CompletionAchievement Counter Used

: 100%

Playtime+1hr Footage Capture Excluded

: 17 hrs

Achievements:
23/23

+18

Showcasing the fight scenes, food distribution, and train operation in the trailer, as if they were the main focus of this game, is rather dishonest in my opinion. Despite being marketed as a "survival" game, The Final Station is a completely linear experience, with one preset progression path and no dynamic elements requiring adaptation.

Expending resources is unnecessary when dying simply brings you back to the last checkpoint, and quitting to the main menu miraculously brings dead passengers back to life. The game outright refuses to sacrifice exposition for better gameplay; there are no hard failstates to punish you for wasting resources, or neglecting to collect them in the first place.

Every step you take to ensures the well-being of your train conductor and passengers is pointless. For example, their hunger and health magically stop ticking down when you're away from the train, with the store page leading you to believe you'd actively need to find supplies in order to prevent this sort of deterioration.

Supplies are placed in preset locations, with the very same price-tag attached, in the very same order in each playthrough. Their prices don't make sense - a bottle of whiskey can cost $16, while a single newspaper, or a single bullet cost $50. They are directly added to account balance, unless they are one of the 4 things you need to craft ammo and medkits, which you find in abundance either way. Neither crafted item is mandatory for the playthrough.

Keeping the train "operational" only benefits the passengers, who are meant to provide flavor for the story but are secondary to it in every possible regard. The main character (train conductor) does not require food to survive and fully heals between the stages, making both food and medkits redundant to the player.

Saving passengers thus only benefits other passengers; you buy food and medkits with their fare which, again, the character does not need. You read their chatter and drop them off a couple of stations later. There is no benefit to saving them, neither story-wise (different endings, for example) nor gameplay-wise (new items or weapons).

If you talk to a person and they are eligible to ride the train, they simply board it. They have no distinct skills, qualities, abilities that would prove useful to the conductor, or aid with survivability.

The option to prioritize passengers based on their usefulness to the player is reserved for the DLC. There is no way to distinguish between static NPCs and actual train passengers; these also stay the same between consequent playthroughs, no randomization.

You can't decide which cargo to attach to your train, or which train station to go to next, even though they're all intertwined. The map interface is meant to provide lore for each station - you don't actually get to decide which location to raid. You can't even see how far you're into the story, because the path you take through these stations is arbitrary.

The cargo you carry directly corresponds to what kind of malfunctions the train has. Since cargo is obtained in a linear fashion, with each container playing a different part in the story, the order of malfunctions also remains the same. That said, multiple parts cannot malfunction at once, making train management more of a nuisance than a challenge. If a malfunction is left alone the train will simply stop, no resource is put at stake.

I expected to have to juggle multiple problems that continue to pile on a la Papers, Please. I also had the impression you'd have to manage fuel, speed or power, perhaps upgrade, fix or switch trains eventually - this is because the first terminal panel shows the train's system power consumption and speed. As it turns out, that panel serves no purpose. I was hoping I'd be able to decide which location to see next, with some locations containing more or less resources based on dynamic elements.

None of that ever happens. The story decides what to take and where to go, and this does not change during consecutive playthroughs. The store page also gives an impression there is a natural day-night cycle that could affect monster activity, passenger quantity, or loot quality, however weather and time of day are static to each stage.

Each stage plays the exact same way. You need a code for the Blocker to get to the next station, but the person in charge is missing. There are 3 layers to each level, with the main entrance locked and player having to "find" their way around it. This is usually done by climbing to the second floor, finding the code along with the key to the main entrance, then backtracking to the entrance (or unlocking a third layer as a shortcut) to get back to your train.

Throughout each stage you encounter what can only be described as zombies. The game insists they aren't, but for all intents and purposes that's what they really are. They don't drop any loot and there is no real reason to engage with them. Each of the six zombie types uses the exact same AI - move slowly towards the player, go away when they break LoS.

Out of the six, only two cannot be engaged in melee range - with the rest easily "cheesable" by moving backwards ever so slightly and mashing the melee button until they go down. Your own attacks always outreach any and all hostile attacks, so nothing in the game ever poses a threat to you, unless it's a scripted event.

As a result, shooting things is not necessary. The player can throw objects at enemies, but that is not necessary either. When these objects appear in front of locked doors you know combat is going to be involved, which kills any tension and pre-emptively destroys any horror elements the devs may have sought to implement into a level. Breaking walls is also done through melee - you can execute a charged attack that deals 4 times the damage, however it doesn't activate half the time, and it is faster to attack 4 times anyway.

There are no human combatants, at least not in the main story. This is surprising considering there is an ongoing end-of-the-world event, with the train being one of the few safe means left to survive it. Despite being held at gunpoint multiple times, the PC does not meet other humans intent on killing them.

I can only assume coding competent AI to achieve this (or making the combat system more engaging to address this) proved to be too bothersome for the Do My Best team.

The story of the game is convoluted, its conclusion is abrupt and disappointing. The world is going through the "second visitation" event, an arrival from a presumably much smarter alien race. This race sent down pods with gas meant to endow humans with super-intelligence. Humans incapable of containing said knowledge turn into hollow husks, aggressive to other human beings. The ones who do turn, but manage to maintain their form, are set on spreading this knowledge further, toppling the government that opposes it.

Said government - the Council - attempts to preserve the unturned human race by building the Guardian. The Guardian is a giant mech meant to launch into space in order to deal with the alien threat. The train conductor is tasked with supplying the parts for this Guardian, while bringing as many passengers with them to the shelter as possible. Despite its successful launch the Advent cult intercepts it, dooming the human race to enslavement.

Most details written here are not explained throughout the game, and many of its intricacies are either lost or left up to player interpretation. The MC never speaks, appearing just as one-sided as the NPCs they encounter.

Most notes and dialogue are riddled with spelling mistakes, grammatical errors, and poor sentence structuring; it is a shame the devs couldn't bother hiring an English-speaking proofreader for a game that mainly revolves around its written text.

What might be even more shameful is that the devs are charging additional money for a DLC that continues this story. It is shameful the game needs to be restarted in order to apply a 16:9 resolution, that the settings menu is no longer accessible once the game begins, that you cannot return to a specific act to make sure you've collected all resources but rather have to restart the entire game to go back to a previous level. This is too shoddily crafted for a $15 title. I simply cannot in good faith recommend it.