The Technomancer

I don't know how good this game is. The reviews didn't convince me that I want to spend hours trying to start the game somehow. So I'm just writing a warning that it may not run on newer machines; it doesn't run for me, at least.

The game is a AA action RPG. Zachariah Mancer and up to 2 companions move around a set of connected maps, fight enemies, talk to NPCs and collect loot to complete quests, level up and make conversation choices. You can change your companions' equipment to make them last longer in a fight, and your conversation choices impact your reputation- get it high enough and you get a trait bonus (lock-picking, crafting, science, stealth, charisma, etc) while they are with you. Traits are important for some conversation skill checks, lock-picking, and sneaking around. You also have 4 skill trees for Zachariah. Majority of combat is melee, and all people on Mars fight in one of 3 styles-Rogue (short blade & gun), Guardian (shield & mace) and Warrior (2-handed weapons, such as a staff). Zachariah can learn skills in these 3 style trees, as well as his specialized Technomancer skill tree. Game's visuals are adequate. There's some environmental variety, but, being Mars, you can't expect too much. The game's leaps and bounds better than War logs when it comes to enemy variety and bosses. The game really shines in its questing. Compared to earlier games, there's stronger writing, more interesting stakes, and most quests have multiple outcomes that affect your faction standings. These become critical by Act III, where you need to recruit ally factions to help you overcome the human Big Bad. I did find some cutscenes to be a bit underwhelming when it came to storytelling, demonstrating the game's small budget, but overall, the story's fairly engaging. Overall, this is a Spiders game. That is, Bioware-lite crossed with Witcher 2. If you've liked GreedFall, all the DNA of that game is in here, wrapped I a cool story. If you were turned off by WarLogs or Bound by Flame, this is significantly more refined. Fans of Eurojank RPGs should feel right at home here. Everyone else, this is peak 7/10. You have been warned.

I bought The Technomancer a long time ago and never finished it, but I was immediately impressed by the combination of thoughtful gameplay design and suprising presentation. I intended to revisit it recently, but the game has a huge problem: it only supports systems of 8 cores or below. Anything higher crashes the game upon starting a new game or resuming, but the game runs in the main menu just fine. Obviously, this game's selling point is not the main menu, so this is not sufficient. This game needs a compatibility patch to be brought to standard with modern systems, but since this issue has existed basically since these systems became commonplace and no patch was ever offered, it's unlikely it will be. Spiders/Focus Interactive, fix the product you're selling or provide a warning of its incompatibility with most modern gaming rigs.

It won't compare with bigger budget games, but choices matter in the game, stability is good, and graphics and story are decent. Combat was a bit mixed for me- Better balanced than what Jensen faced in Dues Ex, or something like Elden Ring (where all enemies are powerful, and many are basically mini-bosses), but I still prefer not needing to button mash as much. Unfortunately, that seems to be the way most games are made. The combat here is based on successive uninterrupted attacks getting stronger, but stating out weak. I had focused on staff and technomancy skills rather than becoming a jack of all trades. I had trouble with some side quest later in the game, where I couldn't get where was needed, and it failed when I left thinking hose areas were tied to another quest and required a return the way earlier side quests had. However main story quests always seemed to have a way to complete them.

older game with pretty good graphics, controls and performance the story is not a chewed tea bag and definitly worth a closer look some repetitive elements are in this game as in real life buy it on discount and give it a try if 10 quid is too much