First impressions

[Elhazzared]

Hello

I've played only this game for about 5 hours, I've finished a couple of quests already, after a few retries and trying to manage the character in a way that it would actually work and this are my first impressions about the game.

1 - I really like the game, it has a good concept and loads of potential the like I haven't seen in a long time.

2 - The money seams to be a bit of a problem early game. I've noticed people say that in the long run you'll have much more than you'll ever need but innitially it's a sad state of afairs when there isn't even enough money to buy bullets and this is quite problematic. At least ammo should be more inexpensive.

3 - Mellee is bad right at the start. It is managable a couple levels later into the game but initially it isn't an option because enemies cause way too much damage, even the rathounds. This ties into the expensive ammo. Mellee at the start of the game should be plain better to be an option not to have to spend money.

4 - Early enemies are a bit too tough. The main problem here lies again on the starting amount of health in relation to the damage they pull out and number of attacks and the fact that they just hit almost every single attack. This ties with the problem of mellee not being viable at the start.

5 - Distance. Although I understand the nature of the game, so far all encounters have been at extremelly close range. The caverns have little in the way of open areas, it's nearly impossible to actually get to see an enemy and start the combat first and place good pop shots out of a good distance, this becomes further more problematic with the distance most enemies can cover in a single round of movement.

6 - Weapon effective range is incredibly bad, maybe it's just pistols and SMGs but the fact is that even at 25 skill on guns, shooting half the screen away is nearly impossible to hit. This ties to the distance problems there was already.

7 - This is more of a personal preference rather than an actual problem so take it with a grain of salt. I'd prefer not to have action and move points separated. I am against being able to move and still be able to make all attacks. If you move you should already be losing some attacks. Again, this is personal preference.

8 - Healing. Going back and forth to the medical office is an incredible pain in the ass. There should be a way of mundane healing, think of fallout 2 first aid and doctor skill. Just use it even without any kind of item and get healed.

9 - Psi energy non regenerative. I do know you guys are trying not to go there but to be perfectly honest. It's not even worth it to pick Psi skills if you're not going to be able to regenerate the Psi energy. think of it this way. Psi rechargers are incredibly expensive which means I won't gain any energy at all! If I'm making a Psionic talented character whose whole idea is to just throw psionic attack after psionic attack (because that's what a psion should be doing), not throwing a few and then resort back to guns for however long it takes to get enough money to sink into psi rechargers. Psi energy must recharge in order to make full psions viable.

10 - Lockpicking should have probably been done more in a fallout style. You can do it even without tools, it's always something you can do. Tools just provide bonus and they shouldn't be wasted on use (cost increasal since they are not singular use). I have a problem where I have boxes which I need electronics to open but I don't even have a form of electronic lockpicks to open it which is just dumb. There isn't any for sale anywhere and having to go in the game god knows how far just to grab some to then have to backtrack and open all those boxes is not right.

11 - Cooldowns. The enemy of mankind in any game. It makes no sense you get a cool down on throwing grenades, using stimpack and so on... I can understand that perks which give you abillities need a cooldown, but quite frankly as far as perks go I'd prefer that all or almost all of them would be passive bonus rather than active and have all cooldowns removed from the game... this not to mention the wait time between entering and leaving the bunker. The first time is cool, after 20 times it makes you want to tear your eyeballs out.

12 - A minor thing which can easly be fixed. Please make a dialoge box open on conversation ala fallout style. Having a small box down there with very small letters makes people not want to strain their eyes to read it and since the RPG element is very import, it would be go a great lenght to just implement a way to make it a lot easier to read.

13 - Almost forgot this one. Having to repair items is ok but the way they degrade is extremelly fast. To exemplify I can't even finish the first quest without repairing my pistol and there is only a few rathounds to kill, I even killed the "boss" with his rathounds with the explosive barrel so I even wasted less shots and as such, durabillity there. There is some work needing done here, either buff up durabillity a ton or just remove it entirely.

Thus far this is all I can remember. Please do not think i'm raining down on the game. I still like the game and tehre are lots of positive aspects to it, I belive the most important feedback however is what needs to change.

Edit: For some reason the first time it didn't posted everything.

[Elhazzared]

Alright I think it is saving my post now, for some reason it wasn't liking one of the characters I used.

[Eliasfrost]

3: I play a melee character and I managed to get through the caves without getting too beaten up, though it helped to have a grenade ready. The thing is, this game is not supposed to be played with just one weapon skill, you need at least two to get through even the easiest battles, because ammo is scarce and weapons bust up quickly, it's a good idea to have a second choice of weaponry. I don't blame you, I did the same mistake at first but I learned a few characters in that having more than one specialization will make the game a whole lot more managable.

8: You can create your own hypos, though in the beginning it's almost inevitable to make your way through the first caves without going back for free heals and trading scavanges items for medical supplies unless you've played the game before and know how to best get through the cave with the least dmg taken possible.

9: Psionics are not supposed to be like spells, they are more of a utility, like grenades. You can't play a grenade thrower efficiently, why should psionics be any different? Utilize psionics, don't depend on them.

10: You can buy hacking devices in SGS, from Ezrra (the blind dude that teaches you psionics). And they are pretty cheap.

11: While I disagree that all cooldowns are evil (it's to prevent spamming, creating balance), I do think that the cooldown for grenades are a bit too long, 3 turns is way too long, decreasing it to even 2 turns would be appreciated, but then, it's all about balance, mixing with cooldowns can have unexpected effects on balance.

13: The degrading was even faster before, it was nerfed a few updates ago, I think it's just fine, crafting or buying repair kits gets feasible pretty early into the game. You can also equip scavanged equipment in case your stuff is broken, unless you blow people up, which makes their equipment lose almost all its durability.

And welcome to the forums!




Oh, talking about crafting hypos, is there a way to create bandages yet Styg? or will we be unabled to craft bandages?

[Styg]

Heya,

I have to agree with what Epeli said. The lot, if not all, of things you disagree with are very deliberate design decisions.

One of the major aspects of this game is managing resources, and that includes ammo, psi, health, meds, even your cooldowns and skill allocations. You are expected to be scrappy and make due with what's available at the start, and as the game progresses your skills of choice will scale up and provide you with enough damage and utility (this includes psionics, you will get to the point where you can just fling those around and not bother with weapons at all).

Also money becomes steadily more available as you move out of the early game.

I hope you keep playing the game and find it more enjoyable as you level up a bit more.

[Elhazzared]

I do understand the want to make resources more scarse and valuable but even saving ammo it can become a problem, especially if you're not fighting things that drop ammo. Money is becoming a little more available (I've just finished the GMS compound) but even then not enough. i don't really craft anything because the skillset I can chose is limited so I had to say no to something and that was psi abillities and crafting.

Damage is largely unavoidable. Even right now the only thing that doesn't does much are the rathounds. A psi-beetle is a guaranteed third of life down (I think I'm level 6 right now). People with ranged weapon or robots can equally get my life down pretty damn quickly. In fact just to do the GMS compound I had to suffer quite a bit over douzens of retries on how to kill the last 3 guys... I may not be supposed to go back for life after each battle but honestly. If I don't do it so often I'll just run out of hypos very quickly and there is no money to buy hypos by the ton with their pricing.

I do like the game very much, I've been waiting for a good cRPG for a very long time. Since fallout 2 the only thing I can say that came out that was decent was arcanum and now this one but it really gets aggravating getting this amount of damage no matter what I do or what I equip, damage is just largely unavoidable and it takes rather sizable chunks of life. I know this is not fallout 2 but comparing just a little. Ammo was less scarse and much cheaper, damage was a lot more avoidable or mitigatable, especially with first aids and doctor skills and the game was still hard without getting aggravating.

Anyway it's just an opinion.

[maheusz]

But then again from the lore standpoint - Fallout was all about getting stuff in after apocalypse America, right? Underrail is more in the vein of underground Metro/bunker tunnel systems, where it wasn't really that available. So it's quite obvious that there will be some problems with ammunition, it will be more scarce and (once again going after Metro reality) lower quality. Besides you're doing okay, right? There wasn't a moment where you though: 'oh, God I'm fucked', ya? With careful checking or even making due with what's in the inventory you can beat the odds.

So let's have fun and find more ways to break the game .

[Elhazzared]

Oh there was several moments I thought I was fucked and since I am not trained in the save earlier save often anymore (because all new games have autosaves so i hardly need to relly on it that much), there was a few rage quits lol.

But the worst I'm fucked moment I had was the GMS compound. The first time I got 3 bots to fight at once! But once i learned how to deal with that I "only" needed to waste some 4 hypos and of course a lot of bullets. Worst was on the cantina when I had to kill the 3 guys in the cantina because there is a rifle, an SMA and a pistol. All of tehm have high health and one hypo each along with seamingly the abillity to pull criticals every round and me not being able to dodge a single bullet. Various approuches with grenades (which my skill at throwing also is 0, I have guns and mellee) also failed even when they hit where I wanted. I had to try lererally more than 50 aprouches until I finally got this one. Open the door but don't go in. Go activate the sentry turrent again. Sprint past the sentry and go all the way around. Shot through the center into a guy and sprint the hell out of there in between the buildings. Throw a grenade as they pursuit and was lucky to manage a land in all 3. The turrent killed a weakling before he used the hypo. I shot one more guy run into a room. The nearly dead guy comes in but doesn't gets an attack, the other still stays slightly back. I kill the weakling, step out, shot the boss and go back in. Then i can finally kill the boss one on one but of course had to spend a hypo of my own... Still all the bullshit moves I had to pull. It hardly seams an adequate difficulty all things considered. I am still not able to go down and fight burrowers... I wanted an anti-bio armor which i'm sure there was one for sale earlier but seams to just have disapeared. Still not sure how the merchant item replacement works.

Again I do have fun with it but at the moment the damage you take and the damage you do, all combined with and enourmous scarcity of items. Which to a point makes sense but one would assume that if the bunkers have ways of growing food, getting clean water, have even research and manufacturing facillistes for their high tech stuff, certainly they have a good manufacturing facillities for all the ammo they'll ever need.

[cogsworth]

There wasn't a moment where you though: 'oh, God I'm fucked', ya?

I've been playing for about 8 hours and I can't get farther than level 2. Love the aesthetic, love the design, just wish it had an "easy" setting.

I already paid, so I guess it doesn't really matter if I'm struggling, but I think there's a good chance I'll stop playing. I have no interest in running with a character built around nothing but melee, and I can't figure out how to make any other strategy pay off.

Still, glad it's getting made. I think it's a great homage to the original Fallout series, even if the balance decisions being made aren't the ones I would go with personally. 

[Eliasfrost]

If the game is way too hard, I found a way to easily get started, though it could be counted as a cheat (good for veterans that don't want to go through the hassle of the slow start too).

1) When you've finished create your character, loot the starting room (the money, hypos, repair kit and armor)
2) Export your character
3) Start over and import your character
4) do it all over again a couple of times, you'll have lots of medical supplies, money and repair kits, and armor to sell.

[Lohengrin]

The game is a bit unforgiving in the beginning, but I enjoyed that - part of the learning curve, at least for me, is getting out of the mindset of most CRPGs out there, where all you do is mash 2-3 abilities until the bad guys are all dead. What I enjoy about this one is that you generally have to plan out how you're going to tackle some areas, and they might not be a brute force method. The compound with the cameras and robots was my first encounter like that - running through the ducts, jumping in front of the cameras to get them to run to me, and running back while they were preoccupied. There was a lot of satisfaction in making off with that key, much more than if I had just gone in guns a-blazin'. Of course, when I got a sniper rifle and high stealth, I could take out robots with a single shot ... that was kind of fun too.

[Lohengrin]

If the game is way too hard, I found a way to easily get started, though it could be counted as a cheat (good for veterans that don't want to go through the hassle of the slow start too).

1) When you've finished create your character, loot the starting room (the money, hypos, repair kit and armor)
2) Export your character
3) Start over and import your character
4) do it all over again a couple of times, you'll have lots of medical supplies, money and repair kits, and armor to sell.

I kind of cheated like this - shot Mordre in the face, took his sniper rifle, and then exported my character. Then reloaded ... hah