ATOM RPG: Trudograd Review - Page 4
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Article Index
When dealing with merchants, you can now sort your stuff based on their preferences, which allows you to sell the right things to the right merchants more easily.
A somewhat weird addition are the items that increase the number of skill points you gain per level. As a result, you can track your experience gains, wear a bunch of those items before leveling up, and then put all your regular gear back on after you've gained a level. I'm not really sure why something like this even exists in the game.
And if you get tired from all the adventuring, you can unwind by playing the new card minigame that's a bit like Magic: The Gathering but without the collectible aspect.
Finally, last but by no means least, at some point, you can get your hands on a set of power armor. As opposed to its Fallout counterpart where power armor is just good armor, here, it has a few unique systems associated with it.
For starters, it needs fuel to work. And it has a number of active skills that either cost a certain amount of fuel or increase your fuel consumption over time. You can also find several upgrades to customize your armor, and there's even a special quest chain related to upgrading it.
Wearing a suit of power armor also gives you access to a few unique weapons and allows you to reach some otherwise inaccessible areas.
And that's all fine and dandy until you realize that while you get to wear power armor, pretty much no one else does, and in general, the game's challenges aren't built around you having it. And when you remember that with you being Brotherhood of Steel, the game's lore appropriately has its own Enclave, you realize what a shame it is that you don't actually get to fight those guys here.
Technical Information
From a certain perspective, playing a game by AtomTeam is a pretty depressing affair. Not because their games have some glaring faults on the technical side of things, but because they remind you that it is indeed possible to create a game using the Unity Engine and not have it be a slow and clunky resource hog.
During my playthrough, the closest thing to a bug I've encountered were some bodies clipping through the ground. Other than that, the game ran perfectly smooth with no slowdowns or technical issues. Saving and loading was pretty much instantaneous.
The game's visuals are a clear improvement over the original ATOM, and some of the new sound effects, limited voice-acting aside, are particularly impressive. You can even freely tilt the camera, something few games allow you to do these days.
The one thing that's a shame about the game's options menu is that you don't get to manually adjust all the settings, and instead are saddled with a bunch of presets, but at the end of the day, it's a minor annoyance.
Conclusion
ATOM RPG: Trudograd makes a good case for looking at the forest instead of the individual trees. While some of the game's quests, characters, and lines of dialogue leave a lot to be desired, they exist side by side with great ideas, RPG mechanics, and yes, other quests that are much better.
And if you manage to not fixate on the game's shortcomings, you will more than likely be able to get lost in its weird, unique, and very much intriguing world with plenty of stories to tell. And so, in the end, I can't help but recommend the game to anyone in the mood for some Fallout-inspired adventures.
