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Technomancer - action-RPG by Spiders (Mars War Logs, Bound by Flame)

Modron

Arcane
Joined
May 5, 2012
Messages
9,933
We'll see how this mid steam sale release date bodes for visibility, publishers sure are attached to that simultaneously release on all platforms even if it means shooting themselves in the foot on their primary pc outlet.
 

Villagkouras

Arcane
Joined
Jul 3, 2014
Messages
1,022
Location
Greece
So, today gets released and a couple of reviews are out.

IGN gave it a 4.9 (why not 5?) and another site 4.5, but since some flaws mentioned include not being able to play as a female or voice acting, I still have hope. Probably it will be mediocre, but let's hope it's playable.

Edit: Looks like these are the worst reviews for the game, as in PC it gets 55 in Metacritic (notice that there are 4 reviews, and (70+65+49+45)/4 = 57,25 and not 55, WTF Metacritic?). In PS4 thing are a bit better, as it has a 68 Metascore and some reviewers say it's quite fun.
 
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yes plz

Arcane
Patron
Joined
Jul 14, 2008
Messages
2,158
Pathfinder: Wrath
"We're gonna make a Mass Effect-esque epic! I mean, we only have like 1/10th the budget but we're still gonna do it! ... Okay, we couldn't do it."
 

prodigydancer

Arcane
In My Safe Space
Joined
Feb 16, 2015
Messages
1,399
I haven't tried it yet but the IGN review can be summarized as: "this game isn't ashamed of being just a video game, folks." Apparently that's an especially heinous crime these days.
 

flyingjohn

Arcane
Joined
May 14, 2012
Messages
2,944
It looks like they are still going with the "enemies are giant meat shields and hit like a truck compared to you".(unless you choose the broken class or skills)
It gets tedious very fast.
And they are still doing the abrupt pacing coupled with below average writing thanks to a lack of budget.
So a typical spiders game i guess?
 

Xeon

Augur
Joined
Apr 9, 2013
Messages
1,858


I kinda like Spiders, I enjoyed Mars, Bound by Flames was also kinda fun except for the final fight with stages, was ridiculously hard IIRC.
 

Malpercio

Arcane
Joined
Dec 8, 2011
Messages
1,534
Are we going to trust mainstream reviewers when it comes to review cRPG?

Really, guys?

No, you can trust this series of extended gameplay videos to see that it's small, derivative, and with horrible dialogue/quests...



Fair enough.

I don't know if Technomancer is good or bad, but even if it was truly awful, I certainly wouldn't rely on IGN telling me that.
 

Xeon

Augur
Joined
Apr 9, 2013
Messages
1,858
Any review site depends on the reviewer, IGN's review about Stellaris for example got hate on but it was one of the few true ones.
 

Malpercio

Arcane
Joined
Dec 8, 2011
Messages
1,534
Any review site depends on the reviewer, IGN's review about Stellaris for example got hate on but it was one of the few true ones.

I get it what you are saying, but it's really hard to trust any outlet regarding cRPG when you remember Dragon Age Inquisition won something like 100 GOTY.
 
Self-Ejected

Bubbles

I'm forever blowing
Joined
Aug 7, 2013
Messages
7,817
The Codex has received a review copy, albeit far too late (early Saturday) for a launch review. Some of the current reviews are pretty hilarious though:

Imagine if you took the Batman: Arkham games, made Batman significantly weaker and less durable than every single mook the Joker throws at him, lifted the restriction on how many enemies can attack him simultaneously, and removed the excellent UI prompts that allow the Caped Crusader to react quickly to danger, flipping and dodging heroically around the battlefield while looking like a badass. That’s basically what almost every fight feels like in The Technomancer.

Even on Normal difficulty, playing on a character with over 20 hours of experience - well into the late game - with the best gear available and a balanced party, the standard humanoid enemies that you run into all over the place feel both significantly tougher and more deadly than you. One wrong move can get you killed almost instantly, while even the most common foes seem to soak up damage from my technomagically-buffed equipment like mercenary sponges. It really breaks the illusion that Technomancers are supposed to be the iconic, mystical heroes of the setting. And you’re often required to fight severely outnumbered on top of it all.

There’s also the matter of firearms. A lot of enemies carry them, and some of them even have fully automatic variants that your character can’t even equip. They do loads of damage and can allow upwards of three or four enemies to plink away at your health from a safe distance while you’re engaged with their buddies. You won’t get any prompt that you’re about to be fired upon, and since one or more shooters may be off-screen at any given time, it’s fairly common to die to gunfire in the middle of a brawl before you even know what happened. Gunmen don’t even seem to have any weaknesses; you can’t simply close on them and take them out quickly before engaging the rest of an enemy group because they’re just as capable of defending themselves in melee as any other class of foe. We’re supposed to believe in this zany future where people choose to fight with metal shields and electro-staffs, but given the unmitigated lethality of guns, you’re constantly reminded of the common sense question, “If we have the technology to put entire societies on Mars, why isn’t everybody using guns?” It’s not like you can deflect shots with your melee weapon Jedi-style, and there isn’t even a cover system. Why are Technomancers significant in this world at all if you can point a rifle at them and take them out like anyone else?

The relatively high enemy damage and health in comparison to what we’re able to wield seem like they might have been intended to keep fights from turning into a button-mashing exercises. The thing is, they actually make it more of a button-masher. It’s just that the button you’re mashing is dodge rather than attack, and you have to be very careful about when to stop spamming it and try to get a hit in or you’ll be toast. There’s no flow or rhythm to it, and the frustration scales up with the size of an enemy group. It doesn’t feel difficult in the Dark Souls sense, where you learn to iterate and get better with each death. It’s just random, tiresome, and annoying, no matter how much time or how many stat points you invest. I kept wondering if there was something I wasn’t getting about Technomancer’s combat. But if I, as an experienced and adaptable RPG player, can make it through a 30-hour campaign without catching onto the specific way I’m supposed to be playing to have fun, that’s just a different brand of failure.

So much could have been forgiven if the central, action RPG pillar of combat wasn’t constructed so poorly in The Technomancer. The world is clearly crafted with vision and attention to detail, but the characters who inhabit it come off too often as awkward marionettes who would rather be doing something else besides participating in this story.

http://www.ign.com/articles/2016/06/28/the-technomancer-review

If there is a game to compare The Technomancer with, it is reminiscent to Alpha Protocol. Both titles felt limited and decisively average in almost every way, except for one area where the game can excel. For Alpha Protocol, it was the game’s dialogue and factional dynamics that elevated it above the dredges of a failed game. For The Technomancer, it is the fluid combat mechanics that pulls Spider’s title from the abyss. This doesn’t save either game from their fate in the bargain bin, but for the right person, the right audience, it is at least a passable experience in the way a B-game can only be, shlocky and without thinking about it too heavily.

http://techraptor.net/content/technomancer-review-average-experience

With many of the current reviews taking this kind of tone, I think I'd be doing the game a disservice trying to rush through it.
 
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Self-Ejected

Bubbles

I'm forever blowing
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7,817
I'm puzzled by how much these reviews focus on the combat, since I've spent the first 13 hours of the game mostly running around the big first city hoovering up sidequests and checking what kind of effect the different outcomes have on different quest givers (you get chewed out with pretty harsh words if you act against a faction, so at least the cosmetic C&C is fully present here). If I had to put a number on the proportion of game time I've spent in combat, I'd guess it was 20-30%, and that's only because I did a bit of grinding to figure things out. The complaints about backtracking are true (comparable to most other older RPGs, from BG2 to Morrowind), but the "realistic" intertwined city layout makes it a bit less boring than running back and forth along the same corridor in KotOR 1, especially since you can randomly stumble into unmarked quests in side alleys.

The inclusion of timed quests also occasionally gives things a nice urgency; the timers are still a little generous, but it's nice to receive a sensitive shipment or run across somebody in distress and be informed that you only have a few minutes of in-game time before automatically failing (and potentially unlocking a unique outcome). The day/night cycle and occasional NPC schedule mostly seem like gimmicks so far, but we'll see.

Maybe all of that is going to change later in the game; I know Spiders have a reputation for weird pacing.
 
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Self-Ejected

Bubbles

I'm forever blowing
Joined
Aug 7, 2013
Messages
7,817
Do enemies respawn? That's what irritated me in Mars War Logs the most.

Yes, and it's slightly annoying. Only slightly, because the city zones where most of my questing has taken place so far have no actual enemies in them except from the unique foes spawned by quests (though I've lately noticed a few "neutral" thugs in the slums spawning as hostiles, either because I've pissed off the crime lord or because of a bug). It's definitely a problem in combat zones though, although so far the combat is still easy and fast. I really have no idea what the IGN guy is talking about there, unless something changes later on. The combat stances are a bit unbalanced, so maybe he just hit upon a bad combination and never figured out how to get better.
 
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Bubbles

I'm forever blowing
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Bubbles, all in all, can you say the game is enjoyable? Because what you describer really interested me.

Well, I can't give a final judgement without finishing the game. I also got the game for free instead of the rather... adventurous €44.99 launch price.

That said, I've enjoyed everything I've done in the game so far expect for the first dungeon, and I think the quests are more interesting than most of the stuff you find in a modern AAA game. The devs seem to want you to think about your place in the world and the decisions you make, and that works out even when the hard consequences still seem to be lacking.

If the writing is "average", it's still decisively better than anything in Fallout 4, and that game has a ton of fans. For the first 13 hours, this is a game with lots of cosmetic C&C, action combat with good enemy variety, and an interesting setting that is at least decently fleshed out by the large array of side quests. What happens afterwards, I cannot say.
 
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Self-Ejected

Bubbles

I'm forever blowing
Joined
Aug 7, 2013
Messages
7,817
I also appreciate that the game so far is really not open-world in the modern sense of the word - there's nothing to collect, no minigames, and no "clear this dungeon and open the chest at the end" type of content - at least so far. There's a single "destroy the monster nests" quest very early in the game, but it can be circumvented by just crafting 8 traps for the questgiver and telling him to fuck off.
 

ERYFKRAD

Barbarian
Patron
Joined
Sep 25, 2012
Messages
28,237
Strap Yourselves In Serpent in the Staglands Shadorwun: Hong Kong Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag. Pathfinder: Wrath I'm very into cock and ball torture I helped put crap in Monomyth
Looks like I'm apt to get this on a steam sale.

Anyway, Bubbles old boy, what're the combat options we got and how good/bad're they?
 

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