Underrail
This is one of the few games lately which I decided not to finish. I was infilitrating the Institute trying to find the elusive cube and after a particular fight with about ten muties along with their stupid mutts, my patience gave out. For about 40 hours I've been playing as a psi/melee build and I've had my share of fun, no doubt about it. There's a lot of positives to take away from this experience and I still judge this game to be a worthy addition into any credible CRPG rotation. I'll probably return to it sometime in the future, considering that different builds offer different strategies and there's a few quests I didn't do. Ultimately, the reason I decided to uninstall after that mutie fight was not necessarily because of it alone, rather than what the fight represented. I did pretty damn well in that fight, considering; throwing fire around, crowd control and racking up kills pretty fast. It wasn't enough, though, as if often the case in this game. At the fourth turn I was predictably crit'ed and died instantly, mostly due to the hypo cooldown was still two turns away. When I stared at the death screen I just felt tired to the bone, because I knew instinctively that this would be the entire game for the rest of the duration. The things I've heard about The Deep Caverns played rather heavily into my decision as well. I just wasn't having fun anymore. The story didn't exactly grab me and my incentive for soldiering on was always exploration and such. I don't have that anymore. I'm sated.
I confess I went into this game rather ignorant. I was expecting a Fallout-esque RPG and I was partially right. However, the game is obviously not as refined or fleshed out. The limited AI really impacts the battles at length. When you've done hundreds of fights, it all becomes rather predictable and boring. Any burrower fight: fail initiative, they lay egg, shoots you two times and you're poisoned. Every opponent you face also has a plethora of AP, running around half of the map before hitting you four times, takes adrenaline, hits you again and then runs away if you're still alive. I spent a lot of points into dodge and evasion but
every mid to high-tier enemy still enjoy a 4/5 chance to hit - without exception. If there's one thing Underrail's combat has taught me is that either you kill your enemies within three or so turns or you're fucked, depending on circumstances - because they're not going to miss. That won't stop you from consistently missing 90% chances, however. So it's crowd control and damage control until exhaustion. That's what I am right now: exhausted. The endless backtracking also didn't help in that regard, as well as the completely useless auto-map.
Despite all of this, I don't go away mad. I've had fun and this game scratched that Fallout itch I've had for a long time, even though it's not a perfect successor, obviously. It is one of the more admirable efforts I've seen, though. There's real potential here, I think. Refine the AI, tone down the THC and perhaps reduce the total AP in combat - in order to make it more dynamic - and you've got a real recipe for success. Finding oddities in order to level up is also a very nice idea, directly rewarding exploration. So despite an incomplete playthrough my own impression of Underrail is still pretty damn complete.
(Not a fan of the Gauntlet, though)
trollfaces for you Avellone anyway.
