UnderRail review at RPS - and it's negative!

[Hot Coldman]

https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2017/05/22/underrail-indie-rpg-review/

The reviewer i nquestion: "the basics are sound;. But combat becomes OBNOXIOUSLY hard early on, mostly due to enemies having access to the same perks and equipment, and then some."

That is his first point. It reveals a chip on his shoulder that explains why he quickly
in his own words "moves past caring" about the game. So it looks like the issue has
been found.. and it's not the combat. It is in fact the player.

 

[Metronome]

Classic makes all the fights a joke as you are overleveled by MUCH on Domination. The rest doesn't matter.

Oddities are not presented as a difficulty setting. If you end up overleveled it's a balancing issue. That's the kind of meta-gaming that I was complaining about from the start.

*Fundamentally*, Oddity is the superior system.

The system in theory is better than experience. The execution isn't great though. I can give the developer some slack, because he seems to have literally invented it. But if it's going to be used by someone in the future, I hope they can find a way to avoid the issues I posted earlier.

At the end of the day I would rather just be rewarded for playing the game than for finding Easter eggs. A lot the time oddities reward you too much for doing something easy or tedious, or don't reward you enough for doing something difficult. It ends up resulting in more frustration over the course of the game. I could see it becoming a superior system, but it would need a lot of work. At least in my opinion.

 

[ciox]

Oddity is great, but Classic is nice too for gimmick builds or weak builds, or for playing with the DLC installed but not wanting to visit the actual DLC area for various reasons, like your build being weak against crabs.

By using Classic and cleaning out absolutely every hostile area (no towns, no grinding respawns) you can just barely get to the raised level cap (30) without actually visiting the Black Sea and its crab hordes, which is quite nice.

 

[Fenix]

because he seems to have literally invented it

No. But he popularazed it in RPG.

It ends up resulting in more frustration over the course of the game.

I had MUCH MORE fristration when I was forced to kill rathounds to get "this levelup is here right after only 20 rathounds" and "I have the key but must picklock" bullshit.

If you end up overleveled it's a balancing issue.

It's an issue that slush to a toilet all the fights' difficulty. It's a bad thing.

 

[Butter]

Wiz4 did exploration-based leveling in 1987.