The Technomancer

Many will take a look at this game after checking out Greedfall, which unlike Technomancer, gained a lot more popularity and way more people suddenly noticed Spiders, a very small indie studio up until recently. The Technomancer not only gained very little attention but many that played it didn't give it enough of a chance to experience its story and get through the learning curve of the game. I am now going to paste the review I had written when the game first came out on steam with a few tweaks: Combat: You can switch between combat styles on the fly and even in the middle of combat, and there is something for every kind of player. You can be sword and shield, pistol and dagger, or a staff wielder and change whenever. RPG elements: The game offers multiple approaches to quests such as stealth or talking your way out of fights with your charisma or other skills, something not many RPGs offer effectively. You also have a variety of companions you recruit that each offer personal quests and commentary as you do quests. You can develop relationships with your companions, good or bad, and there are even three romance options you can pursue. Story: The story is very good. Your choices have consequences, and you have different endings you can choose. I would also dare to say that the companions easily compete, and some surpass Greedfall's. Misc: There are multiple areas to explore, and while the maps are a bit confusing to get around at first, a dungeon fan would feel right at home in it. The city areas are full and visually distinct, and the art style is unique and pleasant to look at. These areas are filled with optional side quests, and the game even warns you if you are about to lock out side content by continuing with certain main story missions, which is very nice if you are a completionist. TLDR; a VERY good, underrated RPG. Sure it's not an AAA RPG that would be polished to the extreme, but that shouldn't be reason for an RPG fan not to check it out.

I took about 42 hours to get near the end of this game, completing all the quests that I could find. It's a really good game! The quests are interesting and nuanced, the storylines are well done, the choices are important from a personal perspective (even if they're not all world-changing choices). I enjoyed it greatly. I didn't finish it. From Act 3 onwards, it becomes a bit of a grind-fest of battle after battle after battle, and the battle with Gorilla was the straw that broke the camel's back. By that point, I'd completed all the quests except for the very last one, and the very last choice was hidden behind pointless waves of unavoidable enemies. I honestly don't know why this otherwise-competent RPG would want to do that. All the fun of making different choices, with a bit of battle thrown in, suddenly becomes unskippable retry-after-retry grindy-battle-mashing with the hope of returning to RPG later on. About half an hour from the end, I just went onto YouTube and streamed the appropriate ending so I could see what happened. Button-mashing isn't why I picked this game up, so that was disappointing. If I had to play it again, I'd play it on "Easy" difficulty to make the last few hours more tolerable. I'm NOT deducting a star because I think that, had I made a better choice of difficulty setting, I'd probably have completed the whole game myself. Other than that, this game was great fun and I recommend it.

I have just finished my first play through. When I bought this game a few weeks ago, there were almost no reviews. I did a little research for them. Some were mentioning great story, some were mentioning very difficult combat. The story, the narrative is great. Mars was my home for the last few weeks, and I really want to get back there. (And I will, just after finishing this review) The combat may indeed be considered difficult. I am not a power gamer (combat-wise, that is), so I have started with the easy difficulty. As long as you don't publicly write about it somewhere on the Internet, nobody will know. Easy does not mean trivial, however. After some time, when you get used to it, and you notice that the fights get too easy, you may switch to a higher one. Somewhere near the end of the first chapter I've switched to normal, and managed to finish the game on it. I have actually liked that the fight is something you need to take seriously. After all, most of the time you are fighting against experienced or professional warriors, not some random thugs. The difficulty seems to scale with the story progress, but so are your skills and equipment. I felt that it was very well balanced. Moral choices. A part of a good story. My advice - do what you think is right. You will have to live with the choices you've made. Do not try to read any guides or walkthrougths - just let the story unfold in front of you. You will be fine. I sensed some similarities to Mass Effect 1 (which I really loved). However, I found The Technomancer to actually be even better. For example, the cities, and my travels through them somehow seemed more "live" and natural. The Technomancer looked to me like a very rare game, where the developers really had the time and will to make everything well balanced, thought off, and just right.

In short? The Technomancer deserves FAR more than the measly 2-3 stars that some “pRoFeSsiOnAL rEviEwErS” gave to it. In detail? This game incapsulates everything that Spiders is: an indie dev that started with passion for BioWare-style action RPGs and a basket of potatoes for a budget, yet managed to create engaging (though usually janky) games, not just constantly improving but listening to their fans as well (something that nowadays seems to somehow be considered a sin). Personally I already had fun with Mars: War Logs, but here every conceivable aspect has been improved. From the environments, to the combat system, the leveling system, the acting, the soundtrack, the polishing, etc. you can clearly see how Spiders has learned and applied (much of what was done here was seriously improved again in Greedfall) , and because of that, this game has pleasantly entertained me so much that I 100% it and even did multiple playthroughs. The combat itself is both simple and elaborated, and having the chance to choose between three different weapons/classes/combat styles adds a decent chunk of variety. Watching your overloaded Battlemage fry a bunch of bad guys with electricity to then unleash a vortex-style electrified staff attack never gets old, and the satisfaction of winning on Extreme really is something else! The plot is no Pulitzer Prize but is engaging and entertaining. The characters are usually likable, the female NPCs aren’t designed so ugly that they will make you puke (hi Horizon!), enemy variety is ok, and the gear customization system is somehow better than what 2/3 of current AAA games do with 10000x the budget. My conclusion? Try this game and give it a fair chance. It won’t be ME2, or Witcher 3, but it will be different, entertaining, way more enjoyable than it’s given credit for, and especially a gesture of passion from a developer who actually cares.

Bioware basically started their own subgenre of RPG with Mass Effect - 3rd person action RPG with an epic, mature story and well written characters that you can romance. They eventually went the way of dodo, courtesy of Electronic Arts, but others try to carry their torch. I think Spiders are among the best of those. Technomancer is the kind of a game I would recommend to anyone who'd ask: "I've just finished the Mass Effect trilogy, are there games somewhat similar to that?" I already kindda liked Mars: War Logs, it was a likeable little indie RPG but Technomancer is on a whole new level. A tenfold increase of budget and ambition. And it all mostly pays off. After finishing it I'm tempted to say "give Spiders two more games and they'll be better than Bioware ever was."