• A post-apocalyptic adventure about travelling a dying world on a train. •
I bought this game expecting some survival horror experience based on that -being in a moving homebase and maintaining it, making stops to scavenge supplies, to find survivors, all while fighting zombies along the way. Maybe something similar to This War of Mine, where you get a map with various locations, with various danger levels and interact with them because you need supplies to survive, and it is also how you get the story moving. What I got instead is a fully linear, barebones sidescroller.
• Maintain your train in operating condition and craft valuable items from the resources you scavenge
Scavenge for loot at stations and craft useful supplies. •
The "train maintenance" mechanic is, as I've seen someone else describe it, a mildly annoying game of whack-a-mole. Basically there's like three types of levers -one of them will be malfunctioning on each ride, you just camp it and keep the numerical value in the green range with a click. That's the full extent of "maintenance" the train requires, no resources or anything like that.
• Pick up survivors along the way, gaining perks (and hindrances) for your troubles. •
The "survival" mechanics are limited to survivors you pick up, in the form of two bars - Health and Hunger. During the linear train rides, you just drag 1 Food or 1 Medicine to whichever survivor needs it and that's about it, that's the extent of that mechanic. If either bar depletes you don't get a grace period or anything, they just drop dead instantly, you hover over them while holding a button and they disappear while you get some cash. I also have no clue what the devs mean by perks and hindrances, as far as I could tell there's no such thing in the game. If there is, it is poorly communicated if at all.
• A story that goes through 5 chapters, with large inhabited stations at the end of each one.
Sell your loot at inhabited stations for useful upgrades to your weapons. •
"Large inhabited stations" with just filler NPCs who you can get a text bubble from once and even that doesn't happen with every one of them, you also usually get a Food, Medicine and Ammo shop and of course you progress the story, that's all there is to the large inhabited stations. "Useful upgrades" like extended gun mags, which I never even came close to needing, that are also seemingly given by just keeping certain survivors alive until the next large inhabited stations. Yeah...
• Don't expect to shoot your way through the crowds of infected. Supplies and ammo are very limited. •
I did not even notice there was a crafting mechanic until the very end of the game and finding it was by total accident. I don't know if I missed a tutorial or if the game just doesn't tell you there is one -in the main terminal of the train, one of the icons you click brings up a crafting menu. Still managed to clear the game with 0 issues, with a ton of leftover supplies and ammo even though I was blasting through everything in my way, so that should tell you how relevant the bit I quoted is.
• The real question is whether or not you'll help the survivors get to their destinations.... or let them die and loot their bodies. •
Other than missing the cash rewards there are literally zero repercussions to just ignoring and letting the survivors die, doesn't affect the story in any way whatsoever, hell the NPCs standing next to them don't even react nor does it affect their rewards. And as I mentioned, the cash rewards are really not a huge deal if you miss them as you can get by in this game so easily by just scavenging as I did.
And then you have the writing. Everything reads like vagueposting in an attempt to be mysterious, didn't do much beyond being serviceable for me.
Overall I can't stress enough just how painfully barebones and linear this game is, as I've already mentioned it is a sidescroller shooter, not a survival horror game by any means. The way the devs describe the game, in my experience at least, is just not what The Final Station is.
If I had to pick things I definitely enjoyed about it, the art style is very nice, there's a fair bit of atmosphere. The overall gameplay is also fine if you are okay with an extremely simplistic game for some mindless action while doing whatever else on your other monitor(s).
I wouldn't recommend it but if you are really curious, maybe grab it on sale.
