I thought Underrail was fucking excellent - it's a nice return to form for games following the old Fallout / Arcanum school of RPGs. You guys did a great job.
Two suggestions, though:
1. Raise the level cap. I played on classic XP, and I've heard that the progression is a bit more streamlined for Oddity, but the fact remains that I reached level 25 a little after starting the Institute quest lines. It kinda sucked some of the fun out for me, cause I like feeling as though I'm always progressing both mechanically and story-wise as I play through a game.
What's more, I actually think a few more levels would have
helped during the Deep Caverns... speaking of which...
2. Do something about the fucking Deep Caverns. It is a tedious, difficult slog and it's a radical departure in consistency from the rest of the game. I can't recall playing anything else in recent memory where I had to go back and forth between locations so often (re-routing power from the Arke station was a goddamn nightmare. Why can't we just power on the whole network and call it a day? There's a certain point where player enjoyment has to win out over grim realism, guys.) The difficulty curve also went from a gentle rise to more like a sheer cliffside - it can definitely frustrate or even bring to a screeching halt any player who hasn't built their character the right way. Enemies aside, several incredibly obscure puzzles are thrown into the mix which I had to fruitlessly bash my head against for several hours before caving and consulting the wiki.
I found the Tchort fight relatively easy once I realized a stealthy approach could win the day, but a less subtle character who hasn't done the incredibly obtuse mutagen puzzle (which I didn't bother to try, since my stealthy approach proved viable enough) will probably tear their hair out in frustration.
Though I enjoy reading logs, there's a mountain of them in the residential area and while I found some of these intriguing I think you could have trimmed the fat a bit. It's a lot to digest about characters we don't really know nor care about.
Finally, there's the simple fact that Underrail actually starts to get a little long in the tooth once you hit the Institute of Tchort - adding in several more hours of tedious, frustrating play almost threatened to undo all the confidence I had built for this game up to that point. A more succinct finale might have been a better approach.
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Those two quibbles aside, this is an excellent game you guys should feel very, very proud of. Definitely hoping for a sequel
