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UnderRail

Solid and definitely has an audience. There could be some hard-to-ignore faults, but the experience is fun.
UnderRail Game Cover
85%Game Brain Score
story, gameplay
grinding, stability
87% User Score Based on 9,942 reviews
Critic Score 75%Based on 1 reviews

Platforms

PCWindows
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UnderRail Game Cover

About

UnderRail is a single player role playing game with a science fiction theme. It was developed by Stygian Software and was released on December 17, 2015. It received mostly positive reviews from critics and positive reviews from players.

UnderRail is a single-player, turn-based strategy game set in a dystopian future where humanity lives in a metro system called Underrail. With old-school isometric graphics and a stunning soundtrack, the game offers an intriguing story filled with conflict and survival. Despite some bugs and heavy grinding, players will find wholesome replayability in this immersive and atmospheric science fiction RPG.

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UnderRail screenshot
UnderRail screenshot
UnderRail screenshot
UnderRail screenshot
UnderRail screenshot
UnderRail screenshot
UnderRail screenshot
UnderRail screenshot
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87%
Audience ScoreBased on 9,942 reviews
story862 positive mentions
grinding370 negative mentions
  • Incredibly immersive atmosphere and world-building, reminiscent of classic Fallout games.
  • Deep character customization and build variety, allowing for unique playstyles and strategies.
  • Challenging and rewarding combat that requires tactical thinking and resource management.
  • Unforgiving difficulty spikes, especially in the late game, can lead to frustration and require extensive save scumming.
  • Lack of clear guidance and quest markers can make navigation and progression confusing.
  • Some builds can become unviable, leading to soft locks and forcing players to restart or heavily rely on guides.
  • story
    3,444 mentions Positive Neutral Negative

    The story of *Underrail* is a complex tapestry woven with rich lore and engaging quests, often reminiscent of classic RPGs like *Fallout*. While many players appreciate the depth and multiple outcomes of side quests, some criticize the main storyline for being linear and lacking compelling character development. The game rewards exploration and offers a unique experience system, but its vague quest directions and challenging difficulty can frustrate players, leading to a reliance on external guides to navigate its intricacies.

    • “Even the side quests are engaging and fun, often offering surprising twists and interesting rewards that add to the overall experience.”
    • “It has a great storyline and greatly written side quests.”
    • “The story is overarching and captivating, and the writing can be really good (at times).”
    • “The story (at least for the base game experience) is a little bare bones, and the characters populating it aren't the most sharply drawn.”
    • “The main story is only like 30% of the game, while the remaining 70% are the gazillion side quests you can run into in the world, most of which are very well designed and usually lead you on some weird and wacky adventure through this shltpit of a place we call home.”
    • “The main issue with the game is that the story isn't explained at all, everything is mysterious and the player has no real motivation to continue the main questline.”
  • gameplay
    1,826 mentions Positive Neutral Negative

    The gameplay of *Underrail* is characterized by its deep, tactical mechanics and a challenging learning curve reminiscent of classic RPGs like the original *Fallout* series. Players can expect a rich crafting system, diverse character builds, and a focus on exploration and combat, though many mechanics are not well explained, often requiring players to consult external resources. While the game offers rewarding gameplay for those willing to invest time in mastering its intricacies, it can also be frustrating due to its difficulty and reliance on save-scumming, making it less accessible for newcomers.

    • “The game is incredibly atmospheric and immersive, with a lot of variation in gameplay depending on your build and weapons.”
    • “An excellent RPG with interesting mechanics, a difficulty level that keeps you on your toes, and a world that feels massive all the time.”
    • “Very high replayability, amazing gameplay, engaging story.”
    • “The game is too hard on the lowest difficulty setting, and the gameplay is not fun enough to justify any grinding I would have to do to improve my character.”
    • “A quick recap of my 2 hours of gameplay: a very(!) brief tutorial that, the moment you explore and encounter actual combat, makes you realize it barely taught you anything at all.”
    • “My biggest problem with this game is that it is very difficult to make a build viable enough to make it through the endgame without any foresight or previous knowledge about the game's mechanics and challenges.”
  • graphics
    688 mentions Positive Neutral Negative

    The graphics of Underrail have received mixed reviews, with many players noting their retro, simplistic style reminiscent of classic isometric RPGs. While some find the visuals charming and fitting for the game's atmosphere, others criticize them as outdated and lacking in detail. Overall, the graphics serve their purpose in creating an immersive experience, but they may not appeal to those seeking modern, high-fidelity visuals.

    • “Proof positive that high-end graphics, massive budgets, and an army of programmers rarely can compete with the sense of place, unquestioned immersion, and plain old fun of a game with vision, art direction, and stellar writing made by an artist with a clear focused sense of purpose.”
    • “Underrail manages to make a dark underground world feel colorful and vivid in its own way, with the sounds and visuals each doing their part to evoke the particular feelings of each space: from moody desolate caves to seedy slums built out of tin shacks, to oppressive station-cities with brutalist architecture and, especially in the DLC, some truly otherworldly environments with strange flora and fauna and even stranger man-made technology.”
    • “The graphics are nice and tidy and evoke a lovely sense of nostalgia for the classics of the nineties, but let's be honest – you're not playing indie games for their 4k graphics.”
    • “The graphics are very basic.”
    • “The animations were uninspired, the graphical style was very bland: I did not have a great time with it.”
    • “The graphics are not good and take getting used to, but it's well worth the effort.”
  • atmosphere
    520 mentions Positive Neutral Negative

    The atmosphere of the game is widely praised for its immersive and gritty qualities, effectively capturing a bleak, post-apocalyptic setting reminiscent of classic RPGs like Fallout. Players appreciate the combination of atmospheric music, engaging world-building, and well-crafted writing that enhances the overall experience, making exploration and character interactions feel rich and rewarding. Despite some criticisms regarding gameplay mechanics, the game's atmosphere remains a standout feature, drawing players into its haunting and mysterious world.

    • “The game is incredibly atmospheric and immersive, with a lot of variation in gameplay depending on your build and weapons.”
    • “The atmosphere is palpable, not only when it comes to the feel of loneliness and claustrophobia, but thanks to the well-orchestrated synth-ambient soundtrack, there are many moments in which a high sense of 'mystique' and almost 'eldritch' themes creep out.”
    • “Underrail is a very good old school RPG, it is very similar to Fallout 1 and 2 in many ways but it also has its own personality, very good atmosphere, nice music, a lot of weapons, items, skills, and feats to create unique characters.”
    • “The atmosphere is bleak and claustrophobic.”
    • “The atmosphere and story is so terribly boring I just stopped caring about it and everyone involved.”
    • “I've been just a few hours into the game and it seems visually monotonous even though the atmosphere is captivating and immersive at first sight.”
  • music
    454 mentions Positive Neutral Negative

    The music in the game has received mixed reviews, with many players praising its atmospheric quality and ability to enhance the immersive experience, often drawing comparisons to classic titles like Fallout. However, some users noted that the soundtrack can become repetitive over time, leading to a sense of monotony during extended play sessions. Overall, while the music is generally well-regarded for its fitting ambiance and emotional depth, its limited variety may detract from the experience for some players.

    • “The soundtrack is brilliant, gameplay was really fun (I quite enjoyed the 'oddity' XP system, where you level up from finding 'oddities').”
    • “The music is excellent, always dark and moody giving you a delicious sense of dread, claustrophobia and impending hardships (Fallout 1's Necropolis and Fallout 2's Gecko come to mind).”
    • “Fantastic atmosphere and world building, not to mention one of the greatest, catchiest soundtracks I've ever heard.”
    • “Horrendous story, environments, music, and sound design.”
    • “The music is monotonous.”
    • “My only complaints so far is that the background music is incredibly repetitive, but so was Fallout 1 & 2, which the game is clearly paying homage to.”
  • grinding
    376 mentions Positive Neutral Negative

    The grinding aspect of the game has received mixed reviews, with many players finding it tedious and frustrating due to excessive backtracking, slow movement, and a cumbersome inventory management system. While the unique "oddity" experience system aims to reduce traditional grinding by encouraging exploration, players still report significant grindiness, especially in the late game where repetitive tasks and difficult combat can detract from the overall enjoyment. Overall, while some appreciate the challenge and depth, many feel that the game's design leads to a frustratingly tedious experience.

    • “Very engaging story, complex characters, not too grindy, not overwhelming.”
    • “No grinding required.”
    • “The issue is the second part of the game (late game) is very repetitive/grindy and lots of walking back and forth.”
    • “The game becomes mind rumbling boring after a tedious trek if the only characters you meet are immature, all sound similar and are unoriginal.”
    • “I really really wanted to like this game, the atmosphere, exploration, characters, and pretty much everything other than the gameplay itself is fantastic, the problem I have is that the gameplay itself is an RNG-riddled nightmare, especially in the later parts of the game, and makes the game as a whole a tedious slog to get through.”
  • replayability
    244 mentions Positive Neutral Negative

    The game boasts exceptionally high replayability, driven by its extensive character build options, branching quest lines, and a richly detailed world that encourages exploration. Players can experiment with various play styles and face different challenges, ensuring that each playthrough offers a unique experience. Additionally, the potential for modding further enhances the game's longevity, making it a standout choice for fans of CRPGs.

    • “The fascinating metro/fallout-inspired setting and oddity XP system work well to incentivize exploration, and the numerous build possibilities and mutually exclusive quest lines give it a high replay value.”
    • “The extremely high amount of diversity when it comes to character builds and play styles will guarantee replayability as you will miss a lot of content just playing the game and you will need to play with a different character to see it all.”
    • “Incredibly replayability through build variety in addition to a lot of random elements such as mutually exclusive quests/areas that may or may not even exist in your playthrough.”
    • “The fact that I have made several characters, have over 200 hours, and still haven't beaten the main questline or the DLC questline speaks to how replayable this game is.”
    • “This most certainly cuts down the replayability value of the game since all you can get differently is different text dialog and a few different small side-quests.”
    • “And yes, you could say this gives the game replayability, but this game just doesn't have the fun factor to make you want to go through its more annoying stages just to play it another way, especially when it feels the same a lot of the time anyway.”
  • humor
    158 mentions Positive Neutral Negative

    The humor in the game is a mix of dark, subtle, and sometimes quirky elements, often drawing comparisons to the original Fallout series. While many players appreciate the clever writing and humorous dialogue that contrasts with the game's serious themes, some feel that the humor can be hit or miss, with certain jokes requiring a deeper understanding to fully appreciate. Overall, the game offers a unique blend of charm and wit, though opinions vary on its effectiveness and consistency.

    • “Entertaining gameplay set within a well-written and often humorous setting and story.”
    • “It's funny, it's charming, it's incredibly deep.”
    • “One thing I appreciate is that the quest lines and character writing have a lot of humor and wackiness, which contrast nicely with the fairly serious and dark setting.”
    • “At last, it's not funny.”
  • character development
    72 mentions Positive Neutral Negative

    Character development in this game is highly praised for its depth and variety, allowing players to create significantly different characters and play styles with each playthrough. Many reviews highlight the satisfaction derived from mastering the character development and combat systems, while some note that the game can be challenging, particularly for those unfamiliar with RPG mechanics. Overall, the character development is described as polished and integral to the immersive gameplay experience, reminiscent of classic RPGs.

    • “Character development and combat in this game are absolutely top notch.”
    • “This title offers uncompromising classic RPG gameplay, seemingly straight out from the golden days of old: for starters, character development possibilities are amazingly varied, allowing players to build significantly different characters every playthrough, each offering a wholly different gameplay experience.”
    • “It's been ages since I've seen a game with such a deep and diversified character development.”
    • “The result was heavy restrictions on character development.”
    • “There is basically no character development whatsoever, and your interactions with NPCs are fairly limited (take quest/sell stuff).”
    • “A normal playthrough will lead to constant frustration unless you are of expert RPG experience where your character design would involve reducing aspects that you won’t need as much to maximize your strengths.”
  • optimization
    56 mentions Positive Neutral Negative

    The game's optimization is heavily emphasized, requiring players to create meticulously planned character builds to succeed, especially on higher difficulties. Many reviews highlight that failing to optimize can lead to frustrating gameplay experiences, with no respec options available. While the game performs well technically, some players have noted issues with higher resolutions and the need for extensive metagaming to achieve effective builds.

    • “There's a special emphasis on build optimization - you will want to have a thoughtful build and not arbitrarily allocate points into ability scores, skills, and feats.”
    • “Exploring the possibilities and devising a highly optimized character build is not only interesting, but also essential since the game is extremely challenging on the default difficulty.”
    • “Prepare for gameplay that requires min-maxing; this is the kind of game where even the easy difficulty expects a large amount of build optimization, and with no respec or retraining mechanic, missing even a single trait point can doom your 50-hour build to uselessness.”
    • “The problem with Underrail is that in many cases, a serious degree of metagaming is required to meet a middling degree of optimization, and failing to meet that optimization can make the game frustratingly tedious.”
    • “Be warned, this game can get pretty hard and heavily emphasizes optimized character builds.”
  • stability
    48 mentions Positive Neutral Negative

    The game's stability is a mixed bag, with many users reporting significant bugs and glitches that affect gameplay, such as freezing, loading issues, and combat-related problems. While some players have experienced minimal issues and found the game relatively bug-free, others describe it as "bug-ridden" and clunky, leading to frustration. Overall, the stability appears to vary widely among players, with some enjoying the experience despite the bugs, while others find it unplayable.

    • “The game seems pretty bug free to me.”
    • “No glitches when missions are out of order (unlike Fallout 1 and 2).”
    • “Updates can be a bit stretched out (time between them), but typically are bug free and add a lot of content or fixes.”
    • “I would have liked to at least try the game, but it freezes as soon as you make a new character.”
    • “I wish I could recommend this, but I can't... it is buggy in the extreme on my machine and doesn't even want to load 3 times out of five. When it does run, it is just far too clunky, primitive, and generally unenjoyable for my liking. The graphics are sub-par to a degree of making the older games it is attempting to emulate look much better in comparison. If you want to relive those Fallout days, then play Fallout 1 or 2; failing that, play Atom RPG, but for my money, this isn't great and really not worth the hype or the asking price.”
    • “Haven't seen such a buggy game for years.”
  • emotional
    38 mentions Positive Neutral Negative

    The emotional aspect of Underrail is largely criticized, with many players feeling a lack of investment in the story and characters, describing them as bland and unengaging. While some appreciate the game's humor and occasional touching moments, the overall sentiment is that it fails to deliver meaningful emotional development or attachment. The detailed world and gameplay mechanics are noted, but they do not compensate for the game's shortcomings in emotional depth.

    • “It must be difficult to write for post-apocalyptic games because it's easy to be overtly negative, but Underrail never does that; there's humor and touching moments to be found amongst the bitterness of the Underrail.”
    • “Not just good but fitting, emotional, and without fault.”
    • “This light, you will soon find, is the incredibly detailed world space, emotionally driven responses to making major accomplishments in the game world, and well-crafted dialogue, balance, weapon design, consumable design, crafting, enemies, combat, etc. I have just finished the first mission; this took me 5 hours of exploring, dying, exploring, dying.”
    • “Blander than mushy cardboard, boring story and characters, and a min-maxing gameplay that boils down to placing as many traps as possible before fighting and hoping the RNG is feeling merciful.”
    • “In short, deep caverns, boring story, too much backtracking, vague quest direction, crappy UI, big battles end up being boring, and some sections just a chore.”
  • monetization
    6 mentions Positive Neutral Negative

    Reviews indicate that the game's monetization is generally viewed positively, with players appreciating the absence of bugs and excessive microtransactions commonly associated with other titles. However, there are some criticisms regarding the presence of microtransactions, suggesting a desire for more thoughtful implementation. Overall, the monetization strategy seems to be a mixed bag, with players hoping for a balance between fair pricing and engaging content.

    • “It's like the Fallout 3 we never got, but better because Bethesda can't fill it with bugs and microtransactions.”
    • “Microtransactions are a major downside to the experience.”
    • “Next time, make some microtransactions for a Doodle Jump clone.”
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75%Critics’ scoreBased on 1 critic reviews
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52h Median play time
123h Average play time
20-140h Spent by most gamers
*Based on 154 analyzed playthroughs
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Frequently Asked Questions

UnderRail is a role playing game with science fiction theme.

UnderRail is available on PC and Windows.

On average players spend around 123 hours playing UnderRail.

UnderRail was released on December 17, 2015.

UnderRail was developed by Stygian Software.

UnderRail has received mostly positive reviews from players and mostly positive reviews from critics. Most players liked this game for its story but disliked it for its grinding.

UnderRail is a single player game.

Similar games include Colony Ship: A Post-Earth Role Playing Game, Encased, ATOM RPG: Post-apocalyptic indie game, Atom RPG, The Age of Decadence and others.