Just not good enough if you really love RPG's. This game is lacking on pretty much all fronts. There is just nothing to do in it and the gameplay is way to liniar for a RPG. If you like having lots of options, and a deep combat system, and enjoy costomising your characters and team with lots of items, then this game is not for you.
But if you're looking for a shallow RPG, then this is a nice looking kiddypool to dip your toes into.
So here are some pro's and con's to sum it all up:
PRO's:
- Good enough graphics for some beautiful scenes
- Fun and diverse customization
- Interesting world/meta-world
CON's:
- As with too many games today, the customization really doesn't matter that much gameplay wise, you're gonna beat any foe anyway
- Too easy
- Too short
- Very repetitive music
- Shallow story with disappointing wrap up
- Dialogue choices doesn't matter much
All in all a fun, but short experience. Worthwhile, but let's hope for the community to make something more interesting out of this one
Be warned, there are no pre-made characters, no tutorial level and no separate manual. The manual is in game, so is no use for character creation. If you want a seperate manual you have to search the wiki dedicated to this game for a button that will download the contents of the wiki in pdf format.
In other words, you are thrown in at the deep-end.
Shadow run was a bit obscure a couple of decades ago but it was unique in the idea of merging fantasy and scifi, whats not to like?. Seeing how both fantasy and sci-fi have matured bring the perfect opportunity to bring back this gem, but sadly this game fail horribly at this.
As a game it feels more like an interactive storybook (and a pretty one too), the thing is way to linear, picked up a decker because you love messing up security and corporate networks, cool, wait till theres a chance for you to do it in the storyline, and don't expect anything new, its just like every other battle you play in the game. I have to say the graphics are beautiful and fit to the mood of the game but game play is a complete let down.
Back in the days SR on the genesis allowed you to roam and take different jobs, got to infiltrate to a building? cool, if you're a samurai you're slashing your way in, if you're a caster you're using invisibility and other tricks, decker? no sweat, just hack a terminal and wreck the cameras and security, you'll find none of this in SRR, its basically: follow the story, pick your dialogues and get into tactical fights, and hope you don't loose any because you CAN'T SAVE, the thing decides where its good for you to make a checkpoint for you to start on if you fail.
As sad as it seems I'd play my old genesis SR before this any day, personally i got this played about 4-5 hours of it and quitted, doubt I'll get back to it ever.
Really wanted to like this game and I was up until I ran into a gaming breaking bug that pretty much doomed my whole playthrough and I couldn't progress. It kept freezing up my game at the exact same point, no matter how many times I reloaded. I love RPGs especially Sci-Fi ones and the Shadowrun universe is very cool to explore, which is why I'm disappointed with this game.
To start with the good, the story was interesting for the first half as it was this cool detective story, until the plot takes a new direction which I didn't like but that was about the time when I hit the bug wall. The character progression is basically the same as Vampire the Masquerade Bloodlines, in that instead of you gaining XP and leveling up, you just get skill points straight away from completing quests. It helps simulate the tabletop style of gameplay which I love. The game is also very linear with you basically going from mission to mission. I didn't mind this and found it refreshing compared to many open world game now a days.
Overall I really wanted to like this game but I couldn't even finish it because of bugs. I searched online and many others have run into the same brick wall. The fact that this game is almost 10 years old and has not been fixed is inexcusable so its a skip for me. I got this for free on GOG, but I would be angry if I paid for it, therefore I do not recommend buying it.
