A standalone expansion of Shadowrun Returns
BERLIN. The Flux-State: a stable anarchy enforced by an ever-shifting coalition of megacorps, political factions, and savvy power players. A place where almost anything goes and the right connections can be the difference between success and starvation. Dangerous jobs abound and there’s no better place to earn a quick payday – provided you live long enough to spend it. For you and your team of battle-scarred runners, it’s just another day in the Free City of Berlin. But a new threat is rising, one that could mean untold chaos and devastation. The only clue: whispers of the DRAGONFALL, a long-forgotten event from the earliest days of the Awakened world. As you find yourself drawn into a maze of veiled dangers and strange machinations, you will come face-to-face with a grim spectre of the past… and alter the course of Berlin’s future.
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I keep trying to give this game a million tries, but I never finish it. No clue why!
Shadowrun is my favorite Cyberpunk rpg, its gameplay can feel basic compared to games like XCOM but it does a servicable job and doesnt take away from the experience. What the game does well however is its writing and story, the characters are written in a reactive way that surprised me all the way through.
If you have an itch for a Cyberpunk isometric rpg this is the one.
If you have an itch for a Cyberpunk isometric rpg this is the one.
the raised stakes of dragonfall's excellently paced epic plot is not totally unwelcome, for the shadowrunner nor the player.
The only sin of this game is that it might make you want to try playing the Shadowrun tabletop
It's pretty good, all things considered. The combat gameplay is fun, even if it feels like the hit rate on attacks is low at the beginning. The writing is good, i really like the companions you get, and their side missions are the ones i enjoyed the most, specially the hacker one. The final mission has enough variance to replay the game one or two times, or at least change up the dialogue options you choose to see what happens, i won't spoil, the overall narrative is also great, love the way they set up the final mission.
Onto the negatives. Hacking is super lame, they decided to go the megaman battle network way of dealing with the internet, but with the same combat gameplay as the flesh and bone counterpart, only differences are your stats and your buyable spells. There are no mage companions, so you'll always be missing that role in your party if you decide to go another route. Speaking of which, playing as a hacker here feels very lame, mainly because your other hacker will always be leagues better than you and get his best equipment and components and stuff for free in between missions. There's a "middle point" in the story where the main narrative kinda stops to a halt and becomes an episodic mission parade where you're just doing odd jobs for cash, stopping the pacing dead in it's tracks. Also, there are almost zero ways to resolve situations with anything other than direct violence, or the occasional dialogue that skips said combat sometimes, but not always. There are also no stealth mechanics, and in the sections that tries (emphasis on "tries") to have stealth segments, it's just regular overworld walking but with people walking in patterns, where you initiate regular combat when caught. I have other spoiler-filled complaints regarding just how little we see of our actions in the epilogue, but yeah. Also most of the art is ugly as sin, you can count the exceptions with one hand, thankfully some of them being your companions.
In conclusion, it has some flaws, but it's definitely worth at least one playthrough
Onto the negatives. Hacking is super lame, they decided to go the megaman battle network way of dealing with the internet, but with the same combat gameplay as the flesh and bone counterpart, only differences are your stats and your buyable spells. There are no mage companions, so you'll always be missing that role in your party if you decide to go another route. Speaking of which, playing as a hacker here feels very lame, mainly because your other hacker will always be leagues better than you and get his best equipment and components and stuff for free in between missions. There's a "middle point" in the story where the main narrative kinda stops to a halt and becomes an episodic mission parade where you're just doing odd jobs for cash, stopping the pacing dead in it's tracks. Also, there are almost zero ways to resolve situations with anything other than direct violence, or the occasional dialogue that skips said combat sometimes, but not always. There are also no stealth mechanics, and in the sections that tries (emphasis on "tries") to have stealth segments, it's just regular overworld walking but with people walking in patterns, where you initiate regular combat when caught. I have other spoiler-filled complaints regarding just how little we see of our actions in the epilogue, but yeah. Also most of the art is ugly as sin, you can count the exceptions with one hand, thankfully some of them being your companions.
In conclusion, it has some flaws, but it's definitely worth at least one playthrough
To this day, no RPG has made me feel an overwhelming sense of dread the way this game's antagonists instilled in me at the end of the first act. To this day no game has made me truly feel the shift from being clueless, powerless, and on the back foot to gaining the upper hand, having an army at my back, and giving the powers that be the boot up their ass they deserve the way this game has. To this day, I have not fallen in love with my party in an RPG the way I have the characters in Shadowrun: Dragonfall.
Rarely in an RPG has a game's reactivity rewarded me (or punished me) for my narrative and mechanical decisions the way that this game does. The player character arc in this game is unmatched. The transition from being the new kid on the block to the Kreuzbasar truly feeling like home is something that I haven't seen any other RPG manage to successfully replicate to this degree, which I think is a product of this game's unflinching, emphatic focus on hope in the face of overwhelming odds.
This game is secretly one of the greatest computer RPGs ever made and tragically, the world simply doesn't know. Discover it for yourself.
Rarely in an RPG has a game's reactivity rewarded me (or punished me) for my narrative and mechanical decisions the way that this game does. The player character arc in this game is unmatched. The transition from being the new kid on the block to the Kreuzbasar truly feeling like home is something that I haven't seen any other RPG manage to successfully replicate to this degree, which I think is a product of this game's unflinching, emphatic focus on hope in the face of overwhelming odds.
This game is secretly one of the greatest computer RPGs ever made and tragically, the world simply doesn't know. Discover it for yourself.