Shadowrun Returns was a very competent taste of the very potent Shadowrun universe, but Dragonfall is something else, at least when it comes to story. It's on the shorter side (even if it's considerably longer than the original), but considering the focuse on a single team of shadowrunners, it makes sense.

It's the narrative that really shines here--the main story has gripping pace especially towards the latter half, constantly throwing scenarios that are inspired by existing cyberpunk tropes, but with unique twists that only Shadowrun can offer. There is nothing like this, and the writing is absolutely top-tier to make the best of it. There are no voice work in this game, sadly, but the dialogues are written so vividly that it's not hard to imagine the voices. Each team member is given a great care in building their personality through their dialogues, and dialogue options to talk out of sticky situations never feel tacked on and provide organic narrative flow.

I just don't like the combat though, which was the same case with the predecessor. It's X-COM, but with a lot of moving parts with RPG mechanics, magic, hacking, summons, etc. and they are tutorialized very, very poorly. There is that inherent divisive mechanic of "you will miss A LOT" but the way to compensate that disadvantage is buried deep in the pile of smaller mechanics that the game does not do a good job (or any job, for that matter) introducing to the players. The hacking portion being a blend copy and paste of the main combat system, just in a different environment, also doesn't help.

If you really want to just engage with the story, which I highly recommend, the debug menu is easy to access.

Reviewed on Nov 29, 2023


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