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.
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.