Shadowrun Shadowrun: Dragonfall - Director's Cut

[Shadowfang]

Cons:
You have to deal with boohoo companions and their boohoo stories.

That doesn't really say much. You could say the same thing about Planescape: Torment.

You are right.
I felt like i was their coach on a cheesy football film.
Whats wrong Eiger?
-Nothing, coach.
Nothing my ass! You are part of this team and everything you bring with you to the field is my bussiness! Keep your head together, the regionals are on the horizon.

I would have prefred a more professional vibe between the companions.

What makes Lucky Strike a pro? Besides her character portrait, I know you can talk to her and it is implied that she will continue speaking to you but, after every mission i went to see her and she wouldn't speak to me. Also do hired companions in Dragonfall DC react to your actions during missions? I never actually tried this thinking they were only there to give you more options stat wise to your squad.

I found her quite useful. She has a rifle and a katana, points in biomedic, grenades, spellcasting (meaning more free healing and aim, and if you are playing the DC you can also give her fireballs and manabolts) making her quite versatile. Add wired reflexes to the misture and you have a character that performs like a glory (if she could hit) and eiger combined.

Even on higher difficulties they wouldn't use different abilities thus making ecounters a bit more challenching/interesting and the only changes i experienced was that they will allways hit you and will gang up on one of your party members. So is combat in DMS atleast a little different than Dragonfall DC? It would be a plus if there atleast some variation in encounters.

Well there are a couple of cool fights in DMS. The renraku lab is nice, the cemetery is awesome and the game gets challeging with the final battles.

Also when you say "low use of skills and etiquettes" in DMS, i found that in Dragonfall most skill/etiquette checks were mostly there for flavour, and besides something like the security etiquette which allows you to avoid a bunch of combat in the Bloodlines mission, those checks didn't really changed the outcome of a lot missions.

Expect even less with DMS.

 

[Lhynn]

Cons:
You have to deal with boohoo companions and their boohoo stories.

That doesn't really say much. You could say the same thing about Planescape: Torment.

You are right.
I felt like i was their coach on a cheesy football film.
Whats wrong Eiger?
-Nothing, coach.
Nothing my ass! You are part of this team and everything you bring with you to the field is my bussiness! Keep your head together, the regionals are on the horizon.

I would have prefred a more professional vibe between the companions.

Wat? not only do you not have to deal with anything, you barely have to talk to your companions, you are the one that makes it personal, not them. They promptly tell you to fuck off the first time you press them for it.

 

[Shadowfang]

Wat? not only do you not have to deal with anything, you barely have to talk to your companions, you are the one that makes it personal, not them. They promptly tell you to fuck off the first time you press them for it.

Not true. There are some mandatory group hug parts, and many of the conversations with Paul(?) have lame bohoo topics about your companions.

You weren't there eiger! You don't know what it was like!
Want to make up, fearless one?
Dont mind if i do.
Hahahahaha

 

[Vadio]

Shadowfang Looks like I'll try it even for the atmosphere, story, setting, etc. Thanks anyway.

 

[Lhynn]

Wat? not only do you not have to deal with anything, you barely have to talk to your companions, you are the one that makes it personal, not them. They promptly tell you to fuck off the first time you press them for it.

Not true. There are some mandatory group hug parts, and many of the conversations with Paul(?) have lame bohoo topics about your companions.

You weren't there eiger! You don't know what it was like!
Want to make up, fearless one?
Dont mind if i do.
Hahahahaha

Last thing paul said to me was that i was a jerk and that i shouldnt be in charge. not exactly honey.
As for the team acknowleding you as their leader, It makes sense. If anything i was expecting it to happen sooner, because i literally had to carry all their asses across entire battlefields because they couldnt hit a target to save their lives and seemed to have a fucking bullet magnet attached to their forehead.
They may be pros, but they are people too, and things got personal back in the first run.
No interaction with them but the ones that moved people from mission to mission seemed mandatory tho, unless something has changed in the directors cut.

 

[Shadowfang]

Last thing paul said to me was that i was a jerk and that i shouldnt be in charge. not exactly honey.

Whats your point?
I mentioned Paul because you said that you only have to deal with the emotional side of your companions if you aproach them about it, which is not true. You are forced unto most of them, some through Paul's conversations.

As for the team acknowleding you as their leader, It makes sense.

Of course it makes sense but who is saying otherwise?

They may be pros, but they are people too, and things got personal back in the first run.

They lost one of their own in a run. Bound to happen in that trade, but as tragic as it may be it was handled poorly and cringe worthy. Maybe you like how they handled it while i didn't.

Those fuckers killed Monika!
Well, we did waste about 7 of their men upstairs...

It felt biowaren, like others have said already, and inferior to DMS with Jake and Coyote.

 

[Lhynn]

My point is that i never actually felt a close connection with paul.
That i felt that the respect that Eiger gave me was earned and not a "boohoo shes so sensible".
That Glory never actually started any conversation, and if you wanted anything out of her you had to pry.
That Dietrich had family issues and was understendably distressed at the very real possibility of you blowing their head.
And that there was a whole entire rooster of shadowruners that kept their emotional distance in check.

I believe your criticism about the team is unwarranted.

 

[SwiftCrack]

Except about Blitz.

 

[Barghest]

My experience with playing DMS after Dragonfall, was poor. Felt like I played Planescape Torment, and then played Icewind Dale afterwards.

At best C+

Well, you played them in the wrong order. DMS wasn't so bad taken by itself. It wasn't so good either, and Dragonfall improved p. much everything, but that bodes well for their next game.

Oh, I totally agree with you. But I would have been annoyed if I had backed DMS on kickstarter. Dragonfall is one of the best games I've played recently and does bode well for the sequel.

 

[GarfunkeL]

I hope that the next campaign allows you to have a party of 5 or even 6 instead of four. The engine can obviously handle more (my current record is PC with 2 drones, Dietrich with a spirit, Eigar, Glory and Dietrich's nephew making it 8 characters in my team at the same time) so I dunno why they artificially limited it to just 4.

 

[Morality Games]

I hope that the next campaign allows you to have a party of 5 or even 6 instead of four. The engine can obviously handle more (my current record is PC with 2 drones, Dietrich with a spirit, Eigar, Glory and Dietrich's nephew making it 8 characters in my team at the same time) so I dunno why they artificially limited it to just 4.

TABLETS.

 

[agris]

Nah, a couple of missions involve all story NPCs.

 

[Jaesun]

I hope that the next campaign allows you to have a party of 5 or even 6 instead of four. The engine can obviously handle more (my current record is PC with 2 drones, Dietrich with a spirit, Eigar, Glory and Dietrich's nephew making it 8 characters in my team at the same time) so I dunno why they artificially limited it to just 4.

To limit the time combat takes to resolve.

 

[Jason Liang]

DMS feels like ToEE - the story feels like it was built directly from a PnP module blueprint (like many of the early NWN mods), so it feels really thin, just like ToEE. It's also extremely linear like PnP and ToEE. DMS also feels really short because your character gets powerful very fast (generous karma rewards), and you can basically do anything since the character system is based on SNES Shadowrun Jake, so you don't need to specialize and can do pretty much everything yourself.

Dragonfall adds a lot of bioware elements to a JA2- like combat engine. Like BG2, you have a hub, fleshed out NPCs in your party and tons of side quests in your journal. I guess where Dragonfall is resonating with codexers is that it marries the world engine of BG2 with the combat engine of JA2, and also takes elements of both SNES and Genesis Shadowrun games as well.

I was originally disappointed with SRR, but that's because I was hoping for it to be GTA set in 2056... (ironic since the Genesis Shadowrun is one of GTA's primary influences). Even Dragonfall is not the Shadowrun game I wish for, but BG2+JA2 lite isn't bad.

Dragonfall feels like a less epic BG2 while DMS feels like an average NWN fan module.

 

[GarfunkeL]

Whoa, Barely Literate and writing out a pretty accurate analysis of them.

Except that the more combat options you get in SRR - DC added some and made cover far more important - the more I'm disappointed that it's not MOAR like JA2 1.13.

 

[Vadio]

I hope that the next campaign allows you to have a party of 5 or even 6 instead of four. The engine can obviously handle more (my current record is PC with 2 drones, Dietrich with a spirit, Eigar, Glory and Dietrich's nephew making it 8 characters in my team at the same time) so I dunno why they artificially limited it to just 4.

Why? Its just an arbitrary number. The character system is not varied enough to justify more party members.

 

[DeepOcean]

I hope that the next campaign allows you to have a party of 5 or even 6 instead of four. The engine can obviously handle more (my current record is PC with 2 drones, Dietrich with a spirit, Eigar, Glory and Dietrich's nephew making it 8 characters in my team at the same time) so I dunno why they artificially limited it to just 4.

Why? Its just an arbitrary number. The character system is not varied enough to justify more party members.

You can make:
A AoE focused mage.
A disabling focused mage.
A support mage.
A cyberware focused samurai.
An adept.
A pure shaman.
A sniper.
A pure rigger.
A pure decker.
And hybrids between all those oprions.
It isn't a question of the character system being not varied enough, actually, Wasteland 2 and it's twenty or so skills doesn't feel as varied as this game combat. Obviously, there are characters that aren't all that useful on the campaign (pure decker for example) but that is more a problem of the campaign than of the system. They cleary kept to four characters to reduce micromanagement and four being the lowest number of players on many shadowrun PnP campaigns.

 

[Jason Liang]

Four is definitely not the "ideal" number of runners in classic shadowrun. Most of the novels and short stories are about small two or three runner teams. In fact, the "iconic" shadowrun team, featured on the cover of the 2E Sourcebook is three members: Sally Tsung (Face/ Mage), Ghost (Samurai) and Artful Dodger (Decker). The Genesis game has 3 member teams and you choice your PC from 3 classes. The SNES game I think Jake can only have one or two other allies. 4th Edition basically dissolved real gameplay differences between hermetic mages and shaman. Basically in the classic canon universe there are three worlds a team has to cover: Astral space, Matrix space and the Meat space. A team basically needs an expert to handle each (which doesn't even translate to the video games since the video games never fully represent astral space).

For example in the Genesis game, you needed a Samurai to soak gunfire and kill things (especially at melee), a Mage or Shaman to cast invisibility (VERY ESSENTIAL), and a Decker to hack into the matrix to turn off security cameras and alarms so that the elevators are working again. These are the essential specialties.

Secondary specialties can basically be doled out to any team member: face/ social, healing, rigging, buffer, scouting. Tactically what makes Shadowrun distinct from D&D is that any team member can accomplish a lot with gear: anyone can shoot a gun for long range, anyone can lob a grenade for AoE or disable, anyone can use a medkit to heal themselves or others, anyone can wear heavy armor to tank, anyone can use use an electronics kit to open lock doors (or use a grenade to blow them up), and anyone can use drugs on themselves to buff.

My hope is that if these games continue to come out and get better, stealth and vehicles will be implemented. Stealth would add a ton of gameplay, and vehicles would help riggers stand out. Also they need to continue fleshing out cyberware.

Actually, one of the coolest parts of Dragonfall was in MKVI, once you jack in, when a rigger tries to take over the cybertroll, he appears in the Matrix where my decker PC can crash him. I don't know if this is automatic or if it's because my PC had used drone control to give the cybertroll 4 AP. But it was really cool.

 

[GarfunkeL]

Why? Its just an arbitrary number. The character system is not varied enough to justify more party members.

It very much is as DeepOcean just demonstrated.

The SNES game I think Jake can only have one or two other allies

Max out charisma and you can have three allies for a party of four. I really wouldn't take any sort of guidelines for party size from the covers of various editions. In P&P, party sizes range from 2-8 but 4-6 are the most common of course. The 4th edition core rules give an example party of 5 (face, shaman, driver/rigger, decker, samurai).

But the important point is that the combat mechanics are on their best when both sides have many characters with varied abilities on the field at the same time. The fewer "puppets" there are, the less options you have, the more boring the combat is. Sure, there can be dramatic and tense moments but combat is most fun and more challenging when there's loads happening on the screen.

Plus, it would cut down on the silly re-spawning waves of enemies entering from a door that you cannot do anything about-phenomenon that happens few times in the game. The battle in the AI room comes to mind.

 

[Jason Liang]

Four runners can fit into a taxi, that's why the game has 4 runners max. One passenger seat, three in the back.

This game really, really needs personal vehicles. In Dragonfall you're taking the metro to and from your jobs... it's really sad.

 

[dryan]

Four runners can fit into a taxi, that's why the game has 4 runners max. One passenger seat, three in the back.

This game really, really needs personal vehicles. In Dragonfall you're taking the metro to and from your jobs... it's really sad.

I think the metro is there just for plot reasons, because in the first run your team has a van.

 

[SwiftCrack]

Nothing wrong with the metro system in Berlin, bro.

 

[GarfunkeL]

Yeah and since spell slots are limited to six, while there are way more spells than that available, having two casters is actually useful but with only 4 party members, that means that you're missing out on some other stuff. Like when I played an AoE/DD-focused mage and brought Dietrich along. Meaning that since I needed Blitzer for decking and buffed Glory does pretty wicked claw-damage, Eiger got to hang out at home all the time.

 

[Gord]

Just replay with a different team then...

 

[Shadowfang]

A bigger team would lead to an easier experience.
If you can only bring 3 runners with you, means that you will have to compromise.
Do i bring a decker with me? Do i prefer bringing a mage or shaman?
The less runners you can bring with you, the bigger the impact it has on your choices.
For these same reasons i prefer fps that restrict the number of weapons i can bring with me.


With 6 you are just crossing names off a checklist to make sure you got all things covered:
Street Sam, check; Decker, check; Rigger, check; Mage, check; Shaman, check; and we still have room for an adept.