Post by WickedCrustacean on Mar 31, 2018 16:21:48 GMT -5
Underrail is an isometric RPG from Stygian Software, a tiny indepenent studio that started with one man, but later added a few others. It was released in 2015, and was supposed to pay homage to and be inspired by the great cRPGs of old, such as Fallout 1 and 2.
The game takes place in a post-apocalyptic setting, but with a different twist than Fallouts. Something has destroyed the surface world a long time ago, although the player is never told what it was (at least in my experience). The surface is now uninhabitable, and humanity survives underground, in various subway stations and tunnels, as well as in other below-surface remnants of civilization. In the centuries since the original disaster, the underground world has undergone various political and factional changes, to bring it to its current state. You begin as a newly admitted arrival to one of the small Southern stations, which function as little city-states. Upon joining them, you are given various tasks and missions for the benefit of the station, which acquaint you with the world of Underrail.
Soon, you learn about the other actors in this drama, ranging from other small settlements to larger forces such as United Stations and The Protectorate, which wish to unify all of Underrail into one political entity. There are also a huge city with several Oligarch families ruling it, a cultish organization that fuses religion and science, an anarchist group opposed to the unification, a powerful subterranean faction with mysterious origins, and lots of smaller groups.
The world of Underrail is split up into relatively small isometric maps with transition zones on their edges, similar to Fallout 1/2. However, the sheer number of these maps is staggering. Just go give you some idea, there is Upper Underrail, Lower Underrail, Lower Passages, Upper Caves, Lower Caves, and Deep Caverns. These six things aren't maps, they are levels of maps, each one containing up to 30-40 maps. The maps are connected to other adjacent maps, sometimes vertically too, creating the sense of a pseudo open-world. In my playthrough, I have 140 hours logged into Underrail on Steam, and I haven't even finished it, or visited every map. It is a huge game.
The writing in Underrail is fairly simplistic, but functional. There are some decent plot twists, and the dialogue is not cringy or anything, but it's not going to motivate you to play on its own. The main story has to do with following some mysterious artifact, and figuring out why everyone is interested in it, but mostly, this is just a pretext for engaing in very fun combat, character development, and exploration.
The combat is a lot of fun. It is turn-based, and at first glance, similar to the model in Fallout 1 and 2. But once you play around with it, there are a lot more options. You can use and specialize in anything from melee weapons (Sledgehammers, knives, fists) to pistols (regular and energy) to submachine guns to assault rifles to crossbows to psionic powers. Weapons also come in different calibers, with different types of ammo. For instance, you can use pistols from 5mm to 8.6mm to 9mm to .44 caliber. There is standard ammo or JHP for armorless enemies or WC for heavy armor types. You can even learn to craft special types of ammo, such as explosive rounds for .44 handguns.
There is also a full stealth model, with enemies attracted by noise and vision. You can attach silencers to some weapons, or use the plain old crossbow. In addition to being able to buy weapons from merchants, there is a comprehensive crafting system. You can loot or purchase different components and combine them into the appropriate weapon or armor once you have the recipe. For example, by combining a Hammerer handgun frame with a .44 barrel, you will create a .44 Hammerer pistol. The quality of the frame will determine how much damage it does, with higher qualities requiring you to have a higher Mechanics skill. Additional components can be added to it for extra effects. Adding a laser sight will improve accuracy, adding a smart aiming module will increase damage of special attacks, and so on. You can also create custom armor, by emphasizing defense against bullets, or fire or electricity.
In addition to the main weapon/attacks, there is a lot of secondary items in combat, such as mines, traps, grenades, health syringes, EMP grenades, antidotes, and adrenaline and morphine injections. They all come in very handy at certain times.
Enemy AI is very solid, and sometimes outright sadistic. Enemies will often attack in groups, use crowd control, and sometimes display very advanced behavior. For example, there is one particularly obnoxious monster, called a Death Stalker (essentially a giant scorpion) that behaves in the following manner: it will stealth in dark areas, and attack you out of stealth, stinging you with its venom. Then, it will stealth again. The venom prevents you from using any medicines (such as healing or antidote), and 2 turns later, will stun you for a few turns. At that point, the Death Stalker will come out of stealth and kill you at leisure. So basically, you have to find it before that happens, or use other avoidance techniques.
Character development is also a blast. You can level your character up to level 25. Every level you can assign skill points to many various skills (evertything from combat to conversation to stealth and lockpicking and hacking). Every two levels, you can choose a single talent, which provides a special ability or changes your character in a significant way. Every 4 or 5 levels, you get a stat point. The talents in particular are very cool. For my gunslinger build, I was able to select ones such as Rapid Fire (allows to fire off 3 pistol shots in the space of 1), Point Shot (lets you get off a lower accuracy shot for half the action points) and Gunslinger (higher initiative roll with pistols equipped). As you can see, they really let you create the kind of character you want to play.
Exploration is another strongpoint of Underrail. You have this giant inter-connected world with a cool background story, and as you play, you get to visit all sorts of interesting locations, from caverns with underground lakes to abandoned military bases full of dangers and loot, to bandit camps and massive cities. You can get around using ventilation pipes, or stealth, lockpick and hack your way through obstacles, and occasionaly meet someone with a cool tale.
As you play for tens of hours, eventually the lack of a compelling story and the general depressing feel of constantly being in abandoned networks of tunnels does catch up with you. There is also quite a lot of backtracking involved. There are quick ways of getting around, such as trains that run between major hubs, and boats that sail between ports, but that still leaves a lot of maps that you have to manually walk to, and sometimes multiple times.
The worst aspect of Underrail though, is its last part. In a move which is unfortunately quite common to RPG developers, Underrail devs decided to ramp up pain factor in the end. While most of the game is by no means easy (I played on Hard difficulty), it is mostly manageable. But toward the end, every fight turns into some against the odds thing where your character is facing an army, and then you get to the Deep Caverns, the last part of the game, where the rug is pulled from under your feet. This area throws large armies of enemies at you with massively inflated hitpoints and abilities, and on top of that, they constantly respawn too. So you end up having to go through every map searching for some things you need to progress, while trying to survive the onlaught. Not only is this completely different to the rest of the game (which really annoys me), but for my build (frail gunslinger), which worked just fine for most of the game, this kind of constant attack might be more than I can handle.
In any case, I am too old for this kind of stuff now. I don't buy games to be put through random difficulty hoops by a developer, nor is this why I play RPGs in particular. So I won't finish the game now, which is a shame. However, despite that, overall, Underrail is a very solid and enjoyable RPG, and I recommend it to anyone who likes deep turn based combat and exploration.
The game takes place in a post-apocalyptic setting, but with a different twist than Fallouts. Something has destroyed the surface world a long time ago, although the player is never told what it was (at least in my experience). The surface is now uninhabitable, and humanity survives underground, in various subway stations and tunnels, as well as in other below-surface remnants of civilization. In the centuries since the original disaster, the underground world has undergone various political and factional changes, to bring it to its current state. You begin as a newly admitted arrival to one of the small Southern stations, which function as little city-states. Upon joining them, you are given various tasks and missions for the benefit of the station, which acquaint you with the world of Underrail.
Soon, you learn about the other actors in this drama, ranging from other small settlements to larger forces such as United Stations and The Protectorate, which wish to unify all of Underrail into one political entity. There are also a huge city with several Oligarch families ruling it, a cultish organization that fuses religion and science, an anarchist group opposed to the unification, a powerful subterranean faction with mysterious origins, and lots of smaller groups.
The world of Underrail is split up into relatively small isometric maps with transition zones on their edges, similar to Fallout 1/2. However, the sheer number of these maps is staggering. Just go give you some idea, there is Upper Underrail, Lower Underrail, Lower Passages, Upper Caves, Lower Caves, and Deep Caverns. These six things aren't maps, they are levels of maps, each one containing up to 30-40 maps. The maps are connected to other adjacent maps, sometimes vertically too, creating the sense of a pseudo open-world. In my playthrough, I have 140 hours logged into Underrail on Steam, and I haven't even finished it, or visited every map. It is a huge game.
The writing in Underrail is fairly simplistic, but functional. There are some decent plot twists, and the dialogue is not cringy or anything, but it's not going to motivate you to play on its own. The main story has to do with following some mysterious artifact, and figuring out why everyone is interested in it, but mostly, this is just a pretext for engaing in very fun combat, character development, and exploration.
The combat is a lot of fun. It is turn-based, and at first glance, similar to the model in Fallout 1 and 2. But once you play around with it, there are a lot more options. You can use and specialize in anything from melee weapons (Sledgehammers, knives, fists) to pistols (regular and energy) to submachine guns to assault rifles to crossbows to psionic powers. Weapons also come in different calibers, with different types of ammo. For instance, you can use pistols from 5mm to 8.6mm to 9mm to .44 caliber. There is standard ammo or JHP for armorless enemies or WC for heavy armor types. You can even learn to craft special types of ammo, such as explosive rounds for .44 handguns.
There is also a full stealth model, with enemies attracted by noise and vision. You can attach silencers to some weapons, or use the plain old crossbow. In addition to being able to buy weapons from merchants, there is a comprehensive crafting system. You can loot or purchase different components and combine them into the appropriate weapon or armor once you have the recipe. For example, by combining a Hammerer handgun frame with a .44 barrel, you will create a .44 Hammerer pistol. The quality of the frame will determine how much damage it does, with higher qualities requiring you to have a higher Mechanics skill. Additional components can be added to it for extra effects. Adding a laser sight will improve accuracy, adding a smart aiming module will increase damage of special attacks, and so on. You can also create custom armor, by emphasizing defense against bullets, or fire or electricity.
In addition to the main weapon/attacks, there is a lot of secondary items in combat, such as mines, traps, grenades, health syringes, EMP grenades, antidotes, and adrenaline and morphine injections. They all come in very handy at certain times.
Enemy AI is very solid, and sometimes outright sadistic. Enemies will often attack in groups, use crowd control, and sometimes display very advanced behavior. For example, there is one particularly obnoxious monster, called a Death Stalker (essentially a giant scorpion) that behaves in the following manner: it will stealth in dark areas, and attack you out of stealth, stinging you with its venom. Then, it will stealth again. The venom prevents you from using any medicines (such as healing or antidote), and 2 turns later, will stun you for a few turns. At that point, the Death Stalker will come out of stealth and kill you at leisure. So basically, you have to find it before that happens, or use other avoidance techniques.
Character development is also a blast. You can level your character up to level 25. Every level you can assign skill points to many various skills (evertything from combat to conversation to stealth and lockpicking and hacking). Every two levels, you can choose a single talent, which provides a special ability or changes your character in a significant way. Every 4 or 5 levels, you get a stat point. The talents in particular are very cool. For my gunslinger build, I was able to select ones such as Rapid Fire (allows to fire off 3 pistol shots in the space of 1), Point Shot (lets you get off a lower accuracy shot for half the action points) and Gunslinger (higher initiative roll with pistols equipped). As you can see, they really let you create the kind of character you want to play.
Exploration is another strongpoint of Underrail. You have this giant inter-connected world with a cool background story, and as you play, you get to visit all sorts of interesting locations, from caverns with underground lakes to abandoned military bases full of dangers and loot, to bandit camps and massive cities. You can get around using ventilation pipes, or stealth, lockpick and hack your way through obstacles, and occasionaly meet someone with a cool tale.
As you play for tens of hours, eventually the lack of a compelling story and the general depressing feel of constantly being in abandoned networks of tunnels does catch up with you. There is also quite a lot of backtracking involved. There are quick ways of getting around, such as trains that run between major hubs, and boats that sail between ports, but that still leaves a lot of maps that you have to manually walk to, and sometimes multiple times.
The worst aspect of Underrail though, is its last part. In a move which is unfortunately quite common to RPG developers, Underrail devs decided to ramp up pain factor in the end. While most of the game is by no means easy (I played on Hard difficulty), it is mostly manageable. But toward the end, every fight turns into some against the odds thing where your character is facing an army, and then you get to the Deep Caverns, the last part of the game, where the rug is pulled from under your feet. This area throws large armies of enemies at you with massively inflated hitpoints and abilities, and on top of that, they constantly respawn too. So you end up having to go through every map searching for some things you need to progress, while trying to survive the onlaught. Not only is this completely different to the rest of the game (which really annoys me), but for my build (frail gunslinger), which worked just fine for most of the game, this kind of constant attack might be more than I can handle.
In any case, I am too old for this kind of stuff now. I don't buy games to be put through random difficulty hoops by a developer, nor is this why I play RPGs in particular. So I won't finish the game now, which is a shame. However, despite that, overall, Underrail is a very solid and enjoyable RPG, and I recommend it to anyone who likes deep turn based combat and exploration.
