I just bought this but probably won’t look at it for a week or so. I did want to check on this quote though - does this game not do conversation gated by skill checks, or is it just not relevant? I tend to build minimal-combat, high-negotiation characters, but if the minimal level of combat skills is pretty high and negotiation is irrelevant that’d be good to know up front.
Also has there ever been a game that had such a tight economy that Barter was a good use of points? If there has, I can’t remember it.
Early access build had a few quests where you could avoid unnecessary bloodshed by using persuade or intimidate but relative to the amount of combat the game has there were too few of them to make the skill point investment worthwhile. I was thinking of picking them for my next character though, since I’ll probably be playing a PSI character with Will as the main stat. I could drop a few points into the two convo skills and get decent effective levels thanks to the synergy with Will.
Each level you get 40 skill points, that means you can fully max out 8 skills (you can only invest 5 points per character level with a skill cap of 125). Combat skills should be among those that get maxed out but you should also stick to one primary damage combat skill. Ie, unarmed and throwing is ok, Guns + crossbows not so much. Throwing is actually a very useful skill to have in this game because it has a big impact on your accuracy with grenades - which are also very useful for all types of characters, ranged and melee alike.
Re barter - I’m currently going through Lords of Xulima and it’s quite handy there. But LoX is a party based game where you can spread out noncombat/utility skills over several characters, in UnderRail you only get one character so you have to specialize a little.
Note that all the information I’ve written so far is based on my experience with the EA build, early sections of the game received some polish in the last few months so it’s entirely possible that some of the neglected skills could be seeing more use.
Just started this and is making my Laptop really hum, like all the fans are going for it. Way too noisy to play it. Also at 1920 res everything looks way too small, anyone else tried a lower res to make things bigger?
Bouncing off this fairly hard. The forced walking speed, the tiny text (Which you can fix at least. If you’re about to go blind with eyestrain check the options), the rats eating half a magazine of pistol ammo before dying, the every single tunnel being packed with like 5 rats so I’d stealth to a tunnel to scout it, move to a different tunnel, repeat, etc. Bleh.
Probably poke at it some more but the first hour left a bad taste in my mouth.
That’s pretty much what happened to me as well. Bateau’s enthusiasm can only get me so far! :)
On one hand, I like in theory that there’s no map and no quest log. In practice, I think I would prefer putting my time into an RPG like Wasteland 2, Divinity, or Pillars of Eternity with more QOL conveniences. Maybe I’m just too impatient, or too aware of the pull of RPGs that I’m already digging like Xenoblade Chronicles X or Guild Wars 2.
The start can be a little rough but if you manage to get past that you should be treated to a very fast growth in power.
About the map - it can be a real issue in the start but once you wrap your head around the system they use - 4 elevation levels with cardinal compass directions - it becomes very easy to find your way to a destination just by following the vague instructions that npcs give you. There are also sign posts scattered around the metro for easier orientation. I’ll admit, if I was new to the game the lack of map would bother me a little - even though I barely noticed it was missing when I first started out because I was so immersed, lol. But once you play for a while without it you just get used to it. Suddenly you start recognizing individual cells and know exactly where you are at all times. That said, the dev did say that the map will likely be added in one of the future updates. In the mean time, you can check the wiki for maps. If nothing else, it helps to get a general sense of where different towns/cities are.
Bad first impressions so far. I couldn’t stand the font in the character creation screen. It hurt my eyes to try to read the descriptions of what attributes did. Everything was so dry and clinical. This wasn’t anything like Fallout’s fun character creation screen. And then to distribute points in skills, they start you off with hundreds of points? Shakes head. I just put them in a few random things to get the game going.
The actual game, the font is different, but not much better. Reading these loooooong passages in the tutorial with no personality, nothing interesting. I couldn’t do it. Skip skip skip, let’s get to the combat tutorial. I got the sentry bots to start sparking, and now to finish them off! I kept shooting at them, and shooting, and shooting. Why won’t they die? Oh right. Apparently they died with the first shot. I was just wasting ammo after that. So strange that they keep letting you shoot at corpses.
And that’s as far as I could stomach today. I think I’m going to need a mod with a prettier font that’s easier on the eyes if I want to continue playing this.
