After playing trough 90% of EA access content ( finished all the quest lines ) , i want to say that this is by far the best game i played in past 10 years or even more . It is challenging , it is interesting , and game systems are amazing . Here are some things i noticed that could be improved to make Underrail even better experience .
Trading :General Store Traders - Cmon , this is a general store he surely could buy more "small items" like parts , consumables , grenades , components etc . As for now General Store traders are those guys who has 500-600 Charons and buys one Belt and 1 Foodstuff (trololol) . Dont get me wrong i love Underrail's bartering system just i feel like General Store's should be the place where you can sell larger quantities of various small items from different item categories , that would make sense for general store and make the world feel more real . I hope they will be fixed for the release version.
Praetorian Security Trader - CMON , this guy is exclusive to other 2 traders , and he sells complete crap , same quality gear as weapons trader in core city just has less of it , and he does not even sell Green/Red Bullets in large quantities like for example Protectorate trader. I really hope to see this improved in release version , faction exclusive trader should have some exclusive / valuable stuff to sell , or just plainly sell highest quality gears , he is exclusive to other 2 main story quest lines that are like hardest part of the game before Institute ( Even Protectorate guy sells crappy gear but he can be forgiven because he stacks 30 Green rounds , tho these traders should sell "high" quality pieces for sure )
Traders that are further away from cities/settlements like Marty in scavenger shop ,Lost Vault guy , Hanging Rat Guy , they should have some unique / decent stock of some kind ( not speaking about unique items that cannot be bought anywhere else ) so they are worth to visit more than once , nobody is gonna trade with Scavenger Shop guy when he sells same things as any other Corecity trader and buys 1 leather armor , by saying unique stock i mean these hidden traders that are harder to reach should have some component/ingredient etc that they sell in larger quantities and that is hard to obtain anywhere else ( Napalm C for example , or white Powder to craft grenades , even Bottles or Rags or anything like that just so you know this guy stacks item X and its worth to visit him again and again if i want item X in large quantity). This would allow them to stay relevant beyond the point where you meet them for the first time and sell them some random junk in from your backpack and ignore them for the rest of the game . Blaine is good example for this , meanwhile he has no Unique stock , he can trade SGS credits to Charons 3 to 1 that is best ratio only available from SGS Old Jonas ( 20 Charons every reset lol ) and Jack Quicksilver 80 every reset . It makes Blaine worth revisiting , even if his dumb ass takes few loading screens to reach .
Reactivity :Meanwhile "nobody know me as Invictus" trolling in Institute was 10/10 , game needs some kind of reactivity , people in Corecity when asked about Invictus should tell its you or something .
I should be able to tell Gorsky to put his plans into his ass because i am Corporal of Protectorate and i aint stealing anything from my comrades and surely not killing some poor co worker .
Depot B in Junkyard after you help Black Eels to take over , seriously are there none of the traders that would like to move in? especially after you kill the best of all traders early game just for that quest , also even after 100 hours in game dead bodies are still there etc . I wish after some time the map would change a bit removing dead bodies and moving in some new people and a trader . There are plenty of places in the game where after something happened , time would freeze in that location and even after many game hours nothing will change , i thought this might not be possible due to engine , but a trader moved into Black Crawlers HQ in core city , you only could hope this will be implemented into other game area's ( for example free drones base becomes blocked forever after the gass is released surely there could be some way to clean the Gas there or it could just disappear after 20 in game hours or something ).
Buzzers shop in Rail Crossing even after months will have same annoying sound of broken electricity , guy reopened a shop he surely could fix the electric stuff, you get the point there are issues like this related to many quests / locations where they freeze in time and never evolve after you complete the quest .
Some general reactive dialogue and some maps changing some time after you complete quest would fix this easily .
Crafting :Super Steel - CMON why the wait , it is not sure now how long i have to wait for super steel to get melted , there are no indicators , the guy will take more money from me but not give the plates etc etc. Just make this a cut scene (bla bla much time has passed you waited and got bored to death but now its done GZ , something along those lines would do ), or make some NPC ( let it be a whore / a drinking buddy in a bar W/E it could even cost decent charons like 100 or two) in foundry that helps you pass time until steel is crafted .
Blueprints - there are many amazing blueprints and crafting system is so good , it still could be better atm you can craft almost everything and it feels like you should be able to craft everything , however Green/Red Rounds arent craftable , meanwhile Shock / Acid / Microshrapnel Rounds are.. , also there could be 2nd and 3rd levels for Flashbang type grenade for example level 3 being something like shock grenade that just stuns shit for 1 turn , also Gas Grenades are very weak compared to other stuff , only use for them is to fuck some poor npc over who is willing to talk with you before getting killed ( rathound king for example ) , i wish Gas Grenades were reworked / improved into something more useful at least that they started working before enemy is dead , and there could be 3 tiers of them "toxic grenades" or just more different special grenades that uses Toxic Material , like Acid Grenade that melts shit or something . Like half of "special" bullets needs to be reworked , Micro Shrapnell is complete garbage just saying .
Energy/Chemical should not stop at Pistols , there should be some tipe of Rifle's/Canons that shoots with energy or chemicals , same goes for some type of rocket / grenade launchers would be nice to see them end game , also they could be a "grenade sink" for those low tier grenades that nobody buys and they just stink in your inventory for ages .
Also i hope that with endgame content we see at least 1 more frame for each weapon type , probably not gonna happen tho .
Biology seems to be lacking and its the skill that can be capped with 60 on char that doesnt use PSI and on 70 on char that does use PSI . I wish there were more blueprints for this skill with various effects like Aegis ( it is hard to craft , expensive , effect is minor but has no penalty it is not overpowered but it is really handy ) ( but no more injectable medicine we got enough of that lol , my character cant take more than 5 needles per turn lol ) Also more items like Regenerative west could be a solution .
Perks :Some Perks are str8 up bad , like
Ballistics ( They are not worth to take early because there are better perks , and late game they give close to no effect )
Three-Pointer perk seems too weak , if it added 5% for every point in dex above 7 it would be a thing tho .
Disassemble Perk - i get that reason for this perk is in the game to be able to sell more stuff , but it could work in a way like Three Pointer does , high INT removing the penalty ( like 3 % per every point of int above 7 up to 10 INT when you dont loose quality ) to make it really decent perk .
Weaponsmith - CMON 5% Crit for whole Perk
? and Only to crafted weapons ... no. There is a perk that gives you 10 for very minor penalty .
There are other Perks that i dont remember right now but i will update the topic with them .
Side-Quests content :There should be more stand-alone side quests that doesnt evolve into major quest line (such as milton's quest) especially in maze like locations such as Caverns or Lower Underrail(some parts of it ) or Under Passages , this would make exploration of those locations more interesting and rewarding , because right now its complete waste of time , you can skip most of those huge locations , and you wont miss anything because there is nothing there to find , add more content there because now it is directions you want to avoid or you end up being lost in dark tunnels with no real content .
Major Factions should have more quests ( Especially after you finished their main quest line ) talking here about Protectorate ( and Free Drones i Guess ) and Core City Factions , 5 quests for each of them is bare minimum tbh and faction feels empty and useless after you do those 5 quests there could be some sidequests ( atleast 5 more for each tbh ) that opens up after you complete the main quest line .
More Side quests in citie's there are ton of NPC's out there surely some of them could have some kind of "fetch quest gone wrong" type of stuff .
Some more people who challenge you after you become invictus in arena would also be nice addition , maybe 1 challenger every 3 hours of game time or something like that .
Difficulty : Underral is kinda hard and challenging game when you dont know what to do , but sometime after you get access to whole Underrail , Mid Game content stops being hard , Burrowers in Camp Hathor were a thing , Burrowers during Protectorate quest line were animal abuse and i felt sorry for them ( and i did Hathor > Crossing > 2 Quests in Corecity > Protectorate so that wasnt even that much of time gap and my character was 5 times stronger ). I know that end game is yet to come but due locations being opened to you all at once whole post SGS stuff is kinda same difficulty and it can give you like 10+ levels which makes your character way stronger in the meantime its same crawlers and burrowers , also the access to mid game traders makes it way easier if you are a crafter . Instead of re balancing every encounter , HARD mode should be in release version , looking that Easy is just some hp bloat i wouldnt mind HARD mode being similar to it , but seriously there has to be a HARD mode in such game , for now if you run a decent character , craft yourself some pieces of gear enemy assault rifle user does 0 damage to you while you shoot him for 300 .This is a problem in all combat heavy games that has "optional" crafting system
Ofc something like Path of The Damned (enemy has increased stats / there are more of them )mode in Pilltards would be more than welcome in Underrail but i guess this is too much to ask at this stage of development , so HP bloat hard mode will do .
Also arena isnt that hard until you meet the end boss who is a thing but the difficulty gap between him and others is too wide ( and i dont mean nerf him , make others stronger )
Give raiders better Rifles / more Armor Piercing bullets , they stopped doing mechanical damage to my heavy armored guy at level 15 and they never did any bullets damage after ( Hard mode would fix this , enemies doing more damage not you doing less )
That is it for now , just finished EA content so i might add something after time passes and i remembered it these are issues i never forgot meanwhile playing lol .
Edit : this turned out to be mega post :/ not my intention to wall of text you to death
