Shadowrun Shadowrun: Dragonfall - Director's Cut

[TedNugent]

Wow, I just finished the Director's Cut.

I'm very amazed that the dev team managed to turn DMH, which was a very limited linear RPG into this game with well developed branching narratives and several optional quest arcs. They must have been limited by their budget with the first game. Either way they learned from their mistakes.

I am very excited for what HBS turns out next - I actually hope it's another Shadowrun expac. I've been very pleased with the endings of both games. I haven't seen this quality of writing in an RPG since I played Fallout. Very clever and original universe.

Bioware could really learn something from the branching endings in this game. It's not so much flipping the switch to determine which of three textboxes you get to read after you end the game, you legitimately get to explore the outcomes of your decision in their entirety with a complete exposition.

If nothing else, it's refreshing to see a game where the dev team actually has some talent.

 

[Jaesun]

As long as they keep following this direction of Campaigns, I will keep buying them. I really really hope they are going to do a new Campaign.

 

[The Great Deceiver]

As long as they keep following this direction of Campaigns, I will keep buying them. I really really hope they are going to do a new Campaign.

I agree, they've shown their will to improve pretty much every element of the game and they've been making great strides ever since releasing DMS. It's a shame they chose the release date poorly, the game doesn't seem to be performing well on Steam.

 

[Abu Antar]

They didn't advertise it in any way. I got a backer beta update about it or else, I wouldn't have known about the Director's Cut.

 

[SausageInYourFace]

I would think that most of the target audience would have owned DF already at that point anyway. I am not complaining that I got it for free, I thought it was a great move, but from a business perspective, I dunno. I am a little worried. I would love to see more campaigns or a sequel, I enjoy the Shadowrunning-atmosphere a lot.

Said atmosphere is really something they nailed with DF, since its exactly these unrelated side-missions that you do simply for money that give you the feeling of actually working in the shadow-underground and doing this for a living, while still maintaining some coherence via the main plot and all the things going on with the Kreuzbasar.

 

[DeepOcean]

I like Director's cut so much that I would gut my wallet if they announced another expansion pack on kickstarter.

 

[almondblight]

I think they let down a lot of people with DMS. SRR was the top selling game on steam for a while, and it looks like only a small fraction of the people that bought it came back for Dragonfall; the media attention, likewise, has been much less. If you read the comments for the Shadowrun Unlimited mod (or check out popular mods in general) you get a sense of why - people were hoping for an open world (buildings you can walk in and out of), more skill checks and choices, side missions, nonlinearity, etc. The DRM and lack of a save game hurt as well.

It's nice that HBS is improving stuff, but it looks like a lot of people weren't terribly interested in giving them another chance.

 

[DeepOcean]

There are only two things that are annoying me at Director's cut, the first is how two of the new missions I played got me to play with shitty runners and another with only my character and another runner that wasn't all great to begin with. I passed a mission with my adept where I hadn't the magical support from Dietritch, had to use all the medkits I started with, used all the medkits that I found in the level and got to the final fight with no way to heal my character. I had to reload three times on a fight where my character was almost dead and had no way to hide from the enemies and as there was only two people to fire at...it was a tough and annoying fight for only 2 karma?

The second thing is a bug that is really annoying is where there are only six spaces on the UI for spells but you can have six spell slots AND a totem spell that have to fit on six slots on the UI, so one of your spells, you won't be able to use on the run because thre is no space on the UI.

 

[Duellist_D]

Either they really upped the difficulty or you're extraordinarily bad because that mission was a breeze (though my PC died in the first post-cyberzombie fight, using up a trauma patch). Cyberzombie is OP as hell, I was killing multiple persons per round with his giant axe.

They really upped the difficulty. If you use all three of the Cyberzombie's AP axing one person, you have a good chance of killing that person (especially if you've marked him), but it's not guaranteed. Only very rarely will you manage to kill even two people per round with him, including when using Cleave on a small group, or the chaingun. I actually doubt you can kill two with the axe unless one or both are at half health. Mages are a bit more vulnerable, but you still almost certainly won't kill two in a single turn on VH.

Obviously some other people ITT have played through that mission. If they play on VH, they can confirm this.

Finished the mission on VH yesterday and i can confirm this.

My Cyberzombie did have 4 AP though (let Blitz with his Questrun-Deck controll him), so i got a few double full auto turns where more enemies died.

Overall DF difficulty did indeed increase, though this was absolutely necessary. The original DLC was way to easy sometimes.
Regarding this particular mission: Despite playing it with a similar PC as the first time, i found it a lot easier.
As long as you keep the Troll out of reach of enemy Deckers, geek those first and early and then proceed to have fun with the rest of the Enemies, its not really difficult.
Though your choice of Team Mates is probably rather important in this one. Trying this without both of Dietrich and Blitz would probably end rather bad.

Pic is the PC i used for this run, though you should substract 10 unspent Karma which i got for finishing it (took the screen at Kreuzbasar, so no temporary Buffs in effect).

 

[Shadowfang]

I had a really hard time on that mission before the patch.
No one on my team could hit shit, cyberzombie included. Now i know it was because of that bug.
After the patch the cyberzombie proved, again, to be a killing machine, even with 3AP.

Edit:
Duellist_D What totem did you pick for Bullet Blaster?http://www.rpgcodex.net/forums/index.php?members/duellist_d.17632/

 

[Icewater]

2.0.5 patch came out today, looks like. I can't find any information on the changes, though.

 

[Duellist_D]

Duellist_D What totem did you pick for Bullet Blaster?

Bear, i find the Group-healing quite valuable and Totems go well with heavy-cyber because their cool-down isn' reduced by essence.

The Accuracy+ Totem might also be good but i always liked not having to carry around tons of Med-Kits

 

[Lujo]

^ Deffinitelly add the fact that several missions aren't all that well integrated into the story, and Eigers is actually underdeveloped as well. Much room for improvement.

Glory's mission ties directly into her personal story, and the old deitrich mission has Luca Duer alternate outcome choice and is part of an actual run, the Doctor, Eiger and Blitz missions feel kinda shallow and tacked on. If they want cohesion across the game and proper significance and appreciation of all the main characters they really outght to brush it up a bit.

I remember them reading the feedback here back for the original Dragonfall, I hope they still do - this really is a legit thing.

 

[Duellist_D]

2.0.5 patch came out today, looks like. I can't find any information on the changes, though.

Bug Fixes

• Minor AI bug fixes and stability improvements.
• Resolved issue that allowed Armor spells to stack or apply the wrong value.
• Resolved issue that caused characters with 6 spells and a Totem to lose one spell.
• General optimization to improve loading times.

Bug Fixes: Dragonfall Campaign

• Added ability to use ESPs multiple times in Settling Debts mission.
• Clarified conversations concerning the Feuerstelle mission.
• Resolved issue that caused a conversation to start after getting a game over.
• Resolved issue that caused Achievement “I feel great” to not be awarded with some heal abilities.
• Resolved issue that caused Achievement “Unintended Consequences” to not be rewarded correctly.
• Resolved issue that caused Air Spirit in MKVI to have incorrect stats.
• Resolved issue that caused a conversation to loop incorrectly in the Engineer mission.
• Resolved edge case issue in False Flags mission that allowed Player to exit with incorrectly set story variables.
• Resolved issue that could cause incorrect conversation options to show after MKVI mission.
• Resolved issue that caused incorrect UI text to be shown with Bliss Auto-Injector.
• Resolved issue that caused the Knight Kings of Lightninghold theme to stop playing at an incorrect time.
• Resolved issue that caused potential play blocker in Beneath the Kreuzbasar.
• Resolved issue that caused Team Advancement ability “Novahot Targeting” to not be rewarded correctly.
• Resolved issue that prevented selling of Paydata from the Trial Run.
• Resolved rare condition that caused the Fog of War to be incorrectly applied in Earwig.
• Other miscellaneous bug fixes and art polish.

 

[Lujo]

Oh, and if those haven't been fixed allready they have many situations where you can trigger events with NPC's out of place. Big example is entering the final room in the Blitz mission where you can end up with the accountant n the wrong sidee of the door and unable to participate in the fight. There's other places too.

 

[mindx2]

Update time and it seems we keep getting more and more prestigious as we are mentioned right alongside with Kotaku...

pdate #82
Sep 25 2014

Shadowrun: Dragonfall - Director's Cut // Help Promote Us on Steam!
7 comments
\nLike\n"">
14 likes
Hey guys! The Director's Cut has been out for a week and we're already off to a strong start. But we think there's a lot more RPG fans out there that would enjoy the game - we want to reach them, and now there's a great new way you can help. Earlier this week, Valve unveiled their major "Steam Discovery Update" for the Steam store. Not only does the store look a lot blue-r now, but they've made some major changes to how games can be discovered and surfaced on the marketplace based on YOUR reviews and recommendations. Just in the last 48 hours we've seen Shadowrun Returns and Shadowrun: Dragonfall - Director's Cut appear on a number of great Steam Curator lists - RPG Codex and Kotaku Recommends among others - which is awesome!

If you love Dragonfall and want to help spread the word, there's two things you can do right now (I know I sound like a public radio broadcaster, sorry):

1. Leave a User Review for Shadowrun: Dragonfall - Director's Cut. (The review box is right near the top of our Steam Store page.) Valve has made user reviews a lot more important in the recent update, including a nice summary at the top of our Store Page - we're currently "Very Positive"!

2. Start Curating! Here's a good overview of the new Steam Curators feature. The more Curators that add Dragonfall to their lists, the more we'll show up to players who follow you or who like similar games. Start a list of your own, or leave comments for some of your favorite Curators and suggest that they add Dragonfall to their lists!

Thanks guys! And, in the spirit of Steam Curation, we've started our own Steam Curator List on Steam. These are games we're big fans of here at Harebrained and that you might like if you enjoyed Dragonfall. Follow it here!

In other news, we've just released Patch 2.0.5 for the Director's Cut, which addresses several bugs and issues that have surfaced since launch. It's available now on Steam and will be soon on GoG and Humble (we've sent them the updated builds already, there's just a bit of time delay before it gets updated.)

Lastly, in the week since launch we've received a TON of extremely kind words from you guys, from press, and from new players alike. I wanted to share a few of our favorites. It's incredibly heartwarming to receive this kind of direct feedback for the work that we're doing and it's one of the greatest parts of game development. Thank you all so much for a fantastic reception.

- Mike

Mitch and I celebrating launch day with obligatory whiskey & cigars!

And the whole Dragonfall team!
----------------------

"The ultimate edition of Shadowrun Returns, the glorious return of the popular tech-meets-magic pen-and-paper role-playing game to the digital realm." - Kotaku

“As it stands, it’s the definitive Shadowrun experience, and is easily one of the best, if not the best, tactical-RPGs of 2014. Do yourself a favor and buy the game. Director’s Cut is clearly worth every penny.” - Hardcore Gamer

"If you haven't played it yet and any bone in your body enjoys isometric CRPGs, I don't even know why you're still reading this." - PCWorld

"Thanks for being a great group of talented people. Shadowrun for the SNES was a seminal moment growing up. I am 32 now and grew up in the time of game rentals. I must have rented it so much that I probably should have just bought the damned thing. You guys captured and improved every element of it, delivering what to me is a near perfect gaming/shadowrun experience. As soon as I saw your kickstarter I had to become a backer and haven't regretted it once.... and now you go and pull a classy move like giving me the directors cut for the expansion for free. You guys rock. Thanks again chummer. "

"Releasing an improved version of an already excellent game for free, this is how I wish all developers treated us fans. YAY HBS!"

"The AI is already noticeably better. Poor Dietrich, his liver's already traumatized and now you've all gone and perforated it."

"I've been gaming for a long time, and I care about my hobby and the state of the industry. It seems like almost every bit of news you hear about the games industry these days is bad news, horrible behavior from consumers and developers alike. I take such news with an enormous grain of salt, but it's still depressing. And then there's Harebrained Schemes, who made a great game, then made it even better, and then gave it to your customers for free. And that's just awesome. "

"I'm sure you are very busy, but I just wanted to drop a quick note thanking you for the release of Dragonfall: Director's Cut. I very much enjoyed Shadowrun Returns and, while I own a copy of Dragonfall, I've been very busy this year and haven't had a chance to play it yet. So imagine my surprise when I checked out my Steam account this morning and saw that you took a game that was, by all accounts, an awesome and refreshing RPG and made it even better... and there it was already sitting in my Steam library, waiting to be played."

"Been playing it almost nonstop since it was released and I'm still not done- just got to the final mission. The DC is incredible. This could very well qualify as my favorite video game of all time. Just sheer awesomeness without the filler content in other RPGs. When it's released on Android I will gladly buy it just to support HBS. I hope to see more Shadowrun games from HBS. If you do a game with the DFDC engine in another city I will pre-order or back it on KS if you decide to go that route again. Bring it on chummers, I need my BTL fix "[\quote]

 

[DeepOcean]

I did Blitz mission and the doctor mission:

Spoiler

Pros: Both are really funny.
Liked Morgan Freeman Assassin.
Both missions have some tough fights that can be affected by your choices and your character.


Cons: They are smaller missions than the major ones from Dragon Fall.
Their storylines are simplistic and they don't show some nice moral decisions you have to make while on the MKIV prototype mission for example.
Blitz get some showtime but besides that, his mission story was kinda disappointing. I expected the conclusion of the story of Aztechnology, the Flux state and his girlfriend but instead the mission has something to do with some generic evil loan shark...
The story from the doctor's mission was funny but I expected some shady organ legging opperation but the only thing it got going was the crazy lab guy plot, it was kinda disappointing. The crazy lab guy situation was funny but not something to get a whole mission going.

Overall, the best addition from the Director's cut so far was the change on the armor and cover system, some fights that were a breeze now are challenging on very hard and more tactical because fights aren't just you sitting behind cover trading shots at the enemies until they die, there is a real incentive for trying to flank them now. The new missions with exception of the Lodge mission were kinda "meh", but there are still Glory and Eiger missions to play, maybe they are better.

 

[Duellist_D]

I really liked Glorys Mission, Eigers on the other Hand was really short and rather bleh.
Only worthwile Addition is one of the possible Items you get for it, which makes her a lot more viable.

 

[GarfunkeL]

GoG only has 2.03 patch, though the patcher itself says its 2.012. Humbug. Guess I'll wait a bit to get the 2.05 before restarting a campaign.

 

[Roguey]

That guy upfront with the glasses looks like a young Cleve. Does HBS have a neanderthal on staff?????????

 

[dryan]

I could not play for a couple of days, and now that I have version 2.0.4 I decided to start over. I'm noticing that in the very first run both Monika and Dietrich have more weapon attacks than before. Also, the chance to hit % is not as screwed as before.

 

[Duellist_D]

So they again catered to the scrub mob?
Decline

 

[dryan]

So they again catered to the scrub mob?
Decline

They didn't. They fixed bugs.

 

[dryan]

Saves aren't cross-compatible from the original? Yay, now I have to start over.

Huh? They are, at least they worked here.
I just started over because I wanted to replay the initial part of the game and see the difference.

 

[Kem0sabe]

Hmm, I'm not seeing my Dragonfall saves showing up in the menu.

Thats because you are playing pirated version.