UnderRail (2013)

I put more than twice as many hours into Underrail as I did into the Witcher 3. While the game certainly isn’t in the same class as CDPR’s epic masterpiece, it was usually a lot of fun. For those unfamiliar with the game, it’s a Fallout-inspired isometric RPG in a post apocalyptic world where all that remains of humanity lives in a few caves and an old metro system. The sci-fi atmosphere that runs from hard sci-fi to science fantasy in places makes for a wonderful world to discover (and DOMINATE!!). I’m delighted to hear that there’s a stand alone sequel coming that will explore more of the word. The game, even on easy (what I played), was really difficult. In fact, the reason I put in so many hours is that you’re always facing seemingly insurmountable obstacles. The thing is, the game offers so much variation in how you approach combat that there always seems to be a way. Like the one-hit kill melee enemy and his gang I faced early on and only won because caltrops prevented him from reaching me. Or the gang that was far more powerful than me but I sniped them from two different doorways. Or the horde of natives I faced down by standing in a wedge spot where only one could face me at a time. The game is overall quite well designed. The crafting system is the best I’ve ever seen in a game. I’ve only done my one stealth crossbow/sniper rifle build so I don’t know how well-balanced combat is, but it always presented a difficult but not impossible challenge for me. The whole thing is designed around exploration and, for a game that has outdated pixel graphics, there's a lot of fascinating stuff to explore. The faction system lets you pick sides in a war of ideology about how Underrail should be governed, which was a nice feature. It’s also a game where choices you make early on have immense endgame consequences. Get the DLC and start it around level 17 or so, if you want my advice. Having those extra levels in the endgame were pretty important. I will say that by the time I reached the endgame stage, I was getting a bit tired of the game. It’s a bit too much of back and forth, back and forth, endless little busy tasks. Then I almost got trapped in a one area when my weapons surprised me by becoming degraded so badly I couldn’t fight and there was no way to exit. That was a lot less fun for me than the rest of the game and I really only kept going out of a desire to finish what I started. Still, killing tchortlings was fun and in the end I can’t take away a star because I had too much fun overall.