WARDOGS
WARDOGS
Game
Game2015
UnderRail
Developer Stygian Software
Underrail is a 2015 role-playing video game by Stygian Software for Windows. It was first released in early access in late 2012. The game has two expansion packs, Underrail: Expedition (2019) and Underrail: Heavy Duty (2023). A sequel, Underrail 2: Infusion, is in development. From Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0)
355 reactions from 4 sources (Steam reviews, Bluesky, Lemmy, Mastodon) · newest Nov 5, 2026 · last updated Nov 5, 2026 · How this works
Audience score
71
Fresh
188 positive · 77 negative
95% range 65–76%
| Source | + | − | = |
|---|---|---|---|
| Steam reviews | 188 | 77 | 0 |
| Bluesky * | 19 | 4 | 41 |
| Lemmy * | 3 | 0 | 22 |
| Mastodon * | 0 | 0 | 1 |
* shown, not counted in the score (label accuracy below our 85% bar or not yet audited).
Steam's own rating
Very Positive
4,963 of 5,786 reviews positive (all languages, per Valve)
What players are saying
71% recommend · 176 yes, 71 no
Counted from the reviewers’ own thumbs up/down on the 247 English Steam reviews we collected, not by the AI. Valve’s all-language rating: Very Positive (6,266 of 7,277 positive).
Players praise UnderRail as a deep, challenging CRPG that rewards careful planning and exploration. [1][2][3] Some reviewers criticize the developer's attitude toward mods and balance changes, calling it controlling. [4][5][6] A few players warn about the game's difficulty and lack of respec options, leading to potential softlocks. [7][8][9]
Liked
Representative posts
- [4]
This developer is a control freak who despises mods even though its a single player game and nobody gets hurt. He goes out of his way to break mods and demands you play the game only in the way he wants even though its an RPG game. Even 10 years after game release he refuses to allow modders to do anything to the game. And to top it off the guy is obsessed with controlling how you play your character IN AN RPG GAME …
- [2]
10/10 - My Favourite cRPG, Ever Underrail is a fascinating game to me. It's very difficult, has an artstyle that looks very old, and has a character creation/customization system thats insanely overwhelming. Despite that, I absolutely love it. While I think that the game's customization is phenomenal and really rewards diving in deep and planning things out, what really sold me was the world of the game. The …
- [15]
Underrail is one of the biggest surprises I've played in years. As someone who generally prefers action RPGs, I fully expected to bounce off a turn-based CRPG. Instead, it became one of my favorite RPG experiences. It took me an embarrassingly long time to realize how some core mechanics actually worked, yet somehow the game remained compelling for nearly 240 hours. Much of that is due to Oddity XP, which may be one …
- [1]
a spiritual successor to fallout 1 & 2. and now even beginner friendly thanks to difficulty settings. edit: i just come to realize in the ~50h i played so far not a single quest broke, which might be a first for an rpg like that. plus it runs well on an i5-8500 (in 1440p no less!) with just the iGPU (except for when there are loads of enemies).
- [3]
Pure gameplay. Pure exploration. No unnecessary exposition, no cinematic interruptions. Underrail strips away the excess that bloats so many modern RPGs. What’s left is bone-hard challenge with a lot of muscle behind it. It’s a perfect game for anyone who wants depth over hand-holding. The character building alone is a sandbox: wide, complex, unforgiving, and incredibly satisfying to master. Every skill choice …
Summarised from 34 of the 333 public posts collected about this game; every point cites the posts behind it ([n] opens the post) and the split is counted from the posts’ own ratings. Updated Oct 11, 2026. How summaries are made
RottenBot@rottenbot · automated account
Players who liked UnderRail talk about spiritual successor to classic Fallout games; those who didn't talk about no respec option can waste many hours. Which matters more to you?
Reactions
60 of 355 · most liked firstThis developer is a control freak who despises mods even though its a single player game and nobody gets hurt. He goes out of his way to break mods and demands you play the game only in the way he wants even though its an RPG game. Even 10 years after game release he refuses to allow modders to do anything to the game. And to top it off the guy is obsessed with controlling how you play your character IN AN RPG GAME WHERE YOU ARE SUPPOSE TO MAKE YOUR OWN CHARACTER THIS DEV SAYS NO I WILL NERF…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →What happens when a developer with an inflated ego can't get out of his little echochamber? In light of recent events I finally mustered the strength to write a review for this game despite having played it on and off for a good while way before things started snowballing into a fairly odd and rather morbid direction. For those who are not in the known, Underrail is an indie CRPG that is mostly inspired by old classics such as Fallout and Arcanum...at least at a surface level. What Underrail…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →So if you ever notice a random influx of positive reviews, it's because the dev begs on his discord server for positive reviews to "offset unprepared players". Sadly the dev (and a majority of the community that surrounds him), have the opinion that everyone who has an issue with the game is "just bad and you're an idiot". Since the diehard community seems to dismiss any criticism as "people who got filtered at Depot A", let me state for the record that my main save is lv.14, I've already been…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Everything fun and unique about this game has been patched into oblivion in pursuit of appeasing a select group of discord sycophants. This is the game I have put more hours in than almost everything else in my entire life, and I am telling you not to buy it. It's nothing but a shadow of its former self. Like everything else about the modern age, something I love has been ruined by a creator not understanding his own work or letting someone else make the decisions for him.
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Any good which can be said about this game is easily nullified by the fact that creator of it is open neonazi which use platform and popularity he got from this game to spread open racist messages (going as far as once even call for extermination of some nathionalities) and homophobic messages. Do not fund fascism-Do not buy this game!
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Wiki game in all the worst ways. Read the wiki, use an external build planner, then you can play. Wiki games aren't automatically bad, but you could reach an "unwinnable" state if you didn't wiki hard enough, and your only choice is to redo an hours long playthrough. One example is the Chemistry skill, which you can get to an effective level of 200+. The problem is, you run out of things to use it at 112. Even when following an optimal build, skill points are already tight enough as it is…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →The game is just a slog to play through, and with no way to respec your character, you can waste dozens of hours in a character with no way to fix mistakes. Very very little information is ever given to the player. In combat you get a % chance to hit, but no info on what is affecting that chance. Out of combat characters may say where to go once, and never again will you hear directions of where a quest location is. Everything in this game seems designed to waste your time with back tracking,…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →What niche RPGs are you particularly fond of? Can be a newer game or an older RPG that never became a cult classic.. Let's exclude BG3, Witcher and well known classics like FO1/FO2, Ultima and so on. Here is my list: [HammerHelm](https://store.steampowered.com/app/664000/HammerHelm/) - This is an RPG and first person city-builder hybrid. Pretty unique combination, the city-building complements the RPG elements by allowing you to develop your character and deal with world events. Story…
neutral · AI labelView post →RPG Video Games (CRPG focus, but ARPG, JRPG, hybrid games discussions are also welcome) - Witcher, Elder Scrolls, Fallout, Baldurs Gate as well as indie RPGs (Underrail, Avernum, Space Wreck etc.).. [email protected] https://lemmy.world/c/crpg Community for CRPG (Computer RPGs) and other RPG discussions. Focus is on CRPGs, but discussion around JPRGs, ARPGs and hybrid games with RPG components is also welcome. New mainline releases, gems in the rough indie releases, retrospectives, mods, RPG…
neutral · AI labelView post →Underrail can be summed up as one of the closest experiences to the original Fallouts you can get from modern titles, which is by itself one of the biggest compliments a CRPG with a post-apocalyptic setting can get from me. The lore is deep, the themes are dark and unapologetic, systems in the background are fairly complex and so on and so forth. Then, why the thumbs down? You see, there is a fairly common theme with hardcore indie titles which surfaces when their visionary of a developer…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Updating your 10 year old singleplayer game just to nerf half of the feats is so clownish.
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Dev is a lunatic. Nearly every balance change since release has been a net negative, only sometimes accompanied by worthwhile content. He bends the knee to discord minmaxers at every turn and nerfs everything that beats the game. Go pirate an older version, you'll have more fun.
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →I like this game but I simple cant recommend this game since it has a bad habit of soft blocking your character if you've built their stats the wrong way. Ive had to scrap multiple playthroughs due to this "mechanic" with 5-10 hours invested into my playthrough. If you have to min max and look up 10+ character building guides just to make sure you dont soft lock yourself thats not a good thing nor is it a fun thing
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →hardcore RPG doesn't mean jacksh1t RNG, missing 3 shots in a row with 95% chance to hit and having to save scum to get the start of a battle where your character attacks first (which might be a necessity to win some battles) is just BS, not hardcore, just boring + the fact the dev keeps nerfing builds and feats even so many years after this game came out just because he gets mad at people playing the game in ways he didn't expect is also complete bullsh1t i enjoyed this game for the…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Going live with a game that not enough people have played, Colony Ship! It is in the same vein as Underrail, though a bit more grounded (despite the fact that it's in space...)
neutral · AI labelView post →"Underrail is an old-school turn-based isometric indie role-playing game that focuses on exploration and combat." Except this is a lie. It has the trappings of a role-playing game that focuses on exploration. But it is very much a combat challenge game. A save scumming, mechanic cheesing (mechanics game doesn't explain), meta gaming experience for only hardcore players wanting a DOMINATING experience. Everyone else just got misled and got dazzled by the atmosphere of the game. Add the "quirky"…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Ill admit, it may just not be for me. I like a difficult game. But this game's difficulty is more like a series of knowledge checks for things that aren't tutorialized. I made a character with what I thought were decent stats and a variety of skills. Turns out you have to max out only a few skills and already know which ones rely on eachother in order to not softlock yourself. Nowhere is this explained or even suggested by the game, which would've saved me four hours and probably changed my…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →a spiritual successor to fallout 1 & 2. and now even beginner friendly thanks to difficulty settings. edit: i just come to realize in the ~50h i played so far not a single quest broke, which might be a first for an rpg like that. plus it runs well on an i5-8500 (in 1440p no less!) with just the iGPU (except for when there are loads of enemies).
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →While I thought the game itself was fine, a lot of systems are poorly explained, and it's very easy to completely stonewall yourself. People like to point out that there is a massive wall with Depot A, but it's really not as bad if you pay attention and take it slow. This game absolutely needs a wiki pulled up on the second monitor, and definitely need a build guide for your first couple of playthroughs until you can figure out meta picks and things that are blatantly overpowered and can win…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →10/10 - My Favourite cRPG, Ever Underrail is a fascinating game to me. It's very difficult, has an artstyle that looks very old, and has a character creation/customization system thats insanely overwhelming. Despite that, I absolutely love it. While I think that the game's customization is phenomenal and really rewards diving in deep and planning things out, what really sold me was the world of the game. The environment, the music, and the worldbuilding through dialogue and scenery. This game…
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →My disappointment is immeasurable and my day is ruined I cannot express the disappointment that I feel towards this game... Not only is this game remarkably buggy, and not only does it struggle at emulating the classic Fallout 1 & 2 experience (in a setting more akin to Metro 2033) but it buckles under its own weight with ideas that were too lofty and ambitious to be properly implemented (maybe this will be remedied in the sequel?) Regarding the bugs: I somehow got an achievement for…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Pure gameplay. Pure exploration. No unnecessary exposition, no cinematic interruptions. Underrail strips away the excess that bloats so many modern RPGs. What’s left is bone-hard challenge with a lot of muscle behind it. It’s a perfect game for anyone who wants depth over hand-holding. The character building alone is a sandbox: wide, complex, unforgiving, and incredibly satisfying to master. Every skill choice matters, every stat point has weight, and every mistake teaches you something. If…
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →I set out to make a decent custom portrait for Underrail but I made a misstep and now it just looks awkward in-game so I'll just go with the default stuff. At least Samantha looks cool. 😅
neutral · AI labelView post →unfortunately, this is - or perhaps used to be - my favorite game but I think now I like the idea of it more than the game itself I have 616 hrs on gog + whatever measly playtime I have on steam at the time of you reading this. I've beaten the game 1x on normal, and 2x on dominating (AR/SR+nades, energy pistol+PK, and TC/TM mage builds respectively) and had multiple other 'partial' playthroughs to mess around with the mechanics of other skills/weapons before I continue, my critique is very…
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →This game rules and if you haven't heard of it, check out the stream! It's got Underrail vibes but the design is a bit tighter and the writing is more of a focus.
neutral · AI labelView post →Underrail wants to be a good game but it isn't. I enjoy it in spite of itself but I would not recommend it to most people for many good reasons. Frustrating design decisions, opaque questlines, and a total lack of respect for players time hold back what little shines about this game. Your character waddles everywhere and its a huge map that asks you to backtrack over it for the entire game. The economy is designed so that I can't kill a few camps and be wealthy forever by just selling all the…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →What game did you purchase because of the aesthetics but barely or never played?. I did this with Cruelty Squad, Hylics, and to a lesserextentt Underrail. For the most part it was either the difficulty or not knowing what I should be doing.
neutral · AI labelView post →A game that has a hyper specific way that it wants you to play masquerading as a game with a wide variety of choice. If I need to waste 3-4 hours only to have the game stone wall me because my build doesn't meet the devs standards, im not playing your game, I wish I could get a refund.
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Underrail is one of the biggest surprises I've played in years. As someone who generally prefers action RPGs, I fully expected to bounce off a turn-based CRPG. Instead, it became one of my favorite RPG experiences. It took me an embarrassingly long time to realize how some core mechanics actually worked, yet somehow the game remained compelling for nearly 240 hours. Much of that is due to Oddity XP, which may be one of my favorite leveling systems in any RPG. Exploration is progression.…
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →I don't often write a "not recommended" review on games I personally enjoy, but here we go. It's a good game, but one that doesn't really lend itself to a blind playthrough, which is a big factor for whether I can really feel it's something that warrants a recommendation. A lot of the gameplay mechanics are simply not sufficiently explained or, if they do become apparent, it's too late and requires a full reset with a new build. A game that leans too heavily on wikis and guides for a reasonable…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Latest patch make the game much harder. The developer instead of making an enjoyable experience try his best to punish at all cost single player experience. Not sure why after 10 years the developer decided to nerf it and its not possible to revert it latest patch back since I paid for dlc which wont work with previous released .. shame on the developer since the story of the game is amazing.
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →A product of derailed pipeworkers Would it be just for the game itself and would Steam offer the option, I would give this a wholehearted and resounding "meh" but considering the developer attitude towards mods and builds which do "a little too well" the thumbs down is well deserved. The good: (What I enjoyed/what the game does well) ~ You can potentially make a lot of interesting different builds thanks to Feats like "Versatility", you can build around traps, different kind of…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Hollow Knight, Crosscode, Hades, Dead Cells, Signalis, Dusk, Outer Wilds, Underrail, and more are all great examples of relatively modern games that kill it in the graphical department without using anything fancy. Edit, because this is fun: Boltgun, Sea of Stars, the Bloodborne PS1 demake, Tunic, and more.
positive · AI labelView post →Fantastic Fallout Spiritual Successor Marred by Frustrating Decisions Holy wow what a mixed bag this is. I want to recommend this game, I really do, but it's just sometimes not worth the suffering - And that's what it can be - suffering. The development history of Underrail is convoluted enough for a multi-page dissertation, but I'm not going to go into that, I'm just going to explain to you how the game makes me feel; Like I'm actively fighting the main dev - Stygian - several steps of the…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →This is the never ending game. I have 80 hours in it and am just now cleaning up Core City quests which is considered midgame. Maybe I will start the Dark Territory DLC for a quick side adventure before the endgame... Hang on a minute. THE DLC IS 60 hours. Help.
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Good game but the (homophobic) dev just pinged @everyone in the (loser-filled) discord server begging for positive reviews because people are calling him out. Don't spend money on it!
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →it cured my zoomer brain, i didn't have videos or music playing in the background while i play this game
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Almost every update since the Expedition DLC released has reduced build variety and made this game less entertaining. Even the '10-year anniversary update' right before Christmas is filled with more nonsensical build nerfs. I won't be buying Infusion and recommend you simply pirate this game on GOG if you want to play the fun version.
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →This game is essentially a retro bait. It appeals to the charms of old games like Fallout I and tries to deliver its feels but at the same time it sure seems to be delivering all that was issues with the games from that era and even some modern day errors. The game is an awful slog, everything feels slow except the combat which thankfully has an option to increase combat speed drastically so you arent spending your time waiting for the 10th spawn to do their 0 damage attack 4 times. Oh dont…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Pulled from my Top Playtime on Steam (so you know you'll get your money's worth if you like them!) * Factorio (Even though the DLC is pricey, it at least doubles the playtime. Though, like RW below, it takes a lot of content/concepts from fan-made mods.) * RimWorld (Though I dislike how many DLCs they're pumping out and how much is basically taken from mods.) * Terraria * Mount & Blade (Warband 1 & 2 are prime) * Kerbal Space Program (NOT the sequel) * TerraTech (The original is a better…
neutral · AI labelView post →This is not even an rpg. It's as much as one as Fallout 76 at best. You do genuinely need a guide on how to "play" the "build" part of the game. And that is the game. Buildmaxxing like an autist. What's worse is the dev genuinely seems to hate people playing the game outside of a narrow vision that he has at that particular time. He changed the games difficulty settings 10 years post release probably because some discord freaks in the top .1% of the playerbase bragged about how they "broke"…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →False RNG ruins this game, as a sniper build with high DEX and buffed accuracy through drugs/food shouldn't miss 6 shots in a row when each shot has a 95% chance to hit, according to the game. Would be fun if reloading saves due to abysmal RNG wasn't required in every level.
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →I dont know where do negative reviews come from. They do have some points. Underrail can be a pain in the ass so after multiple attempts to play it i just selected the easy difficulty with oddities XP system - and it works fine by me! The game is cheesy: the save-scamming, hoarding and random combat calculation. You have to be careful with your decisions what to level up otherwise you may end up being softlocked without being able to progress the game. It is spiritual successor of early…
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Gonna say a very cautious no on this one. Look, difficult games can be fun. But if you offer me multiple ways to start a game, weapon wise, then make those all viable. Why let me go melee build if it's so obvious by the first pack of enemies that melee is not supposed to be a starter build. If you've given me three choices but only one makes sense, then you are railroading me and that goes heavily against the spirit of a CRPG. If you want us to run ranged or assault rifles, then just start…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →I really wanted to like this game, and I actually found the atmosphere very gripping, but due to some issues I can't recommend it. 1. Combat is boring and completely bare-bones. There is no cover system, and mostly it boils down to shooting at each other until someone's HP runs out. I'm not saying there's no tactics involved, but you'll figure out what works for your build pretty fast, and do the same thing over and over again. Except for some almost unkillable enemies like Deathstalkers, whom…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Terraria Lost Kingdoms 2 Rengoku 2 Dark Souls 2 Underrail I just realized I like sequel games and Underrail 2 is in the works and I know I'm getting it.
positive · AI labelView post →I don't like the patch, but even more I don't like that I have to do voodoo magic to downgrade the game. I don't think that the situation where it's easier to yarrharr the game than to buy is normal. It's a great game prior to the latest patch, though.
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →OK, so the game can be fun and enjoyable (See my 95 hours at this time), but it's absolutely something that requires you to not care two ♥♥♥♥♥ about how it treats you or your time. This is not a game if you're at all a casual gamer. It'll suck and you'll be unable to refund it because getting out of the starting town takes longer than two hours. This game isn't even for most "hardcore" gamers, it's actively trying to fight you with both the UI and game design every step of the way to getting…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →This game is the complete opposite of beginner friendly. I was looking to get into a bit more complex CRPG, and on the surface this game seemed really fun. Cool world, lots of builds, different playstyles. I am fine doing a bit of research into a game, watched some guides, found a "beginner character forum" but my god this game takes a real masochist to enjoy. 70% shots feel like they miss more often then they hit. No way to respec so if you start experimenting with builds as a new player you…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Underrail 2: Infusion - Alpha Demo (early alpha build).
neutral · AI labelView post →I want to like this game, but the combat is onerous and painful. You're essentially always outnumbered, enemies will stunlock you from 100 to 0, and the system is obtuse requiring indepth online research to build a functional character. The tutorial doesn't touch on nearly anything relevant to the gameplay itself. Your most powerful tool is savescuming. After playing for a while you'll start to praise XCOM's shot accuracy after you miss 10 80+% shots in a row while enemies turn you into red…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Something happened to me and I don't really know how people play more than one game for fun at a time. I'm really psyched for Mina, gonna buy it to show my support, but I got a whole Underrail ahead of me.
neutral · AI labelView post →I'm a sucker for isometric RPGs, but this was is very lacking. The concepts are excellent, but there is almost no motivation from the get go. The plot is barely there for the first few hours; gameplay is mostly extremely crunchy combat with nothing backing it up. Dialogue is quite bland and uninteresting and there is little character development. The combat supposedly gets quite complex and interesting later on, especially with all the crafting options, but I would only call it mediocre in…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Imagine if Fallout 1 or 2 was set in the Metro universe, and add a healthy seasoning of good old fashioned "my god this writing is PEAK" very difficult combat. always you (and ONLY you) against squads, groups, overwhelming odds. Just look up a character guide for your general archetype at character creation and keep it in the back of your mind as you level up. Fun fact: psionic skills are unable to miss! Also the crafting skills are the best.
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →As much as i like the game its just to dependent on the wiki if you dont wanna hate yourself later on, if you wanna follow a guild and not think for yourself then this is the game for you.
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →78 Hours of pain and suffering. Couldn't even bring myself to finish the main story let alone the dlc . Combat is quite challenging which leads to plenty of problems the game has imho. Pick one wrong perk and you gimp yourself making every encounter almost impossible .The game artifically increases it's longevity by simply having you reload saves over and over for going the wrong direction , not having a meta build(which you would have to research first) or making a mistake in combat.…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →I feel like the main difference is that Elden Rings difficulty is innately linked to its game design. A similar game in a largely different genre is Underrail which is basically designed with CRPG fans who want to be kicked in the dick... repeatedly. Seriously Underrails combat is weirdly complex and frankly speaking even on easier difficulties is still a bitch. I get that accessibility is a factor and all but theres only so much one can do thatll help without compromising the game design. I…
neutral · AI labelView post →Total slog to play and far, far too difficult, even on the easiest option. Feels like I spent more time reloading quick saves than playing anything. From the very start, you're hopelessly outgunned and outnumbered. The stealth is basically non-existent; there's no enemy awareness icons or any way to peak around corners or plot your scouting efforts. Enemies always seem to react before you can, despite being aware of them beforehand. Put lots of my skill points into utility and social,…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Quintessential boomercore game. Only buy this if you're old
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →I wanted to like this game, I really did, but the challenge is just too much. Even on NORMAL you can just ♥♥♥♥ it all up and the game becomes absolutely unplayable. If you're a masochist then go right ahead, but I work too hard to spend my free time beating my desk in frustration.
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →
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