Shadowrun: Cyberpunks with Orcs
What an awesome premise!
I had the RPG handbook, had run some sessions with friends and even read a Shadowrun novel before finding this game cheap in Blockbusters one day.
So yeah, not an unbiased review.
The game opened slowly, with a totally obtuse puzzle involving opening a broken fence for a talking dog (who was actually your spirit animal) and I think I bounced off it a couple of times before I actually solved that and then marched through the rest of the game.
That was all in the course of a few sick days off school, stuck at home, still waiting for the N64 to launch.
Silverchair's "Freakshow" had just released so the song "Cemetery" is forever interminably linked with mental imagines of this game.
Basically, it is a relatively typical isometric RPG, but on a SNES - so totally alien to me at the time - and the UI was well designed enough that the controller never felt like a hindrance.
The game is text heavy story-wise with lots of cool looking people to talk the rad 2053 lingo to - probably if you didn't know the source material you would need a dictionary to work out what the drek these netrunners were up to (in 1993 at least) but aside from the initial dog/fence nonsense I don't recall being stuck anywhere or on any particularly heinous sections.
Because of the genius of the setting, you get to fight Syndicates, Cyberpunk Gangs and fucking Vampires, which is not something you can say bout most games...
The action mostly consisted of you moving the pointer over an enemy and pressing B to shoot them, but the numbers went up as you got better guns and more powerful friends.
Things change when you go into the Matrix though - this was the hacking minigame that, despite looking super simplistic, was a/pretty deep version of minesweeper vibe and b/ opened up various new things as you grew more awesome (or bought more powerful IC software stuff).
Overall though, the whole style is that of an uncompromisingly beautiful cybernoir, that still holds up today (annoying pixel-sized puzzles and all) in the 16 bit sphere of my memory.
Your mileage may vary however, especially if you prefer your RPGs to feature luscious green rolling hills and a beautiful princess to rescue.
What an awesome premise!
I had the RPG handbook, had run some sessions with friends and even read a Shadowrun novel before finding this game cheap in Blockbusters one day.
So yeah, not an unbiased review.
The game opened slowly, with a totally obtuse puzzle involving opening a broken fence for a talking dog (who was actually your spirit animal) and I think I bounced off it a couple of times before I actually solved that and then marched through the rest of the game.
That was all in the course of a few sick days off school, stuck at home, still waiting for the N64 to launch.
Silverchair's "Freakshow" had just released so the song "Cemetery" is forever interminably linked with mental imagines of this game.
Basically, it is a relatively typical isometric RPG, but on a SNES - so totally alien to me at the time - and the UI was well designed enough that the controller never felt like a hindrance.
The game is text heavy story-wise with lots of cool looking people to talk the rad 2053 lingo to - probably if you didn't know the source material you would need a dictionary to work out what the drek these netrunners were up to (in 1993 at least) but aside from the initial dog/fence nonsense I don't recall being stuck anywhere or on any particularly heinous sections.
Because of the genius of the setting, you get to fight Syndicates, Cyberpunk Gangs and fucking Vampires, which is not something you can say bout most games...
The action mostly consisted of you moving the pointer over an enemy and pressing B to shoot them, but the numbers went up as you got better guns and more powerful friends.
Things change when you go into the Matrix though - this was the hacking minigame that, despite looking super simplistic, was a/pretty deep version of minesweeper vibe and b/ opened up various new things as you grew more awesome (or bought more powerful IC software stuff).
Overall though, the whole style is that of an uncompromisingly beautiful cybernoir, that still holds up today (annoying pixel-sized puzzles and all) in the 16 bit sphere of my memory.
Your mileage may vary however, especially if you prefer your RPGs to feature luscious green rolling hills and a beautiful princess to rescue.