Underrail - Review @ Mortismal Gaming

Mortismal Gaming reviews Underrail in his "after 100%" series.

UnderRail - Review After 100%

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Decent review. I like his style of presenting his opinions.

Personally I did not enjoy Underrail.

The sound design was barebones and boring and the music lacking and very repetitive. This coupled with the very slow tempo of the game itself made me turn of sound in this game altogether after a while.

The graphics were boring. There's a lot that can be done with simple graphics, but it's obvious the creator is not skilled in (or cares about) this part of their game.

The fighting was slow and not satisfying at all. Difficult fights I often ended up reloading a save, and setting lots of traps beforehand. Even watching late game videos the fights seem boring.

I did not enjoy the skills and character development due to this. It felt like it was mostly a numbers game of increasing damage or chance to do something quite mundane. I never felt much impact after leveling up.

Most quests were different variations of fetch quests or kill quests. Walking slowly there (even with high game speed), across boring maps. And then walking back slowly to sell stuff and turn in quests.

I quit after about 20h. The first five hours were alright. A lot of trial and error and reloading. Then five pretty fun hours. Then five thinking "is this it?". Then the last five forcing myself to keep going since it's supposed to be fun, and I hoped it would become fun eventually. But it didn't to me.

I understand it's a one man passion project and all power to them for doing it and finding their niche audience. Just not for me.

SveNitoR said:

Personally I did not enjoy Underrail.

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I haven't played it, wanted to multiple times, but what you say is exactly what I thought would put me off. Though from what I head I had the impression quests were better, but it doesn't even seem to be the case.

I know that people who like this game usually like it a lot. So maybe it's one of those special games that requires a special mindset to be appreciated? Mechajammer seems to be another example. As you said, it's for a niche audience.

Really enjoyed Underrail. Lot of freedom, lot to explore, original setting. Imo, I thought combats were pretty fun but each his own, I guess.

SveNitoR said:

...across boring maps.

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The maps / world building is the best part of Underrail for me and like with Spiderweb games this is enough for me to play these games.
All is handcrafted and you can experience this in every single map. There is so much to explore, and especially with the odity XP system the exploration is very rewarding.
Plus Underrail has a very open world design - before reaching Core City you can already explore a ton of maps with very difficult encounters. And there are interesting connections between different parts of the world.

I did not play the expansion of Underrail and hope to find the time for a replay sometime...

I liked it alot, the first play-through was great, the second even better. This is a game I know I'll be replaying every few years.

Kylex said:

The maps / world building is the best part of Underrail for me and like with Spiderweb games this is enough for me to play these games.

All is handcrafted and you can experience this in every single map. There is so much to explore, and especially with the odity XP system the exploration is very rewarding.

Plus Underrail has a very open world design - before reaching Core City you can already explore a ton of maps with very difficult encounters. And there are interesting connections between different parts of the world.



I did not play the expansion of Underrail and hope to find the time for a replay sometime...

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The world building might be great, eventually. Not in the first 20h for me, though.

The maps might be well made, but the caves all look more or less the same and finding another piece of cave was completely uninteresting for me after a while. The oddity thing was an interesting concept, but it made me feel like I had to investigate all corners of every similar cave.

But, I'm happy you enjoy it

Redglyph said:

I haven't played it, wanted to multiple times, but what you say is exactly what I thought would put me off. Though from what I head I had the impression quests were better, but it doesn't even seem to be the case.

I know that people who like this game usually like it a lot. So maybe it's one of those special games that requires a special mindset to be appreciated? Mechajammer seems to be another example. As you said, it's for a niche audience.

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Yeah, I was hopeful that I was part of the niche, but I am not.

The strongest point of Underrail is the writing. Maybe fishing and catching those tiny dog-rat like peaceful rodents. Sneaking and stealing and pickpocketing also belongs to the positive side of the Underrail experience, probably what kept me playing it in the first place.

UI is somewhat endurable as it at least allows increasing fonts. Though UI Art Direction is BAD.
Music I didn't even notice.
Combat is the worst part of this game: exactly how you DO NOT DESIGN turn based combat.
Graphics is okay to "Meh!". Inventory system probably grew out of necessity to become a gigantic heap of stuff..
No true map system: instead there is a thoroughly confusing junkheap that was declared "Overworld Map"
The skill / PERK system is uninteresting.

I'm at about 50%-60% through, but haven't entered into their greatest jetPack DLC yet..
The only way I endure the game is to set all points to maximum at each level gain. I want to finish it, but every time I think about starting it up, its a big pill to swallow.

I've tried it a few times, but gradually lost interest. Some fast travel options between maps might have made it more bearable.

For me it's all about the "world vs build" gameplay.

Like I did it before in Fallout or Arcanum, or more recently in Age of Decadence, I keep replaying it to test new builds (and there are so many possibilities !) and see how it goes (600h...).

And the turn-based combat is great, I don't get what would be wrong with it (worst for me is the one in Banner Saga, that one is incredibly stupid).

Has he reviewed Pac-Man yet, trying to decide whether to get it or not and need an opinion I can trust.

He certainly likes his classics

rjshae said:

I've tried it a few times, but gradually lost interest. Some fast travel options between maps might have made it more bearable.

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Agreed. The very slow pace (in this case both literally and figuratively) makes progression a chore. Fast travel might have made it more bearable.

DR490N said:

For me it's all about the "world vs build" gameplay.

Like I did it before in Fallout or Arcanum, or more recently in Age of Decadence, I keep replaying it to test new builds (and there are so many possibilities !) and see how it goes (600h...).

And the turn-based combat is great, I don't get what would be wrong with it (worst for me is the one in Banner Saga, that one is incredibly stupid).

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I loved Fallout and Arcanum. Incredible games.

This one I just couldn't get into and I started avoiding combat as much as possible. And since I didn't enjoy the fights, having to start over when things went wrong (which they do quite a lot), was zero fun.

Maybe it was the build I chose making combat boring, but I would rather not start over and experience the same things again, which weren't much fun the first time. And I have only a few hours a week to play, usually. I don't have the time, if I want to play more than one game a year.