UnderRail

I love isometric turn based RPG games. Back in the day I played Fallout 1 & 2, Baldur's Gate and it's offspring, and of course Planescape: Torment for days on end. I thought this would be a throwback to those classics, how wrong I was. Combat is so incredibly frustrating, that no amount of longing for the good old days can redeem it. Unless you like to save after every step you take, and run into literally the first combat encounter of the game without a hope of survival because you do zero damage and you just get swarmed by enemies, give this game a wide berth.

To start, I'm surprised that largely one person put such a big and detailed game together. I played Fallout 1 for the first time a year ago (2015) and loved it. When I saw this game I skipped Fallout 2 and jumped on it. It seemed like a good time as with version 010 any bugs or issues would have been sorted out. Indeed, the game is pretty bug and issue free. However, it was unfortunately a waste of my time. The story was not well developed (we'll let the typo's slide). Even in the first ten hours of play, I understood more about the background story from reading online than I could figure out by talking to everyone. And the ending concludes just one part while leaving a lot of unanswered questions and an unpleasant "cliff hanger" - By the time I dragged myself through the last area of the game I cared even less what was going to happen than before, so to imply that "cliff-hanger" means I was on the edge of my seat is... not accurate. The mechanics of the game were diverse enough where I wondered about different builds. And a second playthrough will be smoother in a sense because you will know what to do when you approach non-senseical, inconsistent game mechanics such as when trying to do whatever (I forget now) to the out of control monster by way of talking to it's incapacitated body... or in the end when you have to stand in front of doors to get them to open unlike anything else in the game to that point. The difficulty on normal was well managed though beating the last guy was frustratingly almost impossible and by the time I won I was out of almost all of my consumables. I would have grabbed more from my stash but I didn't know I was going to be trapped in the last area which is a significant percent of the game to not be allowed to leave. Spoiler-ish: I would have loved to know that if the eye is on you the enemies are limitless. And grabbing the heart from the plant is NOT OBVIOUS. Finally, the music could have really used extra tracks. Sigh... Cheers

It could be nice and atmospheric dungeon crawler, with pieces of classic fallouts, metro and cyberpunk. But it is not. Developers had failed in their task: it is imbalanced from the start. That is the reason this game needs strange cooldowns, terrible barter system and ultimately implemented hardcore elements in battles (e.g. if enemy CAN stun you, he WILL stun you. No pathetic excuses like misses (enemies almost never miss), saving throws, full metal armor or even constitution resist). And while you see it that way, you cannot overlook mediocre (sometimes amateur even) graphics, generated-like soundtrack, almost absent story or terrible elements of game design. I completely understand that there are players playing hardcore for the sake of hardcore, while generating builds is greatest pleasure and do not mention the world. But that's not me. And this game has very little common with "classic Fallout" if we are talking about enjoying game, not suffering it.

I am going to compare this to the Fallout series. This is because this game INVITES such comparison, being similar -- even down to perks. First, I am stuck in an impossible situation. I'm trying to do the "rob Protectorate warehouse" mission in Core City. From what I can tell, there are two ways to do this. One requires a much higher persuasion than I have. The other way involves going through an area where nearly-invisible monsters attack you and disappear. Without VERY high perception combined with one specific perk, you will just die. So, I have NO WAY to complete this mission. Nice planning, guys. Second, you are just thrust into the game. Are you trying to save your vault/village by getting a water chip/GECK? Are you searching for your father? Are you trying to find the man who left you for dead? Nope. If this were real life, you have no reason to do anything except use your coin to get drunk. There is no motive that the character has to do any mission other than boredom. We know nothing of the main character's past at all at the beginning, no reason to keep going. Also, the original Fallout series ran just fine on a 120 MHz Pentium. Despite this having inferior graphics, it takes about a minute to start up using my 2.0 GHz AMD A10 processor. Plus, when trying to load a game, it minimizes itself the first couple of times you click on the "load game" button before it lets you actually load. This is annoying. Finally, the actual user interface is just kind of a mess: parts of it are just downright confusing. Supposedly you can use an "omni-tool" to open and close ventilation covers in order to enter the ventilation system. Open, yes. Close, I have no idea how to do this. You can also use a crowbar to open them, supposedly, but I can't figure out how. Also, neither good nor bad, but this game is more "realistic" in many ways than Fallout. Loading up heavy armors reduces your action points. Whether this is good or bad is a matter of opinion.

So Ive seen this compared to Fallout multiple times. Heres what you should expect; a few quirks that make the game almost unplayable at points. --All medical supplies have cool down times, along with special skills. This means that if you have 500 stimpacks (the arent called that, but you get the idea), you can only use one at a time. If you happen to wander into an area with enemies WAY too hard for your level, you are boned. Why is this in the game, again? What does it contribute? --Make sure you SAVE YOUR GAME BEFORE ENTERING THE GAUNTLET. I had friggin 50 hours into the game, decided to run the Gauntlet, and got myself into an inescapable position. Unacceptable. WHY ISNT THERE A TIMER? --There isnt a map system, at all. No maps. In a giant labyrinthine underground rail system with multiple levels, there isnt a map system. Why. Would. They. Do. This. I played this game for a long, long time. I tried. I had to stop multiple storyline quests to go wander around and level up. Its annoying. It plays like a game that should be great, but is crippled by pointless "quirks", a horrific inventory system, lack of guidance (especially in the "find this guy" quests, with no direction besides "go somewhere near the Drop Zone)...just play Fallout 2.