Playing A Game Shadowrun Returns PC

An earnest attempt at Divinity: Original Sin last year finally convinced me that I'm not "into" traditional CRPGs. Surprisingly, and thankfully, my experience with Shadowrun Returns felt less like a deeply-technical party-management and -tactics game than it did like a sci-fi visual novel punctuated with simple turn-based combat.

After a relatively simple character creator, Shadowrun Returns dives right into its narrative, which is compelling by virtue of both a distinctive techno-elves setting as well as high-quality written dialog. Its aesthetics and character attitudes nail the "cyberpunk" feeling, and its mystery plot is rife with genuine intrigue.

(Also compelling, for me, are the story's frequent references to Seattle and east-side environs. No doubt due to the developer's geographical proximity, mission text continuously name-drops cities, neighborhoods, even streets which literally hit close to home.)

The story is unabashedly linear, which is mostly to the game's benefit. I almost never felt like the game was rail-roading me in a direction I didn't want: charming NPC personalities and tantalizing mission events kept this ride exciting from one beat to the next. Only occasionally did I wish for more control over the pace of that ride, for example to do some "hacking" instead of starting another combat mission.

Compared to a choose-your-own-solution architecture like Deus Ex, Shadowrun Returns doesn't really allow character-based approaches to obstacles -- you can't charm, or hack, or fight your way through "X" problem; rather, high Charisma allows you to charm "Y" and high Intelligence allows you to hack "Z" but you won't necessarily be able to do both Y and Z. And the fight with "X" is generally not avoidable; everybody fights.

That's fine for telling the game's (again, linear) story, but it does make character progression feel more puzzling than empowering. I can't skip some Strength challenges, buff up my Strength, then backtrack and revisit them; all I can do is invest skill points in the things that sound fun, and hope that the next mission caters to my investment.

Unfortunately a fear-of-missing-out on "appropriate" skills is amplified by how Shadowrun's character sheet works: not only because skill levels require increasing point-dumps to progress - six points for level six, then seven more points for level seven! - but also because of how some sub-skills are structured.

The Rifles skill is capped by the Ranged Combat skill, which itself is capped by the Quickness attribute. Therefore, if I'm at 6 in Rifles, getting to 7 could mean spending as much as 21 points, since Quickness and Ranged Combat must also be at least 7.

But here's the good news: combat tends to be pretty easy. At least on the Normal difficulty level, I never felt like missed opportunities kept me from affording adequately-powerful (or even over-powered) equipment, and I also never felt like enemies were too strong for my somewhat-haphazard skill choices.

If you were expecting deep combat tactics from Shadowrun Returns, well -- I can't say that you won't find them, just that it's not gonna happen in Normal mode. By the game's end I'd barely scratched the surface of any combat mechanic other than "shoot gun."

That may make fights sound dull, but to me this simplicity was pleasantly satisfying. Especially because the game does a poor job of tutorializing itself: an NPC skipped teaching me about Decking (hacking) because my stats were too high, I didn't know it had overwatch until an enemy hit me with it, I didn't even know you could reload until I saw a skill to reduce its action point cost, and I still don't really know what a "ley line" is.

Granted, I glazed over the game's single "Show Help" UI tutorial screen, because it was an unreadable wall of text. Maybe some valuable information was hidden somewhere in there.

Anyway, my point is that while Shadowrun Returns didn't do well at teaching me how to play, I was able to succeed and have fun regardless. And my main interest wasn't in its combat dynamics, anyway; fights were more like an active approach to storytelling.

That story - a noir-styled murder mystery, strongly-written NPC personalities, megacorp conspiracies, and a spicy twist of magical fantasy - kept me interested in following its threads all the way through.

So long as the Dragonfall and Hong Kong expansion-sequels keep up this narrative quality, I'm not too worried about whether I do or don't become "better" at Shadowrun.

Better than: Dex, Divinity: Original Sin - Enhanced Edition
Not as good as: Deus Ex: Mankind Divided
Basically as good as: Masquerada: Songs and Shadows

Progress: Finished the Dead Man's Switch campaign on Normal.

Rating: Good