. I've found the list somewhere around and just brought it here. No idea how to check removed titles (except checking the games' history one by one)...

PS. Hey, perhaps it was just a mistake, because it's discounted again (-90% at the moment).

Someone on staff is f'ing with you. :)

I purchased Balrum at the start of this sale and have been playing it since. I'm really hooked on it. Granted, I have mostly been farming, mining, stealing stuff, and building my house and I'm only level 2 (going on 3). Progress is very, very slow - even if I did venture out more.

So far, it seems like a cross between the 'Eschalon: Book" series and Stardew Valley. It is an open-world isometric RPG with some survival elements (have to rest/eat/drink), crafting, farming, and house building/decorating. Though I'm not sure it is quite as good as Eschalon as an RPG, or as good as Stardew Valley as a farming/house building sim. Yet, somehow I'm finding the mix very enjoyable.

Most of the quests are pretty straight-forward fetch or collection quests, you don't get to create or even name your character (though there is lots of skill customization), and some of the dialogue isn't great. I'm not too sure about the size of the world, it seems to be a fair size, but I've heard its on the small-side and there are less dungeons than your typical open-world RPG. Monsters are pretty tough, don't seem to ever respawn, and don't give a whole lot of exp for the difficulty (I'm playing on Normal difficulty, btw).

It is definitely an ambitious game with all of these systems in place, even if some of them aren't as well done as other games. If you don't mind just immersing yourself in the game and doing lots of tasks that are sometimes menial (delivery quests, chopping trees, mining, decorating your house, tinkering around with the crafting and farming, roaming around and stealing stuff from people's homes, and slowly venturing out to kill the odd monster or progress on the main quest - it can be fun and engrossing. If you are looking for lots of action or super-compelling writing and dialogue choices, it might not be for you.

Well, UnderRail is the sequel to MiniMetro; you know, after the apocalypse happened. ;)

Thanks for the write-ups! I was in a hurry earlier, so I didn't say anything about what games I play of the genre and such.

I haven't played Eschalon or Stardew Valley, but I've played lots of Minecraft, which I enjoyed a lot. I could definitely see myself spending many hours chopping wood and gathering resources. I do like the zen aspect of these games, just slowly gathering resources and building up your base can be very relaxing. When I looked at the screenshots, I expected a mix of Minecraft and Tales of Maj'Eyal, which I guess it kind of is (without the roguelike permadeath aspect). It surely is very interesting.

How does Underrail compare to Fallout 1 & 2? It looks *very* inspired by them (and I love those games). Is it a open game with sidequests and exploration? How well done is the combat? I'm guessing it has a lot of it, so it's important that this works well :)

Hmmm, interesting title on this page:

https://www.gog.com/game/everything

Everything -40% on GOG.com

:D

I wonder, why is 2004 seemingly the "old" cut off date for so people - presumably in their 20s - including me? Is that because that was the last great year - as far as we are concerned - for games (Doom 3, HL2, GTA4, etc.) and exciting game engine tech (despite Crysis coming out three years later)?

I also didn´t get it. I would understand if Cardskeeper would say 2000, but why precisely 2004?

In my case, probably because of Bloodlines. But there is also an argument for 2005, albeit early 2005, for KotOR2. Otherwise, fair number of others in 2003.
But may also be the fact that there's an idea of the golden age of RPGs being late '90s - early '00s, and '04 is really as farf as you can stretch "early '00s" to (and you have to, because of Bloodlines - sorry mess that it was on launch in the technical aspects).
I'll be 33 in a few weeks though, so not 20s anymore for a while now :)

I think that's probably about right, though golden age for PC games in general (maybe games in general), not just RPGs.

https://www.reddit.com/r/gaming/comments/1kl0or/2004_one_of_the_best_years_in_gaming/

Why 2004 Was the Best Year in Gaming
https://www.gamespot.com/articles/why-2004-was-the-best-year-in-gaming/1100-6424377/

1998 is mentioned in both links above for having plenty of good games that year too. Other Gamespot links discuss '93 and '96.

Ah I didn't know that. That's interesting.
I think I need an explanation to make sense of the timeline. Do the events of UnderRail happen before, between or after Metro 2033 and Metro Last Light?

Haha, you guys are overthinking it.
In the GOG store you can filter by release dates, and the first two categories are "pre-2000" and "2000 - 2004"
Since I am a '93 kid, those two filters classify as my 'Good Old Games' filter.

I would understand why you'd personally cut it off at 2000, but I'd say some great games came out during the 2000-2004 period judging by the selection of games in the store. I am seeing 'The Longest Journey', 'Empire Earth', 'Morrowind' and a bunch of other classics listed for this time period. I don't think that's just my nostalgia talking, those are objectively great games even today.

If there wasn't a GOG filter, I don't know where I'd make the clean cut between 'Old' and 'Modern', but I think it'd be around 2006? That's when consoles took off and stabbed PC development in the back, a wound that we are still recovering from imo. Not to say there weren't any great games post-2006, but that's when it started feeling a little more iffy for me. Maybe I just grew older? I am also not hating on consoles or anything, I just meant to say that everything became a little less innovative and more ... Safe since 2006.

Contrary to the other opinion, i don't think Balrum is a good game. In my opinion, it's the strange mix, precisely, the problem.

The game has a good amount of content but mixing survival needs with a real time rpg is a bad idea. Or, at least, in this case is bad implemented. When you have text to read (quests, dialogs) and you have to think in front of a screen full of items (skills, crafting, building, etc) but the time never stops...well, you can dehydrate and/or starvate without even noticing. Why not implement a pause while you are reading something or even at your inventory? I remember people saying this again and again to the devs while development to no avail. No answers, no explanation, ignoring feedback.

Dialog is not good but you can find yourself reading a (small fonts) text too large while you know you are losing time (eat/drink/rest) and stressing about that. I ended up NOT reading almost anything, accepting any quest as soon i can hit the button and reading only what i needed to do later. In my opinion, this is a but stupid and frustrating. Same when you are looking at your inventory and thinking about what to craft or how to plan your building.

Only pause is at combat. This is TBS, while all the rest is RT. Also, game stops time whenever you get close enough to a hostile, even if that hostile is not attacking you and you don't even see that hostile. An example: you are grinding (yes, you will need to constantly grind, even more at the begining to get berries to eat...constantly) and game is stopping again and again, yet you don't even see why. It's frustrating that then you suddenly have to move like in a TBS (if you managed to see what npc was "near" you and move away from it) just to continue normally with your game in RT.

It's a shame because the game has enough content to be good, but the design is questionable, in my opinion, and gives you unnecessary stress while playing and also kills completely my immersion when i have to accept quests and talk to npcs wihout even reading the text (that, or accepting the "penalty" for reading in the form of hunger and thirst...crazy)

lol or it is because later than that, scene changes, publishers start buying studios, developers start making their previous PC games for consoles (and releasing PC ports later), war for exclusive games in each big console starts (what leads to more poor PC ports later), online content scalates (not yet DRM online schemes, but only online gameplay even in single player) and start the avalanch of DLC's instead of classic expansions...until now, that we can have a game made for console and then PC ported, only online (even SP), bugged and with big patches since day 0, with pre-order non-cosmetic exclusives, poor vanilla content, day 0 DLC's, random loot boxes you can buy with real money (microtransactions but with the "fun" of lottery) and Denuvo online DRM.

A big change in just a decade, indeed :(