Shadowrun awakens from its long slumber with a stellar example of how a CRPG should be made, even if it's rather short.
Except one.
The Sega Genesis version of Shadowrun, for those who have never played this gem, is a game that out Elder-Scroll'ed the Elder Scrolls and did so with only the limited memory and CPU power of a 16 bit RISC chip at its disposal. Shadowrun was so vast and so non-linear that there are still very few games that match it in relative size and scope. It even managed to account for the player not following the plot and, unlike other so-called open world games, allowed for you to completely ignore the story and enjoy nearly all of the game's content through free-form sandbox questing.
Throw in the vast digital world of the matrix (An entirely different second game within that same RPG) and you can see why fans of Shadowrun are still praising it to this day. After all, who would believe that a Sega cartridge from 1994 could manage to hold an open world RPG with random events, free-form questing and sandbox gameplay? As a good friend of mine put it when he was professing his admiration for the game, "It was a miracle of game design".
After reading all of that you no doubt understand how excited I was for the new Shadowrun Returns by Harebrained Schemes. I gladly backed the title on Kickstarter with fifty of my own dollars and patiently awaited each update that trickled out from the producers. I poured over screenshots, watched beta footage released from high level backers and read every article I could about the game...fully expecting it to be the modern day equivalent to the Genesis Shadowrun game I grew up on.
...and I was, for the most part, not disappointed.
If you were to read the forums devoted to this game you'd think the general consensus on the web was that Shadowrun Returns was a failure. You'd believe that it didn't live up to people's expectations and that it came up short in nearly every category. You'd hear fans of the Super Nintendo Shadowrun game say it's too slow and boring while you'd hear fans of the Genesis version claim it lacks the deep questing system and matrix interaction of its predecessor.
The truth is that Shadowrun Returns takes bits and pieces of both the previous RPGs made in its name and combines them to form a beautiful middle-ground that both sides can enjoy...
If only they'd give it a chance.
Shadowrun Returns is an unapologetically old school CRPG that relies on both its highly strategic turn based combat and deep character customization to set itself apart from its contemporaries. Much like 2003's Temple of Elemental Evil and the original two Fallout titles, Shadowrun Returns doesn't care if you're comfortable with its mechanics and will not hesitate to send you to game over screens for making one or two small mistakes.
To its credit, Shadowrun Returns does a fine job of slowly easing new players or those unfamiliar with the pen and paper version of the core rules into the game's combat. Battles start out as simple two on four or three on five affairs with very little surprises or tricks. As the player begins to learn about overwatch, the three degrees of cover, summoning spirits and AP usage they are pushed into large and larger arenas with odds that go more and more against their favor. Eventually you find yourself sweating bullets and having panic attacks because you are going up against immortal enemies that chase you through an entire level ripping you to shreds as you frantically search for an exit. That is where Shadowrun is at its best, putting you in horrible situations that look impossible to survive and require intense concentration and planning.
One fight in particular, a skirmish that I was forced to engage in about midway through the game, seems to embody this more than the rest.
Imagine being attacked by a force that cannot be killed or stunned and your only exit is a locked door you cannot open without letting one of your team members hack a nearby computer to look for the command which unlocks it. While your decker is hacking the terminal for the door code they are defenseless, requiring the rest of the team to steer the monsters away from them so they can take the damaging blows they dish out. To make matters worse the person hacking the terminal must navigate the digital world of the matrix once per round and fight computer programs within the terminal while dodging all attempts to boot them out, which would force you to start the hacking process all over again.
This battle, which was by far the most intense and beautifully agonizing 30 minutes of my entire life, is the perfect example of how turn based combat is suppose to be done. Not since Temple of Elemental Evil have I played a CRPG that actually gave me a panic attack, and I cannot give Harebrained Schemes enough praise for having accomplished that.
I've mentioned Troika's classic Temple of Elemental Evil several times by now and you've probably imagined the weakpoints of that classic CRPG likely apply to Shadowrun Returns as well. The rule that deep combat results in weak storyline is as old as the genre itself and so universal and concrete of an analysis that it's considered truth. Though I wouldn't fault you for thinking that way I can put your fears to rest by stating that Shadowrun has the best campaign story I've read in an RPG since Ultima 7. Lofty praise, but praise deserved nonetheless.
A good RPG makes you care about its story and play "just a few more hours" to find out what happens...but a great RPG goes a step further and makes you connect with its characters in such a way that you see them as real people and develop feelings for them. Shadowrun Returns manages to do this, making several of its characters feel very flawed, very human, and very easy to empathize with. At first I thought it was just myself who became enraged at Sam's killer and felt true anger towards someone for having killed the charming little drunk, but when one of my best friends who was also playing it said the same exact thing to me I knew the writer had done something special.
He made me care for a picture on the TV screen.
The writing is razor sharp like a Joss Whedon dialog exchange and the plot twists come so fast and yet fit so smoothly into the story that this game would have made for a great cliffhanger episode of NCIS. By game's end I found myself smiling ear to ear as I revisited all of the major NPCs I had grown fond of. Coyote the wet-behind-the-ears but realistically tough waitress turned hunter, Dresden the mildly insane mortician, Kluwe the muscular oaf with a heart of gold...I felt for all of the game's characters in much the same way I did for Bioware's own creations back in the 1990s, and that's saying quite a bit.
Shadowrun kept me playing one night from 10pm all the way to 5:30 in the morning straight with no breaks, all because I simply could not live life without knowing what would happen to the people I cared about within the game. It truly was that intense of an experience.
Though as good as the story and the combat may be, Shadowrun isn't exactly perfect.
The first thing that disappointed me is how short and terribly linear the game truly is. Of the five people I know who have beaten the game, including myself, not a single one has taken over 21 hours to complete the story. While that isn't so short I would hold it up as a flaw, it isn't as long as I was hoping it to be. Shadowrun burns white hot like a supernova and dies out nearly as quickly, leaving the gamer wanting more and, if the current state of the mod community is taken into account, unable to find substantial post-game content to fill that void with.
Its only saving grace in the replay value department is the robust skill system and its strict pen and paper ruleset. There are dozens of unique and powerful builds you can create within the rules that can change your game experience dramatically, even if the story itself doesn't.
Another gripe I have against the game is the lack of any manual saving. Your progress is only saved at the start of each "Chapter" and you must continue playing nonstop until you reach the next part of the story or you lose all of your progress. This can sometimes result in you playing for 45 minutes to an hour straight before you are allowed to turn the game off, an unforgivable oversight if, like me, you have a hectic schedule and a significant other who depends on you being available at all times. I remedied this by only playing the game late at night when I knew the next day I would not have anything important to do, but it still bothered me. I could not play the game on my breaks like I did for nearly every other one title and would have given anything for a functional manual save.
Still, as much as the checkpoint system annoyed me, I do see the value of it. Not being able to save during combat or before important dialog choices forced me to actually *care* about my decisions and added real weight to my actions. It may sound funny, but the conservative nature of the save system made the game even more intense and nerve-wracking than it already was. A true silver lining if ever there was one.
Even with these small quirks, the top quality soundtrack (Which I easily rank as one of the best I've ever heard in my entire gaming life), the impressive art direction and attention to detail in each scene as well as the faithful reproduction of a long forgotten RPG ruleset should make everyone happy with this heavily hyped kickstarter-born child.
Shadowrun Returns is, as I said at the start of this review, a game that refuses to be compared to any previous incarnations of the license and instead carves its own path through the genre. It's an RPG that relies on great writing, great combat and intense situations to craft a memorable experience that nearly any patient and open-minded CRPG fan will fall in love with.
As a longtime Shadowrun nerd and someone who reveres the Genesis Shadowrun with such fervor that it's almost become a religion to me, I can honestly attest to this new game's faithfulness and level of quality. It could be longer and it could be a bit less linear, but it left a mark on me that time will never wash away and had me addicted to it in a way that no other $19.99 game ever has. As embarrassing as it is, it fills me with childish anticipation and squealing glee that we are still getting two more scenarios and few large fan-made mod projects released within the next few months.
It's impossible to brush off Shadowrun Returns as a failure or a short little roadbump on the genre's crowded highway. It's a game that will only grow and evolve as more people discover its charm. Much like Neverwinter nights years after its release, Shadowrun is a CRPG that will only grow in greatness as time goes by.
Welcome back Shadowrun, you were sorely missed.