roshan
Arcane
- Joined
- Apr 7, 2004
- Messages
- 2,489
Hello everyone. I really liked most of what I played of Underrail, but at this point I'm just totally bored of it and more or less had my fill of the game. I had realized more or less early on that this was a game that I wouldn't want to replay anytime soon, but thought I'd be interested enough to finish my playthrough. The following are the reasons why I have had enough:
1. There's not much meat to the story, plot and world. There aren't enough characters to interact with, not enough quests, and not enough motivation in the central plot to drive you forward. Some areas like the Foundry and Camp Hathor are somewhat wasted. The game is more or less a long dungeon crawl. Factions like Ironheads or Lurkers are just mobs to kill rather than forces you can interact with like the Slavers and Raiders in Fallout. There's not much CNC in the sense that you can complete quests but it doesn't seem to have much impact on the game world.
2. The game is just ridiculously and stupidly easy, and the difficulty curve is whack. It was most tough when I was fighting beetles and rathounds early on. Then there was the bots challenge and the now-nerfed mutants challenge, but other than that it was easy going despite my gimped pistol build. And when exploring further on I found enemies like Lurkers to be significantly difficult. But then I found a good tactical vest, built a crafted hammerer, and that unique SMG (later upgraded to crafted steel cat), and basically ROFLstomped the whole of lower Underrail, including Balrog and Carnifex.
The "normal" difficulty setting really should be renamed to "moron". And this is given that I spent most of the game using an SMG as a pistol.
3. Respawning trash mobs everywhere. I appreciate that enemies like rathounds, crawlers, siphoners, psi beetles and warthogs have unique abilities that you need to watch out for early on, but they quickly turn into trash enemies and they keep respawning in lots of areas, so it gets really tiresome to click through them after a while. Thank the heavens for rat king armor.
4. Too much of the game is spent slowly trudging through isometric space. First of all movement speed is a crawl (I got 10 DEX and 7 AGI, nimble + rat king armor + tabi boots, and it's still bloody slow). Then areas are designed in such a way that key parts are as inaccessible as possible. It's annoying having to open that gate to SGS all the time. It's annoying having to make my way all the way to the merchants in Core City. And so on and so forth. This stuff doesn't even make sense from a realism standpoint. Commerce, business should cluster around central and easily accessible locations, that's more or less how it works in the real world.
5. Too much of the game is spent waiting for stupid bars to fill up. You want to pickpocket someone, or lockpick, or hack, or open a vent, and you need to wait for that ridiculous bar. What in the world is the point? I mean there are some times (like if you are infiltrating a compound, or dodging guards) that the bar actually fulfills some sort of gameplay function (for locking/hacking), but a lot of the time, specially for pickpocket, it's just a huge time sink.
6. Cooldowns suck and are lazy design. Yeah, I'm one of those people now. I didn't mind it at first when those abilities seemed really important and I actually had to think about whether or not to use them or keep them for the next turn. But when combat got easy, spamming knee cap, aimed shot and so on became a no brainer. In effect the game devolved into Shadowrun where you just fire off an ability as soon as it's ready. The game further encourages this because of smart modules and goggles that increase special attack damage. So you are basically pushed to spam those attacks over and over again because it's the optimal way to play.... and again, wait for stupid bars to fill up. And the bars don't even make sense - why in fuck's sake does an ability named "RAPID FIRE" involve a bar slowly filling up? It's pretty retarded. And the alternative option is click click click click click to kill which is just as banal.
7. I don't mind the lack of a world map but the way that Lower Underrail fits into the caves and tunnels is just whack, areas are more or less connected at random and there seems to have been no effort (or early on planning/vision/foresight) into building a logically connected world.
8. Itemization totally sucks, and the crafting system lacks meat. Most of the unique pistols I found were not even worth a second glance. And there are not enough options for attachments to really add variety to crafted weapons. I mean, if I were to craft another pistol, it would be another .44 hammerer with smart module and laser sight - but with higher quality parts. But I don't actually need to craft such a weapon because everything is just too fucking easy anyway and I don't need to make it any easier. Same thing with SMG - my next crafted weapon would be another steel cat with smart module and laser sight. BORING. Then you roam around and keep finding the same items like bolt of black cloth or circular wave amplifier over and over again, and it's the same items in the shops all the time. Again, BORING.
And each weapon comes in exactly four varieties that are more or less equally banalced against each other at the same quality point. I can't bloody understand what was the point behind such insipid design. Really seems that the king of banalce himself took a pass at this game. There's really a difference between games that were beautifully hand crafted and designed like the IE games of old and Fallout 2 versus Underrail which relies on simplistic and random systems.
9. Underrail is like TOEE in that it is too bloody easy for you to even bother making use of the systems in place, so most of them are totally wasted. Take my character. I have the option to craft and use some powerful energy weapons. And my character is basically built for that. But I'm wondering - what's the fucking point? Energy ammo is expensive, and I can one shot most enemies with a critical from my hammerer anyway. And I'm almost at the end of the game (Upper Underrail). So there's no impetus to make use of the systems because there is no real challenge being offered to players.
Verdict: Good not great, with some of it being mediocre or boring. Still enjoyed what I played of it, but changing my GOTY vote to Serpent in the Staglands. And I didn't even make it to the deep caverns.
But still looking forward to whatever Styg and co does next. :D
1. There's not much meat to the story, plot and world. There aren't enough characters to interact with, not enough quests, and not enough motivation in the central plot to drive you forward. Some areas like the Foundry and Camp Hathor are somewhat wasted. The game is more or less a long dungeon crawl. Factions like Ironheads or Lurkers are just mobs to kill rather than forces you can interact with like the Slavers and Raiders in Fallout. There's not much CNC in the sense that you can complete quests but it doesn't seem to have much impact on the game world.
2. The game is just ridiculously and stupidly easy, and the difficulty curve is whack. It was most tough when I was fighting beetles and rathounds early on. Then there was the bots challenge and the now-nerfed mutants challenge, but other than that it was easy going despite my gimped pistol build. And when exploring further on I found enemies like Lurkers to be significantly difficult. But then I found a good tactical vest, built a crafted hammerer, and that unique SMG (later upgraded to crafted steel cat), and basically ROFLstomped the whole of lower Underrail, including Balrog and Carnifex.
The "normal" difficulty setting really should be renamed to "moron". And this is given that I spent most of the game using an SMG as a pistol.
3. Respawning trash mobs everywhere. I appreciate that enemies like rathounds, crawlers, siphoners, psi beetles and warthogs have unique abilities that you need to watch out for early on, but they quickly turn into trash enemies and they keep respawning in lots of areas, so it gets really tiresome to click through them after a while. Thank the heavens for rat king armor.
4. Too much of the game is spent slowly trudging through isometric space. First of all movement speed is a crawl (I got 10 DEX and 7 AGI, nimble + rat king armor + tabi boots, and it's still bloody slow). Then areas are designed in such a way that key parts are as inaccessible as possible. It's annoying having to open that gate to SGS all the time. It's annoying having to make my way all the way to the merchants in Core City. And so on and so forth. This stuff doesn't even make sense from a realism standpoint. Commerce, business should cluster around central and easily accessible locations, that's more or less how it works in the real world.
5. Too much of the game is spent waiting for stupid bars to fill up. You want to pickpocket someone, or lockpick, or hack, or open a vent, and you need to wait for that ridiculous bar. What in the world is the point? I mean there are some times (like if you are infiltrating a compound, or dodging guards) that the bar actually fulfills some sort of gameplay function (for locking/hacking), but a lot of the time, specially for pickpocket, it's just a huge time sink.
6. Cooldowns suck and are lazy design. Yeah, I'm one of those people now. I didn't mind it at first when those abilities seemed really important and I actually had to think about whether or not to use them or keep them for the next turn. But when combat got easy, spamming knee cap, aimed shot and so on became a no brainer. In effect the game devolved into Shadowrun where you just fire off an ability as soon as it's ready. The game further encourages this because of smart modules and goggles that increase special attack damage. So you are basically pushed to spam those attacks over and over again because it's the optimal way to play.... and again, wait for stupid bars to fill up. And the bars don't even make sense - why in fuck's sake does an ability named "RAPID FIRE" involve a bar slowly filling up? It's pretty retarded. And the alternative option is click click click click click to kill which is just as banal.
7. I don't mind the lack of a world map but the way that Lower Underrail fits into the caves and tunnels is just whack, areas are more or less connected at random and there seems to have been no effort (or early on planning/vision/foresight) into building a logically connected world.
8. Itemization totally sucks, and the crafting system lacks meat. Most of the unique pistols I found were not even worth a second glance. And there are not enough options for attachments to really add variety to crafted weapons. I mean, if I were to craft another pistol, it would be another .44 hammerer with smart module and laser sight - but with higher quality parts. But I don't actually need to craft such a weapon because everything is just too fucking easy anyway and I don't need to make it any easier. Same thing with SMG - my next crafted weapon would be another steel cat with smart module and laser sight. BORING. Then you roam around and keep finding the same items like bolt of black cloth or circular wave amplifier over and over again, and it's the same items in the shops all the time. Again, BORING.
And each weapon comes in exactly four varieties that are more or less equally banalced against each other at the same quality point. I can't bloody understand what was the point behind such insipid design. Really seems that the king of banalce himself took a pass at this game. There's really a difference between games that were beautifully hand crafted and designed like the IE games of old and Fallout 2 versus Underrail which relies on simplistic and random systems.
9. Underrail is like TOEE in that it is too bloody easy for you to even bother making use of the systems in place, so most of them are totally wasted. Take my character. I have the option to craft and use some powerful energy weapons. And my character is basically built for that. But I'm wondering - what's the fucking point? Energy ammo is expensive, and I can one shot most enemies with a critical from my hammerer anyway. And I'm almost at the end of the game (Upper Underrail). So there's no impetus to make use of the systems because there is no real challenge being offered to players.
Verdict: Good not great, with some of it being mediocre or boring. Still enjoyed what I played of it, but changing my GOTY vote to Serpent in the Staglands. And I didn't even make it to the deep caverns.
But still looking forward to whatever Styg and co does next. :D