Underrail is actually quite good

[Blaine]

Metal armor/SMG is the official RoboCop build, and quite viable if you also spec for grenades.

 

[Sykar]

Id argue that all ranged builds play the same.
Shoot, backup and break LOS, shoot, backup and break LOS, ad inf, or overwhelm with dmg.
So that reduces energy pistol, chem pistol, pistol, smg, AR, sniper to the same style - gameplaywise same build.

Grenades are applicable for all builds. Shields are for everyone.
Defenses are too weak. Armor is irrelevant in so far as it only allows you to take minmal attacks without dying.

Crossbow trapfags are a bit different. Traps generally can be an interesting modifier but they also go for everyone and are useful at the lowest skillpoint investment.

Lets be generous and give melee 2 builds for different weapon type procs.

And Psi is all the same.

Voila, ~5 distinct playstyles.

Arguably only 3: shootist, melee, psi

Crossbreeds are gimped shit.

That is not true at all. SMGs are only really effective at close range. They also make good use of the Expertise feat. Thanks to close range and burst requirement to deal good damage you need feats to be able to close in and out of range and/or use grenades properly and also you will want probably stealth/light armor since heavier armor really gimps your movement. SMG base damage is also relatively low especially at low levels so you will struggle more with heavy armor.
Assault Rifles do not nearly profit as much from Expertise and are much better at being build for crit. Furthermore they have much higher strength requirement to get the full benefit out of them at 7 for Full Auto feat which means they tend to be more geared towards heavy armor/high con builds. That means of course that their mobility is limited but they have a higher effective range and can also do decent damage with Aimed Shot for example. Out of all the builds a heavy armor assault rifle build is probably the easiest to make and play.
Sniper are essentially required to be build for Stealth since their strong point is burst through their signature feat Snipe. Sniper gameplay revolves around finding a good spot far away from the enemy, prepare the ground probably with traps and then burst one or two targets away in the first round with Snipe and Aimed Shot while luring enemies into your minefield.
Crossbow is similar to Sniper but has the advantage of having special bolts which you can shoot for free essentially and have effects similar to certain PSI powers or grenades. Crossbow also has better synergy with traps than Sniper which can also be build as hybrid with PSI or get some utility from grenades or technical gadgets depending on which skills you pair it with.

PSI is far from being all the same unless you mean full PSI but there are hybrid builds which only use one or two schools. All three schools are very distinct in terms of what they provide.
Metathermics are mostly AoE and single target damage with a little CC and a little protection
Psychokinesis is almost exclusively single target burst with some CC and utility.
Thoughtcontrol is primarily CC with some damage, defense and utility.

There is also again the question wether you want to go stealthy Psionic or heavy armored juggernaut Psionic.

As to melee, again wrong. Fundamentally there is a big difference between a heavy armor wearing a sledgehammer or a lightly armored knifer. One wades in trusting his HP and heavy armor to negate most of the enemies damage the other sets up a good ambush where he can quickly dispatch enemies and then depending on circumstances CCs or uses LoS to avoid the enemy.

All these builds have their own weaknesses which require you to be extra careful around enemies which can ignore your defenses. To illustrate my point a character going with heavy armor is well protected against physical and elemental damage but is usually helpless against Thoughtcontrol PSI both in terms of resisting damage which you resist with your resolve

 

[Trashos]

On melee builds. They are usually not my priority, in exploration-driven games I prefer the rogue/sniper archetype, but I may try it if I have ideas of combining it with something else exciting. They are going to have to wait until after I try the mages, though.

On respawning. I agree that, for the time being, the problem is not huge. There is not too much respawning. But, for example, on the road to the GMS dungeon there are rathounds respawning, and I had to fight them over and over again as I was carrrying loot or went back to homebase to buy stuff. What is the point in fighting them again? It is a complete waste of time, in Oddity mode at least.

Blaine, I found an interesting merchant, I take it you were a backer?

Xotiphile, well for the time being I can only speak for the builds I have tried, but no, ranged characters don't play the same. Not even assault and smg play the same. Assault play well as tanks as far as I can tell (high strength, high constitution, heavy armor, penalty for moving before shooting), while smg are mobile (no strength requirement, no penalty for moving before shooting, can wear light armor, stealth) and are better played with hit & run tactics. Then the arbalist plays different too, it's all ranged, stealth and traps.

I am still on Normal difficulty, so I will wait before I comment on whether hybrids are gimped. But I will definitely be taking an optimized version of my sniper/smg build to Hard after I finish the current playthrough. I doubt that he will be gimped though, the base is STR 5, DEX 3, AG 7, CON 3, PE 10, WILL 3, INT 7, and there are still 2 points of base abilities to distribute for improvement (which I currently put in DEX for extra rogue skills) plus the ability points gained later. So he has a lot of room for optimization, not to mention that some INT and PE may be sacrificed if I find that more CON is needed. We will see, but currently I am very happy with it.

EDIT: Ninja'd

 

[ciox]

The builds are properly differentiated IMO, even if you just look at guns
Pistol - no minimum skill, means it's very useful to have one on high difficulties vs. enemies that can Intimidate and reduce your hit chance to 10% with other weapons
SMG - no STR req at all, heavy DEX focus and the best SMG feat also needs AGI
Rifle - STR req, no DEX focus or AGI focus, gives you more freedom to spec the rest of your build or use heavy armors since you want STR
Sniper vs Crossbow - sniper rifles are deliberately made to be non-stealthy, while crossbows can snipe and are stealthy, with a crossbow you can repeatedly kill groups of 2 enemies in 1 turn (Aimed Shot + Snipe) without alerting anyone or even making noise, so you can often just kill everyone in a place like the Ironheads base in 1 turn, provided you find isolated groups or can isolate them during patrols so there's just 2 of them in one spot, because the rest never hear you and never take action, obviously you can't do that with sniper rifles that make noise

 

[Tygrende]

sniper rifles are deliberately made to be non-stealthy

This is not entirely correct. While sniper rifles do generate quite a bit of noise and attract attention, their long range often allows you to kill isolated enemies and hide before anyone can reach your location. You can do that in the Ironhead base, it's just a bit harder to pull off.

 

[Sykar]

The builds are properly differentiated IMO, even if you just look at guns
Pistol - no minimum skill, means it's very useful to have one on high difficulties vs. enemies that can Intimidate and reduce your hit chance to 10% with other weapons
SMG - no STR req at all, heavy DEX focus and the best SMG feat also needs AGI
Rifle - STR req, no DEX focus or AGI focus, gives you more freedom to spec the rest of your build or use heavy armors since you want STR
Sniper vs Crossbow - sniper rifles are deliberately made to be non-stealthy, while crossbows can snipe and are stealthy, with a crossbow you can repeatedly kill groups of 2 enemies in 1 turn (Aimed Shot + Snipe) without alerting anyone or even making noise, so you can often just kill everyone in a place like the Ironheads base in 1 turn, provided you find isolated groups or can isolate them during patrols so there's just 2 of them in one spot, because the rest never hear you and never take action, obviously you can't do that with sniper rifles that make noise

Sniper needs stealth just as much as Crossbows. Snipe is just too good of an alpha strike to not have it.

 

[lukaszek]

deterministic system > RNG

 

[Blaine]

Blaine, I found an interesting merchant, I take it you were a backer?

Underrail wasn't crowdfunded, and I'm pretty sure based merchant was in the game before I even started playing during the alpha/beta.

I am however the proud owner of a rare Underrail t-shirt sent to me as a gift.

 

[Trashos]

Another thing you will notice while playing it is that movement IS a valid defense mechanics(especially when joined with sneak). Up to the point where I've actually finished game as glass cannon with movement as my only mean of defense.

Right, and I also see a very tasty feat called Sprint. Now, I am not sure I am going to need it for by sniper/smg, as my plan B is the smg and running away is only my plan C, but I did make heavy use of such "defense" when I tried the arbalist and the mere sniper. I agree that running away is a perfectly valid tactic, it is obvious form the game's design that it's a feature not a bug/cheese.

 

[Blaine]

Actually responding to Xotiphile now: You are wrong.

AR/heavy armor/throwing, melee/heavy armor/throwing, crossbow/stealth/traps, stealth/melee/evasion, stealth/ranged/evasion, melee/psi, and stealth/psi all play quite differently, with a fair amount of wiggle room for tweaking, branching out, and taking various different crafting skills.

So really, that's more like 7, again, with variability. I will allow that not just any random combination is fully or even partially viable, but yeah, you're gay and stupid kill yourself.

 

[lukaszek]

deterministic system > RNG

 

[Jack Dandy]

I really never understood the Respawning complaints. It only happens to trash mobs, not the main encounters - and even they only do so once in a full moon.

Also forgot to add - being able to smash old enemies with the new powers you gain throughout the adventure is one of the greatest delights in any RPG. Very important element. Must not remove!

 

[Chaotic_Heretic]

3 psi bettles can buttrape a lowleveled non-stealth full psi caster as u dont uave many pai skills (unless grenades).

when u return after a dozen levels; u can actually burn the fuckers to ashes before your 1st turn ends.

 

[epeli]

This is an absolutely huge cRPG. Is every room you clear in what is essentially an underground wilderness with its own ecosystem supposed to stay empty forever?

From my perspective, if respawns are an issue at all, it's because they're always the same as the initial spawns in that room. It would better if the spawns shifted around to represent wildlife moving from area to area (including areas the player never sees), but that would require a tremendous amount of work. Keep in mind that sacrifices had to be made during development to save resources and man-hours, such as not implementing crawling animations for vent movement, an omission that was frankly explained to fans during development.

In a living world with an ecosystem, one person shouldn't be able to clear out all of the wildlife on a permanent basis. It just doesn't make sense. I'd rather have a limited, abstracted representation of the ecosystem's robustness than none at all. Believable world-building and atmosphere call for it.

Precisely. Simulating the ecosystem is a part of world-building. Respawning wild animals and plants is a cheap (both in good and bad) way to achieve that.

About the bolded part, I expect that to improve over time. The random event system lets stygsoft easily implement more dynamic roaming animals than the old static respawns. All the old respawning critters are still in, but new areas made with random events in mind don't contain any of that.

Now they probably could go all simulationist and script a complex wildlife migration simulation as the triggers for the events, but to save man-hours it won't be anything crazy like that - just events that happen randomly. Imagine that, for example, the rathounds between GMS and SGS wouldn't always be there. And it wouldn't always be the same rathound pack. Occasionally something else like wild dogs might also wander in. There could be both rathounds and dogs fighting over territory. Maybe even burrowers later on if you leave the vault open. That sort of thing.

 

[Major_Blackhart]

If they can use that sort of tech for their next game that would be insane.

 

[HeatEXTEND]

I'd rather just have more content. MOAR

 

[Trashos]

You get to meet other rathounds again later, it is not necessary for the ones you have already killed to respawn in order to feel your power gains. Also, the "living ecosystem" argument is irrelevant. If the reason was that simple, then you could produce a living ecosystem by moving the respawns OUT OF THE WAY, so that you would only interact with them if you wished. This would also solve all potential issues with farming needed crafting materials and desired XP grinding in Classic mode.

To counter this level of arguments, I say that respawning enemies kill the joy of cleaning maps for good, and of opening convenient routes to various locations. But the worst part of respawning enemies is the absurdity of it all in terms of gameplay. If I want to walk from SGS to Junkyard, for example, I have to kill the beetle over and over and over and over and over till the end of times. That's not interesting gameplay at all. And that's only one example, there are several others too. If I do half a map and decide that I want to do the rest later, the enemies I have killed may* have respawned, and I have to do the part I have already done again. Why?!

*Fortunately, this doesn't happen in all maps. But it sucks in the ones it happens.

 

[Sweeper]

There's two types of people in this world, those who are combatfags, and those who are retarded.
Rating this game below a 9/10 cause of dialogue and writing proves it.
Underrail is the true renaissance of the TB CRPG genre.

 

[ciox]

You get to meet other rathounds again later, it is not necessary for the ones you have already killed to respawn in order to feel your power gains. Also, the "living ecosystem" argument is irrelevant. If the reason was that simple, then you could produce a living ecosystem by moving the respawns OUT OF THE WAY, so that you would only interact with them if you wished. This would also solve all potential issues with farming needed crafting materials and desired XP grinding in Classic mode.

To counter this level of arguments, I say that respawning enemies kill the joy of cleaning maps for good, and of opening convenient routes to various locations. But the worst part of respawning enemies is the absurdity of it all in terms of gameplay. If I want to walk from SGS to Junkyard, for example, I have to kill the beetle over and over and over and over and over till the end of times. That's not interesting gameplay at all. And that's only one example, there are several others too. If I do half a map and decide that I want to do the rest later, the enemies I have killed may* have respawned, and I have to do the part I have already done again. Why?!

*Fortunately, this doesn't happen in all maps. But it sucks in the ones it happens.

A living ecosystem should mean that creatures eventually abandon unsafe environments where they get killed all the time and move to another area, possibly more out of the way, possibly quite far from where they used to dwell. But that takes extra work to implement and potentially a lot of debugging since AIs are suddenly acting out somewhere else than normal.

There's two types of people in this world, those who are combatfags, and those who are retarded.
Rating this game below a 9/10 cause of dialogue and writing proves it.
Underrail is the true renaissance of the TB CRPG genre.

Sadly I'm not sure if we have a 9/10 or 10/10 from any outlets, would like to be proven wrong.

 

[Sweeper]

Sadly I'm not sure if we have a 9/10 or 10/10 from any outlets, would like to be proven wrong.

>outlets
https://www.metacritic.com/game/pc/divinity-original-sin-ii
https://www.metacritic.com/game/pc/underrail
Anyone who considers Decline Original Sin 2 to be better than Underrail doesn't know what the fuck they're talking about.
And the vast majority of complaints about Underrail were directed at difficulty, or masked as criticism of something else, but really it's just the difficulty the fags have a problem with.

 

[ciox]

Sadly I'm not sure if we have a 9/10 or 10/10 from any outlets, would like to be proven wrong.

>outlets
https://www.metacritic.com/game/pc/divinity-original-sin-ii
https://www.metacritic.com/game/pc/underrail
Anyone who considers Decline Original Sin 2 to be better than Underrail doesn't know what the fuck they're talking about.
And the vast majority of complaints about Underrail were directed at difficulty, or masked as criticism of something else, but really it's just the difficulty the fags have a problem with.

Man, not even some serbian game magazines gave it a 9? This is evil.

 

[Sweeper]

Man, not even some serbian game magazines gave it a 9?

https://www.sk.rs/2016/02/siop06.html

 

[luj1]

Underrail is the true renaissance of the TB CRPG genre.

I wish it used hexes for combat, but yeah. It's one of the very few truly exceptional RPG titles in recent memory. The other being the true renaissance of blobbers, Grimoire. Nothing comes close really, unfortunately, it's these two before anything else in the last 10 years.

 

[Dyet]

There's two types of people in this world, those who are combatfags, and those who are retarded.
Rating this game below a 9/10 cause of dialogue and writing proves it.
Underrail is the true renaissance of the TB CRPG genre.

I can't brofist, but I would if I could.

Man, not even some serbian game magazines gave it a 9?

https://www.sk.rs/2016/02/siop06.html

Worse score than some western outlets...not surprised to see bitching about the difficulty.

 

[ciox]

Man, not even some serbian game magazines gave it a 9?

https://www.sk.rs/2016/02/siop06.html

Brutal NPC score.