Finally, it's a long time since I've
actually finished a game like this, to be actually qualified to
review one so I'm going to jump right in here and get to work.
Shadowrun is an RPG of old school
design, you navigate diaglogue tree, make moral decisions and command
troops in turn based combat as you make your way through a cyberpunk
story featuring evil corporations, morally ambiguous runners and
spoiler alert, evil space bugs.
So, this is where I flash my
credentials. I played through Baldur's Gate 2 back in the day and
had countless hours of fun with Fallout one and two. This is my kind
of game, no two ways about it and it's been so long since we've had
something decent I jumped right in.
The Theme: The
theme here is cyberpunk, a particular form of cyberpunk involving
Elves and Orks called Shadowrun. Personally, I don't like the
Fantasy in my cyberpunk but really, you can get away with just
pretending those guys are just horribly mutated individuals. The
different races have little impact on the story and you'll really
need to be focusing on a skill hard for the race restrictions to
matter much.
Fantasy
elements aside everything cyberpunk is in place, mega corporations,
hackers in cyberspace and so on. Overall it's satisfying but I could
see people being put off by the lack of cyberpunk “purity” in the
setting.
The Story: The
story starts strong but tapers near the end, perhaps outstays its
welcome by one or two hours while being a very short game in the
first place. It took me about six hours to finish, the first four
hours were very solid but then things got a little downright stupid.
It also loses points for being extremely linear which hurts the most
in the sections you spend in cyberspace. In what is essentially the
internet being railroaded to one or two points, fighting the same
enemies and then reading a piece of text just felt like such a wasted
oppurtunity. What can't I hack into people's personal bank accounts,
blackmail corporations or just be a general nuisance.
There's
enough story here to pull you through the game, that's for sure. Not
the strongest but serviceable.
The Combat: First
of all, the combat is fun and that's the most important thing for a
game like this. It's not overly challenging but you'll find yourself
making some interesting decisions and nowhere is this more pronounced
than in the sections where one of your team is in cyberspace hacking
away and the rest of the team need to hold off enemies in the real
world. These sections represent the game at its best and are
extremely enjoyable.
Being
fun, it's easy to forgive the combat for being completely and utterly
broken. For example, I build a decker character. A decker focuses
on combat in cyberspace and neglects it in the real world, that said
all I needed was the starting assault rifle and the “Full Auto”
skill to two shot essentially every enemy in the game. Full Auto is
unlocked incredibly early, the only drawback that it forces a reload
after being used twice. Things get even more fun when the same skill
applies to the automatic shotguns in the game, these will more often
than not take fools out in a single action. Is this thematic and
fun? Yup. Is this balance? Probably not, but I can get over that.
The one issue that can't be forgiven as easily is how underpowered
close combat weapons are as a result. But whatever, who brings a
knife to a gun fight. Likewise with magic or shamanism, leave that
Dungeons and Dragons shit at home.
Overall: Shadowrun
Returns will not be remembered as a classic, the controls are too
finnicky, the story too janky and the combat poorly planned. What it
will hopefully be remembered as is the harbinger of the wave of
Kickstarter RPGs that blow our minds. It's a light aperitif that
whets our appetites before the main course arrives and it fills that
role remarkably well.
