Nachdem die Story kurz vor ende doch einen ziemlichen Hänger hatte, ist das Ende auf seine eigene Art und Weise doch ziemlich befriedigend gewesen und es gibt einen schönen Einblick in ein Universum von dem ich zuvor keinerlei Ahnung hatte.

Anhand einer kleinen persönlichen Detektivstory wird dir die ganze Welt drumherum etwas näher gebracht, du lernst etwas über die Probleme in Seattle, ein wenig was über Kultur und Slang und merkst dass du tiefer drinsteckst als du je gedacht hattest.

Leider merkt man dem Spiel an, dass es recht billig ist. Während ich die grafische Darstellung an sich mag, ist die Präsentation abseits davon sehr rudimentär, das UI sehr Handy-esque, alles halt sehr zweckmäßig. Gerade in den XCOM-ähnlichen Kämpfen ist das gelegentlich ein Problem.

Ich fand das Spiel für das was es ist, bzw für die Geschichte die es erzählt, ein Stückchen zu lang. Aber es setzt am Ende dann plötzlich doch noch deutlich mehr in Bewegung als ich vermutet hätte und es endet mit schön bitteren Worten.


War nett, aber ich glaube man ist mit den Nachfolgern besser beraten.
Trotzdem hab ich nun Interesse an merk, irgendwas wirds also richtig gemacht haben.

Forget about the last Shadowrun FPS. That game was a disaster. This HD remake of Shadowrun returns with a great story, but the combat is lacking just a bit. You are basically a runner who watches a tape of your best friend before he died. You suddenly become his insurance collector and need to find his killer. The story is pretty engaging and I was sucked in from the beginning. You basically just follow mission after mission unraveling this mystery.

Of course, you get to pick your class in the beginning. Go from ranged weapons to melee to magic. There’s also a fourth decking ability that makes you stronger during hacking battles. Once you complete some missions you get to The Union which is your underground hideout. You can buy weapons, cybernetic enhancements, magic, first aid, weapons, and various other things. Make sure you take plenty of health with you and stock up on the latest before the next mission. Usually, you have to hire out mercenaries to help you in a fight. I found a majority of the story fairly challenging but later on, it got downright unfair. The biggest issue is the unfair save system. The game is autosave only. The game will only save at the beginning of each level so if you die it’s game over. This is so infuriating towards the end when you have really long and tough fights.

The combat is fairly decent. You can select between ammo types (or magic types), special powers, and items. With this variety, you are sure to win battles. I was just so upset at how often I missed. I could be at point-blank range and I would miss three times in a row. The accuracy and rate you hit enemies seem completely random and I hated that. Decking battles are interesting but boring because they aren’t as deep as regular combat and there are only a few types of enemies. Once you complete the mission in the hacking area you have to run all the way back to the opening. If no one’s out there defending you the enemies and shoot up your body and you can die. That’s really frustrating and it drove me nuts.

I also wish there was more exploration but you’re stuck to where the missions take you. Sure there are a couple of side missions, but you can’t explore anywhere. This is a really interesting world with interesting characters, but you’re limited to where the story takes you. That will turn a lot of RPG fans away, but the entertaining combat and story should keep you for a while. I also wish there were more powerful weapons and armor in the game. Even when I was almost done the same armor from 10 missions ago was the best still. The game is pretty unbalanced, but some may overlook it. The graphics are decent, but nothing special. They won’t make your system sweat.

In the end, Shadowrun is a fun RPG for fans of Fallout and earlier top-down RPGs. The story is great and is a fun murder mystery, but the combat feels too thin and decking just isn’t fun. The real deal breaker here is the unfair and punishing save system, and some may quite early on because of it. If you can stomach the unbalanced gameplay and save system you will be in for a great story.

To nie jest RPG według mojej definicji. Gra się w to trochę jak w przygodówkę, ale bez łączenia przedmiotów i zagadek. Do tego dochodzi taktyczna walka (rzadko, co było dla mnie zaskoczeniem - w sumie pozytywnym). Gra jest do bólu liniowa, a struktura dialogów jest płytka (mam na myśli rozgałęzienia, wykluczające się nawzajem odpowiedzi, etc.). Na plus zasługuje bardzo dobry writing, zarówno opisy jak i dialogi - głównie dla nich grałem. No właśnie - grałem, ale przerwałem, bo trafiłem na dwa bugi, które zepsuły mi całą grę. Jeden to przenikające do świata rzeczywistego programy z Matrixa (Black ICE w pokoju...) i zacinający się tryb walki, a drugi to niemożność wejścia do sieci przy pomocy terminala, który powinien to umożliwiać. Jako że grałem Deckerem, to dla mnie dyskwalifikuje tę grę. W tej chwili jest technicznie spartolona (wystarczy poczytać to co piszą inni użytkownicy, nie trzeba koniecznie mi wierzyć) i jako taka nie zasługuje na rekomendację. Wyobrażam sobie co musieli czuć ludzie, którzy męczyli się z autosavem - ja przynajmniej grę kupiłem dużo później. Gdybym wsparł ten projekt na Kickstarterze, to na pewno bym tego żałował.

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Wróciłem później do gry, udało mi się jakoś obejść bugi. Im dalej, tym gra słabsza, nawet fabuła się spruła i z w miarę ciekawej historii detektywistycznej przeobraziła się w sztampową kalkę z innych produkcji. Bohater, który miał być największym wymiataczem (żyje już 7000 lat, jest nieśmiertelny) okazał się największym gamoniem w drużynie, w końcu po tym jak zginął trzeci raz dałem sobie z nim spokój. Nawiedzał mnie jeszcze zza grobu, bo twórcy chyba nie przewidzieli, że może zginąć i gra traktuje to tak jakby nadal był w drużynie... Dotarłem do finałowej walki, ale po paru próbach sobie odpuściłem. Granie w Shadowruna powinno być karą.

I'm not really a CRPG guy, and I used this game to dip my toes in the genre, since I heard that it's pretty simple and could be a good introduction.

I find that the narrative and especially the atmosphere are pretty compelling. A gloomy, cyberpunk Seattle makes for a good backdrop to an exciting murder mystery. That's where the positives end for me.

I found the overall quality of the game to be pretty cheap. The visuals are kind of uninteresting, and pretty repetitive. The UI is clunky and clearly designed for tablets. The music is just a handful of short (admittedly moody and fitting) tracks that are repeated ad nauseam, which gets really grating in no time. It also seems to be a very linear experience with almost no sidequesting.

Combat seems really uninspired, being basically a less-interesting xcom, and there's very little of it: 6 hours of playtime (almost halfway through according to howlongtobeat.com) and the number of fights my character has been in can be counted on the fingers of two hands).

Overall, this game is a bit too barebones for my liking. I'm still interested in the genre, but I think this title wasn't the right introduction

Simple and relatively linear, Shadowrun Returns shows its age in certain places.

Those things aside, the game is mechanically sound, the writing is clever, the cast—if a little typical—is fun, and the story is unexpectedly compelling.

Definitely worth the bite-sized experience if you have Game Pass.

This review was originally going to go on Steam (hence some wording that I'm too lazy to change), but due to the fact I don't own it and played it through library share, I was unable to post it there. So it goes here. Forgive the text wall.

Ah, man. I wish I could recommend this because there are aspects of this game I do like, but overall I found it obtuse and unpleasant to play. I breezed through the first half of the game and then there's a difficulty spike in the second half so extreme I found myself spending upwards of 30 minutes on each battle and quite frequently having to restart just because RNG fucked me. I believe my issues were build-related, but that's still not good game design, in my opinion, especially since the game's skill system is ... not easy to understand. To be completely transparent, I have not played the original Shadowrun TTRPG; maybe it would be easier to grasp if I had?

One thing I found infuriating is that unlike other isometric RPGs with turn-based systems that I've played, in this game, if your player character goes down, you immediately fail the mission. Considering that whoever gets targeted and how much damage they receive seems to be completely random, this aspect of the game is utterly agonising to deal with. I found myself having to micromanage my PC and making sure he had enough health kits to not take lethal amounts of damage just so I could maybe get through another physically painful fight ten times more difficult than anything from the first act and he still went down quite frequently.

Again, for the record, I have seen people online have wildly different experiences with this wherein they continued to have zero difficulty upon the difficulty spike, but like ... If you get several hours into a game and then the difficulty suddenly and without warning shoots up and you're spending significant amounts of time pulling your hair out over it, that sucks, in my opinion. It's been long enough that I can't remember if this game has a respec, so if it does, my bad. I believe I was also playing on normal/medium difficulty and cannot recall if it was possible to lower it.

Either way, I don't think "your build isn't very good" should completely fuck over an entire playthrough of a game, especially since there's ALWAYS the potential that someone is brand new to the genre. I am not and I struggled.

The story is fine and I really wanted to finish this game because I did find myself engaged, but every time I think about going back to this, I feel my soul withering. If you do decide to get this game, make sure your PC has a metric shit ton of health, because fights will be an absolute slog otherwise.

Entertaining but pretty overrated. The kind of XCOM-inspired combat where your dumbass soldier will miss with 0% obstruction and perfect line of sight, which is just annoying, and the writing is just Gibson rewritten. I forget which is which of these games, but one of them was just the plot for Count Zero with some things changed and the other was just Neuromancer with dragons instead of two warring AIs. Nicely captivating with pleasant graphics and engaging gameplay and dialogue, despite these issues.

It's sequels essentially kick it's ass three times over in every way, but there's something kinda loveable about this first go; the XCOM-lite gameplay is satisfying in a dumb guy 'I'm so fucking smart because I put my guy in cover and had him aim better instead of rushing in'-way, but what really had me smiling and nodding in delight was the story. Nothing much goes on in it, at all, but the player character and their voice in this manages to be oddly endearing, and it leads to one of my personal favorite player-driven bullshit choices in any game.

Shadowrun Returns is a good tactical cRPG set in a very unique and interesting setting that combines fantasy elements such as mages, elfs, trolls, etc. with a modern/cyberpunk setting, creating a unique universe that becomes very intriguing. While the game has a ton of room for improvement, it's important to keep in mind this was crowdfunded and it's impressive to see what the developers were able to achieve with this game since it features a very good story, good characters and good (albeit linear) level design and combat. This is the perfect game for newcomers to the cRPG/tactical RPG genre considering its length and straightforward tactical turn-based combat system.

My expectations for this were pretty low, I had heard it was like "a number of combat arenas with some light fluff", but I feel like that's really a downplay of it! The characters are memorable (I really like the doctor with a little shaman sprite), the setting and mood are pretty good, and I'm a big fan of the way the combat works here. I played on hard and I felt the difficulty was great for me. It's pretty linear but the stuff you get up to (pretending to be a janitor to steal a weapon to defeat a cult run by insect spirits) is pretty cool.

The one big mechanical annoyance for me is having to move everyone turn-based style in between encounters, which takes forever and makes upkeep on buffs quite annoying. Imagine staying in full turn based combat mode for dnd for every single part of the dungeon. Lame! Very excited to see the sequels to this that show off more of the world and mechanically improve the game a bit.

The best part of Shadowrun Returns is how much Shadowrun is in here. The story and gameplay are straight out of the old TTRPG, right down to the Seattle setting and cameos from prominent characters. The writing strikes the right world-weary tone, the character options are fun – I played a Dwarf Rigger – and there’s a solid option to stick it to the shitty lieutenant who gets in your way at the end. All that and dialog and choice options right for role-playing, even if they’re not too consequential for the story. All in all, a faithful adaptation of one of my favorite old RPGs.