The bigger problem with UR is that the game follows a sandbox approach that will let you with an abundance of oddities (the equivalent of SPs) and money. In fact, the game seems to be influenced by MMOs a lot.
MMOs are the natural consequence of the sandbox approach of FO and the traditional unimaginative cRPG design, “Mom, I want things to kill!”, but without decent character building. Underrail just adds decent character building to the formula.
No mention of the fact that the Odyssey system leads far too many times to "Clear entire room, find secret, get exp" rather than "clear entire room, get exp" making it pointless, this is a combat game through and through.
But muh system is so innovative! Well, it doesn’t fix the problem it was designed to solve.
No mention of the tedious backtracking compounded by re-spawning enemies.
Which makes the infamous teleports in AoD seem so cool and well thought, huh?
No mention of how susceptible enemies are to kiting.
But by far the most egregious part:
"...a spiritual successor to the original Fallout..."
No.
Underrail has absolutely none of the atmosphere that made Fallout 1 special. You can easily see this even from the start from how psionics get treated in the world. You are psionic, see trainer, get skills, kill rats. It is more reminiscent of those MMO moments where every single class trainer is neatly stacked in the same building (the unflattering single player MMO comparison can be pushed even further...)
Underrail has absolutely none of the exploration that made Fallout 2 special. If you go once through the game you pretty much see everything that is relevant, the replayability is given solely by different builds. For all its lack of direction in terms of navigation, it is a pretty straightforward experience.
What Underrail does have is the adventure of extreme vermin extermination via a dozen methods. Which is fine, the systems here are actually very well made, it allows for many playthroughs with different builds that require genuine thought to make work. Unfortunately "SPECIAL" is not what made Fallout special and it seems people forgot that.
This one thousand times. I think that Underrail is what we would have if a combatfag tried to imitate what he liked in Fallout. Fallout is a classic, a great game, but it’s also a very mixed bag. You have mature themes and good writing, but you also have retarded jokes and exploding heads. Saying that you are influenced by Fallout it’s not great with you were more influenced by its retarded features. Underrail was inspired by some of the good stuff we have in FO (SPECIAL, perks, setting, interaction with the environment, etc.), but was also influenced by silly things, like being able to exterminate a whole city by yourself, sandbox approach, etc. You have the ability to kill everyone in one city, but almost zero dialogue checks. You have a post-apocalyptical setting, but that doesn’t have any depth, because it is presented in a childish way and with childish writing. Nobody will be quoting a sentence for the intro of Underrail, or remembering a twist in a quest or a memorable NPC ten years from now, because it’s all childish. The combat is much better than Fallout, but the game is also designed around grinding and backtracking in Diablo style. The list goes on and on. The fact that is obviously heavily influenced by a lot of other tendencies that have nothing to do with Fallout, results in a completely different game that is only faithful in the looks. If the game is good, it is not because of Fallout influences, I can tell you that. Dropping “Fallout” name is a good way to attract old-school fans that doesn’t know the game, but it is not honest.
Personally, Underrail feels like a game made by programmers rather than designers, it inspired no "sense of wonder" in me. Still it is a min-maxers heaven and if that is for you then go for it, just stop gnawing at the Fallout franchise for recognition and hive mind approval since it has nothing to do with the experience of those games and aims for very different things.
I disagree with that part. The things Underrail does well (crafting, perks, combos, itemization, etc.) it does really well. You say that the game doesn’t have the atmosphere that made Fallout 1 special, but it has its own childish atmosphere. The quests and characters are superficial, but they come across as part of a pre-existent world. The worldbuilding in Underrail is strong. I only wished it had more sophisticated content.
Underrail has absolutely none of the exploration that made Fallout 2 special. If you go once through the game you pretty much see everything that is relevant, the replayability is given solely by different builds. For all its lack of direction in terms of navigation, it is a pretty straightforward experience.
To be fair, you also have additional quests regarding your choices in the faction quests, but since they don't make any difference whatsover to the main story and present just more stuff to kill, it fells just additional quests to kill stuff.
him and he said no, I am not gay like you.
