ATOM RPG: Post-apocalyptic indie game

The devs like Fallout 1 and 2. A LOT. So much, in fact, that they made a spiritual successor to Fallout 1 and 2, but instead of making a fresh take on the genre of isometric apocalyptica, they CTRL+F'd "California" and replaced it with "Russia". This game just doesn't feel like it has an original bone in its body, and that's a real shame. There's something skeletal and empty about the game world that's hard to put a finger on - Fallout 2 had this issue somewhat with the huge tracts of land you had to travel to once New Reno was available, but that's a game from twenty years ago(!), and it made up for the hollow feeling of the world screen by jam-packing towns with hours of shit to do. ATOM doesn't do this at all, and in fact reminds me of Morrowind with how the abundance of stock dialogue options serves more to cheapen the experience than flesh it out. The old fallouts at least had the courtesy to just not let you talk to people who didn't have anything worth saying - ATOM lets you talk to everyone, and ask the same four stupid questions and get one-sentence responses back. This is indicitive of another massive flaw in the game - the dialogue SUCKS. BIG TIME. It hurts extra bad that the dialogue is so trash, because that's the heart and soul of the OG Fallout games. There is the real possibility that the dialogue is better when the game is played in Russian, but I can get past grammatical errors and odd syntax! I can't get past people just running up to me and going "Hey! Get me something from the town you just left!" and my responses being either A) "What's in it for me?", B) "Sure, I'll do it for free" and C) "No", ad nauseum, over and over again. This game kinda...sucks. It's a valiant effort, but the whole is far, far less than the sum of its parts. For $15 it's alright, and you might like it as a cheap thing to fiddle around with, but don't expect anything more.

I can't recommend this game enough! It feels very comfortable after having played Fallout 1 & 2 and similar games since then. I thought the translation was very well done. I don't get why people are complaining. The game feels very polished to me. There are a lot of quality of life improvements over F1 and F2 that I appreciate. The first 10 or so hours are tough I admit, but you really need to stick with it. I love this game!

I like Fallout 1, Fallout 2, and Underrail so this game is a perfect match for me. Abundance of quests, encounters, items and skills make it a rich and satisfying game. I completed the game in 94 hours. Wording sometimes is a bit difficult to understand but it's still good and conversations with NPCs often make use of your skills and attributes. Combat (turn based) is great and the learning curve is high (I like it this way). At this price I got a massive amount of content and happy hours playing it. Amazing game and I wait with anticipation for Trudograd (sequel) to be finished.

And almost all the flaws of the original Fallouts are still here, but that ain't enough to warrant a score lower than 5/5 for me. Even the inventory screen looks the same! The biggest flaw of Fallout 2 - the very inconsistent location design - is fortunately absent. Some skills are mostly useless (I'm looking at YOU, stealth), but that's a problem hardly unique to ATOM or Fallout. I'd disagree with the 100+ hours of gameplay claim in the description, though, as it took me a bit over 50 hours on normal difficulty to get through any quest that my character's admittedly limited personality and speechcraft would allow me to take on before beating the main quest, and I doubt (albeit I sincerely hope to be wrong on this one) that quests only a high personality&speechcraft character can take on constitute another 50 hours of gameplay. The setting itself isn't as over-the-top as Fallout even at it's most fantastic, which sits well with me, but the perks aren't as fun. Companions which don't waste all their ammo firing bursts from their MG at a pack of rats like a bunch of idiots would be nice too.

Just finished Atom RPG. It’s a Russian indie Fallout 2 clone. Overall 7/10, for the effort. In plus: dark Fallout-like humor, all best F2 mechanics are here, nice crafting system, quirky and fun side quests, nice immersive gameplay in general (the RU folklore!), developed with care, no bugs. In minus: too slow leveling and punishing perk system, music and companions are only satisfactory, overall scarcity of drops and too restrictive carry weight, somewhat too short. Still, a must for Fallout fan. Looking forward to Trudograd DLC, will be instabuy. Please try it, it’s good value for money.