how are you enjoying shadow running?

I finished it a few hours ago on hard difficulty and thoroughly enjoyed it aside from a few targeting and cover issues. Also encountered a few bugs and weird AI behaviour.

It's fine. I was hoping for a deeper RPG and combat system but it is still enjoyable. The saving thing is a pain but not the end of the world.

I'd probably only recommend to two types of people: 1) those who love the Shadowrun universe (or potentially those who love a fleshed out universe with tons of lore) OR 2) Those who are craving an isometric RPG. If you are the latter, I would urge you to reflect upon how mcuh you are "craving" such a game. If it is a burning desire (much like when I go pee) then go for it. If it is an itch that is present but not overbearing, then maybe wait for Wasteland 2 (releasing in October/November 2013).

If you are anything like me, the game is not nearly as deep as you hope. Furthermore, it is obvious that the campaign was structured in such a way as to facilitate easily created user generated content. If you are in a map with combat, you will run around, possibly doing a side mission and then finally doing the main fight of the section. If you are in a non-combat map, you will run around talking to people and occasionally purchasing new armour, weapons, or spells.

In the end, mages who use assault rifles are cool.

It's weird. I had a SNES, and I don't remember hearing anything about Shadowrun. This looks cool, though.

Is it worth playing if I don't have the nostalgia factor?

When I first heard of the game I thought "Holy shit, fantasy meets cyberpunk... this game will be amazing!" Kind of hyped myself up. It's still a very good game simply because of the universe and writing. I just wish it had more depth in terms of gameplay and exploration.

The game is also heavily influenced by Neuromancer (obviously?), which is pretty awesome. All in all it's a good game, I hope we see some more official campaigns that might improve the game.

I'm excited this is doing well. When I was in school one of my professors was Tom Dowd, one of the original creators of Shadowrun and Battletech. He always had great stories to tell about the early days of cyberpunk and table-top RPG's. He also wrote a bunch of the books I guess. Great guy. Amazing teacher. Ended up working on the video game side of FASA and made the Mechwarrior and Mechassault games as well as the early Shadowrun console games for SNES and Genesis. I guess he consulted on this game so maybe that's why everyone is saying they got the lore and tone so right. I also hear one of the characters is based on him. It was probably one of the coolest things about going to school. Being able to say I learned to make games from Tom Dowd.

I really, really like it. I'm only about two hours in, but it's a lot of fun. I've never played a Shadowrun game before, though, so I can't speak comparatively. It is a bummer about the saving thing. And I didn't know about reloading at all until watching the Quick Look.

I'm kind of excited to see what user stuff gets made for this.

I barely know what a shadowrun is but I'm really enjoying the atmosphere and tabletop sillliness of Shadowrun Returns.

That said. That gameplay. At first I thought it could be neat, but the farther I get into the game the crappier it gets and the more shallow it reveals itself to be.

Ive restarted like 6 times and cant decide on a race/class...

Played 5 hours so far. I have to say, the auto save function is the worst part of the game. I'm also a little disappointed in the way they handled some UI elements. I've been wondering why they did what they did then I heard they were iOS developers and they plan on porting this to tablets or whatever. Now I know why the UI is bad and there isn't really any awesome story branching that only a RPG without voice acting could bring.

It's still pretty good. Though I'm not sure if it was worth what I payed. Maybe the custom modules will help. I'm thinking about trying that myself once I'm done with the main module.

This is the hardest decision in every RPG... I've went with a elf street samurai. Any impessions on other classes/races?

I never played the original but I must say that I'm really liking this game.

Any of you figured out how to access the stash outside of directly after purchasing something from a vendor?

I purchased a drone, knowing I had enough karma points to upgrade my drone control skills to use it later. Directly after purchase I got to the stash window, but couldn't equip the drone yet, as I hadn't invested my karma points yet, so I exited the screen, upgraded my karma points and now can't get back to the stash screen, as I don't have enough money to buy something else from that vendor. Looks like you should be able to do it from the character screen, but nothing happens when I click the empty weapon slots there.

Never played any shadowrun games except for the fps one. I don't know if the original was like this or not, but this game screams Neuromancer to me more than anything else and I absolutely love it simply because of that.

I rolled with a Street Samurai Dwarf and am quite enjoying the game, not able to quit when you want is a bit of an issue though.

@fisk0: You can only access the stash at the Seamstresses Union, or when the loadout screen is presented before a mission, afaik.

But it seems I can only access the stash at the Seamstress Union directly after purchasing something from a vendor, as I bought something with my last money there, and then exited out of the stash screen, it seems I can't return to the stash there without making another purchase.

@fisk0: There's a locker in the room just to the right of the entrance with the bunk beds. That's your stash.

Oh, missed that one, thanks!

Just finished the game and it feels short to me, I wish there was another act or 2. The story, narrative and characters were all awesome and the writing was great and engaging.

Player choice seemed pretty lack luster and combat isn't as complex as I'd like it to be but overall it was alright. A great game but I wish there was more to it, but for 20 bucks I guess its justifiable.

@potatomash3r How long is it? I've just completed the graveyard mission.

Things I can't stand:

- Autosave only? Lame.

- When your main character gets KO'd, you game over. Even if your party has trauma kits. WTF? It's not 1997 anymore that's not fun.

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Loved Shadowrun as a kid (pen and paper, never played the SNES or Genesis games), even played and enjoyed the Xbox 360 game (for different reasons, shouldn't have been called "Shadowrun" but whatever). Backed this Kickstarter game at a stupidly high rate. I got a boxed copy and everything. I feel so dumb, and this is definitely a lesson I needed to learn. The game is OK, but I'm not having as much fun with it as I thought. I was like "maybe I'll make an adventure!" Uh...did you SEE that creation kit? It looks super complicated and scared me away instantly. Maybe it's just that the pack-in adventure isn't tickling my fancy, but I'm also not finding the combat very fun. I get that scarcity of resources is part of the whole thing, but...y'know...I've kinda grown out of that. It discourages me from experimenting when "Shoot the guy in the face" is ALWAYS the best way of dealing with any enemy. I'm past the point in my life where things need to be difficult for it to be worthwhile. I want to experiment more and all, but if you die you have to do a bunch of dialogue and shit again...uugh.

All that being said, I'm still playing it and I'll beat the adventure it came with. Maybe it'll get better, but I'm just not in love with the core of it, so I can't see how I could fall in love at this point. Hopefully in a few months people make some cool games for it and I can get back in.

Really enjoying it. Feel like I'm about to end Act I. Without spoiling anything, the last conversation and splash screen STRONGLY urged me to get some decking gear, if that tells you where I am.

Apart from the pretty crummy save system, I think I hit one frustrating bug, but I can't be sure. In the first mission where you can hire other runners, I was 100% positive I had picked a mage with healing abilities and a melee focused adept to round out my team. I got into combat...and had two melee focused adepts with identical skills. I was even about 85% sure the portrait for one of them matched the portrait for the healing mage I had selected. I wouldn't have noticed otherwise, but that mage had a band over her eyes like the other NPC, Shannon, that was part of the team. I tried to make a go of it, but combat with that team was brutal.

The good news from all this was I discovered that all those autosaves stack, they don't overwrite each other, so you can roll back to an earlier point. I had to repeat some conversations and redo some shopping, but my second run with the healing mage/melee adept combo worked as expected. Like I said, I don't know if it was a bug or user error, but I'm really glad I only had to replay 20-30 minutes, not three hours.

Really like the world and style, and digging the story so far. Still can't stand the saving issue. Also you can't rotate the camera in combat, which is fucking bonkers to me in a game like this.

I'm curious if any of the player made stuff is any good. I'd like to check them out.

Seems quite mediocre and, in some respects, lazy. The interface is quite clearly meant for tablets, the game is extremely linear with choices that influence absolutely nothing, etiquettes are largely pointless beyond a couple of instances in the entire game, decking is worthless and combat is pretty shallow in general - nevermind the abominable save system. The campaign just comes across as a short showcase for the mod tools. The problem is that the mod tools themselves aren't particularly powerful.

I'd say it was up there as one of my favorite Genesis games by far. Endless gameplay, decent combat / systems, and fairly open world (considering the era). Honestly, being a decker in Shadowrun Returns is extremely disappointing compared to the way they did it in the Genesis game.

What do deckers even do in this new version it looks like it's mostly combat?

Very few combat situations involve the option to deck into the matrix. Usually this helps make combat easier or completes a side objective. This is very rare though for the most part it's like having a high skill in Fallout: New Vegas where it opens up alternate solutions in dialogue and other situations. Also you don't miss out too much combat wise by being a decker. My main focused on range weapons and his decking skills, he hits pretty hard.

In the parts of the game where decking is required, the game provides you with deckers for your team, so the only reason to play a decker is just if you're really into it for flavor reasons.

Still, I'll probably eventually make a Street Sam with decking skills to I can at least hack a bit on my own.

@alkusanagi: Found this the hard way, as I chose to play a Decker. I like hacking in other RPGS (y'know, hack the auto-turrets to kill all your enemies instead of fighting them head-on) but I feel gimped here. My guy shoots people 95% of the time, and whenever there's decking to be had it's always story related. It's never an option in normal combat.

I'd say if I had to pick one thing about this game that I really don't like it's that it's SO combat heavy and there's no way to avoid it. In Fallout I sneak/steal/connive my way through things. Here it's "BOOM BOOM BOOM BOOM HACK, MAYBE BOOM BOOM SUMMON BOOM BOOM OH GOD THE SUMMON BROKE BOOM END"

@galacticgravy: I recently played through a part where if I had a high decker skill could've avoided combat, but that was 9 hours in. :\

It's definitely combat heavy, at least the official campaign is. Choosing to main a pistol wasn't very fun early on, but now being able to attack 3 different enemies with 1AP is pretty rad.

I've never played the original Shadowrun but I have to say I'm really loving Shadowrun Returns. I'm enjoying the combat (it has a very xcom feel) but it mostly has to do with the setting. I simply love the idea of Blade Runner mixed with fantasy.

There is a major mission later in the game where decking is an optional route to supplement combat. It is not particularly involved but it's present.

From the little bit of reading that I did before buying the game, it seemed that decking was finalized pretty late in development because the dev didn't feel that they had the resources to do it justice and were looking for other ways of incorporating it.

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Reading some of the reactions to the game, it's strikes me as odd that people have higher, more stringent expectations for a $20 budget game made for less than $2mil than you normally see for full price AAA titles. At least people seem to know what they want from this game; If I were the dev I'd be considering another crowdfunding campaign for an expansion which addresses the specific issues that people have with this version of the game (after the dlc, of course!) I'd pay another $20 for better decking, better saving, and a couple more campaigns.

Awww I just started yesterday and after about 2 hours in character creation started playing a decker :/

While we are here, how useful/prevalent are the cybernetic implants? And do they affect adept skills?

@tennmuerti: They effect magic and adept skills. For every point of essence you lose, the cool down for the ability increases by one.

I have zero nostalgia for Shadowrun. I played the tabletop game once back in the 90's and the SNES game passed me by because I was a Genesis kid in those days.

I didn't back the kickstarter.

I was convinced by the old-school nature of the RPG, which reminded me of Fallout 2 in a lot of ways and bought the game on Steam. So far I am LOVING it. Nice tactical combat, great mechanics, deep character building and soon I will have user generated adventures.

Great game.

I have no experience of shadowrun before this. I was really looking forward to it because I want something like the new x-com to fill a void. Playing Enemy Unknown endlessly is getting a bit too much! I should also admit that I didn't get super deep into the game, so maybe take these more as "reasons why I haven't felt much desire to continue playing" rather than "this is why the game is bad"

I was mostly excited because my main issue with XCOM:EU is that I kind of wished there was slightly deeper progression for your soldiers, and this looked like it would be that: RPG levels of depth with XCOM levels of tactical combat.I know it's not cool of me to judge the game based on my erroneous expectations, but I do feel it doesn't deliver at all on that. The combat doesn't feel tactical at all to me and the RPG systems aren't grabbing me enough to make up the shortfall. It feels nothing like X-Com, and a lot like the original fallout games, only without any reason to deviate from a fairly standard path in your character build.

Mostly what strikes me about it though is how thoughtless some of the combat scenarios seem, or at least how they make all the "tactical" trappings feel totally extraneous. In particular, an early mission where you rescue someone, which immediately starts combat: You are at least a full turn away from any cover, and every enemy on the map runs towards you, and you end up just standing in the open shooting at them. I suppose this wouldn't be the case if walls counted as cover, and it is a bit bizarre that they don't.

As a quick sidebar, it does really make me appreciate a bit more the elegance of Firaxis' game, and how a game can feel so tactically rich from just a few elements. I feel like people make the XCOM comparison because of the little "In cover" shield, but that only feels at all meaningful if there is some kind of flanking mechanic (someone please correct me if there is one in Shadowrun Returns). But it's even more than that, I think. What XCOM does is makes you manage distance to gain a tactical advantage; Knowing that you have the advantage over long range because the aliens have no sniper class, but also knowing when you need to move in close to finish an encounter. It's also partly to do with trying to engage the enemy in discreet groups so as to maximize your chances. The fact that the missions are all combat, all the time (a fact that does actually irritate me on larger maps) allows for this because it gives you that opportunity to take out small groups in a quick and efficient way, either with really well set up advances or just through sensible use of overwatch.I think this is what SR really fails at, not just because the fact that you have no choice over whether it is "walk and talk" mode or "fighting" mode, so that even on large maps the "combat area" feels very small, with battles devolving into 4 or 5 dudes standing 5 feet away from you while everyone shoots each other in the face (and the animations aren't really interesting enough to save this, which is how Fallout got away with it), but also because the effective range of options in how you do this is incredibly narrow. Melee seems pretty useless, and magic just seems weak, and the guns (at least early on) are so similar (especially given the ranges at which encounters take place) as to make no difference.

The setting is appealing but I'm not massively keen on the writing, and I feel like making the game as incredibly linear as it is whilst also trying to engage the player in a murder mystery. I feel like if the main impetus of your first act is a murder mystery, there ought to be more uncertainty to it. It also suffers from that problem that a lot of games have, where I'm pretty sure I've twigged as to what is going on with the murders, but all the characters (including my own) are being totally clueless about it and i just want to be like "guys, I got this. Don't hurt your heads over it!"

It's a shame, I was really anticipating this being something special. I suppose it is unfair to compare this to XCOM in such depth, and it will be easy for people to say that they are doing different things, which is true, but it's not as if the comparison hasn't been invited. I'm glad that plenty of people are finding enjoyment in it though.

i just finished it , i was actually quite satisfied by the end , im looking forward to the berlin campaign , its a shame they didnt have the time and budget to make this a blockbuster because i really do enjoy the setting and the (potential) overall tactical variety more than xcom etc. im going to play again on the hardest difficulty and see if its unfair then , because i honestly only had a real challenge on the final battle and even that was suprisingly easy.

im glad i kickstated it and i look forward to the user generated content especially the shadowrun identity project.

alexander falk ftw