UnderRail (isometric post apocalyptic RPG)

Games
1

Couldn’t find a thread on this, so here it is. Despite my strict policy regarding EA titles I’ve decided to go ahead and grab this - I’ve had my eye on it for a really long time and judging by the reports on forums it’s also pretty close to completion. The low price point also helped.

So far I’ve put in 18 hours according to Steam and loved every single minute of it (according to wiki I’ve seen maybe 1/4 or 1/3 of the game so far, tops. Most other games at this price point would be over after 10 hours). It’s a pretty oldschool rpg, very much like the beloved Fallout 2, if a little lighter on the text and conversations. Where the game really excells are its mechanics. There’s everything - crafting, hacking, mechanics, lockpicking, stealth, melee, ranged, psionics (think mage) and looking at the skills themselves and the feats (perks) the game has it looks like everything has its uses. I’ve decided to make an agi / dex character for my first run and just went with the skills that benefit from these two stats. One of the skills I picked up because of this is throwing which is something that I’ve NEVER taken in an rpg before. And, as it turns out, the skill has been very useful on quite a few occasions. Judging by other people’s posts on the steam forum you can make very interesting and varied builds and still finish the game with them, as long as you don’t gimp yourself on purpose (ie, no synergy between stats, skills and feats).

This is mostly thanks to the Oddity system which is an alternative to the Classic XP system (which is also in the game). Classic, as the name suggest is how rpgs typically play - you get XP for quests and for killing enemies. Oddity on the other hand is different - you still get XP for completing quests but the bulk of XP comes from studying items that are scattered around the world (no XP for killing or opening locks). Some can be found through exploration, some are on npcs, some on enemies, etc. This means that even characters who are not focused on combat can easily keep pace with the combat specced ones. Thanks to a high stealth skill on my character I’ve successfully avoided most of the combat sections early in the game and still leveled up relatively fast because I made sure I thoroughly explored the areas I was in. Each Oddity item can only be studied a set of amount of times and besides the unique ones there are more available than you need to max each one out. This means that you don’t require 100% exploration to level up properly but this system still makes exploration feel relevant.

Another part of the game that deserves a shoutout is the UI. It’s sleek and informative. Inventory has filters, stats properly explain what they do and what their effects are. Same goes for item tooltips.

Despite the relatively large amount of items, skills and mechanics available in the game I’ve never felt like I was under the effect of the info dump, something that for example really bothered me in Pillars of Eternity (starting with 20-30 spells on a character? Sure, why the fuck not). You can really see the logic behind the design decisions and it’s clear that the developer (used to be just one guy, now he has a team) is a massive fan of games like Fallout 2 and probably a hardcore player too - so far I’ve yet to find any elements that felt like a chore, everything has a clear function.

There are two negatives that I’d like to point out and one of these two will probably feel like a positive to some - one, the journal is fairly basic. The quests are just vaguely referenced, there are no detailed instructions on what you have to do. If you play in long stretches this isn’t much of an issue, but if you’re gonna put the game down and return to it a few days later then you’re gonna have a real problem unless you wrote the details on a piece of paper.

Two, there’s no map in the game. At all. Exploring underground caverns introduces a very real possibility of actually getting lost. Once again, a pen and piece of paper are recommended here.

2

Thanks for the review. I bought this game over a year ago but don’t plan on touching it until it is officially released. It’s sounding like the game may actually exceed my expectations.

3

It certainly exceeded mine. I’m actually sitting here scratching my head and wondering why this game is so cheap, considering the amount of content and quality it has. Even if the developer puts the release price at 20$ (so ~2x more than now) it’s still gonna be hell of a lot cheaper than similar games that came out lately (Wasteland 2 and so on).

4

The screenshots on the Steam page seem awfully dark. Is the whole game like that?

5

Damn you Bateau, stop costing me money. ;)

This is even cheaper on Desura, and also nets you a steam key.

6

Kinda. Entire game is underground but it’s pretty easy to see where you’re going. For the most part it looks like indoor/underground areas in Fallout 2 or JA2. Some areas have lights, some don’t, but the natural lighting is always bright enough. There’s also a highlight key so chances of you missing something due to low visibility are non-existant.

7

Isn’t Desura having issues paying their developer partners?

8

Yeah, and their owners declared bankruptcy, be wary.

9

I just discovered I had purchased the Alpha a while ago via GamersGates Indiefort Spring Bundle. I added the key to Steam and I now own the full game! Awesome.

-Todd

10

How to tell a game (or at least combat) is good? I’m already having a case of altitis because I want to try out Psionics and I’m not even done with the game yet! And I probably shouldn’t mention that I haven’t even tried guns so far.

Difficulty really ramped up when I got to high level areas with level 20 enemies, mostly due to mechanics and my build of choice. A lot of enemies at this point are wearing heavy armor and I’m trying to punch my way through with my (not so bare) fists.

I’ve also done the Arena and Gauntlet and wow, those two areas really push your character to the limit.

Even in this unfinished state I can heartily recommend the game to anyone who has even a passing interest in isometric rpgs with turn based combat.

11

Bought this years ago and took it for a spin. Always seemed promising. I guess it’s time to give it another look! Bateau > evil.

12

It’s pretty slick, though those damn rathound things are mean.

13

I’m very interested in this, Beteau, thanks for this thread.

When you say no map, I assume you mean there’s neither a global nor a local map. So how hard is it figure your way through underground caverns and such? Have you resorted to pen and paper?

14

That’s correct, no global or local map. I haven’t resorted to pen and paper yet, but the areas I might have missed are tickling my OCD a little. I don’t know how feasible it even is to map this beast out. There are soooooo many sectors. Just now I’ve spent about 4 hours (I shit you not, it involved quite a bit of combat though) exploring the lower levels of a city. And then you got vent shafts, ladders, levels that are inbetween levels, it’s absolutely crazy. Explorer’s dream. And lots of areas are connected through multiple paths (think Dark Souls and you’ll get the idea). The map does follow its own internal logic though, it’s basically split into several levels (caverns, caves, lower underrail, upper underrail) with major points of interests on each. Instructions on how to get to them are usually ‘south’ or ‘north’ and then you’re left to your own devices. Fortunately there’s also a quick travel system between settlements. What really boggles my mind is how ONE guy (with small team later on) managed to create so much content. I haven’t seen all the locations yet but I think at this point the game is already bigger than Fallout 2.

15

I hate any RPG that dumps me into a character building screen full of stats, skills and talents and doesn’t tell me which ones are actually useful in the game and how big these numbers should be. e.g. Is “1” in every skill ok or pointless? Am I meant to actually play this RPG for a few hours and then re-make my character, or something?

Why can’t they just come with a few pre-made characters so I can at least see what the game thinks is sensible.

16

This is a pretty weird complaint since most serious RPGs (not rpg-lites/action adventures, such as Witcher or Mass Effect) do this. Generally, all skills are useful, except maybe Mercantile which comes up only a few times in conversations and the game offers plenty of opportunity to earn money so this skill is imo a waste of skill points.

It really comes down to what type of character you want to play. I suggest you look at the skills that are interesting to you and check what stats they benefit from and what other skills they synergise with.

For example, when I looked at the skill list I instantly knew that I wanted lockpicking and stealth. This was non-negotiable for me so I decided to raise dex and agi to 8 and 7 respectively. I left other stats at 5 because I didn’t know their full uses, but like with other rpgs, you can dump some stats in Underrail too. Knowing what I know now, I would’ve made strength my dump stat since I’m using fist weapons which don’t benefit all that much from high strength and would’ve invested those points into Will instead to raise my Psychokinesis skill even further (it has a really nice toggled buff that adds mechanical damage to your unarmed or fist weapon attacks). I probably would’ve dumped intelligence to 3 as well but I kinda hate playing dumb characters (I know that high intelligence helps in conversations, I’m not however sure if opposite is also true. I did come across one scene where the options to sign a piece of paper were “<character name>” and “X”. I assume the latter is the only option if your character is dumb). After that I looked at the skills to see a full list of skills that benefited the most from these two stats. So I ended up with melee, dodge, evasion, stealth, traps, lockpicking, electronics (leveled later, it depends on INT), throwing, pickpocketting and psychokinesis (also leveled later, depends on Will).

Every level up you get 40 points which means you can max out 8 skills or spread them out a little more. Additionally, every 4 levels you get a stat point. The skills are generally split into two categories - utility and combat. From my experience and the posts on UR forum, 120 EFFECTIVE (shown in brackets) in skill is usually enough to pass even the hardest checks in the game. Combat skills on the other hand should ideally be maxed out, that means 5 skills points per character level, for a max of 125 base, which, with correct stats, means over 220 effective in some cases.

Combat skills:

Guns
Crossbow
Melee
Dodge
Evasion
Stealth
Thought Control
Psychokinesis
Metathermics

If you pick any of these skills I suggest you max them out. Utility:

  • Throwing (this is a mixed bag, you generally don’t need much more than 120 for decent accuracy but throwing knives keep getting dmb boost with higher skill. Altho I found that weapon somewhat underwhelming, it’s much better to utilize grenades instead).
  • hacking
  • lockpicking
  • pickpocketting
  • traps
  • persuasion
  • intimidation
  • mercantile

Crafting (same as utility, but some very high end crafted stuff requires about 140 or so. Relatively easy to reach with high int)

  • mechanics (seen this and electronics show up in a few skill checks)
  • electronics
  • chemistry
  • biology
  • tailoring

Last layer are the feats. The requirements on them take BASE skills into account, which means that if it for example says 40 melee required on the feat you won’t be able to get it before level 4 (you start with max 25 in skill and can put a max of 5 each level). Same deal here as with Fallout games - they enhance your chosen playstyle and offer extra layer of options for your character. A very nice option here is “Show All Feats”. You can check out the entire list right there on the character creation - some are really cool and will likely inspire you to spec your character a certain way.

Couple minor tips - half-assing crafting is not worth it. Either go big or go home. Another important thing to note here is that you will need multiple disciplines to assemble some items (ie, tailoring and mechanics, or electronics, mechanics and biology - depends on item). Second, crossbows offer nice utility in the form of special bolts but most people prefer guns as their primary ranged combat spec. It doesn’t make sense to pick dual combat role, ie ranged and melee - focus on one. Exception here is psychokinesis which synergises amazingly well with unarmed/fist weapon combat.

17

Just because a lot of RPGs up-front demand you to choose your build from millions of skills without a clue how the game works, doesn’t mean I agree with that game design. Besides, which “serious RPGs” made since the 90s don’t have a few sample characters or are very obviously D&D based (and therefore you know how it all works and to use charisma as a dump stat)?

It really comes down to what type of character you want to play. I suggest you look at the skills that are interesting to you and check what stats they benefit from and what other skills they synergise with.

My main problem is I don’t know anything about the game and therefore I don’t know what’s useful or not. Is it like D&D, where charisma is basically useless? Or like Fallout1/2 where Energy Weapons is only useful in the endgame and a bunch of the skills are completely unused? (And, like Fallout1/2, you have no idea that some of those skills are not even featured in the game…)

I think it’s just really hostile game design to do it this way. Even a note saying “in this world, lots of people punch each other and use telekinesis, guns are scarce” is a thousand times better than simply allowing a player to choose “guns” if it turns out to be useless.

But thanks for the info. I also found some stuff on the official forums, e.g. this topic, which suggests something like 5557757, which is basically what I did, to be completely useless. ;)

It looks like you can have a completely broken build in this game and not know about it until later on, forcing you to restart or suffer through. So I really do have to be wary :/

18

As I said, most skills have their use. Some basic logic goes a long way though - you want some form of combat ability as a backup at least. If you’ve played rpgs before this should be common knowledge. As for the 5557577 being useless?

I started with:

Strength: 5
Dexterity: 8
Agility: 7
Constitution: 5
Perception: 5
Will: 5
Intelligence:

I used the stat points from levels to get agi to 8 (first one I spent), strength to 7 and dexterity to 11. My character has pretty much breezed through the combat sections once I hit level 5 or so (and before that I was able to utilize stealth to bypass combat entirely in a lot of places). Now at endgame I can drop most targets with 3-4 punches, frequently eliminating 3 enemies per turn. I guess I just didn’t get the memo to know that my character was supposed to be gimped? Acing the Arena and the Gauntlet, which were probably two of the toughest challenges in the game was probably just a fluke too. Nevermind the fact that I’d have 10x more trouble if I hadn’t picked so many utility skills and instead minmaxed my character for combat. And I’m using self-found gear only, no crafting at all (and that gear is a huge upgrade to the stuff you find). I was also able to get all the feats I wanted. The limiting factor was the number of free slots, not stats.

I share your concerns though. I’ve played so many unbalanced rpgs that obsessing over stats on the character creation has become the norm for me. Fortunately this isn’t one of those games. As long as you don’t spread yourself too thin and pay attention to synergies you’re good.

edit: From the thread you linked

And so on. Basically, a build which looks horribly ‘unoptimised’ [e.g. str7/dex6/agi4/con4/per8/wil10/int7 @L24] may in fact be necessary to provide access to all the feats you want to have on your character (in this case, the listed stat distribution would allow for full assault rifle damage, grenadier, locus of control, gun nut - i.e. a very good balanced hybrid character that would output almost 100% of the damage a ‘pure’ assault rifle build would do along with access to crowd control via thought control, AoE damage via throwing, and even stealth if desired if you tack on ballistics to give you very good tactical vest options).

See, it’s not all doom and gloom ;)

19

So I bought this game yesterday (mostly because of your glowing recommendation, Bateau, along with the general reviews by people on Steam and elsewhere). Hopefully I’ll get to play a bit of it by the weekend, and I’ll probably go with a psi/melee build like the one you described there. Looking forward to it!

20

Looking forward to your impressions! This game is still at the top of my most anticipated releases for this year, even with stuff like FO4, D:OS DC and Wasteland 2 DC just around the corner.