Let me preface this by saying I'm not a seasoned player of isometric games. I enjoyed Fallout (1,2) and the Baldurs Gate series. One of my first games was Baldurs Gate, so I understand the gameplay style that Underrail is going for. There's a difference between hard combat, and challenging combat. The game's combat is tough because it is clunky. The stealth isn't useful at early levels, and in my playthroughs it is straight up broken. The game favors sinking points into specific builds and specializations, which is fine, but it makes your character weak to other enemy types or challenges. In Fallout, you can get followers to help offset your weaknesses. Not in this game, sadly. The combat itself doesn't feel balanced. By design, it feels like a trap should go off when a target walks on it, but they just don't work for me. I don't know why. The Psi-Beetles annoy the piss out of me because you basically need to kite them to do damage. In an enclosed area, that's near impossible without traps. However, they for some reason ignore my traps entirely. Spamming grenades generally works, but sometimes they miss despite landing right next to the target. It feels cheap. Overall, the combat is janky, and the experience isn't worth the effort. It's an interesting world, and I enjoy the possibilities presented to the player, but I'd rather go back to Baldurs gate or Fallout if I wanted tactical gameplay. I can't really recommend this game unless you're a masochist, or you have time to sink in order to learn how to play the game "right". PS: The stealth broke my game, because now if I go into a zone stealthed, every enemy aggros in the zone. Period. They also have initiative, which makes stealth quite literally useless.
I remember I got this gem from a buddy who said it couldn't run on his potato. When I started playing I was sucked into a world of magic, art, history and genuine originality. The three factions I had (Since the expansion wasn't released until later) at my disposal offered so much versatility that I couldn't simply choose a "favorite". I recommend to anyone, regardless of what genre you play.
