I've never played any table-top RPGs before, but if I ever got into the scene I'd be interested in Shadowrun - its sometimes-ungainly fusion of fantasy, sci-fi, and dystopian elements is something I find really engaging. A kickstarter project directed by Jordan Weisman himself (one of the original creators of Shadowrun), Shadowrun Returns is extremely faithful to its TTRPG roots, from the decision paralysis of character creation right down to the majority of the plot being communicated through text. It's perhaps a bit too faithful, as SR follows plenty of tabletop conventions but doesn't quite stretch its legs in its new medium.

One way the change in medium wasn't kind to SR is its linearity. Unlike a typical tabletop session whose allure is being able to do whatever you like at your own pace, Shadowrun Returns is extremely streamlined, railroading you at high speed from plot point to plot point. While this more focused and curated experience can be seen as a strength, I did wish for a couple of branching plot paths or sidequests - of which there were almost none. Even the different dialogue choices seemed entirely for flavor, only rarely having an effect on the gameplay or story.

This illusion of choice spreads over into character building as well - while different races have different stat caps, it requires an extravagant amount of karma points to bring any stat anywhere near the cap, meaning there is effectively nearly no difference between the races gameplay-wise. The skill trees and class archetypes present more meaningful choices - but again it's a bit of a missed opportunity. There are computer terminals a Decker can hack into to disable security and the occasional air vent that a Rigger can send a drone into, but fulfilling objectives with different skills in different ways seems a largely underexplored design space. If you need to shoot your way into an area, the game doesn't give you the means to talk your way in; if there's a computer that you really need to hack and you're not a decker, the plot provides you with a decker of sufficient skill instead of giving you an alternate route.

Despite the issues detailed above, I still very much enjoyed my time with it. The X-COM-lite combat presented just enough depth to keep me engaged through to the end, but the real strength of the game is in its excellent setting and script. Featuring a crapsack dystopian Seattle that is only slightly less grey than Seattle in real life, and morality that is even greyer, Shadowrun Returns managed to make me feel amusement, disgust, kinship, respect, and mourning for characters, some of whom only get a couple of lines of text as introduction - that's the mark of good writing. I also have to give credit to the fact that the base game comes with an easy-to-use campaign editor, essentially handing the role of DM back to its playerbase. It's no Doom, but there is a pretty good selection of user-made content that I'm looking forward to exploring.

Speaking as someone who's learned about TTRPGs by osmosis but never actually played one, I really enjoyed my time with this. And as long as there are people who can't make the sizable time investment or can't find a playgroup they can vibe with, there will always be a place for games like Shadowrun Returns and its ilk. Apparently its official expansions are even better too!

Playtime: 8 Hours
Score: 4/10

Really wanted to like this game and I was up until I ran into a gaming breaking bug that pretty much doomed my whole playthrough and I couldn't progress. It kept freezing up my game at the exact same point, no matter how many times I reloaded. I love RPGs especially Sci-Fi ones and the Shadowrun universe is very cool to explore, which is why I'm disappointed with this game.

To start with the good, the story was interesting for the first half as it was this cool detective story, until the plot takes a new direction which I didn't like but that was about the time when I hit the bug wall. The character progression is basically the same as Vampire the Masquerade Bloodlines, in that instead of you gaining XP and leveling up, you just get skill points straight away from completing quests. It helps simulate the tabletop style of gameplay which I love. The game is also very linear with you basically going from mission to mission. I didn't mind this and found it refreshing compared to many open world game now a days.

Overall I really wanted to like this game but I couldn't even finish it because of bugs. I searched online and many others have run into the same brick wall. The fact that this game is almost 10 years old and has not been fixed is inexcusable so its a skip for me. I got this for free on GOG, but I would be angry if I paid for it, therefore I do not recommend buying it.

Very short, somewhat limited experience (the absence of valid reasons to play a Face is very demoralizing mainly as a long-time TTRPG fan) but the gameplay is fun and the story is super engaging. The lack of real sidequests is the only real downside to the experience in my opinion, with a grand total of one optional run to break up the story and get some much-needed experience and cash. There are also very few incentives to go for certain builds, with melee being a meme and hacking essentially just being a reason to have to do more work each area, since nothing of importance is locked behind the mechanic.

It's a great translation of the medium, no doubt about that, especially since Shadowrun has a reputation for being very hard to actually play. And the sequels build upon the foundation quite well, so there isn't much to truly complain about - give it a try, it's not much of a time investment after all.

I thought this story was going to be a generic murder mystery, but it turned into something else that was very interesting. It seems like the dialogue choices are flavour-text, or grants access to some more items but doesn't change the overall game outcome. That's totally fine for a game that wants to tell this story.

Character creation is based solely around combat, and whatever classes or skills you don't take on, you can fill with teammates and mercenaries. The combat is fine for a turn-based strategy game. It can force you to diversify your team between the cyberdeck, magic, or weapon user, and the random-number game actually makes sense. I've played other TBS games that are frustrating and encourage save-scumming by having an unfair RNG, where everything hits you but you can't hit anything. This one makes sense because you can have supports buff/debuff combatants, take cover, and flank appropriately, while your enemies are trying to do the same.

A couple of pieces of advice on combat to make the game more fun: use items liberally, because you'll always find more. Focus on what you want to fight as and spend money to fill in the gaps you need. I found myself at the end of the game with way too many consumables and cash, while playing conservatively in fights which deprived me of having a lot more fun in this game.

The artwork looks great, between portraits and 3D models. It really sets the mood for a dystopia, and the NPC text really fills out the world to give an accurate picture of the huge world Shadowrun is. The writers really did a lot of work to make you feel like you're within one story in a large universe that has a history and has been lived in - without a prologue or unrealistic text-dump from an NPC.

I know it came out 10 years ago, but even back then it would have felt a little underwhelming. The game in general is fairly buggy and more than a couple times i had to quit out and reboot to fix an issue. The combat is a little janky too, a few times id have an enemy flanked with no cover 99% and it would still miss multiple times, so fucking infuriating.

X-Com is just a better game all around. The only difference is the cyberpunk story, which is pretty meh anyway, with fairly forgettable characters and very linear levels and maps.

Worth a play if its on sale. There are definitely worse ways to spend 15-20 hours.

I really expected more out of this game if I'm being entirely honest. That's not to say the game itself is bad, because it isn't, it has quite a few things in it's favor and does the cyberpunk-style medium well, but it just doesn't really do anything interesting or special. While I think the systems are cool, the gameplay is fun and the characters are (sometimes) interesting, I think this really fails in the immersing myself in the game. If I wanted a real shooty-crpg I would play wasteland, and if I wanted a better cyberpunk game... I would probably just play Citizen Sleeper or another title with a bit more focus. I will eventually give the sequels a try and perhaps come back to finish this title, but as of now I kinda am fine leaving it where it was and seeing what future efforts were made. Overall just kinda meh, but not necessarily a bad title.

Shadowrun Returns. The game that started Harebrained Schemes' Shadowrun Trilogy, and yet is hands down the worst of the three. Now, this isn't to say it's a BAD game, otherwise it wouldn't have gotten a DLC so good it became it's own game, or an actual full sequel. But, it is most certainly flawed. No companions are free to take, instead costing you money to hire(including the ones required by the story to progress). Because of this, it never feels like you're actually growing with these characters, never connecting with them, so because of this, you never really care if any of them die.

Now, while some may tell you that that's the quintessential Shadowrun experience in Tabletop, it was only ever like that to help facilitate drop in play, letting people join a group for a single session before leaving and never being seen again. But this is a video game, and I've seen Tom's troll ass available for every goddamn run I've gone on in this game, so having the hireable mercs system feels like nothing more than a waste of good nuyen that could be spent on fun stuff, like cyberware, weapons, or spells.

Besides this, most of the story is a tad generic at best, and super weird and full of some of the weirdest parts of the Shadowrun lore. And, while the guys who've been playing the tabletop game for decades will know who Harlequin is, I don't know him from Tom, and at least Tom's been available to me the whole game. Good ol' dependable Tom.

Anyway, moving past these faults, the game is still quite fun(otherwise I wouldn't have finished it), with a plot that, while the majority of which you'll see coming from a mile away, the climax was definitely not what I, or most other people, expected to see, in a largely entertaining way.

However, the best piece of praise I can give Shadowrun Returns is that it allowed Shadowrun: Dragonfall and Shadowrun: Hong Kong to exist. And honestly? That's pretty good praise in my book.

There are a lot of options in terms of classes and character progression, but there isn't much reason to do a 2nd playthrough. The plot itself isn't stellar, feels rushed, and has a couple twists that don't make sense at all.

The combat is refreshing. Each class has a handful of attacks with different effects, and you're free to multiclass if you know what you're doing. While this can lead to occasionally spamming the same daily driver damage spell to finish off an enemy, the beginning and middle of combat encounters yield a lot of possibilities.

Role-playing is limited, with somewhat frequent character-specific dialogue options appearing, usually requiring an "etiquette" or a high enough level in a certain stat. I hope the sequel takes this concept much further, because the dialogue in an RPG should not be so limited. Especially one with no voice acting.

There is almost no optional side content, aside from one or two quests or a slightly different way to approach a quest.

The turn-based combat is the only thing keeping this game at a 3/5.

Before I started this game, I was warned that it was supposedly the weakest part of the new three games and after playing it, I can see why. The whole thing feels a little unambitious.

I'm not sure if that's the result of a small budget or simply because they wanted to create a "small" game, but either way, it lacks interesting decision making in the story and character build. Granted, I chose the possibly most bland character class and just went for a combat focused shotgun-wielding troll and simply did not need more than two shotguns in my whole playthrough, but I can still tell by looking at the skill system that another class wouldn't have made a huge difference. The game simply doesn't offer enough opportunities to even use your skills on. For example speech checks were barely there. I also feel like having a set team instead of constantly hiring mercenaries would have been better. The idea of paying for party members is fairly unique though.

Combat was still quite good. Shadowrun Returns plays pretty much like modern Xcom and it was fun finding the perfect position for your characters, make the best use of AoE effects and buffs and get through missions without casualties. I probably should've played on hard, but I don't have much experience in the genre and wanted to play it safe for now. Dragonfall is getting played on hard.

Returns feels like a solid groundwork. A decent combat system, varied classes, pretty good presentation and music. It just needs more complexity ... the story feels too linear and it seems like you can't impact it in a meaningful way. If the other games offer actual involvement in the story and makes your profession or race more relevant in dialogue I could see them being really fun. But in this case I tried to play as a somewhat dumb but loyal street-cred guy who just wants revenge for his friend and while some of the dialogue seemed to fit that kind of character, there were other moments where the game clearly railroads the player into a certain direction and only gives you very smart and convoluted answers to choose from.

I may sound a little negative here, but I appreciated that the game didn't overstay it's welcome and I feel pretty positive about it overall. Like I said, it feels like a solid foundation. If it gets uphill from here, I can see myself becoming a fan.