Shadowrun Returns Review

An RPG to grow on.

Shadowrun Returns is the name of this classic-style isometric role-playing game, but it's really just a venue for telling stories in its long-dormant sci-fi/fantasy universe. What you're really getting when you buy it is a short but well-written tale of murder and conspiracy called The Dead Man's Switch, access to what will probably become a fertile ground for community-created content in the future, and just enough of an isometric roleplaying game and turn-based tactical combat to get by.

Some jerk's snatching Seattle's organs.

Shotgun-toting elves fighting side by side with ork mages and dwarf hackers certainly isn't the typical take on fantasy, and that lends Shadowrun's setting an edge. Thanks to a shared minimalist style, its sparsely detailed 3D characters fit in well as they run around on a respectable variety of painted 2D backgrounds representing a noirish vision of 2050s Seattle. Shadowrun Returns isn't a very pretty game, but it does make effective use of its simple graphics, in part by preventing us from zooming in for a close look.
At first glance its RPG system looks promising – intimidating, even, due to a list of skills and abilities so long and complex it requires quite a bit of scrolling
to get through. Skill points are doled out regularly, creating a good sense of constant progression. I soon grasped that I'd only need to worry about a small part of the tree with any reasonably specialized build, though. Racial bonuses for the five fantasy species aren't dramatic, amounting to just a point or two, but a dwarf's higher willpower ceiling would make him a slightly better fit for a mage, for example. The differences are mostly cosmetic, and playing as a massive troll or ork certainly makes me feel more intimidating than a human, elf, or dwarf, even if characters don't react to me differently. The Dead Man's Switch's story briskly and entertainingly twists itself into something much bigger and more sinister than the whodunit it begins as. Though its characters aren't particularly novel, they are colorfully written in a style that matches their expressively drawn portraits and compensates for the lack of voice acting. The text could definitely use a copy editor, though, and its many grammar errors and typos can get distracting.

"Cherry Bomb's pretty face is hard, armored in lipstick and low expectations."

Even though it attempts to create the feeling of an open-world RPG like Fallout and Fallout 2, in reality it's disappointingly linear, directly funneling you from one mission to the next. There are a couple of well-done puzzles that require information-gathering detective work, and a handful of areas have problems that can be solved in at least two ways – reprogram a blank access card or steal one, for example. But very few of my decisions in dialogue trees had any significant impact on how events played out. For the most part it's window dressing, there purely to let our characters display the professional, sleazy, or good-hearted attitude we want them to. Likewise, only a couple of optional side-missions popped up, giving me the impression that even if my next playthrough is as a straightlaced male troll Decker instead of my wisecracking female elf Street Samurai, events are going to play out pretty much as they did the first time through.
Variety and difficulty in playthroughs is largely up to us, and Shadowrun Returns facilitates that with an excellent risk-reward setup. Each major mission hands you a big chunk of change with which to hire a three-man team of shadowrunner mercenaries, and like in Jagged Alliance 2, you’re incentivized to cut corners and keep the money you save. On the other hand, where Jagged Alliance 2 features great mercenary personalities that we get to know and love, in Shadowrun most get only a line of text to introduce them. Only the angry sometimes-sidekick Coyote, who has a significant supporting role in the story, seems to matter.

Killing thugs in a graveyard is just plain convenient for everyone.

I've forgotten the names of the shadowrunners who fell during the turn-based combat, which reminds me of a light version of both XCOM: Enemy Unknown and old-school Fallout. Fights have enough tactical depth and barely sufficient weapons and equipment to keep things interesting throughout this relatively short adventure. My melee character was able to easily hold her own against gun-toting thugs and soldiers, especially when buffed by a mage to increase her movement range, and ranged combat is enhanced by a simple cover system and multiple firing modes.
Hacking (or decking, as it’s called) is an unexpected combat skill that at certain points in the story transports you into a slick Tron-like virtual world. There, gameplay takes a turn for the repetitive in terms of attacks, awful sound effects, and enemy variety. It’s used sparingly, though, and even effectively, particularly in a couple of engagements where one team member fights his way through the Matrix (Shadowrun called it that first!) to disable enemy systems in parallel with the other three doing battle in "meat space." In that way, a weakness becomes a strength.