The first time I played this game, I went against my instincts and got stuck in a 'role-playing' build of "Assassin."
It was based on those old build videos on Youtube, maybe by Nerd Commando [massively obsolete now].
It was actually very fun from a RP perspective to play a weak glass-cannon knife assassin. I had to scout out a lot of areas beforehand, which I was really good at. I could see and find everything, but couldn't necessarily fight everyone until a later time. Good for Oddity-playthroughs.
In early builds of Underrail, you could use various AP-gains from "Taste for Blood" and so on to make an enormous number of strikes per turn. Easy to stun and kill an individual, but the challenge was, can you do it to 3 people in one-turn? The risk was palpable, but so was the reward.
Took me a while to learn about the noise made by electro-knives, I could have benefited a lot from the stealth of regular knives. This was before each knife type had its own graphics, too.
Anyway, it's a big deal choosing and crafting your knives. Also, the character used land mines when appropriate. Very deadly, especially being a highly-stealthy interloper, you could really rig up some situations in tough spots like the ironheads camp. Needs chemistry for the fun effects of traps, which has been enhanced in Expedition.
Obviously a weak [at first] character like this was using a lot of caltrops and other exploits, but it was really fun.
You can stealth your way through the Lunatics at the Mall to get the figurine, so you don't have to repeat that big fight if you don't want to. You can skip over more fights than some other characters, it's about the sneaking and the choice.
What I really hated was how, when you're exploring some watery caverns away from the beaten-path, there are situations where there are like 3 people and it's hard to get them all in one-turn, especially if there's a stealthed guy too. That was one of the worst parts of the build.
Anyway, there are more armours and weapons and dodge/evasion stuff for a character like that now, so it should be fun. And it's challenging. For the entire game. You have to really strategize for a lot of parts. So it's fun and engaging. And when you go on a streak, it's really rewarding.
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Yeah, I have to agree that there's a burnout on this game around 600-700 hours in. Hard to avoid: you've experienced all the content, absorbed all the music and scenery, the story is invisible to you.
Not much you can do about that, except play a weird build.
And don't feel bad about stopping once you reach the Institute. I figure, once you reach the Institute, you've already won the game. You know what to do in Deep Caverns.