ATOM RPG quickly captivated many players with its deep dive into a post-nuclear Soviet wasteland, drawing clear inspiration from classic Fallout games. When Trudograd emerged as a standalone expansion, later evolving into a full-fledged sequel, fans were eager to return to this harsh yet compelling world. For those diving into Trudograd, especially newcomers intrigued by the survival elements often associated with post-apocalyptic settings and wondering about game mechanics like “Atom Rpg Eat Food”, this review offers a comprehensive look at what to expect. Having spent considerable time exploring Trudograd, I’ve compiled my thoughts to help you decide if this game is worth your time, and to address whether sustenance and food consumption are significant aspects of the gameplay experience.
Navigating the vast world map in Atom RPG Trudograd, players must consider every aspect of survival, including resource management.
ATOM RPG Trudograd isn’t just an expansion; it’s a substantial continuation of the ATOM RPG saga. Think of it like Baldur’s Gate II to Baldur’s Gate – a more refined and focused experience building upon the foundations of its predecessor. While ATOM RPG offered a sprawling journey across the Soviet wastes, Trudograd centers its narrative within and around a single, miraculously untouched city in the East. This shift in focus allows for a richer, more detailed urban environment, reminiscent of moving from the open world of Baldur’s Gate to the city-centric Baldur’s Gate II.
For anyone who fondly remembers the isometric RPGs of the late 90s, particularly Fallout 1 and 2, Trudograd will feel instantly familiar. The core systems are strikingly similar, with the most notable difference being the absence of a karma system and reputation mechanics in Trudograd. However, this doesn’t detract from the overall experience; instead, it streamlines the gameplay, allowing players to focus on the intricate quests and character interactions. If you relished the atmosphere and gameplay of classic Fallout or the original ATOM RPG, Trudograd is undoubtedly designed for you. Even if you’re new to the ATOM universe, Trudograd is accessible without prior knowledge of the first game, much like Baldur’s Gate II. However, experiencing ATOM RPG first will enrich your appreciation for the numerous improvements and refinements implemented in Trudograd.
General Story and World of Trudograd
The imposing Trudograd gate, a symbol of the city’s resilience and the gateway to its labor-driven society.
The story of Trudograd unfolds in 2007, two years after the conclusion of ATOM RPG, directly picking up from the first game’s cliffhanger ending. Players once again assume the role of an agent dispatched by the ATOM organization, tasked with a perilous mission that leads them to the eastern city of Trudograd, aptly named “City of Labor.” This city, constructed from typical Soviet-era commieblocks and fortified by a massive wall and grand gate, stands as an anomaly – untouched by nuclear devastation. Adding a unique architectural layer, some residents have built homes atop rooftops, creating the “Second Tier,” a society above the streets. The city’s location in the East also introduces the Gwon-Jo, Chinese merchants who control the docks, bringing with them elements of organized crime, drugs, and protection rackets, expanding the game’s lore beyond purely Russian influences. For the elite, the “Seventh Heaven,” a snow-globe-like structure perched on high-rises, represents opulence and seclusion, becoming a central location in the main quest.
Trudograd’s narrative setup echoes Fallout: New Vegas, with a prominent pre-war city spared from destruction and a hydroelectric dam supplying its power. The threat of the Northern barbarians mirrors the factions of New Vegas, and the city’s corrupt governance further enhances this parallel. The reason for Trudograd’s survival remains ambiguous, with rumors suggesting a miraculous interception of American nukes.
Even in the outskirts of Trudograd, the struggle for survival is evident, as seen in this encounter with a goat herder who has lost his livestock.
From the outset, rumors of a Northerner invasion led by Syoma Voronok permeate the city outskirts. Within Trudograd, tensions are palpable, with lynch mobs targeting Northerner residents. The game masterfully plays with uncertainty regarding the invasion’s legitimacy, presenting conflicting viewpoints from merchants, city guards, and propagandists like Aqil Pugachev. This ambiguity keeps players engaged, questioning the true nature of the Northerner threat until it becomes undeniable. By the game’s climax, the invasion is in full swing, offering players the choice to side with the city defenders or join the pillaging Northerners, adding significant replayability and moral complexity.
The quest for the OR-1 Railgun drives the main storyline, promising a powerful solution to a looming threat.
The central quest revolves around locating a pre-war railgun, believed to be housed in the Invertor Factory within Trudograd. This weapon is deemed crucial for neutralizing a threat revealed at the end of ATOM RPG. The questline effectively guides players through Trudograd, uncovering side quests and even casting doubt on the railgun’s necessity. Upon discovering the factory’s demolition, the quest shifts to infiltrating the Seventh Heaven for answers. Here, the main quest branches into two mutually exclusive paths: siding with the city police or the underground revolutionaries, both aiming to secure documents for Seventh Heaven access. An “Outlaw” path also exists, allowing for a more independent, albeit potentially less quest-rich, playthrough. However, the Seventh Heaven itself proves surprisingly anticlimactic upon entry, feeling sparsely populated and lacking the opulence suggested by its exterior and reputation.
The chaos of the Northern invasion engulfs Trudograd, presenting players with dire choices and intense combat scenarios.
The branching main quest and varied side quest resolutions significantly boost replayability. Dialogues and quest outcomes are often influenced by character stats and skills, allowing for diverse playthrough styles. Strong characters can intimidate, while charismatic ones can persuade, and so on. The main quest lacks urgency, encouraging exploration of side content like a pirate island, further enriching the game world.
Hexogen, a returning companion, injects humor and his unique, often skewed, worldview into dialogues.
Companions are fewer in Trudograd compared to ATOM RPG, but their roles are impactful. Depending on the chosen main quest path, players gain either the police lieutenant Razin or the revolutionary Blaze, both initially pistol-focused. While companion quests are absent, they actively participate in dialogues and may react to player choices, even leaving the party if moral boundaries are crossed. Razin, for instance, disapproves of aiding the Northerners. Fan-favorite Hexogen returns, offering his characteristic humor and versatile combat skills, capable in unarmed combat and rifles from the start.
The game is filled with humorous references and absurd situations, adding to its unique charm.
Humor is a prominent feature of Trudograd, woven into dialogues and scenarios. It ranges from subtle conflicts over beetroots versus turnips to bizarre situations like a rich man staging mannequin displays to torment his neighbors. Absurdist humor shines in moments like intervening in a vigilante act to free a mass murderer for a trivial debt. References abound, from obvious nods to Breaking Bad to more obscure allusions and, of course, Fallout homages. This humor, reminiscent of Fallout 2, is a core part of ATOM’s charm, and Trudograd continues this tradition effectively.
Players can encounter and intervene in morally ambiguous situations, like this vigilante scene, shaping their own narrative.
Occult and Lovecraftian elements are also present, extending to encounters with fish people, further diversifying the game’s content. Overall, Trudograd expands the ATOM universe effectively, building on its Soviet wasteland lore. While it may not evoke the same groundbreaking fascination as the original Fallout for those who experienced it in their youth, it carves its own niche. The ATOM organization itself, a remnant of pre-war military science, might echo factions like the Desert Rangers or Brotherhood of Steel, but Trudograd distinguishes itself through memorable locations and characters, setting it apart from other recent RPGs like the Wasteland series. ATOM’s non-western perspective allows for storytelling that might be considered taboo elsewhere, free from contemporary political agendas, which some players may find refreshing.
Gameplay Mechanics and Combat
The familiar combat grid system, a tribute to classic isometric RPGs, emphasizes tactical positioning and turn-based strategy.
Trudograd retains the gameplay mechanics of Fallout 2, offering a nostalgic experience with minor enhancements. The combat system remains turn-based, with action points governing actions, and options for single shots, bursts, and aimed attacks. Companions act independently but can be given basic commands. Combat primarily involves bandits, mobs, animals, and mutants. However, a significant drawback is the lack of challenging encounters. For melee-focused characters, truly difficult fights are rare. Even for weaker builds, companion support often trivializes combat, making the game generally easy.
Battles, such as this defense against Northerners at the dam, can feature diverse enemies, including wildlife like bears.
Enemy equipment often feels underpowered, which, in a city setting like Trudograd, might be lore-appropriate but reduces combat challenge. Enemy AI is simplistic, lacking tactical depth, further contributing to the ease of combat. While dialogues and quests are rich, the scarcity of stimulating combat encounters is a notable flaw.
Random encounters populate the world map, but often offer the option to avoid combat, sometimes too easily.
Avoiding combat is also surprisingly easy, even on Expert difficulty. Skills like Survival, Speechcraft, or Stealth allow evasion of most random encounters. Oddly, random encounters often don’t initiate combat immediately, requiring players to search for enemies on the map. This can lead to situations where escaping combat is simpler than engaging, especially when rewards are minimal.
The revamped perk system, now skill-based and tiered, offers more strategic character development choices.
A major improvement is the redesigned perk system (Abilities). Instead of a linear perk tree, perks are grouped by associated skills and tiered by cost and power. This skill-based perk system, with increasing costs for higher tiers, provides a more intuitive and strategic character progression compared to ATOM RPG’s sometimes restrictive perk tree.
The maximum skill points have been raised to 300 from 200, mirroring Fallout 2’s progression over Fallout 1, likely to accommodate higher character levels without maxing out all skills too quickly. However, starting at level 15 still allows for near-maxed weapon skills and relevant perks from the outset, contributing to the game’s overall ease, especially in combat.
Companion skill and perk allocation can feel unclear. Weapon skills, First Aid, and Lockpick are generally useful, while others, like Speechcraft for companions, are less so. The effectiveness of perks boosting aimed shots for companions is also ambiguous. Clearer skill and perk descriptions tailored to companions would be beneficial, or perhaps removing redundant perks altogether.
Traders and vendors populate Trudograd, offering goods and services, sometimes with humorous interactions.
Character stats remain capped at 10, but items and consumables can temporarily boost them. Strategic use of consumables like coffee, cologne, and joints allows players to pass stat checks, sometimes trivially. The abundance and stacking nature of consumables, like cologne, can feel unrealistic and further diminish the game’s challenge. Rare quest rewards offer permanent stat boosts via syringes, but these are limited. While stat-boosting items offer convenience, they contribute to the game’s ease, suggesting a rebalance might be warranted, perhaps favoring humorous consequences for failed checks over complete roadblocks, akin to Disco Elysium.
The cold Russian nights add a survival element, though warmth and food are readily available in Trudograd.
Radiation is scarce in Trudograd, but survival elements include hunger and cold. However, food and warmth sources are so plentiful that these mechanics rarely pose a challenge. Food items are abundant, and burning barrels are ubiquitous, turning survival mechanics into almost negligible concerns. This abundance effectively makes the Survival skill, especially perks that extend food effects, less valuable. The “Bloodthirsty Ogre” trait, which enhances food harvesting from human corpses, becomes largely pointless in this context. Even food items with negative stat effects, like cheese and onions, are unnecessary to consume due to the oversupply of better alternatives. Making food and warmth scarcer could significantly enhance the survival aspects and gameplay depth, making skills like Survival and traits like Bloodthirsty Ogre more meaningful.
Food items are abundant in Trudograd, sometimes leading to humorous situations, but rarely posing a true survival challenge.
Overall, Trudograd is an easy game. Consumable stat boosts, easily defeated enemies, and trivial survival mechanics contribute to this. Even “Expert” difficulty feels more like “Easy.” While a “Survival” difficulty mode with permadeath exists, the low frequency of death makes it somewhat redundant.
Weapon modifications, like bigger clips or better sights, are a welcome addition, governed by the Tinkering skill. Attachments are common loot or purchasable, incentivizing weapon customization. The crafting system, also Tinkering-based, is present but less compelling due to the abundance of loot. In a more challenging, resource-scarce game, crafting could become a more vital and engaging mechanic.
Power armor makes a grand entrance in Trudograd, offering significant combat advantages and a distinct visual style.
Soviet power armor debuts in Trudograd, a diesel-fueled, customizable suit. It offers a powerful, clunky, and noisy experience, reminiscent of Bioshock’s Big Daddies. Upgrades and modifications further enhance its capabilities, requiring diesel fuel to operate. While powerful, the armor’s noise and slower animations can become slightly tiresome over time, but this accurately reflects the nature of power armor. This implementation of power armor sets a high bar for future Fallout games, potentially inspiring projects like the fan-made Project Van Buren.
Bombagun, Trudograd’s in-game card game, offers strategic diversions and a unique form of entertainment.
Forget Caravan; Trudograd introduces Bombagun, an engaging in-game card game described as a strategic resource management game. Despite chance being a significant factor, Bombagun is surprisingly addictive and fun. Players can challenge four “grand-masters” across Trudograd to become the ultimate champion. While winning is relatively easy, the game is enjoyable. Later in the game, players can assist Bombagun’s creator, adding a narrative layer to this mini-game.
Trudograd forgoes voice acting, except for Russian lines from NPCs upon dialogue initiation, reminiscent of Baldur’s Gate’s immersive ambient voice lines. This choice is appreciated by players who prefer faster reading and find full voice acting tedious. Fallout’s selective voice acting for key characters with talking heads struck a good balance, enhancing atmosphere without slowing down gameplay. Trudograd’s lack of voice acting isn’t a detriment.
Narrated sequences, like this dream sequence, are present, but the American narrator may feel out of place in the Soviet setting.
However, narrated segments, like the campfire introduction and CYOA sequences, feature an American narrator, which feels somewhat incongruous in a Soviet wasteland setting. A narrator with a Russian accent would have enhanced immersion, drawing inspiration from games like STALKER or Red Alert 3. The English translation quality is high, with only minor, quickly patched issues. The game features reactive world elements, with consequences of player actions unfolding over time, similar to Fred in Fallout 2’s Den. However, more reactivity is desired in certain quests. Surprisingly, fetch quests are minimal in Trudograd, a departure from ATOM RPG. Map traversal and NPC movement speeds can feel slow at times, and a game speed adjustment option, like in Pillars of Eternity, would be a welcome convenience. Save game naming is also missing, making save management less intuitive.
Graphics and Visuals
Trudograd’s graphics are a significant leap forward, especially the stunning outdoor environments and weather effects.
Graphically, Trudograd represents a major improvement over ATOM RPG. The visuals are stunning, particularly the outdoor environments, snowy landscapes, and harsh winter nights. Comparing Trudograd to Wasteland 3, which uses the same engine and features a winter setting, Trudograd, despite its indie development and smaller budget, often looks superior.
The toggleable isometric mode provides a classic RPG perspective, enhancing nostalgia and strategic overview.
Trudograd, like ATOM RPG, includes a toggleable isometric mode, locking the camera to a classic isometric view. While technically trimetric, the isometric view is effective and nostalgic. Camera rotation is allowed, snapping to four directions. In confined spaces, visibility can be an issue, and a Fallout-style visibility circle or transparency for obstructing walls would be beneficial. The game also offers a standard 3D camera for those who prefer it. The camera implementation in Trudograd surpasses that of Wasteland 2 and 3, despite InXile’s larger budgets and resources, highlighting ATOM Team’s technical achievements.
Music and Sound Design
The music in Trudograd serves as soothing ambient background audio. Memorable musical pieces include the Bombagun mini-game theme and the accordion music at the docks. While not as instantly iconic as Fallout 1 & 2’s soundtracks, the music effectively sets the atmosphere. Combat music intensifies during the Northerner invasion, heightening tension. Like ATOM RPG, Trudograd features an old song on the main menu, establishing the game’s tone. Many players consider Trudograd’s music an improvement over the first game, effectively enhancing the overall experience.
Final Verdict
The Northern invasion serves as a climactic event, testing the city’s defenses and the player’s allegiances.
Returning to the Soviet post-apocalypse in Trudograd is a delightful experience, continuing the narrative thread from ATOM RPG. While the main storyline isn’t fully resolved, securing the railgun sets the stage for future installments, hinting at its crucial role in ATOM 2. The diesel power armor is a fantastic addition, with its customization and impactful presence. The game’s structure, offering mutually exclusive quest paths, encourages multiple playthroughs with different character builds to explore all content.
Despite the harsh world, Trudograd is populated with memorable and often humorous characters.
Trudograd excels in dialogues, quests, and world exploration, with engaging writing and humor. However, the lack of difficulty in combat and skill checks can lead to occasional boredom. The potential of challenging encounters, like the Battle Robots, is sometimes undermined by easy workarounds. The final boss fight, in particular, feels anticlimactic and too easy compared to memorable boss encounters in classic RPGs or even the original ATOM RPG.
Vehicles and travel add to the post-apocalyptic atmosphere, though map traversal can sometimes feel slow.
For replayability and increased engagement, ATOM Team should significantly ramp up the difficulty. Difficulty levels should offer distinct experiences, with “Expert” truly challenging experienced players. Increasing enemy numbers, improving AI tactics, and making survival mechanics more impactful, especially in higher difficulty modes, would enhance the game. A “Survival Mode” with scarce resources could make skills like Tinkering, Barter, Gambling, and Survival more valuable. To address the ease even for high-level starting characters, skill progression could be made more challenging at higher levels. Optional time limits for main quests could also add urgency and difficulty.
Despite its ease, ATOM Team has created a remarkable game in Trudograd, arguably their best yet. The improvements in graphics and perk system are significant. A remaster of ATOM RPG to match Trudograd’s polish would be highly desirable. With ongoing updates and a planned ModKit, Trudograd’s future looks promising, offering a rich and enjoyable RPG experience, even if the “atom rpg eat food” aspect is less about survival struggle and more about readily available sustenance in this unique post-apocalyptic world.
