The game is good and stable, the general level of the plot is decent. But 90%+ of the game is linear. There are like 1-2 side missions, very little character development, no choices that matter etc. Basically, it's like "we've built an engine, here's what it can do" type of feeling. Somehow reminds me of Half-Life 2: great engine, solid story, solid experience, 100% railroad shooter. Except that HL2 did not pretend to be an RPG, but this game does. Shadowrun Dragonfall, for example, feels quite differently (even though after classic CRPGs the world feels a bit empty of action, and controversial choices could matter a bit more..).
Don't get me wrong, the game is nice, except that s was designed for the consoles and some funky stuff like the 2nd controller trick (google it) won't work. But it is a really old game, what the F price? Same thing as with EA titles - I would have bought some to pay respects, but not at this price level..
If someone offered me to trade back the game experience for time spent after finishing this game, I'd take it. Pros: * Stable. I had 0 glitches * The graphics are nothing you'd want as a wallpaper, but OK. * Voice acting is actually MUCH better than expected. Probably, the only thing that I will remember a month later about this game. * Background music is very good, reflects the atmosphere well. Too short for OST though. * Quest items are spawned at the beginning of the game, not when you take a quest - combined with fast travel saves you a LOT of back-and-forth - a very respectable game design decision! Cons: If you know the typical cyberpunk cliches and played Deus Ex, the story and setting will be 0% new and 100% feeling of copy-paste. Plot twists and endings (most unsatisfactory endings ever!) are predictable; writing, characters and quests are bland. There is no depth and no emotional attachment. By the end you don't care who lives of dies - you just want it to end. DROD had better writing! When platforming you have no clue which objects are material (can stand on) and which are just background decorations - they all look the same, causing tons of confusion, and falling damage. Why? The secondary attacks when hacking are not mentioned in tutorials! I've found out about them only when I started reading guides, because hacking was so darn hard. And YouTube is full of videos of people never finding that the secondary attack actually has 3 modes, not just one. Combat (both ranged and melee) is very simplistic. Stealth pretends to exist, but doesn't really. Bosses do not exist. The final "boss" is a fat stationary turret, which you kill by moving your joystick left and right in a repetitive pattern for a minute or so. Summary: The game feels as if the devs had lots of great ideas, but only 30% budget. So instead of cutting the breadth and having a few 100% great mechanics, they give you lots of not-even-half baked ones.
