ATOM RPG

I started my first playthrough with a luck-sniper build, and for what i can say is that this is one of the fucking funniest, best and most enjoyable turnbased old school fallout-esque games i have played so far!

DAS russische Fallout... Wer die ersten beiden Teile von Fallout noch kennt, wird dieses Spiel lieben. Ein paar Jammerlappen werden wohl bemängeln, das vieles nicht erklärt wird und man vieles selbst rausfinden muss. Aber jeder, der sich ein wenig mit RPG- Begriffen auskennt wird sich schnell zurecht finden. Damals war Souls Like noch Standard in Punkto Tutorial und Questmarker, Schwierigkeitsgrad und allem eigentlich^^
Edit: Habe ich schon erwähnt, dass ich die Rüstung des Qriginal Stalkers Alexander Kaidanovsky, himself aus dem alten Soviet Sci-Fi Film gefunden habe? So geil, was die hier alles reinballern. Obwohl, eigentlich ist das bei dem Teil auch ein Muss.
Manche Quests gehen zwar nicht so tief, wie man sich es wünschen würde oder im großen und ganzen kann man, wie in Fallout auch Quests auf mehreren Wegen lösen, der Böse sein oder versuchen das Ödland ein wenig lebenswerter zu machen. Es gibt viele Anspielung auf eben Fallout, Stalker und Lovecraft und Co. Ich habe schon mithilfe des Buches Unausprechliche Kulte ( Ja, das von Friedrich von Junzt) einen Shogoten beschworen und ein armes Schwein gefunden, welches von Nyarlathotep oder vom gelben König gejagt wurde und bin gerade dabei Randolph Carter bzw Rudolf Karpov aus seiner Traumsuche nach dem unbekannten Kadath heraus zu helfen. Auch fand ich ein Buch der Golden Goblin Press- Apropos Schwein, manche Schweine haben wohl Animal Farm gelesen und glauben, sie seinen gleicher als andere Tiere. Man kann sogar die Rakete abschießen, die in Fallout 1 The Glow erschafft, auch wenns zeitlich nicht ganz hinhaut, schon ganz geil. Ich habe sogar den Banküberfall One-Liner aus "They Live" im Kampf gerufen.
Die Macher müssen noch ältere Säcke, wie ich sein, aber Hut ab. Und hütet euch vor BBQ´s und Postboten...

Review
Atom RPG is a throwback not only to old top own RPG´s but rather a direct fallout clone. The game shows a lot of different aspects and has its own identity but shares similar ideas.
Gameplay
Your character can place specific stat points towards their general aspects.
There are Strength, Endurance, Attention, Luck, Charisma, Intelligence and Dexterity.
All of these have more or less also uses in dialogue boxes, some are rare like luck. Dexterity is the most important aspect as with enough dexterity you can fire your weapon twice in a round. Intelligence is mostly useful for their dialogue checks and increased amount of level up points you can spend on the other direct abilities. My mistake was to ignore endurance a bit, even with average endurance enemies could one shot you in a round due to the high burst fire damage of automatic weapons
Therefore, the whole system is basically the same gameplay structure of the original fallout. You also have the average luck dump or luck max character build. Although in this game the strongest weapons are expensive Russian machine guns. Skilling in pistols or snipers, is not really recommended. Even when using critical hit builds or aiming at specific body parts its just inferior to any automatic weapon. You use melee until you can finally get a hunting rifle with enough ammo so you can later switch to a smg again if you have the ammo to save money for the high tier armour or a weapon. It’s harder to keep up the ammo supply for those weapons rather than finding or buying the gun in the first place. There is only a single real weapons trader who will constantly change what he has so I had to camp three days to reset his store. You can also later find an old car and repair it! The progress feels absolutely great. Until I come talk about the combat.
There is no cover in this game only line of sight. I often encounter enemies and they kill you or a party member in the first round as encounters force you into bad positions from the get go. Ah party members are a thing, you can send them orders and equip them, some even have dialogue, but they are all lame. And there are only 4 of them. If you win you need to go on a trip to the city and try to minmax your profits. People with money are incredibly hard to find. Traders, especially the gun shop owner gives you prices that are sometimes so low you would need to sell the same weapon 6-10 times to be able to afford his. Also, the non availability of all loot in the store sucks. Just forces you to advance time 3 days to hope that they have something useful.
The final encounter for example is in a tight room with no cover. The only solution is to run away, cheese the enemies around a corner and either stand Infront of it so their teammates will shoot each other in the back, or run back and let them come out on by one to spread them down with the MG. I thought a sniper and pistol or melee would have made for a versatile combat system, but they are useless. You also cannot control teammates directly.
At last, the game has barely any dungeons. There are around 5. All very short aside one bunker that felt more interesting due to actually having enemies available. Otherwise, it ends with a stalemate and you can either let people go or just fight them. The end fight too. Its optional. You can be a pacifist throughout the game.
The quests on the other hand are most of the time very well written. The whole game is just a journey. The end goal is something that is the least interesting part here. Luckily the quests are usually fun and unique, as the whole combat wasnt that fun to me, probably one of the most unbalanced rpgs in this genre.
Story
Atom features a more realistic post nuclear scenario where an event in Germany made the cold war hot. The game is now set in 2005. There are some mutated creatures, but mostly big versions of their animal parts. Mostly you fight human enemies. It’s a bit more realistic and has only a very tiny amount of future tech. You never receive a plasma rifle or fight an army of robots or the like. It has science fiction elements, but those are rare making it more interesting. You can even have relationships, flirt with some people or randomly destroy a further questline by killing enemies in dialogue for no reason.
The downside is the amount of useless dialogue; you can ask every character their name and other filler dialogue like rumors. Some even offer new quests that way, or an xp bonus. Therefore, you want to talk to everyone, despite them offering often boring dialogue.
Sound
Very atmospherical and gets the russian vibe along. But its not in any way that memorable It does its job but doesn’t give you an impact like stalker, fallout 1/2 or even new vegas did.
Graphics
Decent, works. Rooms are full of stuff, areas are recognizable and memorable, Does its job and the unique real human painting portrait style gives the game a good charm. Hud menu and everything fits the tone. Runs on any potato.
Conclusion/TL;DR
Atom RPG is the closest to a fallout 1/2 sequel we have. It has a ton of flaws, the combat system is worse than in fallout 1 and 2, especially the combat encounter structure. Its serviceable, but makes everything around it tedious by making you loot and manage your loot most of the time. Ammo is hard to get, enemies don’t drop enough ammo that combat sometimes is often uneconomical. The game is full of tedium but also charm. Its a more credible and realistic post ww3 rpg, where the experience is less about combat or the story but rather how you build your character and make decisions in the worlds stories. It’s still a lot behind fallout yet I enjoyed the game and I think its decent. Good. I would even recommend it, but barely. Just warn people that the combat is awful. There are better rpgs in this kind, like wasteland 2.

Irgendwo zwischen S.t.a.l.k.e.r. , Fallout und Project Zomboid

Erinnert an Fallout 1 und 2 ist aber nicht wirklich wie Fallout 1 und 2. Ist gut. ^ ^

Cool game

6/10