This is a developer that understands and loves their source material, which very evidently comes out in their work. Consequently, Shadowrun: Dragonfall is another home run for the up-and-coming studio.
ABSOLUTELY one of the most-riveting and well-written RPG video games I have ever played! While shorter than Deus Ex the quality of the writing and the gameplay is in the same league and a pure joy to play. Deserving of the 10/10 rating I gave it.
It is a wiz simsense chip choomba!!!!
Very good indie game
Cheap, good difficulty level, great character, very good runs, faithful to pen & paper Shadowrun rpg, lots of turn based fight and dialogues.
Shadowrun Returns: Dragonfall offers 12+ hours of fresh adventure in a new city, a sizable helping of new weapons and enemies, and a hub quest system which gives this expansion a leg up over its core campaign.
An expansion that improves on almost every aspect of the original, fixing obvious flaws and adding a much greater sense of variety to what is now one of the best retro role-players around.
It's more professionally made and superior to the original campaign in every way, and likely to clock in at around 12-15 hours depending on difficulty settings: enough to tell its story, but not enough to outstay its welcome.
Surprise hit for me. Played this while waiting for Witcher 3 and actually kept on playing when WItcher 3 was already relased, since the story and the characters you met got me so engaged.
Never finished playing the first story campaign, but this one was pure quality and I actually hope now that CDProjekt will take a look at this game to learn something for their future Cyberpunk game.
Sure graphic wise that game has not much to offer though, but quest wise this game is up with the best in the genre. Seldom mattered decisions you made in a game more than in this Shadowrun campaign.
I loved Returns and the one starts off with a bang, and has one of my favorite video game characters [Eiger]. Eventually you set into a rhythm of taking quests, going around to everyone in town to check if anyone has something more to say, and remembering the different shops to look for upgrades at. The quests start to loose focus and feel forgettable, even when the writing of them is good, because it just won't have a strong enough connection to the story. Then I hit a brick wall of a difficulty spike mission.
The first one felt more real, and had a better flow overall. I warn against the people who tell you to skip Shadowrun Returns, I think it is a good deal better than this one.
I enjoyed playing Shadowrun : Dragonfall much more than Shadowrun Returns. Probably because of the better narration while I still felt it should have been a much better game overall. The game is an upgrade of the older title probably in every way, though still very limited. It has good pace all around, some more stuff in it, few more skills. That said, most of its predecessor flaws stay the same. So it is a better version at best, not a different game. If you hated SR, you will hate Dragonfall. At 80% of the game`s story I felt exhausted and bored. For me to buy another Shadowrun Title from Harebrainded Schemes they would have to introduce something revolutionary. Because frankly most of the times I played this one, it got me thinking time and time again how the genre has fallen back in development.
If IMO Shadowrun Returns was a 7, Dragonfall is a 7,5.
STORY
The story is based on a run that went bad. You`re one of the team that performs a basic operation at first glance, then sh_t hits the fan and everything goes wrong. One of your teammates dies, you`re caught in an ambush and you have to run. After you save your skin, you decide to get to the bottom of what happened back there and why. Telling the rest would be a spoiler. All I can say that it is well written, there`s a nice twist. The difference from the older title is that it is a bit less linear. You get to discard some of the side missions if you want. Still pretty sensless because ofcourse you will do those missions. Two of them are completely sensless and silly and add nothing to the game. The rest is ok in a way they give you more money to buy stuff. The ending to the story is pretty weak and as in the other title your choices dont`t matter that much.
MUSIC
Same music that is in Shadowrun Returns, with few variations. Goes well with the mood of the game, changes depending on the situation.
GAMEPLAY
This is where I have a problem with Dragonfall. At first you notice that now you have one main map where you can see different vendors and buy different stuff, talk about side missions. But that is about it. What you do and where you go besides that is a strict one door linear path to the story. I mean few times you can talk yourself out of trouble, although still you are going to end up in a fight.
However the game is still very limited. If you ever played Fallout you will painfully experience this. The enemies do not drop any loot besides security cards. The player has a very limited inventory and cannot rearm his teammates upon mission start. You cannot prone or crouch. You cannot exchange items with your teammates. The game is missing some classes like infiltrator. The biggest problem I have with it is that when you select your class, you`re pretty much required to go its path all the way. If you pick a mage but want to carry firearms, you`re not going to be great at either magic or shooting. There are no traits or perks that would influence the gameplay. Some classes are clear favorites, so you`ll be much better off creating a street warrior and take one decker into the team than having a shaman/mage. The spells system is very scarce and when you do get to cast your strongest spell, your action points leave you open for bullying. A mage cannot even carry cyberware because it makes him lose his abilities. Why?
You do not get to customise your looks, you do not get to customise your teammates at all.
Maps are ok. Much more varied than in Shadowrun Returns. Still there is not much choice how you go about your task. Just go here, go there, shoot this group, proceed forward.
GRAPHICS
Standard Shadowrun graphics with some UI upgrades. The actor models still look silly on zooming in, weapon models are divided into four groups. Few more grenade types. Not much else to say.
This game is stupid. It's a half-hearted attempted to make you feel something but, in the end, it falls short. There is nothing here. The idea was to take you on a journey to another part of the Shadowrun world; **** reality, they simply used google translate to come up with some BS to keep you involved (and failing miserably). I felt as if the game were more a chore, than an adventure for which I had paid. I hate to berate a good company that is bringing a good genre back to life, but this effort was less than sufficient. Somewhere between expansion and DLC, by the time you complete this game you will not be appeased as a supporter. In this era of Kickstarter (where companies can legally rip you off without recompense) you will find that they are more interested in the almighty dollar than the creation of actual art. From the character screen, to the stupid UI that is your inventory (why can't I give Glory some real cyberware? Why can't I give my team better gear?), stupid AI that is anything but challenging on a real level, to the inability to modify your party... this game is half-baked. At best, your character will shine as the boss - better at everything. Everyone in the team is a piece of crap except you. At worst, you'll be carrying your ineffectual team on your back with no ability to affect the outcome. The story is flat. The characters are flat. This is just a waste of time. I am disappoint.
On the positive side, I will say that the game is pretty stable. In time where I thought I was headed for a total crash, I found that the game recovered. As my stash increased, I also noticed that the load times increased. All in all, I would recommend this game ONLY to the most hardcore of fans. If you are on the fence, look elsewhere. There's not exactly a plethora of cyberpunk games out there, but there is the hop[e that Cyberpunk will come through.
P.S. Shadowrun and Cyberpunk 20XX are both shameless thieves of William Gibson's "Neuromancer" (even going so far as to use words such as: Matrix, Sprawl, ICE, many others, etc...). Although said book, in present age, is not so great (it took me 5 attempts to finally finish it, and I was displeased (for reasons similar to this game (flat characters, lack of realism)) )
Reality Check: We need to do better than this, people. This is not a great RPG (the RPG is very simple, very limited compared to the Pen and Paper (PnP) version), this is not a great story, and this is not a fun game. I hate to say it but, since the dawning of video games, the imagination factor has taken a total back seat.
The only thing this game has is beautiful and detailed backgrounds and nothing more. They haven't improved anything over the previous game. There is still no voice acting (would help the atmosphere), still a very limited selection of weapons and armor and other gear (most are useless). The combat is still bad, you miss half of the time even if the enemy is standing right in front of you, you can't equip your team with better gear (in an rpg no less) so they are stuck with default crappy equipment the entire game and many more thats wrong. The universe of Shadowrun is very interesting to me, I mean its cyberpunk mixed with magic and there are elves, trolls, gnomes etc who wouldn't love that but the developers f****** it up the game is s***. Whoever supported Shadowrun on kickstarter got ripped of honestly.
SummaryExperience a New Full-Length Campaign: Return to the “Tech meets Magic” future of Shadowrun in an all-new 12+ hour campaign. Operating out of an offbeat hub neighborhood, you’ll choose which missions to accept and how you’ll approach them while navigating the dark underbelly of “the Flux”.