Shadowrun Shadowrun: Dragonfall - Director's Cut

Escape during the False Flag mission seems really tricky, or maybe I'm not strong enough for it. Think I'll rewind and try the other mission first.

 

Played a bit more with my adept and it's made of rape. Get one bottle of Cram before each run(+3AP, +2Movement) , before tough fight, use the cram. Walk from one side of the screen to the other side with Stride(+2 movement passive and +4 when active), hit two to three enemies with chi focus(100% critical chance) and on round 1, two to three enemies are pratically dead and stunned. Magic resistance and martial defense spell + decent armor = you don't need to care being on the open.

 

Wow, I just finished the Director's Cut.

I'm very amazed that the dev team managed to turn DMH, which was a very limited linear RPG into this game with well developed branching narratives and several optional quest arcs. They must have been limited by their budget with the first game. Either way they learned from their mistakes.

I am very excited for what HBS turns out next - I actually hope it's another Shadowrun expac. I've been very pleased with the endings of both games. I haven't seen this quality of writing in an RPG since I played Fallout. Very clever and original universe.

Bioware could really learn something from the branching endings in this game. It's not so much flipping the switch to determine which of three textboxes you get to read after you end the game, you legitimately get to explore the outcomes of your decision in their entirety with a complete exposition.

If nothing else, it's refreshing to see a game where the dev team actually has some talent.

 

I agree, they've shown their will to improve pretty much every element of the game and they've been making great strides ever since releasing DMS. It's a shame they chose the release date poorly, the game doesn't seem to be performing well on Steam.

 

They didn't advertise it in any way. I got a backer beta update about it or else, I wouldn't have known about the Director's Cut.

 

I would think that most of the target audience would have owned DF already at that point anyway. I am not complaining that I got it for free, I thought it was a great move, but from a business perspective, I dunno. I am a little worried. I would love to see more campaigns or a sequel, I enjoy the Shadowrunning-atmosphere a lot.

Said atmosphere is really something they nailed with DF, since its exactly these unrelated side-missions that you do simply for money that give you the feeling of actually working in the shadow-underground and doing this for a living, while still maintaining some coherence via the main plot and all the things going on with the Kreuzbasar.

 

I like Director's cut so much that I would gut my wallet if they announced another expansion pack on kickstarter.

 

I think they let down a lot of people with DMS. SRR was the top selling game on steam for a while, and it looks like only a small fraction of the people that bought it came back for Dragonfall; the media attention, likewise, has been much less. If you read the comments for the Shadowrun Unlimited mod (or check out popular mods in general) you get a sense of why - people were hoping for an open world (buildings you can walk in and out of), more skill checks and choices, side missions, nonlinearity, etc. The DRM and lack of a save game hurt as well.

It's nice that HBS is improving stuff, but it looks like a lot of people weren't terribly interested in giving them another chance.

 

There are only two things that are annoying me at Director's cut, the first is how two of the new missions I played got me to play with shitty runners and another with only my character and another runner that wasn't all great to begin with. I passed a mission with my adept where I hadn't the magical support from Dietritch, had to use all the medkits I started with, used all the medkits that I found in the level and got to the final fight with no way to heal my character. I had to reload three times on a fight where my character was almost dead and had no way to hide from the enemies and as there was only two people to fire at...it was a tough and annoying fight for only 2 karma?

The second thing is a bug that is really annoying is where there are only six spaces on the UI for spells but you can have six spell slots AND a totem spell that have to fit on six slots on the UI, so one of your spells, you won't be able to use on the run because thre is no space on the UI.

 

Finished the mission on VH yesterday and i can confirm this.

My Cyberzombie did have 4 AP though (let Blitz with his Questrun-Deck controll him), so i got a few double full auto turns where more enemies died.

Overall DF difficulty did indeed increase, though this was absolutely necessary. The original DLC was way to easy sometimes.
Regarding this particular mission: Despite playing it with a similar PC as the first time, i found it a lot easier.
As long as you keep the Troll out of reach of enemy Deckers, geek those first and early and then proceed to have fun with the rest of the Enemies, its not really difficult.
Though your choice of Team Mates is probably rather important in this one. Trying this without both of Dietrich and Blitz would probably end rather bad.

Pic is the PC i used for this run, though you should substract 10 unspent Karma which i got for finishing it (took the screen at Kreuzbasar, so no temporary Buffs in effect).

 

I had a really hard time on that mission before the patch.
No one on my team could hit shit, cyberzombie included. Now i know it was because of that bug.
After the patch the cyberzombie proved, again, to be a killing machine, even with 3AP.

Edit:
Duellist_D What totem did you pick for Bullet Blaster?

 

2.0.5 patch came out today, looks like. I can't find any information on the changes, though.

 

Bear, i find the Group-healing quite valuable and Totems go well with heavy-cyber because their cool-down isn' reduced by essence.

The Accuracy+ Totem might also be good but i always liked not having to carry around tons of Med-Kits

 

^ Deffinitelly add the fact that several missions aren't all that well integrated into the story, and Eigers is actually underdeveloped as well. Much room for improvement.

Glory's mission ties directly into her personal story, and the old deitrich mission has Luca Duer alternate outcome choice and is part of an actual run, the Doctor, Eiger and Blitz missions feel kinda shallow and tacked on. If they want cohesion across the game and proper significance and appreciation of all the main characters they really outght to brush it up a bit.

I remember them reading the feedback here back for the original Dragonfall, I hope they still do - this really is a legit thing.

 

Oh, and if those haven't been fixed allready they have many situations where you can trigger events with NPC's out of place. Big example is entering the final room in the Blitz mission where you can end up with the accountant n the wrong sidee of the door and unable to participate in the fight. There's other places too.

 

Update time and it seems we keep getting more and more prestigious as we are mentioned right alongside with Kotaku...

 

I did Blitz mission and the doctor mission:

Show Spoiler Hide Spoiler

Pros: Both are really funny.
Liked Morgan Freeman Assassin.
Both missions have some tough fights that can be affected by your choices and your character.


Cons: They are smaller missions than the major ones from Dragon Fall.
Their storylines are simplistic and they don't show some nice moral decisions you have to make while on the MKIV prototype mission for example.
Blitz get some showtime but besides that, his mission story was kinda disappointing. I expected the conclusion of the story of Aztechnology, the Flux state and his girlfriend but instead the mission has something to do with some generic evil loan shark...
The story from the doctor's mission was funny but I expected some shady organ legging opperation but the only thing it got going was the crazy lab guy plot, it was kinda disappointing. The crazy lab guy situation was funny but not something to get a whole mission going.

Overall, the best addition from the Director's cut so far was the change on the armor and cover system, some fights that were a breeze now are challenging on very hard and more tactical because fights aren't just you sitting behind cover trading shots at the enemies until they die, there is a real incentive for trying to flank them now. The new missions with exception of the Lodge mission were kinda "meh", but there are still Glory and Eiger missions to play, maybe they are better.

 

I really liked Glorys Mission, Eigers on the other Hand was really short and rather bleh.
Only worthwile Addition is one of the possible Items you get for it, which makes her a lot more viable.

 

GoG only has 2.03 patch, though the patcher itself says its 2.012. Humbug. Guess I'll wait a bit to get the 2.05 before restarting a campaign.

 

That guy upfront with the glasses looks like a young Cleve. Does HBS have a neanderthal on staff?????????

 

I could not play for a couple of days, and now that I have version 2.0.4 I decided to start over. I'm noticing that in the very first run both Monika and Dietrich have more weapon attacks than before. Also, the chance to hit % is not as screwed as before.

 

So they again catered to the scrub mob?
Decline

 

They didn't. They fixed bugs.