Finished Dragonfall yesterday. While it felt good and i definitely got my money's worth, I felt half the game went against the other, so to speak, or that the core mechanics in the game were bit disjointed:
1) The way skill checks work in conversation feels annoying. If I don't have enough strength to pick a certain option, don't even show me that option. It feels like the game is constantly taunting you to spread your karma points around but then punishes you if you do so as that makes your character significantly less viable in combat.
1a) Now i know most of the additional conv options is story fluff and only occasionally alternative objective paths/bonus goodies. Problem is showing the greyed out options shatters the illusion of choice and, by proxy, replayability. If I wouldn't see the greyed out options i would feel tempted to reroll a different character after my current playthrough just to see how certain convs play out when playing a strong decker instead of a charismatic mage. Due to seeing different options and noticing how all of them lead to the same outcome I don't feel tempted much.
2) There's one optimal character build: Rifles, rifles, rifles. Long range? Carry a sniper rifle. Short range, grab an AR and then switch to a minigun. All the other weapon types are subpar compared to rifles. They tried to fix this by introducing weapon variety like tasers in the pistol group, or accuracy/different firing modes to some shotguns. Still, what's the point of tasing someone when you can unload full auto on him and kill him outright or in 2 rounds.
Buffs are nice but redundant when you've cyberware and stims. Mages damage output shines only for a brief moment in the mid-game and then falls behind again. Shamans suck a bit as there's only a handful useful conjuring spells and spirits are too unreliable unless you pick the creator totem (which is one of the few useful totems in the game, by the way). Deckers are plain bad and matrix segments don't really justify having them around if you ignore story fluff. Riggers scale weirdly but are still worse than other choices and if the drones are gone they're dead weight. Melee is lacklustre.
Seriously, I played through this game on hard and had a feeling all the time that having four runners with miniguns/sniper rifles/grenades would steamroll through everything there is in the game without issue. Also would feel like playing Syndicate.
3) The party system is very restrictive and, what adds insult to injury, the game capitalises on these restrictions to work around basic design flaws outlined in point 2 which never should've been there in the first place.
Ultimately I'd say the game's got lots of soul backed by great visuals, great music and a solid storyline but the PnP->cRPG translation is pretty bad which effects in a poor party system, basically non-existent loot system, poor character development and poor combat (although it did get considerably improved compared to Dead Man's Switch so kudos where they're due).
Don't get me wrong, it all works, and it gets the job done and ultimately the game is quite enjoyable - but when HBS start working on a sequel they should go back to the drawing board and rethink the way they want to do it from scratch. The whole team is there, what you need is a proper systems designer on board.
I recommend JE Sawyer.
