UnderRail

Underrail features one of the greatest single character, turn-based combat systems of all time. Combine that with one of the greatest video game settings of all time, gorgeous art/aesthetics, quality writing, and endless replayability, and what you're left with is a spectacular experience that is a must-play for anyone who claims to be a fan of the RPG genre. While the game is difficult, don't let that deter you from giving this game a whirl. I had to remake my character several times on normal difficulty my first time playing through the game. Fast forward hundreds of hours later, I'm playing extremely sub-optimal builds on the highest difficulty, and having a blast while doing it. There is no artificial difficulty in Underrail. If you're struggling, it's because your build is terrible or you're just making fundamental tactical/strategic mistakes. There are videos where people beat the game on the highest difficulty using nothing but a crowbar. My recommendation? Follow a build for your first play through, or at the very least some sort of guide. It'll allow you to get an understanding of the game's systems, experience the quality setting, quests, and everything else the game has to offer. All in all, can't recommend this game enough. Do yourself a favor and play it.

If you're into games with a robust character creation and crafting system offering multiple options and tools to approach combat and exploration, get this game. This freedom naturally comes with a bit of a learning curve, more difficult to deal with for some than for others. The atmosphere is great; the world is dirty, dark and indiffirent with most inhabitants focused just on survival. The presentation is OK but it grew on me. The music and sounds are decent enough. The story holds together the experience filled with heaps upon heaps of combat encounters, scavenging and exploring and while I enjoyed it, I feel like it will feel a bit bare to many since the game is not extremely narratively driven. You are pointed towards objectives and sprinkled in are meaningful interactions, some interesting and even humorous ones, too, but there can never be enough for a game like this. A big hurdle for some could be the time it takes to travel in the world and possibly the amount of time combat could take. You will definitely be spending a lot of time just navigating the world, especially if you're the type to hoard items as the in-game speed selector enforces the lowest setting if you're encumbered. You might want to look into third-party software to increase game speed in either case. Play on Easy or Normal, learn the systems and crank up the difficulty on the next playthrough when you have an idea of how things work and you want to try one of the many builds that you haven't already so you can play with the toys that you couldn't before.

The game is interesting and allows for a good amount of character customization. However, be aware that you can easily create a character that is simply not viable (you will scour the map for limited XP sources, and end getting "locked" in a section of the map, not able to get past some invincible enemy). Still, worth a shot if you are a fan of the genre.

Hands down, best writing in postapo rpg since first Fallout. Excellent world building and audio

I will start out by saying that I’m not going to be long-winded here because I wrote a long thing on reddit about this game and Atom RPG (another good game, albeit very different from this one. Underrail is the one to get between the two, but they are both worth owning). The game isn’t perfect. Sometimes the gameplay can get feel a little stale when you are towards endgame. Even though there is the railway and boats that take you to various areas, not having a fast travel system is a bit of an annoyance. But I have 550 HOURS LOGGED in this game and always come back to play it. Sure, some of that might have been idle time, as I often play at work, but maybe only 100hrs of it. I am at the end of the main campaign and I’m not entirely sure where I am in the expansion 1. I love the ability to create hybrid classes. 2. I love the unique characters I meet. 3. I love the fact that they often don’t give you a right/wrong or good/evil solution to questlines. 4. The amount of items is overwhelming in a good way (there could be more endgame weapons/armor to keep exploration/questing rewarding and fresh). 5. The turn-based mechanics are great: nothing feels broken. In the expansion, even at level 30+, I have to reload in some areas repeatedly because the combat and enemies are very challenging (but not TOO challenging!). 6. The graphics are really pleasant to me. I have a really nice gaming computer, but retro, isometric graphics with deep game systems really gets me going sometimes. 7. The writing is quite good for a game that so heavily relies upon conversations and narration. 8. The exploration is so enjoyable, I spent a good portion of the game just exploring and happening upon other random quests. Exploration rivals Morrowind here for me. The cons: as mentioned, there is only in-world fast travel. Load times between screens can be annoying (especially when traveling). There could be MORE choices to quests. Not much to complain about. Absolutely excellent job.