UnderRail

OK, so this game has some highlights - it is huge, has good world building and good complexity. 'The Dude' is cool. Occasionally it is even atmospheric. However it is also bland in feel and graphics, and just not much actual fun. It loves trolling the player and adores wasting time. It has one of the absolute worst endgames I have EVER seen. We are talking a final segment that goes on forever, and has a lot of moon logic puzzles, Macguffin hunts/fetch quests, continously respawning (and dangerous) enemies, deliberately confusing corridors, and backtracking galore. Hell, it is even has a pixel hunt where a 100% necessary plot item is easy to miss if you don't hover your mouse over just the right spot!!! And the author has known about it for years and not fixed it!!! What. The. Hell. How is this 'game' highly rated? All the good aspects are outweighed and over-ridden by deliberate trolling of the player, particularly in that last segment. This is NOT the second coming of Fallout - which is actually enjoyable! - and it is not a very good game unless you are a masochist. If you are the sort of player who CAN give up on something once you begin, then fine try it. Somehow some folk seem to like it. But if you are like me, DON'T waste your time. (Yes I beat Underrail, may that one eyed monstrosity and the Deep Caverns he lives in rot in hell. If I wasn't so disinclined to quit something I started I would not have finished it, but my obsessive determination to finish stuff can be a warning to you. Don't buy this unless you like wasting your time.)

I'd give 4.5 out of 5, mainly for minor quest-clue-solution annoyances and occasional typos. The mechanics are solid and challenges fair, and the first area of the game is kind of a mix of non-tutorial tutorial and weeder course, because your options are tight, resources seem scarce, and it all seems designed to really teach the player by dropping them in the deep end. Expect to replay the first 3-8 hours of the game a few times to get a feel for the skill points and stats economy and come up with a viable build that you can also enjoy playing (slow tank, mobile shooter, backstabber, trapambusher, etc.). It's a very tactical combat-oriented game, where even stealth and speech serve as tactical options rather than ways to avoid combat completely. Don't fret though, if you have a build you enjoy that manages to get through the first 6 character levels without too much reloading (and reloading is expected in this game, as it was in the old late 90s classics), you should have the start of a viable build to last you through the end of the game--just spend future points reasonably with combat first in your mind. Now, it's not all about combat, it's also a well-fleshed out world full of lore and immersive NPCs, factional culture, stories of things going on despite your toon. The game mostly avoids drawing attention to the old CRPG trope of the One Hero, instead doing a good job positioning you more as an investigator "fixer" type, doing tough odd jobs, but always incidental to the slow buildup of this subterranean area's developing events. That is, until your toon is in the middle of it! Individual characters may have "merely okay" writing and personality, but factions are multifaceted and avoid boiling down to being simple "good" or "evil" cutouts. You pick your sides and get the job done, and your toon's character comes out of whatever plays out, nobody judges except the factions you piss off. And you. Can you live with your toon's self? Can you survive the Underrail?

I'm a big fan of Fallout 1 and 2. Underrail reminds me of those games and I was initially enthusiastic about it. However, I'm about 30 hours in and I've lost interest in this game. The graphics look fine. The writing is awkward. The combat is mediocre and unbalanced, as the game starts off a bit on the difficult side, but then gets way too easy soon (this is on Normal). While I could live with all of the above, the game's technically primitive engine has exhausted all my patience -- the engine is worse than the engine of the original Fallouts! First, the maps world is split into many tiny maps. Imagine Vault City from Fallout 2 split into 8 areas, for example. While Fallout 1&2's load times are nearly instantaneous on today's PCs, Underrail takes several seconds to load each map. That is an issue because to get from point A to B you have to traverse a bunch of these maps -- so the load times really add up & break immersion. Combined with a lack of fast travel and slow walking speeds, backtracking is infuriatingly tedious. In addition to all that, there are often long wait times (longer than 5 seconds) between each enemy when it's their turn. So combat is insanely slow compared to Fallout, simply because the engine needs to calculate stuff all the time, despite my game running on a SSD, 32GB RAM and a 6-core CPU. My CPU usage hovers around 1-3% with Underrail. That suggests that this game's engine is completely unoptimized and probably poorly built from the ground up. It can only handle tiny maps and can't take advantage of any hardware released in the last 10-15 years. The interface also leaves a lot to be desired. It has zero scaling, so it is completely unplayable in 4K. I have to play it in 1080p on my 4K monitor just to be able to comfortably see the UI. I don't mind playing retro games, but there is zero reason to make them in an engine that is outdated by 25 years and systems that lack QoL. For example, the world map and pathfinding are garbage.

I have both Fallout 1+2 and UnderRail is very similar but hardly as great as most of these reviews would have you believe. There are some major flaws I can't overlook. 1) Venders are picky about what they will buy from you. In a world where everything is needed I find it most annoying because I have to store a ton of stuff till they deside they want to buy it. 2) The difficulty ramps up pretty quickly and without starting another game with the same charactor thats now at a higher level you get your ass handed to you. 3) Its very linear. Now it's not a horrible game but certainly not as good as Fallout 1+2.

This is a wonderful addition to the 90s era Fallout style of games. And it doesn't embrace difficulty=quality as hard as other games in this niche. But, even on easy mode, the difficulty spike after 20-25 hours that does not recede throws a good game off kilter. You can go from doing just fine to constantly dying or burning through healing items. Even staggering this difficulty spike would alleviate the issue, but it hits like a wall. Again, this is on easy mode. ----- Absolute favorite feature: The option to use Oddities instead of an XP system. It rewards exploring the world, and adds a lot of fun to the game. Again, if only that lasted. Worst: Balance. Armor and weapons get super wonky. You can take 0 damage from guns but be 3-hittable (one turn!) by crossbows. What it needs: Companions. Having to do everything solo in a turn based game like this gets stale when 4-6 enemies get a full turn while you get one. What you should do: Find a broken or munchkin build. Don't bother trying to make your own character/build. Don't roleplay. It's not going to work. There are a finite number of viable character options. Spoil some of the game for yourself so you don't hit the difficulty wall.