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Incline ATOM RPG: Trudograd - standalone expansion sequel to ATOM RPG

Üstad

Arcane
Joined
Aug 27, 2019
Messages
8,487
Location
Türkiye
If I'd allow myself to dream, I'd tell the devs to implement JA2 style combat and a BG style map but let's face it, they're not gonna do that.
:negative:
 

nimateb

Augur
Joined
Oct 19, 2013
Messages
123
God damn I just finished this. It made me remember why I like gaming. No AAA title other than fromsoft games can get a grip on me like these games, I don't know why. The setting is awesome, the writing is so campy it becomes good and it made me care for the characters. It really succeeds on the goal that every game should aim to according to Disco Elysium: making the world a bit less cold. Just me and my idiot martial artist character fixing the world.
 

Nifft Batuff

Prophet
Joined
Nov 14, 2018
Messages
3,169
Played for about a couple of hours, then I noticed that NPCs stopped complaining when I take objects from their homes, even if I do that in front of them.
Is it a bug?
 
Joined
Jan 14, 2018
Messages
50,754
Codex Year of the Donut
the writing is so campy it becomes good and it made me care for the characters.
There are some people who can't appreciate this, I pity them.
The characters feel spontaneous, with their own lives and quirks and what not. Someone sat down and decided to think up colorful people to populate their world with rather than poorly copying what they've seen in other TV shows, books, or games.

ATOM RPG is the anti-Pillars of Eternity.
 

Nifft Batuff

Prophet
Joined
Nov 14, 2018
Messages
3,169
Played for about a couple of hours, then I noticed that NPCs stopped complaining when I take objects from their homes, even if I do that in front of them.
Is it a bug?
It seems related to the "Midnight Stranger" ability. With this perk, you gain +50% stealth during night. But stealth lacks any feedback. I can just enter a room where there is a NPC. I talk to him, then I take any object in the room that belong to him and sell it back to him. It doesn't seem stealth at all. It looks ridiculous
 

kangaxx

Arbiter
Joined
Jan 26, 2020
Messages
1,385
Location
Atop a flaming horse
Has anyone else come across a bug where you "lose" skill points you'd previously spent? I added a load into the rifle skill and an hour or so after level up my character is back to where they were before. No debuffs or anything.

I'm baffled, but I really can't be bothered to go back and redo everything.
 

Krivol

Magister
Joined
Apr 21, 2012
Messages
1,951
Location
Potatoland aka Prussia
I just finished this. Whoa, what a great game! Almost 50 hours of fun and eye-snipping with a good story and a fine world to explore.

It's much better than Atom RPG in many aspects and is a perfect expansion of the original story (of our hero, the story per se has almost nothing to do with the original).

There is room for improvement, but let's put it in more readable pros/cons points:

pros:
+ good story and writing - well, still a lot of quirky and weird stuff, and MQ is nothing special, but everything is serviceable and gives you a proper feeling of urge and pushes you forward with the plot
+ much better UI - from bigger inventory (still no search option and too few sorting options), through more readable characteristics and map - mind you old system has it's own charm, but this is more convenient
+ whatever was good in Aom is also good here - battle system with the possibility of giving orders to your teammates (no one died me even once)
+ graphics is a bit better - more details, better colour, better icons etc
+ better ammo crafting and house system
+ weapon upgrades are great!
+ builds seem balanced - you can be sniper, AR-guy, crossbow grenadier, pistollero, a madman with an axe or Chuck Norris - every build will get you through the game, I don't have a feeling that only 1-2 are good and the rest are placeholders (still melee chars have to spend too much APs to get to the enemy thus are generally harder to play, bu8t you can always use stun grenades etc)
+ world is filled with quests or exp-givers, I had fun with literally every single NPC interaction
+ choices and consequences - if you put a drug dealer in jail, there won't be a replacement in some magical way - you will lose the possibility of buying drugs from that place
+ few groups to join, where joining one means you can't work with the other
+ atmosphere is just brilliant!
+ even if a bit of a parody, the world still feels natural and well thought (fuck you, Bethesda!)
+ most quests give you some choices and ways to solve
+ gold balance for the first 40% of the game is just brilliant - you are struggling with money and are not sure what to spend for, as there are so many possibilities - better gun, better upgrade, better armour, more coffee, skill-book, armour upgrade, training, prostitutes... a lot of ways to spend your cash (too bad in the end you will have so much money you will not be even searching bodies anymore)
+ POWER ARMOUR! And you can modify it and even change how it looks, and IT LOOKS AMAZING!
+ running through the world just before the game ending to check if there is something new to do gave me a few new quests! - Great stuff!

cons:
- balance is shit - the game is easy, especially if you learn how to play in the previous title (and if you transferred char from Atom RPG you will have much more skill points and char points), you start with a basic weapon and with a proper build, it can get you through 50% of the game, especially with mods. You still can die from a lucky burst, which is good, but like 80% of fights felt like - oh, those guys again <yawn>
- halfway through the game you don't know where to spend your cash and skill points. Even perks points are useless at about 30-ish level.
- some characters seem out of place
- no dog in my team :(
- no car to drive :(
- just two followers
- lack of weapon variety - well, at least for Sniper build there are like 4 rifles in the whole game better or on par with starting gun
- skill points inflation - skills limit is raised to 299, but there are plenty of skills that do not need to be put that high (e.g. technology or lockpick, I did not find any lock nor computer that needed more than 110-130 of those), so you will get to 299 with your weapon of choice skill, speechcraft, sneak and whatever-you-like (first aid is good for skill-perks) and you end with a gazillion of skill points that you don't know what to do
- therefore even skill checks are too easy to pass, so not only battles are easy, but also the game as a whole
- not as many atmospheric places as in the first game - while bunkers in ATOM RPG gave me sometimes The Glow vibe, I didn't feel this here
- last battle is a joke and your enemy there is bullshit. No spoiler here, but if you quickly destroy enemies with the most damage potential, you will see HERO HIT FOR 0 HP plenty of times.
- too easy to rise your stats temporally - not only addictive, expensive drugs but also cheap food.

Still, a brilliant game, especially for this money (I bought both supporter packs, and I still feel like I have stolen something from someone). Gaining exp is fun and head-blowing animations remind me of Jagged Alliance 2 :D .

tl;dr : BUY IT! PLAY IT! 9/10 will play again

EDIT: One thing I forgot - a few people mentioned Dan from 1st game being in Trudograd but I haven't met him. I hope they will add him in the expansion (or I missed something important)

EDIT 2: I didn't find how to skip sex scenes. There should be that option, as those scenes are boring and long!
 
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Darth Canoli

Arcane
Joined
Jun 8, 2018
Messages
5,687
Location
Perched on a tree
Still, a brilliant game

I have to disagree, it's a decent/good game but nothing more, there is some improvements upon the first game like the skill tree but the lack of difficulty alone is too much of a step down for me and the power armor makes easy battles even easier.

This game requires a machiavellian AI and hardcore enemies in numbers to justify the use of the power armor, nothing less.

And enemies with working Armor Piercing ammo at least for the second half of the game.
 

Krivol

Magister
Joined
Apr 21, 2012
Messages
1,951
Location
Potatoland aka Prussia
Well, Fallout 1 and 2 were easy too. And a similar reason why the late game was hard - a lucky critical burst could kill you despite advanced power armour. IMO use of healing items from the inventory level should be forbidden in both franchises ;) . Also, I abused the fast reaction perk - this stuff is broken.

But I agree - the game should be harder, especially during end-game.
 

CoronerZg

Scholar
Joined
Apr 15, 2015
Messages
129
- balance is shit - the game is easy, especially if you learn how to play in the previous title (and if you transferred char from Atom RPG you will have much more skill points and char points), you start with a basic weapon and with a proper build, it can get you through 50% of the game, especially with mods. You still can die from a lucky burst, which is good, but like 80% of fights felt like - oh, those guys again <yawn>
I honestly don't get why is it so hard to make the game more difficult, or at least add more difficulty options. It's really sad that people are saying this for over 2,5 years now and there was 0 reaction from devs. I guess most of the tard casuals enjoy being OP-Power-Armor-God and the game is selling well... I see no other explanation. I bought game in EA and I'm still waiting to for some difficulty patch or mod overhaul or anything to play it, cause original Atom was piss easy after first 1/3 of the game and from everything I've seen, Trudograd is just story mode. Just... disappointed.
 

Krivol

Magister
Joined
Apr 21, 2012
Messages
1,951
Location
Potatoland aka Prussia
- balance is shit - the game is easy, especially if you learn how to play in the previous title (and if you transferred char from Atom RPG you will have much more skill points and char points), you start with a basic weapon and with a proper build, it can get you through 50% of the game, especially with mods. You still can die from a lucky burst, which is good, but like 80% of fights felt like - oh, those guys again <yawn>
I honestly don't get why is it so hard to make the game more difficult, or at least add more difficulty options. It's really sad that people are saying this for over 2,5 years now and there was 0 reaction from devs. I guess most of the tard casuals enjoy being OP-Power-Armor-God and the game is selling well... I see no other explanation. I bought game in EA and I'm still waiting to for some difficulty patch or mod overhaul or anything to play it, cause original Atom was piss easy after first 1/3 of the game and from everything I've seen, Trudograd is just story mode. Just... disappointed.

The problem is with their overall take on the difficulty problem - higher difficulty means just less exp and perks points per level (and hardcore mode). It seems like ATOM TEAM thinks, that casual players will still find this game too hard (especially 1/3 - as you said - so they will drop the game at the beginning and never come back).

Main problems with difficulty:
- HP bloat of main char - I got like 320 HP in the end, I didn't try this, but I believe it is possible to survive full auto burst from the best weapons in the game
- healing is just too easy - open inventory screen, get 30 stimpacks etc
- too many encounters with melee enemies that are extremely weak

OTOH imagine if every enemy was a sniper trying to shoot you in the eye. Encounter starts, they got critical, reload. It would be tedious and frustrating.
OTOH2 - it's good that the game gives you so many possibilities to abuse it - you can rise your stats with consumables and drugs and the game gets easier. I will try a no-consumables run one day.

The hardest fight I got was with robots in one of the bunkers - their bursts were deadly, so IMO more encounters like that would be great (you will need to use cover, and move your teammates to safe places if you don't want to lose them etc).
 

Wunderbar

Arcane
Joined
Nov 15, 2015
Messages
8,809
Fallout's combat system just doesn't support high level play - you simply end up with bloated numbers.

For the game to be engaging and hard without also being frustrating, devs have to re-do their entire rpg and combat systems into something akin to Underrail.
 

Wunderbar

Arcane
Joined
Nov 15, 2015
Messages
8,809
tbh Trudograd would've been better if you started at level 1 (with some offhand explanation that your character got wounded shortly before beginning of the game, and is still in recovery).
 

CoronerZg

Scholar
Joined
Apr 15, 2015
Messages
129
Fallout's combat system just doesn't support high level play - you simply end up with bloated numbers.

For the game to be engaging and hard without also being frustrating, devs have to re-do their entire rpg and combat systems into something akin to Underrail.
I think good encounter design can go a long way without bloated numbers. Just solid equipment for enemies and creative combat maps.
Make a player use all his tools to survive, force him to be creative or just fail. Failing is huge part of the fun. And not the other way around...
if I take a best rifle or a toothpick I still mop the floor with everybody. Then we get as Krivol said "oh, those guys again <yawn>" feeling.
And I do understand wanting to sell more copies by making a game journalist difficulty... just add some "red-alert-stay-away-your-brain-will-melt" option for the rest of us.
 
Joined
Jan 14, 2018
Messages
50,754
Codex Year of the Donut
There are parts of Trudograd that have difficulty spikes that offer an actual challenge(the one bridge encounter comes to mind) then it goes right back down. It's very weird TBH.
 

Stavrophore

Most trustworthy slavic man
Patron
Vatnik
Joined
Aug 17, 2016
Messages
12,612
Location
don't identify with EU-NPC land
Strap Yourselves In
Inevitably when reviewing Trudograd, the comparisons with original ATOM will have to be made. First thing you notice is better QoL and overall more polished, less janky feel to the game, with quest log and highlights done very well. From technical standpoint you can't see any drawbacks compared to first game, as the environment, sound design, graphics are all improved. This already bode well for the product you try.

Trudograd starts with brief introduction and recall the things from ATOM, at least when you import your character as i did[lvl 16]. You are given a focused task of finding a railgun, some gun and equipment to be well prepared against task you will face. Just from the start you can feel the game oozes atmosphere, and it's more climatic than first installment, with location design and clutter being a class above of it's predecessor. You do around few local quests and either buy the pass to the city or use your skills, ready for the action without lengthy meandering aimlessly through wastes[the game system prohibits that anyway]. This is a huge plus, as the game pacing and focusing the player at the task, motivate the player to play and get him/her engaged. Everything is very cohesive and flows naturally without too much backtracking. You get overreaching arcs of choosing between revolutionaries and police, with the game clearly nudging you to go with revolutionaires with it's overall theme of delapidated living standards. There is no double crossing or working for both, you either work for one or the other. Overall it's improvement over first installment.

Character stats and skills are straight from the first installment, while perk system was overhauled, the player grievances about inability to unlock perks due to their progressive cost increase was addressed. Sadly we don't get any abilities, the perks are just as bland as in first game with percentage increase to something. The tactic layer is the same old fallout gameplay, and same old ATOM with the only addition of gun mods that are frankly an icing that doesn't change the overall flavor of the game. At least you can finally have points to fully buy perks from a certain tree if you so wish, with again clearly superior choices to pad HP and armor due to burst system and damage bloat. Certain skills that i had mentioned in my ATOM RPG review are also a clear winners while others are completely useless. Power armor is completely out of place and i consciously haven't used it due to it's sillines and breaking the game, beside enemies[beside certain part of the game] don't use it and you can't equip all your companions in power armor. Don't know who thought it's a good idea to add power armor in the game, whoever did it should be fired tbh.

Combat is the same from ATOM RPG, with one caveat that there's less of combat in the game, since there's TONS of speech checks that can completely skip combat and even in the great finale. If ATOM ever gets third installment i would like to see some branching from fallout combat mechanics, things that were great 20 years ago, not necessarily can be as good as today when we know that things can be done better as many TRPGs had shown, without sacrificing storyfaggotness.

Environment interactions and puzzles - seems that we get less and less puzzles with each game. The only puzzle i can think of is at the endgame, while the mechanics of radiation and toxicity were totally skipped from the first installment and completely useless[why can we even find gas mask in this game?]. This is a huge downgrade when it comes to mechanics, with hunger being even less of an annoyance/importance than in first game. We get coldness instead which is a useless indicator that is not a problem in the game considering you can just enter house and get heated up, and there's plenty of houses around. Travelling on the world map feels kinda forced, and you get spammed with random events way more than in the first game, thankfully with imported character you generally get high stats of your companions like hexogen so you can cover speechcraft and survival necessary to skip those after first encounter when novelty wears off. I think the game would be better if they ditched travelling on world map with random encounter and rest, and use for example a tram/carriage to go around city - would feel more industrialized, beside who the hell believe that a city can work normally with a huge bat demons that can rip people in one swing casually strolling on streets?

Dialogs and choices are again improvement over first installment. We get less cringe and cultural references that were hamfisted in first game. In trudograd they are generally more subtle, with only some outliers. I think the game tried to be more mature with the whole revolutionary struggle. Trudograd uses the same dialogue system as ATOM, so no changes with the dialog tree. The variety, scope and clear tangible goals of quests feels as an improvement over first game. Trudograd added CYOA storytelling slides, and i don't like them same as i don't like them in pathfinder, whenever game takes agency from player instead of showing it in real time, it's a bad design, usually done because it would be too much resource consuming for devs to present it ingame.

In the end i give it 7/10, maybe 8/10, an improvement over atom rpg, with more immersive environments[you can actually feel the winter!], better storytelling and QoL. It has some drawbacks and unused features, while being less open world of a game, but in the end if i had to replay one of the atom games, it would be trudograd.
 
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OSK

Arcane
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Joined
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How the hell is this game only $10!? I was expecting 12 hours of gameplay, but ended up playing for 40.

Overall I enjoyed the game, but it's pretty mediocre. The combat is still stale, except now it becomes completely trivialized with the power armor. Thankfully the game is a lot more comprehensible for someone who didn't grow up in Eastern Europe, but there's still the awkward sentences, odd word choices, and spelling mistakes. While this game is more polished than Atom RPG, I prefer the original game to this one.
 

HoboForEternity

sunset tequila
Patron
Joined
Mar 27, 2016
Messages
9,175
Location
Disco Elysium
Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag.
Atomboy

are you all all right? i hope the war doesn't dissolve the atom team. it's been a year since i completed trudograd, aside from localization update there's been nothing on them.
 

jagged-jimmy

Prophet
Joined
Jan 25, 2008
Messages
1,550
Location
Freeside
Codex 2012
Just finished this. Tried to play it back to back with Atom, but was too burnt out. Started again couple of months later and it was pretty fun.
It's a shame they copied Fallout's flaws so hard, so everybody plays the same speech/gun character. The combat was already discussed...
But only this and AoD gave me that awesome rpg questing feel like Fallout did.
Btw who is the guy in yellow coat by the fire in the ending slides?
 

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