Is "light tactical combat" a euphemism for "an excuse for shitty AI"? While I applaud HBS for handcrafting every encounter, not having any grinding and sometimes superb encounter design, it's all for naught when it's so easy and you are so freakishly overpowered it doesn't really matter what you do. In Hong Kong, a rigger + Racter can "overclock" a drone to have 6 AP (!). Keep in mind I haven't played Dragonfall yet, so it may be different there, but Returns and Hong Kong were ridiculously easy on the hardest difficulties. The only fight in both games (I haven't completed Hong Kong yet, so can't speak for end-game encounters) I had to reload was my first mission in Hong King, it was where you had to disrupt the qi in the corporate building, the last battle was against a handful of mages who flung nasty AoEs and grenades at you and you are still a newb shadowrunner with not a lot of options.
Ridiculously easy? Now that is just plain exaggeration. I agree that the AI is not the greatest but it was servicable. Racter's Drone might get 6 AP but lasts for one round only. It also does not have the greatest accuracy, mine was hovering between 60% and 70%.
There were other missions I remember which could turn nasty, like when you get some data and then two parties try to persuade to give it to you and you tell both of them to screw themselves while they surround your team with like 10 on each side. If they had perfect AI you would never win this fight, period even with the two round advantage you get.
Though I admit I fully ignore the revive kits, I wish they were not present. An activated revive kit is reason to reload for me.
This is a RPG first, a tactical combat game second.
Which would be tolerable if the stuff you do outside combat was worth a shit.
It is good enough compared to other RPGs in last 10 years. For me Dragonfall was best in out of combat stuff since Kotor 2/MotB.
You walk through narrow hallways, click on the shiny hotspots and sometimes pass a skillcheck (assuming you correctly guessed which etiquettes would have actual use). Yeah that's actually good and not something that makes you wish this game was an actual VN instead of a glorified one so you could get back to the words.
I still have boredom PTSD from the mission where you first meet Gaichu.
What? You can have three fights during that mission if the peaceful solution bores you.
Etiquettes play only a small role overall, there are plenty of other skill checks which you can potentially pass.
It is an RPG with turn based combat.
Fixed. It's certainly an RPG with turn based combat, that much I can agree on.
Harebrained went out of their way to make every instance of combat a uniquely handcrafted scenario. It's a shame then how basically every aspect of the game's design works to undermine that effort.
- A.I. is handicapped, never doing more than moving and performing one action on their turn. Your characters have no such limitations and can attack multiple times on their turns. I don't think I need to explain how being to attack at least twice as often as the enemy by default affects the difficulty.
- Companion inventories, which are filled with medkits, grenades and other useful items, are replenished between every mission. This makes the game's resource management almost non-existent. It also means you always have a consequence-free bag of goodies to fall back on.
- Cooldowns encourage rote tactics, e.g. spam all your abilities at the start of combat so that they cooldown as fast as possible and you can use them again.
- Many mechanics are quite wonky and perhaps even broken. I've noticed distance seems to have a very dubious effect on accuracy, for instance.
- The nu-XCOM AP system where taking a single step costs the same as running to the other side of the room, combined with the fact that you can use your AP's to attack multiple times a turn, discourages movement and encourages staying behind cover and taking potshots at enemies.
The end result is that despite the obvious care put into mission design, combat is a fairly mindless affair, even on the highest dfficulty.
If the enemy could attack twice you would no be able to win some fights. The enemy has that much more fire power.
Most companions have like 1 medkit. How does that undermine the economy? In fact HK has by far the most severe restrictions in terms of what you can buy and you have to chose carefully
Some CDs make no sense using at start like Heal for example. Same goes for certain defensive buffs.
I never noticed anything pecular about distance and accuracy. It is lower the farther away the target.
Taking pot shots at the enemy is the safe route but takes a long time since the enemy is fairly adapt at staying in full cover often. Flanking give you much faster combat at the expense of lowered saftey.