Recente recensies door Waffe677

This is a terrific Game. It looks like Dark Souls, it plays like Dark Souls, it sounds like Dark Souls.

But it's not Dark Souls.

Not litterally, at least.

Let's make a point here: this is a positive review.

This game is an absolut blast. I really enjoyed (and still am) enjoying this game, with all its glorious and shiny PvP, easy loot and non-punitive mechanics. But this is the biggest gripe I have with it:

It is fun.

When I think "Dark Souls", fun is not the word I'd think of. Intriguing, Gothic, Dark, Depressive, Hard, Deep.

But not fun.

When I took care of Gwyn in the first title, I was exhausted. Of course, I was willing to take another trip in the NG+, yet I was terrified about having to go through all that sheer, magnificent pain and frustration all over again.

Dark Souls III, compared to that, is a stroll in the park.

And I am not talking merely about the raw difficulty of the thing: the depression, the choices I made, the people I saw dying - it all felt like I completed a unique, aesthetic journey.

With Dark Souls III, I feel like farming, improving my stats, getting this or that weapon.

Plus, I had the dire feeling that FS had to throw cheap references to the older titles just to get its fanbase all moist. Don't get me wrong, I had my nerd boner up and hard in Anor Londo, but really, ten square meters littered in dung? Is that it? Nice. but a cheap, really cheap vibe.

It's fun, it plays a thousand times better than Dark Souls 1 & 2, but it is kind of what Battlefield 4 is to Battlefield 2 (not litterally, because BF4 is utter ♥♥♥♥♥ while DS III is lovely <3).

I never thought I could enjoy a Souls so light-heartedly, and I can't really say whether this is a good thing or not.

Long story short: if you are looking for a real Souls experience, fetch yourselves a Demon Souls or a Dark Souls, if you are looking for a slightly modern, less inspired Souls, get DS II.

If you are looking for a beautifully made, fast paced, way easier and bright Souls, get the third instalment.

I have played quite a lot of the lately isometric RPGs inspired (or not so much) by the nineties, such as PoE, Serpent in the Staglands, Age of Decadence, the Shadowrun serie, Divinity: Original Sins and Sword Coast Legends (which I hardly perceived as a rpg, but that's another story).

With this one, we got ourselves a winner.

To begin with, I started to play it craving for something falloutish, knowing that such a thing could not be delivered by bethesda. I was looking for that retro-looking style with the modern mechanics so much needed after years of gaming that undoubtely evolved in that direction.

I needed to play a revisited, improved version of Fallout 1 & 2.

That's what Underrail is NOT. Whilst It takes what is good of this serie (and many others, but we are bound to look in that direction, I guess), it drags it into its own (not so innovative, yet quite fascinating) world, with its lore and claustrophobia.


The underground playground created by Stygian is quite everything I had been hoping for a sci-fi/cyber punk inspired game: it has the freedom, the rpg-oriented gameplay, the beautifully made (and I mean, astonishingly beautifully) crafting system, a skill/features system that finally makes some sense (yet it could be quite punitive if one fails to grasps the basic chemistry between certain stats and perks), no voice acting (bad?) and extremely intresting and fun dialogues.

The vendor system? Brilliant. I read some complaining about them merchants being too picky for someone who's living underground. Well, I'd say that being the one with the goods in a decayed environment, I'd be the mean ♥♥♥♥ deciding whether or not to buy your rusty shovel - and I probably would not.

Someone else is not entirely cool with the respawn system either.

To be fair, I actually had not realized how good this was before reading these complaints. They had me thinking about it, and only then I realized how balanced, effective and realistic the gimmick is: simply put, if you kill a bandit, a robot (basically, anything that does not breed in the open, or at all), you will have their rotting remnants tainting the soil for quite a long time (litterally, you'll have to stride on your victims decayed body over and over), without them respawning EVER (at least for my previous 30+ hours of game), while killing vermins will not prevent their progeny to harass you on your next stroll in their neighborhood.

Beacuse, you know, scavengers DO lay eggs, rats DO have hidden nests, and so forth. Thanks to Ubisoft and Far Cry 2 I was led to believe that africans too lay eggs in their outposts, but to my amazement I came to realize that such is not quite the truth. Live and learn, I guess.

And this is just plain brilliant.

Technically speaking, the graphics is nothing special, if nothing at all, yet it manages to get you inside the world of Underrail effectively. I daresay that it works just as fine as that of Project Zomboid, which never failed to scare the ♥♥♥♥ out of me regardless of its pixelated windowpanes.


The game could and should be more fast paced under certain aspects: the character has no means of running or using some "ride" to get to places quickly. Yes, you get faster spending points in certain skills, but imo you stay way too slow throughout the game.

Anyway, this works just fine with the overall "groove" of the game (and for once, you don't have your toon jogging his whole time through the entire game like a crazed marathon man), I'd just like it to be a little faster.

The AI is really smart, and the encounters with the NPCs could have presented a real challenge, was it not for the fast load function: I run through apparently desperate and overwhelming situations just by sheer luck; namely, I put tons of mines and granades between me and those trying to stop me, and load after load I got them all where I wanted them to come.

Being a "one-man-army" kind of game this is easily acceptable and understandable, but I cannot fail to see the lack of tactical depth in such a move, which I deliberately used many times to go past otherwise unsolvable situations. I think of games like Serpent in the Staglands, where no matter how fast (or not) you loaded from the bloody corpses of your comrades, you had to think of something better than a Save File to beat the ♥♥♥♥ out of that pack of foxes.

Not that SitS is anywhere close in enjoyability to UR, but that should get you to the point.

Navigating in the game could be a little frustrating (you will quite often struggle to point your cursor where you want due to the isometric nature of the game), but thankfully the highlight button helps in lessening this nuissance. Even if the problem is practically fixed by this, I cannot help but think that having had the possibility to switch perspective would have surely been a welcome implementation.

I unfortunately had my previous save files corrupted by the release of the final version of the game (oh dear, an early access which actually delivers?!), reason enough for me to stay quite silent about the story that, anyway, didn't seem too interesting or inspired. The world and everything works, just because of the game-play and the beautifully dark and oppressive feeling of the whole thing; the EU/NATO kind-of-affair going on down there is really well thought (unlike, imo, in METRO 2033), but the reasons why you are doing everything? To me, that really did not matter.

Overall, I'd say that this game is a precious gem with some venial take-downs.

Keep in mind that this review was made playing the the early access version of the game, I'll update as soon as I get to play the final version.

But, having been that good before the final release, can you fetch yourselves an excuse not to buy it now?