Shadowrun Returns
negativ:
-I kinda missed some real bossfights, but that’s obivously just a minor complain
-balance issues -> the game is too easy on normal and some classes are unbalanced: A decker is useless in missions where he isn’t required for the matrix, because he does almost no damage in fights, whereas mages do very high damage, especiallly because the enemys do not position very well and sometimes you can hit 3 of them with an aoe spell and pretty much win the fight straight away
-I think it would be very good for the game, if you could have actual companions that you can skill and have a background story and with whom you can talk and maybe even get quests with, so pretty much a system like in a dragon age or mass effect, because this would give you much more freedom in creating your own strategy in fights and you would be forced to deal with every class and system in the game more (in the game you just buy complete companions for missions with money that have preset skills and so on). However, I think that was a decision that was based on the fact that it would have been too expensive to develop all this.
-in the final 5 hours or so I got a little bit annoyed by all the fights and it felt like you just have to fight for another hour to get the next story piece, but that are really just the last 2 missions, so it’s wasn’t the end of the world for me
positiv:
-the soundtrack is great, although there could have been more of it…
-the story was very well written and one of the best I experienced in a video game
-I loved the characters, the world and the dialogues and all the reading. I don’t know why, but for some reason I was able to emphasize myself with the world and when I started playing I always sank in this world for at least 2 hours.
-the combat itself was nice and there are a lot of options to customize the way your character fights and you have many choices in fights, but it would have been even better, if you could customize every companion
Overall I think it’s a game that definitely has it’s flaws, but it’s still a great game in my opinion and I am looking forward to play Dragonfall and Hong Kong to see how they improved everything. Does someone have any recommendations for games with this style (not the setting, but more like games with very good writing and where you can really sink in the world).
I played this a couple of months ago and enjoyed it. I would have preferred if the mercenaries would have had some backstory rather than just being anonymous hirelings, and I would have really liked being able to explore the world more and find some sidequests here and there, but like you had mentioned, expanding the game like that would have required more development time and a bigger budget. For what it was, I thought they did a nice job, and I’ve heard that Hong Kong and Dragonfall are even better. Also, I haven’t tried any of these yet, myself, but there are a bunch of user-generated campaigns for Shadowrun Returns that you can find here in the Steam workshop.