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Shadowrun First impressions of Dragonfall

Vlajdermen

Arcane
Joined
Nov 19, 2017
Messages
2,039
Location
Catholic Serbia
I've been playing this game for a while, and I'm up to the part where you have to do various jobs to pay that information broker. This is what I think so far:
  • The presentation, as a whole, is pretty good. The whole thing is unapologetic cyberpunk pastiche, and I wouldn't have it any other way.
    • I really dig the visuals. They're as grimy as they should be, and whoever did the character portraits outdid himself.
    • The music is awesome, no two ways about it. It gets the mood of the game perfectly. A lesser game would've had some dull orchestral mush (ahem, numanuma and filthomata) but SRDF knows its shit.
    • It's surprisingly well written. Video game writing isn't normally given much effort, but here it's pretty solid. The world, story and characters are believable, and the dialogue is as concise as it should be. I never felt like skipping through it.
      • More on that note, I respect its choice to have no VA.
  • There's enough skill checks sprinkled throughout. I'm glad that my dumb thug ork couldn't handle situations that require intelligence or charisma, but could easily break down doors or scare the other guy into cooperating. Here we take another judgemental look at Numanuma.
  • The combat is a lot of fun. It's standard turn based strategy, but it's done well enough to be consistently entertaining. The fights in the Matrix feel dull in comparison, though.
  • The hub area doesn't feel alive or dynamic. It's just kinda there. This isn't a deal breaker, but it's worth mentioning.
Overall, I'd say it lives up to the moderate hype it gets on the codex. I haven't gotten around to playing the other two campaigns yet, but all in due time.

If there's anything to be taken away from this post, it's that you should get it, if just for the fact that it's better than most games 5 times its price.
 

Loostreaks

Learned
Joined
Mar 28, 2018
Messages
103
Much better than older crpgs like Fallout. Class above it in writing and characters, tone is consistent and main theme ( freedom) present all through out the game. There are no fetch quests or wasted time on exploring the "map", every mission is enjoyable and can be handled in number of ways, This game is "all meat".

No loot hoarding either, and economy actually plays a part in character progression. Combat is nothing remarkable, but encounter design is a lot better.

What they need to do:

- Improve main hub: make it more interactive, dynamic and less npc dialogue repetition (after each mission)

- Redesign matrix: something like Deus Ex+Very light version of Uplink. This would be pretty interesting to do in heat combat: two completely different styles of gameplay at the same time

But overall, as a whole package it's better than IE games, even if it doesn't quite match what each is best at ( Torment: writing, TOEE: combat, BG II: npcs/dialogue, etc)
 

Cross

Arcane
Joined
Oct 14, 2017
Messages
2,983
Much better than older crpgs like Fallout. Class above it in writing and characters, tone is consistent and main theme ( freedom) present all through out the game. There are no fetch quests or wasted time on exploring the "map", every mission is enjoyable and can be handled in number of ways, This game is "all meat".
How does any of that relate to Fallout, a game that has no fetch quests and is probably even shorter than Dragonfall? Speaking of filler content, Dragonfall does devolve into filler combat at times, particularly in the final mission, which throws endless waves of fire drakes and scorpions at you that are completely inconsequential (because the 3 AP boost turns late game combat into even more of a cakewalk than it already was).

'Every mission can be handled in number of ways' is severely hampered by how heavily scripted everything is and how little interactivity the player has, which often makes it that there's effectively only one way to handle a mission. For example, in one mission you're paired up with some shady guy who the game repeatedly beats you over the head that he's going to cause trouble. In another RPG you'd be able to act on your hunch, like by (temporarily) removing him from your party beforehand. In Dragonfall, you're forced to put up with him until the inevitable moment where he goes apeshit and you have to deal with the fallout.

No loot hoarding either, and economy actually plays a part in character progression.
Dragonfall barely has an inventory system to speak of. Your companions come fully decked out with their own equipment and consumables, which replenish after every mission, or even during some missions. Yeah, they eliminated the busywork that RPGs with inconsequential loot suffer from, but at the same time, they didn't anything compelling to replace it with and with the way consumables work, they also removed any semblance of resource management. On balance, there's nothing positive here.

But overall, as a whole package it's better than IE games, even if it doesn't quite match what each is best at ( Torment: writing, TOEE: combat, BG II: npcs/dialogue, etc)
Dragonfall makes severe concessions, such as the elimination of exploration (consider that even a game as linear and story-focused as PS:T lets you spend the bulk of the game doing side content in Sigil). It's not some perfect template for RPGs.
 

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