Shadowrun Shadowrun: Dragonfall - Director's Cut

ds3 had good core gameplay, alpha prot had excellent crpg mechanics tied to c&c, motb had good spirit meter and nice c&c, soz had excellent class/religion/feat/friggin everything checks. obsidian may always fuck something up, but they also usually have something remarkable on the mechanical side, even if it's just c&c.

 

Fixed it. But with SoZ, I agree. I also edited my previous post before regarding C&C.

 

And the implemantation of CRPG mechnics in Obsidian's games are great. The things Obsidian regurarly fucks up, (camera, UI, shooting, combat in general, stability and bugginess of the game) are not CRPG mechanics

 

They're game mechanics though.

 

what? for a coop hns it really did.

 

To me the fights are still kinda easy, harder than it was before but not impossible. The flanking mechanics, on my experience, work this way:
The target is on front of your selected character and is behind heavy/medium cover, the target gets cover bonus and best of cases you are only going to do normal damage and, most of time, half damage and with enemies having armor, your damage will be low.
Cover only offer you protection if it is exacty between you and the enemy that is shooting, if the enemy is on your right or left (it doesn't need to be totally to your right or left) and the enemy can shoot you without the bullet passing through cover to get you, you are now being flanked by that particular enemy and are going to receive criticals like crazy from him with damage ranging from normal to double. If you hide behind a single box (doesn't matter if it is light, medium or hard cover.), it is extremely easy to be flanked as the enemy just need to move a bit to the left or right to shoot directly at you, ignoring the box.
If your character is stunned, prepare to be butt raped by flank shots as he is considerated out of cover.
Any character out of cover is automaticaly on flanked state and has a big chance of being raped by flank shots by everyone nearby.
Because a character is on flanked state, it doesn't mean all attacks are going to be flank attacks (but with high weapon skills is almost guarantee you gona rape an enemy that is out of cover) but there is a big chance.
You don't need to be exactly glued to cover to be protected by it, if the bullet has to pass through cover to get you, you won't be flanked.

 

Never said the opposite, nor i consider Obsidian great game makers. Outside of RPGs and maybe adventure games, the studio could not design a good game to save their lives.
I like them because (with the exception of strategy), i don't play other types of games.

 

Combat is a huge part of CRPGs and is not only based upon mechanics but overall gameplay design (and capable coders in the end). And Obsidian is yet to make a good game in this regard... They do earn their reputation as great narrative/quest designers but that's fucking it.

 

Decker with awesome pistol skills and not drones is the way to go, IMO.

 

Thanks for you recommendations guys. Another question: Do I need to buy stuff like consumables, medi-kits, grenades etc. for my party members? There doesn't seem to be a way to give them items so I guess they restack their inventory by themselves in between missions?

 

You can at the loadout window before zoning into a mission. The item will even show as "loaned" when you give it to your companions.

 

"ds3 had good core gameplay, alpha prot had excellent crpg mechanics tied to c&c,"

No.

 

It was used in DMS when you sell data to that one fixer in the Union to get better prices.

Could have sworn there was something in Dragonfall that used it.

 

The etiquettes in general are a bit of a missed opportunity. It would be much more fun if it weren't just passive checks, but you'd have to choose among several etiquette options, with different outcomes - some of them good, some neutral (aka "try again"), some disastrous. Given how rare etiquette checks currently are, it wouldn't increase their workload much. In their current state they feel more like an excersise in metagaming than a meaningful mechanic.

 

I've finished Harfeld Manor, The Drug Pit, and notably the Humanis Policlub mission, am working on the sewers, and haven't had much of a problem yet, except when three more assholes popped out of a door during a certain mission and I realized I should have bunkered down in that room with the turret after all. I'm playing on Hard.

It does unfortunately have the side effect that any single-target offensive ability you're not maximally skilled at has at best a 20-30% hit chance from one fucking square away, unless perhaps it's a shotgun you're using. I haven't a seen whiff factor like this since I can't remember when.

 

so? dms had totally different etiquette usage distribution. we are talking df here.

maybe after the etiquette patch (i think there was one), but definitely not before.
it's even mentioned in roxor's review. i remembered it because friggin shadowrunner was the first etiquette i picked.

 

I decided to go very hard and am regretting it, which means I'll restart unless there's a way to tone it down. Being a decker isn't helping things, either, but I did the first two missions, the sewers and trial run, and I still can't get past the Loose Ends pharmaclean-up job. There seem to be bugs with the final fight, namely, the way turns before the reinforcements show up are calculated v. strangely and the basilisks simply don't turn up or do anything even if you free them some (most) of the time.

Glory is much better now, Eiger gets hit really hard with difficulty increase and all the general miss chance. The also buffed the decker guy a ton, it seems.

 

I'm playing a charismatic decker with a rifle on Hard, and getting reasonable hit%s so far (usually over 60%) in the early-midgame. I do use Dietrich's aim buff when facing tougher enemies. Eiger holds her own too, as long as I keep her in sniper range... Glory sometimes drops down to 30-40%, which is annoying.

BTW, Lockdown (one of the new runs) is one of the best/funniest side missions I've played in a while. It even has its own thematic battle music. FOR THE KNIGHT-KINGS!

 

Don't invest all your points on decking at the start of the game, decking becomes really useful later but, at the start, it is better to invest on your gun to get decent accuracy. Aim spell from Dietritch + Eagle totem and my assault rifle on full auto almost kill an enemy each round.

 

You can switch difficulties anytime.

 

As is typical in the 2010s, Hard in Dragonfall is actually a slightly easier version of what would have been Normal in the 1990s, while Very Hard is probably slightly too obnoxious to properly enjoy, and meant solely for challenging true veterans who know the game mechanics inside and out. In fairness though, I have played X-COM, TFTD, JA2 et al. extensively, so Hard is working pretty much as Harebrained described it. It's not keyboard-smashingly frustrating, but if you make mistakes or are sloppy, you'll definitely pay for it (in medkit costs if nothing else). The inability to fully heal multiple wounds between the typically several battles per mission further discourages derpy play. It's not so punishing as to completely emphasize super-cautious turtling, and bold moves can pay off, which is nice.

Still, Open X-COM on harder difficulties makes this game look like Kiddie's First Playskool Fun Set.

Why the fuck are Silence and Quiet Bomb in this game? They never implemented stealth, which is fine, but why the ballast? Are they there to support modders who do implement stealth, perhaps?

 

It isn't, they balanced the game on Very Hard and then scaled it down thrice. They could call it Easiest, Easier, Easy, and Normal but there are psychological reasons for not doing that.

Anti-magery.