Atom RPG

Man of Honour
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I couldn't see a thread on this so apologies if there already is one.

Anyone playing this ? Watched a bit on Youtube and it looks a lot like the early Fallout games.

Seems to get good reviews on Steam as well. Only £11 so might give it a go once I am bored of RDR2.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/552620/ATOM_RPG_Postapocalyptic_indie_game/

I bought it a few weeks back when it was on sale on GOG. I forget what I paid for it, since I bought a couple of dozen games at the time. Certainly less than £10. I liked the idea of it, but the UI put me off. That sort of thing was as good as it got in its day, but I'm not a fan of retro gaming. I bought Fallout 1 and 2, but stopped playing FO1 after about an hour of trying it and never played FO2. They're great games, but that type of UI really puts me off. What I'd like is FO1 and FO2 remade (without any changes) in an open world 3D game engine, even if was Bethesda's aging and limited engine.

But I do like a post-apocalypse exploration RPG, and I mean RPG. Not a hugely simplified pseudo-RPG where the dialogue options are "yes/no/sarcasm/question" and you can't even see what your character is going to say for each selection. Fallout has dropped the RPG aspect pretty much entirely. Great world-building, crappy game-making. Then Zenimax destroyed what was left with drooling greed and blatant contempt for customers.

So I was definitely looking for a post-apocalypse RPG, enough to chance a small amount of money on buying one that looked very good in every way apart from the very old-fashioned simple UI. Then I left it in my library and didn't play it, as usual. I don't play most of the games I buy. Obviously I intend to play them, but I buy more games than I have time to play.

I got around to playing it last night, on a whim. Time to give it a chance and see if that deeply unappealing (to me) UI is a deal-breaker. 4 hours later I stopped playing it because I had to pee and then I decided that it was past time that I should be in bed.

That UI? Not my preference, but so well implemented that it's smoothly playable even for someone who dislikes that time of UI. Unlike some more famous offerings, it really does just work. I didn't even read the manual and I skipped part of the tutorial section and I still found it easily usable. It doesn't get in the way of experiencing the game and the gameworld.

As for the rest of it, oh yes please! An RPG, an actual RPG! Happy dance time! Detailed and appropriate skills and stats, all of which are relevant and useful. World-building. Lore. Dialogue, proper dialogue based on the assumption that players don't find reading more than a few words a chore. Choices, so many choices. Places to go, stuff to examine all over the place. It's always interesting to walk around everywhere, just to see what's in the places you haven't seen yet...and there will usually be something. Maybe an interesting environmental feature, maybe a new location, maybe a shack that might have some stuff and/or lore in it...the only way to know is to look and it's always fun to do so. Loads of junk that I want to have because I think it will probably be of some use for something. Yes, yes, give me 20Kg of empty bottles, scraps of plastic and lengths of wire to haul around! Scavving and exploration - two of my favourite things in a post-apocalypse game. And crafting. Crafting in a way that makes sense. Basic stuff you already know. It's not that complicated to know how to make a crude club or shield or even (for a person in a modern post-apocalypse society) a crude gun. You might lack the skill to do it right or to make a good job of it, but you shouldn't lack the knowledge of roughly how to do it, enough to have a go at making it. And people, people to talk with. There's dialogue, real dialogue with choices and those choices are affected by your character's personality and skills and by your character's choices. Did I mention that it's an RPG, an actual RPG?

I did a favour for a character in the first village, refused payment partly because I was thinking that reputation affects dialogue options and partly because I'm roleplaying someone decent and the NPC clearly didn't have much of anything (did I mention that this game is an actual RPG) and they gave me an old rifle as thanks. Sweet! I wanted a rifle. Punching rats to death is not my ideal course of action. But...they gave me a rifle. Just the rifle. They didn't have any bullets of the right type. Neither did I. Neither did any of the traders in the village. I knew the general idea of how to make bullets, but lacked the materials to do so and lacked the skill to do a decent job of it. And that's how it should be, in the context of that gameworld. So was I annoyed at having a useless rifle? No. In character, I was pleased at having the potential for a useful weapon. Out of character, I was pleased at having a very well made game.

Here's another thing that makes it stand out. It has explicit mod support integrated into the game. It's right there in the main menu. The game itself has a mod manager built in. It's not "screw our fans and screw your mods, we want all the money you have for a collection of insultingly crap microscopic mods - give us $18 real money for a paintjob for one suit of armour, you stupid suckers!"

Do I recommend Atom RPG for the £5-10 I paid for it? Yes. Do I recommend it for the £11 you can get it for now? Yes. Would I recommend it for £20? Yes. Without hesitation. £30? Maybe. It's very good, but it is a simple and outdated type of UI. It's a very well implemented version of such an UI, but it is an outdated UI. But for £11? Absolutely. I came here to enthuse about the game and found your post when I searched to see if there was already a thread before I started one of my own.

Minor issues, most of which very likely stem from me jumping straight in and not reading the manual:

1) I didn't know that left-clicking and holding on an interactive item brings up a menu of interaction options. A simple click performs the default action, click and hold is used for anything else. I only found that out because I didn't know how to try to pick a lock and went online to find out.

2) I'd like to be able to scroll the map. Not the gameworld - that's the usual method of simply moving the cursor to the edge - but the map. Maybe there is a way and I just don't know it. Maybe there isn't a way.

3) English is not the language the game was developed in. While the dialogue is still very good in English (and vastly better than the current norm for games), it is a translation and that means some nuances are lost. Also, the gameworld itself is in Russian. The UI is completely translated, but where there's writing as part of the graphics of the gameworld itself, the writing is in Russian. Completely correct for the gameworld since the game is set in Russia, but it does make some things less immediately clear if you can't read Russian. For example, there are some signs on some buildings. If you can't read Russian, you won't know what the signs say. Not a big deal - e.g. if you go into the building and it's an improvised clinic with an NPC selling medical services you can deduce that the sign outside says "Doctor" or "clinic" or somesuch thing.

I will buy stuff from this dev. If they announce a sequel, I will pre-order it. I hardly ever pre-order games (2 so far, in the decades I've been buying games), but Atom RPG is so good that it has earned the devs that much status with me.
 
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Soldato
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Nice review. I can't remember how I heard of it, but I had this on my wishlist over Christmas and very nearly bought it when it was on sale. The only thing that stopped me was the fact that I already have a silly amount of games that I own but have never even installed.

Your comments have made me bump this up my wishlist a bit. Be good to hear how it goes for the rest of your playthrough.
 
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This looks great - I've been looking for something to sink my teeth into since finishing Divinity: Original Sin 2, and I love the Fallout franchise (although not the last few games).

Thanks for the review. I'll grab this!
 
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Idk is this game worth getting over:

Planscape torment
Baldurs gate 1+2
Divinity original sin 1+2
torments of numeria
tyranny
pillars of eternity
disco elysium
pathfinder

i think theres plenty of crpgs in this genre atm that i'd really struggle to go for one which isn't top tier [unless you've already completed all of them]
 
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Idk is this game worth getting over:

Planscape torment
Baldurs gate 1+2
Divinity original sin 1+2
torments of numeria
tyranny
pillars of eternity
disco elysium
pathfinder

i think theres plenty of crpgs in this genre atm that i'd really struggle to go for one which isn't top tier [unless you've already completed all of them]

I've not played it but as you say there are plenty to choose from atm. I guess it comes down to your preferred settings. If you want a fantasy then buy something else, if you want post apocalyptic setting then it's either this, Fallout 1/2 or Wasteland 2
 
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[..] Your comments have made me bump this up my wishlist a bit. Be good to hear how it goes for the rest of your playthrough.

My prevailing impression after a few more hours of play can be summed up in two words - "hard" and "morally compromised". I'm playing on normal level and it is hard, very hard. Scav is far sparser than in Fallout, which fits because you're far from the first scavenger in the area. You will be short of money. You will be short of food. You will be short of ammunition. You will not be unusually strong or tough or capable, so you will not be able to kill three people attacking you as a minor inconvenience...and you will often be attacked 3 (or more) to 1. Random encounters while travelling will kill you more often than not. You might be lucky enough have a gun with 3 bullets you happened to find somewhere, or you might have a brick or a rusty knife. There are 3 of them and 2 have guns with a dozen bullets each because they've been killing and robbing people. You die.

You can buy food...but how do you pay for it? Food is valuable. What do you have that's valuable? Not much. I talked with an NPC and did them a favour and they taught me how to extract bits of the wierd mutated animals that could be used as bait for fishing...but I'd already killed the few such animals in the area. Life is sparse in such a harsh environment.

Some raiders were "taxing" the village from a base nearby. OK, load up and kill them all! No. You are not a hero with oodles of weapons. I have 4 bullets for a badly worn out crappy rifle and 2 bullets for an improvised pipe pistol. The raiders have taken over a factory with a good wall and there are at least a dozen of them and they're armed with decent guns and adequate ammunition and they're fairly organised. They've been "taxing" people in the area, so they have resources. So my only option to work against them is to join them and gather information and try to devise a plan to deal with them. They're not all insane, so of course they test recruits. This prisoner is useless to us - here's a gun, kill him. Er...

I've not played it but as you say there are plenty to choose from atm. I guess it comes down to your preferred settings. If you want a fantasy then buy something else, if you want post apocalyptic setting then it's either this, Fallout 1/2 or Wasteland 2

I agree. Or buy more than 1 of the listed games and have a choice. Most of them are cheaply available nowadays.
 
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heh...I only just found out that there's a special abilities tree in the game (accessed from the character screen) in addition to the skills, and only because I watched a build video. Maybe I should have read the manual :) That makes it a bit less hard. I also learned that my "slightly better than average in most things" stats choice is apparently a poor choice and that I should have obsessed with speechcraft from the beginning even for a violence-orientated build. Ah well, Anastasia is who she is and she'll get the job done.
 
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I've not played it but as you say there are plenty to choose from atm. I guess it comes down to your preferred settings. If you want a fantasy then buy something else, if you want post apocalyptic setting then it's either this, Fallout 1/2 or Wasteland 2

I also have my eye on Encased, though that one is still in early access at the moment.

heh...I only just found out that there's a special abilities tree in the game (accessed from the character screen) in addition to the skills, and only because I watched a build video. Maybe I should have read the manual :) That makes it a bit less hard. I also learned that my "slightly better than average in most things" stats choice is apparently a poor choice and that I should have obsessed with speechcraft from the beginning even for a violence-orientated build. Ah well, Anastasia is who she is and she'll get the job done.

Thanks for the more detailed reflections! The more I read of your experiences with the game, the more I want to play it! It really sounds right up my street.
 
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Played it over a year ago. I like these game but I didn't hit the 2-hour mark with this.

I remember watching my health bar slowly deplete and have no ******* idea why.
 
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Played it over a year ago. I like these game but I didn't hit the 2-hour mark with this.

I remember watching my health bar slowly deplete and have no ******* idea why.

My guess would be hunger. Although there's also radiation and toxins and as yet I haven't found a way of finding out how exposed I am to those. So maybe it was one of them. It's an unforgiving game, that's for sure. I've died a dozen times already, although I did know why each time.

I've just found out that there's a "supporters" DLC that contains very little and is explicitly labelled as being mainly a convenient way to send money to the devs. I've just bought it. I don't know if it has any effect on an existing game, but hey ho. I bought it to send more money to the devs because I think the game is worth more than I paid for it. If I get a useful knife and some clothes in the game, fine. If not, also fine. I think that's the first time I've sent extra money to a dev for a game I've already bought.

EDIT: I also found out how to scroll the map, which was the only thing niggling at me. You just have to right-click and hold to scroll the map.
 
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Soldato
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I also have my eye on Encased, though that one is still in early access at the moment.



Thanks for the more detailed reflections! The more I read of your experiences with the game, the more I want to play it! It really sounds right up my street.

Encased is shaping up to be fun, picked it up when it was on sale over xmas, one looking forward too now when fully released if you like these sorts of games. Also looking forward to Wasteland 3 myself on game pass!
 
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Played it over a year ago. I like these game but I didn't hit the 2-hour mark with this.

I remember watching my health bar slowly deplete and have no ******* idea why.

Having played some more, I think I know why. You can't detect radiation or many toxins without appropriate equipment. So if you are exposed, you don't know it until you're showing symptoms and by that time you're losing health. I rested for 30 minutes in the game tonight for some alcohol to wear off and I died because the location I rested in was exposed to something that killed me in <30 minutes. Realistic. Unlike most games of this type, but realistic.
 
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Having played some more, I think I know why. You can't detect radiation or many toxins without appropriate equipment. So if you are exposed, you don't know it until you're showing symptoms and by that time you're losing health. I rested for 30 minutes in the game tonight for some alcohol to wear off and I died because the location I rested in was exposed to something that killed me in <30 minutes. Realistic. Unlike most games of this type, but realistic.

I think there was a yellow symbol. I was in between places travelling on the map when I realised, and by the time I reached any destination I just died shortly after spawning.

I'll go back to it again at some point. As said I like these games, Dead State probably my favourite. The only disappointment I really had with that was the environments looked a little too 'clean' for the post-apoc feel.
 
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Has anyone installed the Nuclear Edition mod for this game? I want it for two conveniences it adds - faster real-time travelling on the world map and looting all nearby corpses at once rather than having to open each one individually. Neither give any ingame advantage (the travel takes the same amount of ingame time) but they would be very convenient. However, the only place I could find it was a Russian file storage site I know nothing about. That makes sense given that this is an indie game from a very small Russian dev team and it's set in Russia and most of its players are in Russia, but I'd like a source I at least know something about.



After some more play I'm finding it less hard but now I'm using more ammunition than I'm acquiring and that's obviously not sustainable. My "jack of all trades, master of none" approach is definitely suboptimal in this game, but workable. I bought a pristine Skorpion SMG from the outrageously expensive weapon shop in Kraznoznamenny (~5600 roubles!) and it's a vast improvement over the quality zip gun I'd made for myself but it chews through my stock of bullets. That same vendor sells lots of bullets...at an outrageously expensive price. Even 9mm bullets are about 6 roubles each!

Since I bought some skill magazines (there's a bookshop in Kraznoznamenny that's also outrageously expensive - I spent over 10,000 roubles there on skill magazines and crafting recipes) and did some training while levelling in order to get my speechcraft skill to 120, many things have become easier. I can definitely recommend a focus on learning speechcraft early on, at least as much as your main weapon skill if not more.

Also, dexterity. As much dex as you can because dex determines how many action points you have per round and that's a huge factor in every fight and you will get in a lot of fights. My character only has a dex of 5 (jack of all trades) and it matters. It matters quite a lot.

Stats in general matter a lot. You can increase your skills a great deal. There isn't a level cap, so if you want to grind you can max all of your skills. But increasing your stats can only be done in a very limited way (I haven't found anything yet, but I know you can get a few extra points during the game) and the normal number of stat points is only enough for average everything or greatly handicapping yourself in one stat in order to excel at another. It's even worth taking distinctions with significant negative effects to get more stat points at character creation.

Prices vary a lot between vendors, much more than I expected. For example, I was offered between 1 rouble and 155 roubles from different vendors for the same crafting recipe I'd read and wanted to sell.

There's a player home/base too. Nice. I'm having the place done up at the moment, as and when I can afford it. Got a herd of cows for it last night. An NPC turned up with his cows and offered to settle at my place for a very reasonable cost.
 
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I was walking home from work tonight when I passed by a skip and was wondering why I was bothering to look at it. Then I realised it was because I've been playing Atom RPG too much :) Skips are (a) good sources of the scrap metal and paper you'll need for the ammunition maker in your base and (b) the only containers that respawn.

I'm roaming around with a party of 4 now and we're all tooled up pretty well. Two with moderately decent rifles, one with an SMG, one with a modernised AK47 variant, all with fairly decent body armour and a whole load of bullets and a fair bit of skill with the guns. We encountered the bandits who stole all my stuff at the beginning of the game...and shot them all repeatedly before stealing everything from their corpses. Good times, Atom RPG style!

This is the best game I've played in the last few months. I've finally found fully functional breathing gear that will allow me to explore a radio bunker station I found that's full of toxic something that I barely escaped from when I first found it.

EDIT: Those raiders I mentioned near the starting village serve as a good example of how the game is an RPG, a real RPG, and as morally compromised as life in a post-apocalypse society should be.

After talking with them, it becomes apparent that they're not exactly raiders. Not like Fallout raiders, certainly. They do provide protection. They're protecting the area against a much more dangerous group. The leader is civilised and trying to make what's effectively a moderately organised and civilised militia group that will protect civilians in the area, but also trying to create a power base for himself. But some of the group are psycho killers who would like to be more like Fallout raiders and the leader can only keep those under control by acquiring money and power for the group. So do you help him? If you don't, will the nutters depose him and go full psycho raider on the surrounding area? If you do, will he become de facto warlord of the area? What if you just kill the dominant member of the nutters faction? Will you then have to kill all of the group, including the decent ones who'll fight out of a sense of duty to the group when it's attacked? You decide.
 
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Soldato
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The more I read your writing about this game the more firmly I hold these two conclusions:

1. I am going to absolutely love this game.

2. I should probably wait to buy it until some currently pressing deadlines have passed, because there's a high danger I'll end up hopelessly addicted to it...

:)
 
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Man of Honour
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Does anyone know of a reliable source of scrap metal? I want as much of it as possible. Hundreds of pieces of it, preferably. Sometimes getting 1 or 2 pieces from some merchants isn't enough. Price is irrelevant - I'd cheerfully spend 100K roubles on scrap metal.


I have an important tip for new players:

The most important object in the game is scrap metal. Scavenge skips for it, buy it at every available opportunity, loot it every time from every corpse even if you have to slowly plod back to a location afterwards because you're encumbered, even if you have to throw away stuff you can sell for many more roubles. Scrap metal is more important. More important than what? More important than everything else. Stash every piece of it somewhere, right from the start of the game and right the way through the game. Even before you get your player home/settlement, stash it somewhere. Anywhere apart from a skip will do until you get your own place with your own containers. I used a container in the abandoned house on the Otradyne map, just outside the village itself. Don't use it to make crude bullets for homemade guns unless you really, really have to.

It's a bit daft, really. Scrap metal should be plentiful, not rare.

Details:

The best weapons use very rare ammunition. The very best weapons use extremely rare ammunition. You can sometimes buy or find 7.62x54 bullets, but it will only be a few at a time and that calibre is used for several excellent guns including a couple that are capable of full auto. Even with frequent trips to the specialist gun shop in the main city and spending thousands of roubles there, I was only possibly just about getting enough to support one character using a Dragunov sniper rifle. The other rifles using that calibre were just left in my gun cabinet in my base, but it would be useful to have my other rifle specialist using one. Then there's the Special pistol. It's the only pistol that's effective towards the endgame, but it uses specialist 9.2mm bullets and those are even rarer. Then there's the big one, the experimental rifle. It's the best weapon, simple as that. The Dragunov might be slightly better as a sniper rifle, but the experimental rifle is better in every other respect and it has selectable full auto. It's a one of a kind and there are only about a dozen bullets for it.

However...if you've restored the workroom in your base and you've dealt with the resulting situation correctly you will have a skilled ammunition maker working in your base. They can make the common ammunition already. If you have a weapon in your inventory that uses special ammunition when you speak to the ammunition maker, you'll have an option to show them the weapon and they will be able to learn how to make ammunition for it. But they will need scrap metal, gunpowder and paper to make bullets. Paper is common enough. Gunpowder is quite common. Scrap metal is the bottleneck.

On a completely different note, the game might seem a bit short of background lore in the beginning. All the lore is related to superficial current stuff in the gameworld. There's a lot of that, which is well done, but no backstory and no deep lore. That's because in the beginning of the game you don't really have a clue what's going on or what went on. As you progress through the main questline you start to uncover some prewar backstory and the hidden machinations behind the current gameworld and how they're connected, with lots of notes and some terminal entries. It's all good stuff. Some of the puzzles in some of the endgame locations
secret pre-war bioweapons research bases
are a bit annoying because the translations aren't entirely perfect and one of them seems to be the victim of a flawed change in the game because the note explaining that the code to the door has been changed is on a corpse inside the room you need the code to get into.

EDIT: None of those puzzles are crucial, by the way, although one of them allows you to get a one of a kind weapon. They're either for lore or they're one way of accomplishing an objective. For example, in one location you need a particular mixture of substances. You can search the area for the ingredients and the equipment to mix them...or you can open a code-locked container which contains a dose already mixed.

And they're working on a sequel. Good job too. I want to buy it yesterday.
 
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Soldato
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Does anyone know of a reliable source of scrap metal? I want as much of it as possible. Hundreds of pieces of it, preferably. Sometimes getting 1 or 2 pieces from some merchants isn't enough. Price is irrelevant - I'd cheerfully spend 100K roubles on scrap metal.

Bought this on Saturday so very new and can't really help with that. Not got far yet and decided to restart last night as I messed up abilities between my characters and since I was only lvl4 decided to start again. I'll keep your advice in mind but if you're using it to craft ammo can't you just use the more common ammo and weapons while you're travelling/ doing easier things to save the rarer ammo? Sorry if you're already doing that. :)

I decided to keep buying all the ammo I come across and store it in the abandoned house you mention, especially from random folks since they have better prices than gun merchants.
 
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