UnderRail

Until I discovered Underrail on RPGCodex.net, I had two holy rules: a) I did not play indie-games and 2) I DID NOT play early access (alpha) games. So how did this game manage to break the most sacred pillars to my fragile existence? Simple: it's awesome. It features everything I miss from an RPG-era long gone by: - Isometric, old-school, hardcore, 2D goodness - Tons of satisfying (turn-based) combat, were clever use of skills and abilities can turn the tide of battle - Classless, skill-based character development system with ENDLESS customization ability and replay value: use traps, psi-abilities, stealth, melee/ranged/laser weapons and much more to get ahead - Freedom to explore the dark, dangerous world of Underrail at your own leisure. But be aware: humanity is struggling to survive in this post-apocalyptic nightmare, so don't expect too many hugs - Deep crafting system with tons of options to get new gear In short, if you liked Fallout 1&2, Arcanum or System Shock you basically can't go wrong. So if you are on the fence about getting this masterpiece, and is still reading this far, my advice would be: get it! You won't regret it! And considering the low price and abundant content it's practically a steal. Enjoy. You thieving bastard.

This game will never be popular in a world where players have the attention span of a squirrell, every dialog has to voiced and answers have to be crearly labeled GOOD or BAD before you can select them. UnderRail is a true RPG experience with tons of choices to make, locations to explore and enemies to kill or sneak by. You are going to make mistakes and you are going to die... a lot. You'll also wonder a lot if you made the right choice. All part of the fun. This game doesn't do all the handholding common in "modern RPGs" so here's my advice for new players: - Play at the lowest difficulty setting. - Create a new save when entering an area. - Quicksave before starting a conversation. - NPCs have personalities and circumstances. Do not expect a junkyard thug and a lone survivalist badass to react the same way to a threatening remark. - Think before you act... or save and load. The game isn't perfect but nearly 7 years after release it's still getting updates and bugfixes more or less regularly, which is more than you can say for most AAA titles with large companies behind them.

Maybe I'm just bad, but I had a tough time with this game; it really made me savescum, try a hundred different approaches to an encounter and also wonder occassionally if I had fucked up my skilling 25 hours earlier. I love it. Of particular joy to me is the overall world and atmosphere, crawling through old caves, subway tunnels or bunkers/vaults and discovering what mysteries lie there is pure joy to me. (The sierra military bunker in Fallout 2 is one of my most favourite locations) The writing is solid and never caught me as much as some other CRPGs, but was still compelling enough to enjoy going through the dialogs, wonder what the different people have to tell and so on. Oh and the dry and/or absurd humour sometimes is just splendid

I tried liking this game. I really did. But after over 50 hours of gameplay, I have to say, I am not enjoying myself. The walls and doors sometimes will not load, making it seem like pavement and walkways (especially in Core City) are floating in a sea of black. The dock areas of Junkyard, SGS, Core city sometimes get laggy for no reason; giving me 1 to 2 frames per second. And the entire camp Hathor would hang and lag, probably because it’s one big dock. And the “Error: Zone Transition failed.” I get! God, I get like 8 or 9 of “Error: Zone Transition failed.” a day, after which I’ll have to load the autosave. And sometimes, after I get “Error: Zone Transition failed.” and I try to load the autosave, I get “Error: Failed to load the save game.” After which I have to quit the game and load it back up in order to load the save. The railroading (the pun is not lost on me) once you join the (spoiler) at the university is even worse. You can’t tell anyone who is coming. No matter what you do or who you join doesn’t matter at the university; even if you choose to kill everyone. You’d think that you could use your comms to tell Schteff what you see and tell him to save himself, or Georgis and Octavia (I told Eidein I needed to do something and ran off to tell Georgis and Octavia to get out, but I can’t do anything except buy stuff and tell them T(spoiler) guide them). The worldcrafting is interesting though. But it's hard to appreciate it when the world is freezing and lagging at 1 frame a second randomly. And Crawlers; oh God. I had to play a new character because I couldn’t detect them no matter what, and I still couldn’t see them with my perception at 12. They’ll always hit you and stun you. I ended up just buying antidotes and just ignoring them as they take chunks of me until they just stand and fight, or blocking sections with psi-forcefields. I’m not sure if this is a game engine problem or a PC problem, but I’m not getting a new computer to find out.

UnderRail is an absolute gem. A worthy addition to the isometric turn based RPG landscape and more than just a clone or simple love letter to fallout 1 & 2. ## The World ## The UnderRail world is pretty neat and surprisingly unique compared to other post-apocalyptic settings, fallout being the one everyone tends to naturally compare it against. In UndeRail the world is worn, the people are for the most part still civilized (in the cities and communities) but you see a little of that "its me or them" survival instinct everywhere you look, the push has just about come to shove, indeed it does and has but only at the seems, the whole fabric has not yet split. Atmospherically its tense and pretty spot on. ## Difficulty ## I've read some comments that it's too difficult and there is something to be said for when the RNG is against you but, to me, it's no more extreme than any other isometric turn based RPG, I'd even say it's pretty forgiving at least on the normal difficulty, also the areas don't scale with the characters levels so if you do missions out of sequence you can get caught out sometimes with stronger enemies. But that's all part of surviving in the wastelands as far as I'm concerned. I do wonder if the people griping about it just weren't around in the fallout 1 & 2 days and hence feels difficult compared to the more modern, player friendly title. ## The Game ### It's a turn-based isometric RPG and done very well. UnderRail has everything you'd come to expect from the genre, engaging combat and interesting skills to utilize when interacting with the world around you. One of my favorite concepts is the crafting system though, repairing equipment is always very expensive so you really need to either cycle through picked up equipment and sell them as they ware or learn the skills to scrap these items to build repair kits, only really repairing your best gear for the big fights and making do the rest of the time, its spot on in the post-apocalyptic setting.