ATOM RPG

ATOM RPG
If there was ever a game that was close to old legendary Fallout 1,2 this is it!
This is a game that was made by a small studio with a lot of love and dedication and you will feel it.
Graphic style is exactly what I was looking for when I was imagining Fallout 3 (Cause Fallout 1,2 are one of my most loved games). I simply love it. You have a nice isometric view with everything drawn with love and details. It is set in the 80's. World is not so destroyed as in Fallouts. There are more intact buildings. Villages and locations are believable. And there are really many of them and quite diverse. Also NPCs are nicely drawn with details and have good variability. Color palette is not so grim, but appropriately colorful. Not greenish or grayish tint on everything like in Fallout 3,4.
Sounds are really nice and few music motifs reminded me about some Fallout 2 locations.
HUD is resembling Fallout too, also using some same keyboard shortcuts.
Inventory is intuitive and great. You don't need to constantly scroll. You don't spend an awful lot of time in inventory either - unlike Fallout 3,4. All the items are nicely drawn, just too bad you can not zoom and see bigger pictures or details. Anything that you put on yourself you will see in game. You can wear things on body like armor, on head like hat or helmet, on face like glasses or clown red nose (+1 luck, - 1 charisma), on back like back pack or shield, one place for accessories like scanner or lockpicks or magnifying glass, two slots for hands. There are a lot of ways to increase certain attributes, like clothes, chems, alcohol. For example Hexagon has I think the only cap in the game which if put on head before reaching new lvl will grant you +3 skillp. You start the game with melee weapons and I used them for half of the game. It is possible to play like that, but you can obtain ranged weapons also quite soon. There is actually one quest about weapons delivery early in the game.
Attributes and skills are easy to understand and like. Attributes go to 10. I think the only exception was with Dexterity where you could go to 11, then get a special tattoo to raise it to 12 to obtain 1 extra action point. In Trudograd every skill has milepoints which when you reach the skill will be enriched with a really helpful feature. Not sure if it was part of the update here as well.
You also get Talent points and have a big three to spend it in. This is the only place you can get lost. They are divided into categories and you can go wild there and build whatever you like, there are many routes to victory. When I played the game some 2 years ago, there was a flaw in it - first talents cost 1, second 2, third 3 points and so forth...
Combat is executed in old school turn based fashion and it works like Swiss-clock, I never had a problem with it. Wonderfull. I also love the weapon system and the upgrades you can do to every single weapon. There are several drugs that can boost something at the expense of other things. Expensive (at least at start) stimpacks with no minus and home made painkillers with some minuses, like lowered attention and so on.
This game has the best shotgun mechanic I have ever seen. Engine calculates dmg for each pellet that hits the target. This way each pellet dmg is subtracted by amount of armor but there are so many of them and some do crits. So for soft targets they are devastating, but can be a problem also for high armor.
You can also have a home and do upgrades to make a base from it. Have a gunsmith to create some unfrequent ammunition. Obtain dumbbells and exercise to have your strength pumped for some time.
Time is ticking away and with it the life of people. Law-abiding citizens will stay on streets only thru day. Shifty characters will change locations and will come to their place only at night. While those that are in house or similarly indoor will be open 24/7. Shopers on streets and near stands will also go home at night.
There are several characters that you can have in party. I liked Hexagon and Fidel. Some are easy to obtain while others are kind of hidden.
Traveling is done simply by having a big map with discovered locations. You can just click where you want to go, or roam about and find something on your own. There are few random encounters. For example near Ghost City was it? There is a location with one to teeth armed guy who took it on him to destroy the nest of Demons (or devils?). There you can find the best helmet, armor and machine gun. After you kill the Demons of course. This equipment can also be bought in shops, but it is hard to find. I think there is a roll based on luck and one talent (to see better items at a shop) can influence it as well.
Quests: the core of all RPGs. Here this game shines like a star. The game has a lot of memorable quests. Really a lot. Like when you will be fixing a car for the mayor of one town. Then when he went to town to buy some stuff he, as an old time cop, will be seen by an old criminal who he put behind bars back then, the criminal will send a hit squad after him. While traveling through that area you will stumble on the wreck of his car, where with his last breaths will explain what happened. You will have the option to tell his daughter the truth or put him into a grave there at the spot. Your simple decision will have a far reaching outcome.
Or there is a criminal group called "Death" roaming the country, killing and plundering. In one town you will find an old criminal who created that group, but will today see the error of his old ways of killing and will ask you to find and kill them. Group has I think 4 leaders, so you will encounter 4 different groups while traveling. Each leader has a distinct original personality. These random encounters start with conversation, so you can not plan formation and tactics like usual. In the conversation you can achieve a few things. One you can persuade them about their wrong ways, two others will be possible to get a better position for combat. In the last one I could pump Constitution to pass burn tests and make such an impression to join them. If you do that forget about completing the game, cause you will be outcast and everyone will open fire when they see you. But it is possible to experience that in this game, which was not seen in games for the last 20 years.
There are many great quests, stories and NPCs to discover. You will feel decisions that you make. Some have profound effect on the world, some only little. Game has a lot of memorable moments. And if this is not a reason to buy this CRPG then what?
Now minuses.
Game uses a barter system, so when you have something really expensive you will either sell it a bit cheap in those few shops with a lot of money but high barter skill or barter it for 3-4 cheaper items that you can sell for money elsewhere. It makes selling stuff harder, more time consuming.
Weapons range is written as short or medium or long. Which sucks. It would be much better to put numbers there. You can have two weapons with Long and one will shoot further than the other. You can not make educated purchases based on that.
I think all lovers of old Fallout 1 and 2 will like this game.

You can nuke Bethesda Game Studios Headquarters ... 10/10

ATOM RPG is a Fallout clone that does NOT suck. It is a great game; every Fallout 1/2 fan must play it. The game also runs great on Steam Deck.

Excellent game. A lot of comparisons to Fallout and Wasteland (which is why I bought it)... And yes, it has some similarities, but it's unfair to call it a clone set in Russia. It's much more than that.
It's decidedly less cheesy than Wasteland or Fallout, more grounded but not too serious or dry. All in all good balance to storylines..
The UI is a little awkward, but you get used to it.

Ultrawide support!
3440x1440 confirmed :)
Now you know, before u buy.

Fallout: Russia
Fallout and Fallout 2 fans will feel right at home in this wasteland. The game boldly wears its inspirations on it sleeves and chest. And while its not a bad thing its not great either, giving the game a feeling of lack of identity,
The story is short but unique, with most of your time spent grinding levels and locating the objective. Quests are gently guided, with no obnoxious quest markers, and a quest log to help you recall.
There is some localization issues, such as calling the Otradnoye General Store an Armorer.

Unlike the Fallout games, you can't really make a non-combat character. As an Atom agent, you're basically special military, so you build accordingly.
All combat skills are viable, but sniper is arguably the strongest. Generally speaking you want to specialize as much as possible in your combat skills.
If you want to build for Charisma, you generally want to build a female character. This allows you to dump personality to 2, and allows use to a combination of sex appeal, joints, and perfumes to bump it up to 10 when needed.
Dexterity 10 is almost always desired as with most of these games, Dex determines AP and AP is king. You also usually want to have at least 5 Str for any build (to use automatics) or 6 str if you want to use bigger guns like snipers.
Finally, never dump Endurance. You gains very little per level and it's all Endurance based. So you usually want at least 6 Endurance, if you drop it to 4 you're going to be relying on drugs to get through tougher fights.
There are 4 stat increases in the game. One of them requires high luck and RNG. 3 Come from quests. 2 of them can be applied to any stat, one gets applied to luck.
Skillwise outside of your primary combat skill to 199, you want Speechcraft at 115, Tech at 80, and Barter at 50. Besides that feel free to do whatever. I find First Aid to be pretty useful since spamming healing items confers a cumulative stat penalty, which means getting more healing out of a single item is pretty valuable.
Consumables are very important for getting through content and what not. Consumables with the same name will stack up to 2 times with themselves.
For abilities the only must have ability IMO is Praetorian as it (and the lead up abilities) drastically improves your survivability.
The Nuclear Edition mod has many quality of life changes that make the game less tedious!!!