KickStarter ATOM RPG - Wasteland Soviet style! - now with Dead City update

[Bigg Boss]

Good to see you appreciate this game like I did Rusty. This is the spiritual successor to Fallout for sure. More so than UnderRail for damn sure not that the game is bad but it does not really fit the bill.

 

[Quillon]

generic template dialogue

But they weren't generic. You'd know this if you were actually reading them instead of skipping through them for your dopamine hit.

And what did I write?

I wouldn't have cared one bit if it were just "generic walls of dialogue"

I'm sorry reading is difficult for you, may I suggest you go play games in a different genre?

lmao

I remembered I've talked about this way back when

Alright, the worst thing about this game for me is the template-info dialogue & every NPC having it. The streamlined structure of the info-dialogue makes me feel like checking boxes after 34 NPCs I talked to in a row. I hope in a future game they make dialogue done/structured more organically and that they should know it would be OK for some of the NPCs not having dialogue trees at all. I'm probably done with most of the main city content, now entered Perugun; I'm like... oh great, 50 new NPCs that I'll get to ask 4 to 5 questions to each, yay!

 

[rusty_shackleford]

There is no "generic template dialogue", I'm not sure where you guys came up with this bullshit. Are you ESLs using words you don't understand?

 

[Lhynn]

Potatos got love for their potato rig.

 

[Jarmaro]

I went to the fucking canals in the city and stumbled upon a cult. Seemed evil, so I wanted to kill them for exp and loot. I only checked if there isn't any important quest associated with them and would you believe that, there was a quest to kill them because they are, indeed, evil! So of course I did that to cut on backtracking later on.

Now guess what? Only few minutes later I found a guy that gives the quest to kill them. And he didn't give me reward me for killing them, because I did that before he asked. That asshole even acknowledged that they were evil and I did good. I would accept this outcome if I chose the option to tell him that I killed them on my own, but the game doesn't allow to hide this. Even if it wouldn't be unreasonable to hide that information just in case of situation like this. No, I'm forced to admit it.

This might genuinely be the first time in a game where I'm being punished for doing the task earlier. What a stupid fucking choice on the side of developers. Them having my companion Fidel tell me that the guys are bad on top of them being fucking cultists praying to a statue of a goat is apparently not enough of an excuse for me to kill them, so I must be punished for making a choice for myself instead of being directed to it by a quest. Thank you, Atom developers. You are really making me feel like I can freely make choices in an RPG game. Sorry for playing your game the wrong way, now I'll make sure to only do what is explicitly allowed, please don't punish me more.

 

[oscar]

If a guy randomly mowed your lawn for you then demanded payment would you pay him (even if you felt it was in need of a mow and would have been willing to pay someone)? Probably not.

 

[Atomboy]

Wowawiwa, I'm back on the site, seems like the design was changed while I was gone. And I haven't even learned how to use the previous design. Everyone enjoy the Polish version! I think it's actually good this time. Speaking of time, it will take me a lot of time to answer all the stuff written in the atom and trudograd threads, but I might just be able to in some time.
Good to see the threads still active and discussions about all manner of shiet still happening! You guys are the best. Now I'm going to go read through some of the new stuff, haven't checked it since February or how I like to call it Fucked-up-shit-brew-ary.
Then... Then I will reveal a few things... A few things that might titillate some!

 

[Atomboy]

I went to the fucking canals in the city and stumbled upon a cult. Seemed evil, so I wanted to kill them for exp and loot. I only checked if there isn't any important quest associated with them and would you believe that, there was a quest to kill them because they are, indeed, evil! So of course I did that to cut on backtracking later on.

Now guess what? Only few minutes later I found a guy that gives the quest to kill them. And he didn't give me reward me for killing them, because I did that before he asked. That asshole even acknowledged that they were evil and I did good. I would accept this outcome if I chose the option to tell him that I killed them on my own, but the game doesn't allow to hide this. Even if it wouldn't be unreasonable to hide that information just in case of situation like this. No, I'm forced to admit it.

This might genuinely be the first time in a game where I'm being punished for doing the task earlier. What a stupid fucking choice on the side of developers. Them having my companion Fidel tell me that the guys are bad on top of them being fucking cultists praying to a statue of a goat is apparently not enough of an excuse for me to kill them, so I must be punished for making a choice for myself instead of being directed to it by a quest. Thank you, Atom developers. You are really making me feel like I can freely make choices in an RPG game. Sorry for playing your game the wrong way, now I'll make sure to only do what is explicitly allowed, please don't punish me more.

Dude look I'm sorry, but this here is the logic behind this decision:

If a guy randomly mowed your lawn for you then demanded payment would you pay him (even if you felt it was in need of a mow and would have been willing to pay someone)? Probably not.

and I think it's kinda tight. The character who declined payment is an asshole. Many of the folks in the game are. That's what makes an RPG cool IMO!

I don't think the problem is the amount of text but rather having the same questions in every conversation. Makes talking to NPCs a bit too monotonous.

Anyway, Atomboy has responded to criticism about the conversations many times in this thread, e.g.:

Well, one thing I agree with is the fact that the conversations are overwhelmingly generic. Atomboy commented somewhere that there was a reason why all interactions follow exactly the same pattern: "work", "how's life", "talk about yourself", "rumors"; and that's it. Sometimes a new option or two depending on some quest or context. I do understand the logic of "why I could ask this question to certain people and not to others" (that ended up leading to this), but the final effect really didn't turn out to be very organic, precisely because the characters end up stuck to that same basic skeleton of interaction. I think I liked the motivation behind their existence more than the final outcome, I guess.

They are generic with generic people. Like, when you get to Patryk the grenade-necklace wearing freak based on our favorite Polish letsplayer you won't get boring stuff about beetroot. But normal "boring" mundane people are a huge part of our worldbuilding. We want to show, that this is a relatively normal, toned down world where some people's biggest worry is beetroot harvest or spooky stories about mud ants. We'd fail at that pretty hard, if we would make every character a unique and unforgettable roller coaster ride. I remember like ten times when I toned down an NPC because he was too entertaining.

Spoiler

Though to be honest, I don't actually see any NPCs as boring, because not a single one is a copypasta of another one, most have hidden clues, checks, or simply just stories. But that's just me.

A lot of people critique Atom for these walls of text, but we don't actually push the player to read them. You're good if you only speak to important people. These dialogues are there as much for the player to read, as they are to make the world believable. Like, you don't talk to every single person on a street when you drive to some town for some reason in the real world, right? But if you WOULD, they would all have some boring (or not so boring) unique shit to tell you, right? They would not have a single line of text or just nothing. That's why Atom's NPCs are like that. You are not obliged to talk to them, and most of the times it's pretty easy to see which NPC is a quest giver and which one is not, and we'll try to make this difference even larger in Trudograd. But in case you would for some reason WANT TO chat with a rando grandma, you will be able to do it. I know it's not OBJECTIVELY better than games with single line NPCs or things like Skyrim where every single NPC is fun and entertaining. But it's something I will do even if I make an FPS. My biggest rage moment in any otherwise good game (not just RPG, even god damn GTA 5 I dropped because I couldn't talk to my character's friends when I visited them while not doing a quest) is meeting a one-line NPC who serves as a decoration. So yeah, there's some of my freaky OCD thing with one line NPCs in the pile of reasons for this in Atom too, won't lie...
Oh and the other part you remembered correctly, the system must be there, because if you can ask one NPC about the weather, but you can ask the other one about pine trees, it would be illogical. So we even wrote in that story about you being trained to ask these specific 4 questions unless you can't for some reason :D

I don't fully agree with that reasoning but its very clear this style was a deliberate decision.

Yes! Still stand by it! However...

Field report #1:
I wonder if the writers were paid by the wordcount, because Atom RPG might be the most egregious example of bloated text I've ever seen. Anyone you talk with will have something to say, and it appears those dialogues are - as far as I've seen - unique. What a horrible, sensless thing to do. What were the creators thinking? That the more text there is, the better? After the first town I was already thoroughly sick of it and most of the time skipping the dialogues. Last time I was this enraged by text bloat was Pillars of Eterenity 1, but that game at least had the decency of varying things up and not giving the same five dialogue options to 99% of NPCs.

More is not better. Without exaggeration this is the biggest sin of Atom, pointless walls of texts that will put you to sleep. If clicking every single dialogue tree was a fluff mechanic, it wouldn't be that bad, but this is how you are getting quests in this game. This is atrocious. Has no one played the game before they started implementing it all? Extremely blatant quantity > quality design.

And in case some retard wants to argue that 'Down to earth dialogue is a part of creating distinct, post-apocalyptic amosphere' then this is not how you do it. All of this should be cut in half and distilled to its most important parts. Instead there are few crumbs of relevant information among tons of bland, boring text that didn't need to be here.

It's the dialogue equivalent of exploring the world just to see 5 gold coins or rusty sword everywhere. After a few hours of that the player would stop exploring because there is nothing interesting to be found. That's why the developers pace the loot and still give 5 coins in random places, but vary it with some note, an interesting consummable or rarely an artifact. So that there is something interesting to look for. In Atom the developers are actively demotivating a player from engaging with their material, making it as off-putting as possible.

We got that a lot, so in Trudograd it's much easier to spot a quest giver. Though I for one still play Atom more than Trudo. These dialogues are an acquired taste!

Will the Trudograd improvements ever be backported to the main game?

Well, if we survive long enough to make a re-release like some people do, like a director's cut or something, probably some stuff will be carried into Atom. At least QOL stuff. But you don't make a director's cut so early! Unless you are a greedy fella. But maybe in a few years or so...

I think this is purely user-driven. You set up what you want Steam to filter or not. Valve definitely does not go around setting different filters for different games.

It's probably not game based but it's time based, at the very least or review bombing type based.
So, they might be willing to remove russian review bombing but not american woke review bombing.

I wasn't logged so it's not user based.
Check ATOM, then Grimoire, there is an asterisk next to ATOM review score and a pop up about review bombing.
Grimoire gets nothing.

I believe it's automatic, because this thing and the asterisk and stuff appeared automatically after we started getting reviews with political shit. Steam is cool like that.

I'm really trying enjoy this game. It's not bad, but the skill check gate seems almost designed to rob enjoyment. My speech craft is not even low but the number of encounters where it failed has been the majority. It's like all encounters push you to go the worst possible route ( have this combat, pay this large sum of money. etc.). The game is not even that hard yet, it just feels like railroading /

It reallllly depends on the build dude. And there are almost always alternative routes. Hope you didn't give up!

Going back over the game a bit to collect my thoughts for a review... eventually..

Atomboy are there any plans to do a balance pass with regards to perks("abilities")?

Here's how I ended the game doing(AFAIK) essentially all content. These screenshots are taken right before the game ends in the very last room after the last battle. I'm level 20, I can't see a way to pick difficulty but I'm pretty sure I picked whatever the hardest is.

While my main character grabbed a few, it's still not that many. Capping perk cost at 3 or making it based on distance from center would probably help in this regard. I don't think perks felt overly strong for having a couple more.

Let's check in on Dzhulbars

Level 13, big gap between him and my character.
Even if I didn't grab that bottom left perk, I wouldn't have filled out the top right. Mind you, this is taken at the very end of the game with no content left.

And still, many of them are very weak.

10%? That's incredibly tiny, especially for the investment needed. 30-45% would be more than fair enough for how much damage he takes. In most fights I have him running away just to prevent him from dying!

Same deal here. I hate perks that are just minor bonuses.
How much is 3 dodge, you ask?

10% dodge bonus, and it gets worse the higher level you are.


BTW, I like that Dzhulbars has his own perk tree. Very cool. I heard the slave does too, didn't check. Would be nice if the other three at least had a few unique perks locked to them.

--
Additionally as a tip since I don't think the game mentions this anywhere, if you open the context menu on a party member during combat you can issue commands to them. Works at any time, not just during your turn.

VERY useful for focusing fire, keeping allies alive, etc.,

Atomboy another suggestion for both ATOM and Trudograd: right-click instant context menu. Both games have it available as a mod(highly recommended), consider integrating it into the base game. Having to hold left click for context menu is strange for a PC game.

Thanks dude! The reworking will have to wait until we make a director's cut or something. Right now it's really spooky to change things people made so many guides on and stuff. Though I agree with a lot of your points.
The right click idea will probably get there in a future project.
Not sure yet though!

Back on topic, I wrote this email to Team Atom 3 years ago. Some things I regret writing (CD Project Red being an awesome studio) but the rest still stands. Enjoy!


I have to say, this is one the best game I've played in years. It gets very close to how good Fallout 1 & 2 were and that's one achievement very few people can boast about.

I had other games installed on my computer like Pillars of Eternity 2 but it felt boring compared to Atom RPG. You guys have a bright future in game design and I wouldn't be surprised if you became a genius studio like CD Projekt Red. (Not from editor: I should’ve said Arkane).

I finished the game and I thought about the experience for a while. I don't know what kind of financing you were dealing with making this game but if you had had the same funding that Black Isle had back in the days, this could've been a masterpiece/GOTY (as far as I'm concerned).

The game is retro-gaming done right and yet it's a breath of fresh air. Very few single player experiences are made nowadays, not of this caliber anyway.

The thing being that, very few game actually offer... a choice. RPGs often end up being a never-ending sequence of battles, sort of like Icewind Dale 2 was way back then.

I mostly dislike games I play, there's always something off, something which breaks the experience or I quickly end up losing interest, but I could play your game for hours without being bored, I was always looking forward to it.

Random Comments about the game that could be improved upon:

1. You can see the content of every map as soon as you enter.
I could never explain myself that as at one point in the game the content of the game is hidden until you open the door. It really bothered me to able to see the whole map, it didn't make any sense at all. I don't understand why you made that choice. It takes all the fun out of discovery. I hope this is something you won't do in a sequel (which I hope will come).

2. Very few characters to join your team.
This is likely a matter of scope of the game and budget so I can understand why it's the way it is. Still, having a couple more characters to join your team would be awesome. Also, characters with more depth would be appreciated. I felt like the characters I had were blank slates with very little character development and interactions. You certainly have the skills as a team to write up more in-depth characters.

3. Useful vs useless skills.
Some skills I found very useless compared to others. Tinker, First aid, gamble and unharmed are seldom used in-game. Speechcraft is used very often compared to those skills. I think this might have been a case of biting more than you could chew regarding skills which meant not implementing them fully in-game.

4. The bunker in Dead City.
This is the only part of the game which felt unpolished. The door puzzles were fun but that battle with the robot seemed like an amateur decision. It felt out of place compared to how great everything else was.

5. Skills % ratio.
In Fallout, your percentage to accomplish certain tasks varied widely depending on the situation.

I often found myself having the exact same percentages when dealing with various situations. For instance, fighting in melee, I always had the same % to hit regardless of the enemy I was facing. I would've thought hitting a bee in flight would be harder than to hit a cow but no, same result. I'm not even sure range seemed to be taken into account when using firearms come to think about it. A rework of how skills work would be a step forward.

6. Food and eating.
I loved that you had to eat (which was missing from Fallout). The idea was barely implemented unfortunately. The food weren't very varied. This only requires a static graphic so it could certainly be expanded upon with very little resources.

Why doesn't food spoil? This could also be coded in fairly easily. I was carrying 80 meat and never had to worry about food again. It's too bad. It's a good mechanic but I never really felt the scarcity of it in the post-apocalypse environment I was exploring. I feel like this again is an idea too many which was implemented. In other words, it's a good idea but it wasn't fleshed out enough.

7. The story.
I usually skip text in games because I find it too wordy or annoying. I liked the story and wanted to find out more. The end came very abruptly unfortunately. It was consistently slow burned and at the end it felt like there was so much exposure text that it became hard to assimilate. Once again, the story is good but the pace of the writing could have been more elegantly evened out.

ATOM is really under-developed as well compared to the Vault Dwellers in Fallout. You barely every deal with the organization itself. It felt like an after-thought.

8. The typos.
There were a lot of typos. I started thinking of sending them to the devs but honestly there were just too many. Also, why the capital for "you" and "your"? Maybe it's something you do in Russian, I don't know but it bothered me in English.

9. Combat Sequence.
I never started fights except a couple of times. I had high sequence for some characters but the enemy always went first. That was frustrating at times because I would lose a fight before being able to do anything. The fight would start and I'd get killed without getting a chance to act.

Maybe it's the initiative formula you are using which could use a greater range in it's RNG.

10. Cover.
It felt weird not having cover in firefights. Being able to use cover to influence % when using firearms would've been really nice and add a lot of strategic depth.

11. Experience gain.
This needs a check. Most random encounters give a lot more xp than completing quests. Fallout was the opposite. I mean, you could get a lot of xp from quests. I think the most I got from quests was 600 xp one time and that's with the +20% perk. I found that fighting random enemies (even much weaker ones) would give more xp than completing a quest which felt underwhelming at times... Those rats and bees give so much xp compared to slave hunters (which should give a lot more).

12. NPC conversation topics.
Having the same topics with every character was disappointing. I think your game is a good example of less is more and should've rolled with that. There's no need to ask every single person about rumors... It feels redundant.

This might be a practical issue, I don't know. I eventually figured out which topics could lead to quests or move things forward versus stuff which is just fluff.

All the text written for fluff could have been distributed differently. For instance, having each character with different topics or at the very least having fewer common topics.

It's not a problem of resources here, the writing was done extensively for each character. It's just how the resource was used which was problematic. Less is more. Make every sentence count.

13. NPC portraits.
This is a minor one but since I'm taking the time to comment on the game I want to touch about this. I was unused to having filtered pictures for portraits at first but I eventually got used to it and it was a good way to do bunch of portraits in less time (than creating each one from scratch).

The characters which were modified however were sometimes very amateurish: the way the hats were glued on felt awkward, like someone using photoshop for the first time; the integration is sometimes hit and miss. Some of the art in the game is really pro but it feels like someone with little experience did those integration which was a shame. It's just that with the typos it gives a bad impression about an otherwise very good game.

14. Time travelling on the map.
Adding the speed-up option was a great idea... why is it missing for the map? I did my washing and cooking while I was moving from one point of the map to another on foot. It's too bad. Waiting a bit is ok but it got tedious. Look at how Fallout did this: you didn't wait long to get from one place to another.

Maybe I missed the quick travel options. The only one I ever used were caravans and their trucks (and the boat and the truck guy). That felt like very few considering how far you have to travel at times.

***

Honestly, that's about it. I took some time to write this because this has the potential to blow AAA studios out of the water. In a way, it already does. I hope someone from the team reads this.

Thanks for making such a great game!!!!

Thank you man! I think I remember the email A lot of what you said was implemented in Trudograd, as these were indeed the right choices to make for a future game. Though we still probably avoid making cover and deeper survival mechanics e.g. food spoiling for our next project.

---

Well now I answered a whole few pages of stuff, gonna go back into sneaky mode for a while.

 

[Mikeal]

Good to see you again!

 

[Jarmaro]

If a guy randomly mowed your lawn for you then demanded payment would you pay him (even if you felt it was in need of a mow and would have been willing to pay someone)? Probably not.

Dude look I'm sorry, but this here is the logic behind this decision:

Guys, don't try to bullshit me. I explicitly mentioned that it's the railroading my dialogue options in conjuction with not getting my reward that annoyed me.
If I had an option to cheerfuly admit that I already did the job? Of course punish me for that stupidity!
But. If instead of pretending that I hadn't done the job yet (which would be a rational option for any experienced person that done any tasks in their life) I have to choose between:
1. Stupid confesion that I'd done the job
2. Refuse to do the job at all
Then yes, this is a shit decision to design the dialogue/quest like that. Let me fail on my own instead of forcing me to do that because I dared to do something of my own volition. There is no excuse for this, just the developers punishing the player for not playing the game like they wanted.

 

[Ninjerk]

I've heard that called a "player punch" (I think by Harvey "Witchboy" Smith).

 

[Saduj]

But. If instead of pretending that I hadn't done the job yet (which would be a rational option for any experienced person that done any tasks in their life) I have to choose between:
1. Stupid confesion that I'd done the job
2. Refuse to do the job at all

I only killed the cultists after getting the quest so I don't know how the conversation goes if you do it the other way.... With the cultists already dead, does the quest giver ask you to kill the cultists and then you have no choice but to admit you've already done it? Or does he already know that the cultists are dead and you're the one who killed them? The latter seems much more realistic given that you just killed a bunch of people outdoors in the middle of the city. IF it is the former, then yes it makes logical sense that you could still accept the task without giving him the news. If it is the latter, then adding an option to lie is just a waste of time because the guy already knows that someone killed them for free and that this someone looks exactly like you. If he already knows and you lie he's just going to say "Oh, then I guess it was your twin who has my gratitude *wink*..." and you still don't get a reward because people don't pay you for jobs you've already done for free.

 

[Jarmaro]

I only killed the cultists after getting the quest so I don't know how the conversation goes if you do it the other way.... With the cultists already dead, does the quest giver ask you to kill the cultists and then you have no choice but to admit you've already done it? Or does he already know that the cultists are dead and you're the one who killed them? The latter seems much more realistic given that you just killed a bunch of people outdoors in the middle of the city. IF it is the former, then yes it makes logical sense that you could still accept the task without giving him the news. If it is the latter, then adding an option to lie is just a waste of time because the guy already knows that someone killed them for free and that this someone looks exactly like you.

It's the first, he didn't know they are dead. Fortunately I've found a save from before that conversation, so you can see it for yourself:

The options to answer his job offer and his reaction to the option 1

If there could be at least a [Speech] check option for getting at least a part of the reward, anything that would give some agency as a player, not an NPC that just does what they are told to, some dialogue to allow me to react to the situation. Nope, just 'let's change the subject' or 'Yup, I gotta go.' This is downright insulting.

For the record, this is a minor thing overall. A side mission, which probably rewards in some additional cash and experience. No biggie. However, the treatment of me as a player left such a sour taste in my mind that I had't touched the game for two days. I'll almost surely continue playing the game, but I hope a situation like that will not happen again. Some people seem to see my posts as me shiting on a game as a whole, but I'm still probably in my the first half of the playthrough. I'm just commenting on the game as I go, and if I didn't like it I just wouldn't be playing it. Nothing here is my opinion on the overall quality, just my impressions so far.

 

[Saduj]

It's the first, he didn't know they are dead.

OK, the "you wouldn't be paid for a job you've already done" explanation doesn't really work if the guy doing the hiring doesn't know the job is done. IMO, in the event the cultists are already dead, the NPC should either not bring it up at all or acknowledge that the cultists are dead in some way. OR the NPC dialogue should stay the same and the player should be able to lie and take the job. I agree that it is a minor thing though.

 

[Darth Canoli]

If a guy randomly mowed your lawn for you then demanded payment would you pay him (even if you felt it was in need of a mow and would have been willing to pay someone)? Probably not.

Dude look I'm sorry, but this here is the logic behind this decision:

Guys, don't try to bullshit me. I explicitly mentioned that it's the railroading my dialogue options in conjuction with not getting my reward that annoyed me.
If I had an option to cheerfuly admit that I already did the job? Of course punish me for that stupidity!
But. If instead of pretending that I hadn't done the job yet (which would be a rational option for any experienced person that done any tasks in their life) I have to choose between:
1. Stupid confesion that I'd done the job
2. Refuse to do the job at all
Then yes, this is a shit decision to design the dialogue/quest like that. Let me fail on my own instead of forcing me to do that because I dared to do something of my own volition. There is no excuse for this, just the developers punishing the player for not playing the game like they wanted.

I have to agree with Jarmaro, I don't mind the guy being an asshole but he should acknowledge the fact his (re)quest was fulfilled and then be an asshole and give you 1/10 of the reward or no reward, he could even be a bigger asshole and make fun of you but you still get some quest xp.

Quest xp is sacred Atomboy you can't deprive players of that in a RPG, it's inhumane!

 

[Darkwind]

Can I play Trudograd independent of this game and "get it"?

I'm not a 'wall of text' fan especially if its not well-written and there seems to be some back & forth here about that, additionally, it just sounds like TG took all the complaints of Atom and basically did all the QoL changes to eliminate most of them. I'm looking for a polished experience even though I will sometimes tolerate Euro-jank or Vatnik-jank if I am really engaged.

Character wise, would I be at a mechanical disadvantage in Trudograd if I don't import a character? I like the 'idea' of Atom I think but it sounds like it is just inferior in most ways to Trudograd which had the benefit of hindsight, player feedback, and more development.

 

[Saduj]

Can I play Trudograd independent of this game and "get it"?

I'm not a 'wall of text' fan especially if its not well-written and there seems to be some back & forth here about that, additionally, it just sounds like TG took all the complaints of Atom and basically did all the QoL changes to eliminate most of them. I'm looking for a polished experience even though I will sometimes tolerate Euro-jank or Vatnik-jank if I am really engaged.

Character wise, would I be at a mechanical disadvantage in Trudograd if I don't import a character? I like the 'idea' of Atom I think but it sounds like it is just inferior in most ways to Trudograd which had the benefit of hindsight, player feedback, and more development.

The main plot is a continuation of the 1st game. One of the companions is from the 1st game. I didn't use him in Trudograd so not sure how much he talks about previous events. Some NPCs mention events from the 1st game. But I wouldn't say you'd be lost without having played the original. I chose not to import my character and didn't really feel underpowered.

IMO, Trudograd would have been better if they made you start at level 1 as a different agent than the one who participated in the 1st game. But I think every expansion should be for new characters starting at level 1.

I think you can just play the 2nd game without any issues but I don't think the QOL improvements are so vast that you should skip the first game.

 

[jackofshadows]

I'm looking for a polished experience even though I will sometimes tolerate Euro-jank or Vatnik-jank if I am really engaged.

The first game isn't janky actually. It runs very well, as for qol stuff - many changes were implemented with the patches, independently of TG development (some could say they went overboard with that). At the same time, TG has in addition to excessive (junky) food mechanic cold mechanic for one.

More importantly, TG focused rather on quests, dialogues and story related stuff than combat and exploration, unlike the first game and that's uh, a bad thing.

Character wise, would I be at a mechanical disadvantage in Trudograd if I don't import a character?

Yes, a massive disadvantage but TG is a very easy game so I agree with Saduj in terms of "players would rather start as lvl1 char instead".

Overall, I'd suggest to play the first game. If you won't like it, you won't like TG anyway I think but otherwise you'll get more coherent experience.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

Both are great, play both.

 

[razvedchiki]

any mod that increased the difficulty?

 

[Darth Canoli]

any mod that increased the difficulty?

Maybe the total conversion expedition(s) mod, i've read some players complaining about the difficulty but didn't try it myself.

 

[razvedchiki]

is there a way to kill the 2 chiefs silently in peregon after resolving the leadership quest? forgot about the cannibal list and did that quest after finishing peregon quests.
tried leaving a tnt charge near the merc chief but it triggers the whole of peregon.

 

[Alphons]

Nothing scripted, you might try ciggies.

 

[razvedchiki]

i forgot about that tactic!

 

[jackofshadows]

Filthy abusers. Don't be a pussy and slaughter the whole city instead if you wanna kill the leaders.