UnderRail is a game rich in story and mechanics. The main draws of this game are build optimization, looting, crafting, challenge, exploration, and lore discovery. That's the short of it. If you do not enjoy the mechanical elements, you will not enjoy UnderRail. More on those ahead.

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. It's unnecessary to be 'hyper-optimal' to vanquish the normal difficulty of the game, but something that makes sense is imperative. You may need to do research on the wiki to figure out how to optimize your combat effectiveness and meet the stipulations for feats. This can be daunting for a new player but it is habit of the playerbase to publish builds for others to use.

Looting and crafting are simple. You loot stuff to sell, you loot components to craft yourself equipment. It's a simple yet rewarding system.

The challenge may leave a bad taste in player's mouths. Most of the disapproving reviews of this game stem from a lack of understanding of game mechanics or the raw difficulty. UnderRail is a mechanically deep game and some of it isn't communicated explicitly. The wiki has all the information you need. I don't think the mechanics are needlessly byzantine, merely that they have depth. If you are willing to learn the machinations of the game, you will likely love UnderRail's combat system.

Onto exploration and lore. This game has fantastic writing and story. Multiple times I was genuinely impressed and have drawn inspiration from this game for my own writing projects. The narrative of the story isn't well-documented due to the niche nature of the game, so unless you sift around on the forums, you will have to unearth the deeper lore on your own volition.

It's my firm opinion that UnderRail is a sometimes misunderstood masterpiece. I could rhapsodize about this game further, but I believe this is suitable. Consider what I said before purchase and please have a dominating day.

Genuinely have not been this angry at a videogame in a long time. Deep Caverns could only have been created by a person with nothing but contempt and spite for humanity, and pure hatred for those that dare play through his creation.

Great game.
10/10

Having to mark it as "Not Recommended" after almost 100 hours of play time is a shame. But I write reviews for games that I would recommend to friends and for myself. And Underrail is sadly a game that I cannot.

The first 80 hours of the game are amazing. The game has almost 0 hand holding and that is fine, there are some quest that are poorly designed and sometimes even force you to look into the wiki if you didnt took the right turn or didnt talk to the right NPC at some point. But thats not an issue.

The issue comes with the endgame, is 1/5 of the game in which you are completly locked out of your progress, you lose access to everything you hauled, your home and every shop, force you to waste hours in a laberynth with a quest that doesnt tell you anything. With an infinite amount of backtracking and arbitrary things that needs to be done, never sure what the outcome of that will be. And everything ending in a fight that if you are just a bit underleveled is completly impossible, even after doing side quests to make it easier.

Is a shame that a game becomes ♥♥♥♥♥♥ so quickly and out of nowhere, but that is how it is.

I like to finish games, and see the outcome of my actions. But knowing how the last part is... Would I recommend this game to myself? No.