Shadowrun Returns Review

[Azahul]

repeatedly missing with shotguns at point blank range gets really old really fast.

Really? I don't think I ever missed with a shotgun at close range. Seemed to be permanent 99% odds to hit across the board. Combined with the close range spray (forget the name), and a single shotgun-wielding character could clear entire waves of enemies on his own.

Snip

I actually think you may have gotten things the wrong way round in your second sentence. Never played any other Shadowrun game, or Shadowrun itself, but I thoroughly enjoyed Shadowrun Returns. I've finished the campaign twice (first time as an Adept, second as a Shaman) and thought it was great. Probably a 3 or 3.5, and I wasn't surprised to see the review give it a 4 as I assume a bit more appreciation for the setting can take it up a notch.

However, almost all the people I've seen that disliked the game were either people that played Decker and were annoyed at the lack of things to do, or previous fans of the setting (and there seems to have been a considerable amount of overlap, as if almost all existing fans default to the Decker).

I'm not bothering with the editor, because (although I am a GM for pnp games) I have little interest in it. I have played a few fan made creations, and they've been entertaining (although sometimes buggy as hell).

Regardless, for $20 it seemed to me as a great little tactical RPG with a fascinating setting. I have no issues with the review score, as I imagine there were a few subtleties that passed me by. Very happy with the $20 I spent, and I full intend to get all the DLC they put out for it in future.

If this is the standard of quality we can expect from most Kickstarter games, then I'm feeling truly optimistic about the future of the game industry.

 

[dangoball]

I don't see why is everyone hating on Decker so much. My first char was a Decker and by the time you get Dodger in you group I was already better hacker than him while being good with pistols and shotguns I only wish there was more of the Matrix throughout the game, but I still enjoyed playing Decker.

My biggest gripe was with the checkpoint saving system. If it was done to create tension so that you have to run through the scene in one go, sure why not, but "save and exit" would have been really nice. Overpowered Kneecap got nerfed with a cooldown, so there goes that complain. What's kinda weird is that my shotgun generally had better chance to hit than my handgun on long distances (even than my smartlinked revolver at the end). Also where are all the smartlinked weapons? I wound only a few top-tier on the last vendor but NPCs had them throughout the game. Did I just miss them?

I don't have any complains about combat, because it works and that's fine in my book. I'm not really sure what did everyone complaining about it expect.

I also feel the need to mention that this was my first exposure to the Sadowrun setting apart from skimming the rulebook and I liked what I saw. I was hoping for a less linear game but I enjoyed The Deadman's Switch anyway.

 

[KazNecro]

Ha! I accutally found there is a hell of a lot more stuff to be gotten from the missions if you are a decker.

My first char was a decker, and I found a decent amount of use with the skill during various runs. I think the main drawback is a lack of Matrix runs in the main campaign, and virtually none in side missions. I'm looking forward to the user-generated scenarios that will hopefully employ more use of the Matrix.

I also noticed that the devs have been tweaking the game a bit for more challenge. My first time playing DID seem like a milkrun. I never used a single medkit until midgame, but upon restarting with a new char recently, I actually had to patch myself up more often in the early game.

All in all, I am very satisfied with the work Harebrained Schemes did, with the budget they were able to gather from crowdfunding.

 

[DarkhoIlow]

I really enjoyed the game immensely. Can't wait for the Berlin dlc in October.

I wanted to play an full charismatic elf female because I have heard it is very story/text/dialogue heavy, but it barely helped in conversations. The etiquette option came up maybe like 20 times maximum in my 10hour'ish playthrough. I managed to finished the game based while focusing primarily on assault rifles and quickness.

I think best decision is to go with a full customized character because usually the presets tend to waste points in some tree skills that you may not need.

 

[Kahani]

My first char was a decker, and I found a decent amount of use with the skill during various runs. I think the main drawback is a lack of Matrix runs in the main campaign, and virtually none in side missions. I'm looking forward to the user-generated scenarios that will hopefully employ more use of the Matrix.

My first character was a decker, and I found myself constantly wishing I'd picked something else. Unfortunately, it's a problem games that give some classes unique systems always struggle with. The more effort you put into optional systems, the less effort you can spend on the general game that everyone is definitely going to see. See also things like rogues in D&D games, hackers in Mass Effect, various faction related skills in TES games, and so on. With Shadowrun, if you make the Matrix too prominent then players will feel compelled to use a decker. If you don't make it prominent enough, they'll feel that deckers are pointless. It's very difficult to hit the sweet spot in the middle.

 

[LordMonty]

I enjoyed the game. HBS have a lot of work ahead of them to make all the moaning go away. But it was a game made quickly and not for a lot of cash, so to be honest i'd give thme a little time to build on what they've done. Anyhow cheers for the review I more or less agree with it.

 

[rofltehcat]

About the Decker problem: I'm playing a decker/rigger as my second character and she really is weak compared to the monster I had as the first char. I tried going for Mark Target combined with drones and occasional pistol shots but it doesn't really wok. I think if they'd buff mark target (e.g. also buff crit not just accuracy) or even add additional decking abilities to make guns, drones and cyberware malfunction, a decker would be a lot stronger. Pistols (except maybe the revolver) also kinda feel like they could use some changes...

But what mostly annoys me is the drone/AP system. Having nearly no AP for movement slows the whole party down extremely if you have a decker with you, especially because you can't quit combat mode during downtime and when it quits the combat mode, the drones reset to following state, which means you have to switch them back on manually, which gets extremely annoying after a few fights.

The feedback some here give about the editor makes me dread that there may not come many good quality mods... I was kinda hoping the engine could be used to make/remake classic isometric tile-based rpgs

 

[KazNecro]

My first char was a decker, and I found a decent amount of use with the skill during various runs. I think the main drawback is a lack of Matrix runs in the main campaign, and virtually none in side missions. I'm looking forward to the user-generated scenarios that will hopefully employ more use of the Matrix.

My first character was a decker, and I found myself constantly wishing I'd picked something else. Unfortunately, it's a problem games that give some classes unique systems always struggle with. The more effort you put into optional systems, the less effort you can spend on the general game that everyone is definitely going to see. See also things like rogues in D&D games, hackers in Mass Effect, various faction related skills in TES games, and so on. With Shadowrun, if you make the Matrix too prominent then players will feel compelled to use a decker. If you don't make it prominent enough, they'll feel that deckers are pointless. It's very difficult to hit the sweet spot in the middle.

All excellent points, I'll grant you. With the list you gave, you're pretty much stuck with the class/skills you're restricted to for the entirety of the game, and have to make the most of it. But at the very least with Shadowrun, you can very quickly tweak your char to be lees of one class and more of another, based on the situation. I'll admit, I leaned more heavily on ranged combat skill over the course of the game, and ended up basically being a combat decker.

 

[StriderShinryu]

repeatedly missing with shotguns at point blank range gets really old really fast.

I have to agree with this. I can understand assault rifles or other ranged attacks having a higher miss chance up close, but it really seems silly that the shotguns have the same issue.

 

[rofltehcat]

I think shotguns are insane if they are supported well. They seem to scale extremely well. Unsupported they can suck... add accuracy buff and haste from a mage and a well built shotgun dude kills everything. You can even add Mark Target from your Decker to push them well into mid range effectiveness.
However, you have to look at the stats of the runners you hire. Some of them look great on the gear page but have horrible stats or sometimes even wrong stats/gear.
They are also great weapons for overwatch.

 

[Cleggster]

I have to admit I loved this game. The art in it was much better then I expected to find in such a cheap game. I played though with a decker/pistoleer. While kneecap is very cool, I loved the advance pistol options. I had no problem being a decker. It gave me more options and more money.

I feel that to properly review this game, you need to separate the game from the packaged adventure. But the editor really is the heart of this. I have just started to play with it and I am really entertained. It does not have quite the same level of control as Neverwinter, but the potential is quite awesome. Man, some of the adventure that have already been released are impressive. Most of the complaints I have seen have already been solved by user content made with the editor.

Speaking of which, some info about the save system. It was not a creative decision, it was a technical one. The engine they are using make save anywhere/anytime close to impossible. Apparently it was try and implement a location based save system or add the matrix and more power to the editor. (oh yeah, matrix was a last month add on. *shrug*) But someone has already made a save anywhere, except in combat, system for people to add to their adventures.

The game is just fun. I can't wait for more content. And for me to have the time to play it all.

 

[Thoughtful_Salt]

Am I the only one here who thought this was a fair review?
I got the Shadowrun rulebook a few days before buying the game. So, I'm new to Shadowrun, and don't have the bias that a lot of people have.

I saw that the main campaign was decent and a good modernization of old isometric games, similar to how Legend of Grimrock is a nice throwback to old dungeon crawlers. No, Shadowrun didn't innovate anything, but it wasn't trying to. No, it wasn't able to give a faithful representation of a pen-and-paper RPG, but I have yet to play a game that has. It's simple and charmingly familiar. With the small budget that they had, I'm glad that they even got that far.

The main focus of SR:R was faithfully recreating the setting and atmosphere of the Shadowrun universe, which it does perfectly. Everything from the color palette to the details within the flavor-text were given careful consideration and executed very well.

Also, for those who think that this is the final product, think again. The dev team is very busy. I mean VERY busy: http://harebrained-schemes.com/post/whats-happening-and-whats-next/

Then why officialy launch it? Why not call it a beta (which, judging by that link and the lack of polish a lot of people are complaining about it resembles) and not have to cry "But we're going to fix it". If a modern game sees most of its sales in the first three months, then releasing this game in a unfinished, unpolished state just kneecaps any potential life time sales (most reviews won't, and shouldn't, give it the benefit of the doubt). Atmosphere and lore are all well and good, but if the gameplay is lacklustre then why should people pick this up over, say, The Last Of Us, One Finger Death Punch or Papers Please? All three of those games executed the perfect balance of gameplay, atmosphere and story.

 

[barbzilla]

The editor is pretty damn bad, too. Here's a quote from a modder who tried it:

"Well I wouldn't get your hopes up, the editor is abysmal to work with. Only SR diehards are going to work with this in the longterm.
You can paint maps easily but in the end you have dumb restrictions all over the place, all of which make the editor a nightmare to work with.
A map can only be a few screenwidths in size before the tile renderer falls apart, these guys don't seem to understand basics of culling and streaming textures. Tile engines from a decade ago can do a much better job.
The game can only save very select variables. When you move between areas, it actually doesn't remember anything AT ALL. No NPCs, no items on the ground, no combat states, nothing. The game is physically incapable of storing active data between scenes.
Every time you want to create a connected area, you have to go out of your way to save each and every change via a manual variable with this fucking elementary script system which is so lovingly put into comboboxes instead of an actual script you can write within seconds.
My only hope for this shit is that someone can create an external script editor to reduce some of the tedium, but it won't alleviate the fact the scripting language is missing dozens of key features.
The editor is fine if you want to travel in a straight line, but god forbid you walk off the beaten path... which I tried, and found out wasn't worth the effort. I'm not putting much stock in things changing in the future given they're moving right onto DLC/Mobiles after absorbing 1.5 million.. and still can't figure out how to save their own gamestate."

Bottom line, don't get your hopes up, it's not getting any better than Dead Man's Switch.

From my experience with the editor I find this to be highly accurate. I was hoping for an editor that would allow someone to essentially make their own RPG, as in a proper one where you can revisit areas again and talk to people about past experiences or see reactions and consequences to your decisions... Dead Man's Switch is essentially a Final Fantasy game without an open world aspect - so it's a shit Final Fantasy game.

This game is a 3 stars at the most. It's average. For $20 you get what you pay for, I guess.

Count me among the people agreeing with the quoted text. There is a reason why more than half of the mods you see on the Steam Workshop are just resource mods and not actual campaigns/stories/ect, and that reason is, the mod tools don't include even a quarter of what a decently robust engine editor should, this is more on par with the map creator from Starcraft 1, and even then not as powerful.

As for the campaign that shipped with the game, it was okay at best. I didn't run into many technical issues personally so I would give it a minimum of 5 just for that. The story was hokey and over the top, but the material and story isn't that far off what you would expect a fresh DM to come up with, so I'll add 2 points for that. Then there was the terrible one dimensional dialogue (not to mention grammatical errors), showing that it didn't even got through a basic editorial process, so it loses a point. The combat was okay, but nothing special, it doesn't gain or lose any points. My overall enjoyment was minor and I had to play in short blocks (the size of a map because if I got bored in the middle of a map, I couldn't save), so once again no added or lost points.

Overall the game receives a 6/10 from me. The editor gives it a 7/10 for just having one, had it been more robust and useful I would have gone up to an 8, but as it is the players/modders are going to have to fix everything to make this as useful as it should have been. I have to wonder where that extra 1.2m dollars went when they made this game (they were only asking for 400k for the kickstarter).

 

[barbzilla]

snip

Speaking of which, some info about the save system. It was not a creative decision, it was a technical one. The engine they are using make save anywhere/anytime close to impossible. Apparently it was try and implement a location based save system or add the matrix and more power to the editor. (oh yeah, matrix was a last month add on. *shrug*) But someone has already made a save anywhere, except in combat, system for people to add to their adventures.

The game is just fun. I can't wait for more content. And for me to have the time to play it all.

False information. They couldn't create a save system with the MAOI engine due to the LOA style, but during the development they switched to the Unity Engine which is quite capable of creating game saves. This was an excuse that is as old as the kickstarter itself (since they made the switch during the kickstarter) and they just kept using it to cover their ass for being too lazy to put one in. Now save systems themselves can be complicated, and if they just didn't have time/money to implement one that would have been fine. They could have come clean with it, but if you look back towards the original announcement as to why the game can't save, you will see it is because of the old engine's LOA systems. Yet they keep using the same excuse, despite the fact that anyone can watch a youtube video on how to create save games in the Unity Engine (actually not sure if it was youtube, but there are tutorials on creating save game systems in Unity somewhere online).

 

[Bocaj2000]

Am I the only one here who thought this was a fair review?
I got the Shadowrun rulebook a few days before buying the game. So, I'm new to Shadowrun, and don't have the bias that a lot of people have.

I saw that the main campaign was decent and a good modernization of old isometric games, similar to how Legend of Grimrock is a nice throwback to old dungeon crawlers. No, Shadowrun didn't innovate anything, but it wasn't trying to. No, it wasn't able to give a faithful representation of a pen-and-paper RPG, but I have yet to play a game that has. It's simple and charmingly familiar. With the small budget that they had, I'm glad that they even got that far.

The main focus of SR:R was faithfully recreating the setting and atmosphere of the Shadowrun universe, which it does perfectly. Everything from the color palette to the details within the flavor-text were given careful consideration and executed very well.

Also, for those who think that this is the final product, think again. The dev team is very busy. I mean VERY busy: http://harebrained-schemes.com/post/whats-happening-and-whats-next/

Then why officialy launch it? Why not call it a beta (which, judging by that link and the lack of polish a lot of people are complaining about it resembles) and not have to cry "But we're going to fix it". If a modern game sees most of its sales in the first three months, then releasing this game in a unfinished, unpolished state just kneecaps any potential life time sales (most reviews won't, and shouldn't, give it the benefit of the doubt). Atmosphere and lore are all well and good, but if the gameplay is lacklustre then why should people pick this up over, say, The Last Of Us, One Finger Death Punch or Papers Please? All three of those games executed the perfect balance of gameplay, atmosphere and story.

It's not a beta. They released it because the main campaign was well polished and pretty good. And it's not like the gameplay is "bad". I thought that it was pretty good and reminded me of older games such as Fallout (which is what it was going for). At worst, you can criticize it as mediocre, but it's not bad.

And you ask why pick up a different atmospheric game with different gameplay... that's kind of a dumb question. No two atmospheres are the same. You might as well ask, "Why are you playing 'Lone Survivor' when 'Hotline Miami' is better?" Both are good in their own respects and deliver their own unique experiences. Also, your examples are nothing like SR:R. None of the games that you mentioned featured an isometric perspective, turn based combat, or even a cyberpunk setting.

 

[Frankster]

As a newcomer to shadowrun lore, i found the game a nice introduction that left me wanting for more, the game has its faults (which i will give examples of below) but i had an rpg itch to scratch and it was satisfied adequately, am looking forward to seeing what content users can create.

Im gonna +1 that playing a decker sucks in the default campaign. Hearing about how one can specialize into playing as a hacker uber skilled in matrix stuff made me rather excited to play that class...And then you hardly ever use your decker skills.

The ONE mission you do use it, I was led to believe it would be a matrix heavy mission so also took the decker the game provides you with, reasoning that with 2 uber matrix users on the team i'd ace it.
And then it turns out there's only 1 terminal available so only 1 decker can use it whilst rest of your team holds on constantly respawning waves of guards... So frustrating having to play that section with a suboptimal team and getting killed, making me restart the whole lengthy level over and over again...

Little things like that negatively affected my enjoyment i gotta say :/

About linearity.. Well truth be told at character creation i had the idea of a charismatic decker who sweet talks people, so i had a fair few etiquettes hoping it would come into play and enable some nice rping...
It didn't, all the etiquettes seem to do is let you lie convincingly to a person belonging to a particular affiliation.
So was somewhat underwhelmed in the rping department.

Ranting aside, enjoyed my playthrough despite some frustrations but were it just for the vanilla campaign i'd have felt ripped off. As it stands i view the bundled campaign as an appetizer and it will be user made content that is the main course.

 

[bjj hero]

Shadowrun Returns Review

This is the game Shadowrun fans have been waiting for.

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Is there a demo available? My laptop is quite antiquated.