Shadowrun Shadowrun: Dragonfall - Director's Cut

[Zombra]

Just watched a glimpse. I love the part at 1:35 where the 2nd girl is like "Put your damn clothes on."

 

[Anomander Rake]

It's the first time I hear about shadowrun.

So, where do I begin? What's your suggestion? I saw there are a lot of Shadowrun games.

Please, give me suggestion on the order I should be playing them, which one to skip, etc etc. I would appreciate it!

 

[Zombra]

Please, give me suggestion on the order I should be playing them, which one to skip, etc etc. I would appreciate it!

They're all pretty good, play the first one first or you'll miss some of the convenience mechanics later. But they're three different stories, no real reason to play them in any order, just go for it.

 

[Lacrymas]

The Sega Genesis version is the best of the old ones (with liberal use of the cheat code for nuyen), the SNES version is kind of meh and more of an action game. The 1996 game is kind of a JRPG visual novel thing and the 1997 is an FPS. The nu-Shadowruns are all fine, too, begin from Returns if you don't want to emulate the Genesis.

 

[aweigh]

Dragonfall is easily better than Wasteland 2, D:OS 1 and 2, or PoE. Oh, and T: ToN. Better written as well.

 

[V_K]

Dragonfall is easily better than Wasteland 2, D:OS 1 and 2, or PoE. Oh, and T: ToN. Better written as well.

Now that was unexpected. Not that I disagree...

 

[Lacrymas]

Dragonfall is made with understanding and competence. Sure, it isn't high art or anything, but it's good. None of this can be said about WL2, D:OS1/2, PoE and Numanuma.

 

[Lhynn]

Dragonfall is easily better than D:OS 1 and 2 Better written as well.

Dragonfall is better written than D:OS 1 and 2, thats for sure. But gameplay wise divinity is vastly superior. So is wasteland 2 tbh.
I dont know how you could even argue this, combat in dragonfall is repetitive as fuck and very simple. Its an outright deranged notion that this would be the case.

 

[Lacrymas]

I think he's saying that in the context of being taken as wholes, not individual elements. Both D:OS and PoE's combat is better than the nu-Shadowruns, but the former are extreme chores to play, being enjoyable very rarely because other parts get in the way of the good. The nu-Shadowruns, like I've mentioned previously, don't have glaring sores that overwhelm everything and kill your enjoyment of the good bits. At least that's what I'm saying.

 

[aweigh]

for sure, when taken as a whole. I didn't find Wasteland 2's game play engaging enough to continue playing after reaching California, and it goes without saying that in the areas of NPCs, quests, locations, and overall quality of the writing Wasteland 2 is massively inferior to Dragonfall.

I suppose it is somewhat inarguable that Wasteland 2 has a more robust combat system than Dragonfall but even allowing that I would continue to say that it still isn't good enough to make Wasteland 2 a better game. It's a serviceable implementation of a turn-based combat system but I found it even less interesting to play with than, as a fitting example, than Fallout 1/2's turn-based combat system (which is clearly the inspiration for Wasteland 2), failing to reach even that bar set so long ago by FO1 and FO2, something all the more telling because those games are not praised for their combat here.

Now, since many posters have made many inspiring arguments regarding RPG gameplay and how it's informed and developed outside of traditional conflict resolution I'll also give Dragonfall the win in gameplay: with things such as mutually exclusive content, branching nodes, and the depth and degree with which the game's founding role-playing tools (attributes/skills/resources) dovetails with these approaches, I'll also say that in these areas Dragonfall 2 also exceeds and easily surpasses Wasteland 2.

TL;DR Wasteland 2 has marginally more complex combat mechanics but they are still not good enough to make Wasteland 2 win in the gameplay department especially when conflated with non-combat scenarios.

---------------

As for D: OS 1 (never bothered playing 2)... I found D: OS mind-numbingly boring. I've never understood why/how D: OS gets any praise. The writing is awful, the aesthetics are terrible, its systems are primitive and the combat system is the most rudimentary turn-based you could possibly find anywhere and, for me, the biggest offender are its terrible quests which make a great case for how "questing" can be detrimental to an RPG with the obsession with substituting game play slices with superfluous activities.

 

[Lhynn]

PoE's combat.

PoEs combat is annoying and complete garbage. I feel like im playing a series of stilt shots instead of an actual game, that or i just select and click on the enemy, even on potd is a viable tactic if you built shit right. Either way you slice it there are no stakes, you lose nothing even if a couple of your guys go down. Its laughable that anyone would find this shit engaging on any level.

 

[Lhynn]

its systems are primitive and the combat system

aweigh my friend, you are so full of shit it isnt funny. Biggest problem with D:OS is the pervading sense of pointlessness across the whole game. Thats D:OS biggest failure. But the combat is pretty great. The elemental interaction system is something for the RPG history books.

 

[V_K]

DOS has some fun mechanics on paper, but 90% of the times it fails to deliver level/encounter design that would make these mechanics actually useful. Dragonfall, on the other hand, has quite limited mechanics, but excellent level and encounter design that makes full use of them.

 

[Lhynn]

DOS has some fun mechanics on paper, but 90% of the times it fails to deliver level/encounter design that would make these mechanics actually useful. Dragonfall, on the other hand, has quite limited mechanics, but excellent level and encounter design that makes full use of them.

Ok, thats true, most fights in D:OS do feel like filler.

 

[DeepOcean]

I think people are easily mislead by the amount of options during level up and don't take into account everything related to combat . D:OS combat just bogged down to CC spam with the terrible dumbdown cooldown system really hurting the game and the character development is very barebones , the great thing about it were the elements interaction system, what they pretty much butchered on D:OS 2.

PoE, on theory, it has alot of options for combat but there are alot of things on it that made the combat a chore, the difficulty system is completely fucked up, with all difficulty levels belw PotD being a complete joke and PoTB being as fun as inserting a fork on your eye socket. The bizarre and clunky way they implemented the attack of opportunity system pretty much grinds the combat to a halt and the animations, spell effects and sound, everything related to polish on the combat is non existant so, it is pretty fun to watch your musket barrage failing to even put down a group of xaurips on PotD.

Wasteland 2 is another one, on theory, you have alot of different weapons and on the end of the day, you will only play with assault rifles that are pretty much better at everything because they failed into both balancing of the weapons and making each one having their unique identity that was useful. I couldn't tolerate more Wasteland 2 combat after Arizona.

I don't think the shadowrun series have the best RPG combat ever but the competition isn't exactly brilliant.

 

[Lhynn]

Eh, dragonfall was about doing the exact same shit on every fight, beat by beat.
Wasteland 2 at least had called shots which offered some variety depending on the enemy. In PoE PoTD you basically ignore the enemy you are fighting and focus on whatever your party does well and just do that.

Underrail, ToME, tale of wuxia and very few other games have any depth worth talking about when it comes to recent rpgs.

 

[DeepOcean]

Underrail, ToME, tale of wuxia and very few other games have any depth worth talking about when it comes to recent rpgs.

Agree, but I was comparing those modern streamlined RPGs that came from kickstarter, there are a bunch of Obsidian fanboys that because Sawyer can't shut up about the mechanics of PoE on his blogs they confuse word counting as actual quality and entertaining combat. My point is that only character theorycrafting doesn't mean the combat will be entertaining, is Fallout 1 combat great? Absolutely not. Why could I withstand it more than the supposedly super advanced Sawyerian combat of PoE?

What annoys me is that some people here on the codex are like, if you tell them:
"Man, this girl is blond, white, have green eyes and big tits, what you think?"
Fuck, she is awesome, how do I marry her?
"I'm actually a priest, I can marry you right now."
Please marry me.
"Do you wanna see her?"
No, hearing and theorizing about her is more than enough to be certain how awesome she is.
"Congratulations, you are now a married man."
Where is she?
"Right here."
Wait... she has Down's Syndrome.
"Well, she is blond, white, have green eyes and big tits, that was enough, right? I hope you are a happy couple."

The secret is on the sum of the parts.

 

[Lacrymas]

Wow, that analogy.

 

[Lhynn]

Its a good analogy, a lot of codexers marry to retarded games with no redeemable value. PoE, TToN, DA:I, DD, PoE, etc.

 

[Haplo]

Dragonfall is easily better than Wasteland 2, D:OS 1 and 2, or PoE. Oh, and T: ToN. Better written as well.

Well, I mostly agree. Well, almost, because for me PoE is a much richer experience. Also much more depth to character building and challenge to combat (on PotD).
Not all parts work flawlessly (which is pretty much the case in Dragonfall... well, except the poor hacking), but it is a much more complete and longer experience.

 

[Haplo]

for sure, when taken as a whole. I didn't find Wasteland 2's game play engaging enough to continue playing after reaching California, and it goes without saying that in the areas of NPCs, quests, locations, and overall quality of the writing Wasteland 2 is massively inferior to Dragonfall.

I suppose it is somewhat inarguable that Wasteland 2 has a more robust combat system than Dragonfall but even allowing that I would continue to say that it still isn't good enough to make Wasteland 2 a better game. It's a serviceable implementation of a turn-based combat system but I found it even less interesting to play with than, as a fitting example, than Fallout 1/2's turn-based combat system (which is clearly the inspiration for Wasteland 2), failing to reach even that bar set so long ago by FO1 and FO2, something all the more telling because those games are not praised for their combat here.

Now, since many posters have made many inspiring arguments regarding RPG gameplay and how it's informed and developed outside of traditional conflict resolution I'll also give Dragonfall the win in gameplay: with things such as mutually exclusive content, branching nodes, and the depth and degree with which the game's founding role-playing tools (attributes/skills/resources) dovetails with these approaches, I'll also say that in these areas Dragonfall 2 also exceeds and easily surpasses Wasteland 2.

TL;DR Wasteland 2 has marginally more complex combat mechanics but they are still not good enough to make Wasteland 2 win in the gameplay department especially when conflated with non-combat scenarios.

---------------

As for D: OS 1 (never bothered playing 2)... I found D: OS mind-numbingly boring. I've never understood why/how D: OS gets any praise. The writing is awful, the aesthetics are terrible, its systems are primitive and the combat system is the most rudimentary turn-based you could possibly find anywhere and, for me, the biggest offender are its terrible quests which make a great case for how "questing" can be detrimental to an RPG with the obsession with substituting game play slices with superfluous activities.

I strongly disagree with Wasteland 2 combat being better then Dragonfalls. I even disagree with the statement that it's more complex. It's really not. Can you use drones? Use ducts for their movement? Sap enemy APs? Have simultaneous hacking action (however poorly done)? Modify encounter difficulty/enemy composition/reinforcement arrival/interval by in-game choices and use of skills? Use spells, summons, adept powers, totems?

Sure, Dragonfall's combat is no rocket science and rather simplistic next to something like Underrail, but it's still miles above anything Wasteland 2 represents.

Regarding D:OS I agree. Yes, the combat ENGINE and the environmental interactions are neat. But the most fitting adjective to describe this game is indeed: POINTLESS. You just traverse the theme park and never really get involved on any level. Combat engine had potential, but game lacks interesting encounters. Character building is horribly unbalanced and, despite initially intimidating number of skills and perks, not very interesting. Itemization is a steaming pile of garbage.

 

[Cross]

DOS has some fun mechanics on paper, but 90% of the times it fails to deliver level/encounter design that would make these mechanics actually useful. Dragonfall, on the other hand, has quite limited mechanics, but excellent level and encounter design that makes full use of them.

Full use of them? You're talking about a game where enemy AI was deliberately gimped to never use their full AP's for attacking.

Harebrained went out of their way to make every instance of combat a uniquely handcrafted scenario, sure. But 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. But not only are enemies scripted to never attack twice, but they're scripted to attack once and move, no matter how little sense it makes. I lost track of how many times enemies would shoot and then move to a less advantageous position, often even out of cover, because they just have to move, I guess.
• 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 means you always have a consequence-free bag of goodies to fall back on that can carry you through the entire game.
• 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.
• Most combat takes place in very 'angular' areas like underground bases, office corridors and the like. Because of this, it's incredibly easy to move your characters behind a wall and out of sight, prompting enemies to spend all their AP's running to you, allowing you to blast them at point blank range with impunity. I didn't try it, but I imagine this tactic is viable for most of the game's encounters.
• 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 unlike nu-XCOM 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. Combined with how streamlined and stripped down everything is, it doesn't make for a very engaging experience. It's better than the likes of PoE and WL2, but that isn't saying a whole lot.

 

[Infinitron]

Reposting:

D:OS is the best new RPG

Dragonfall is the best new RPG for people who don't have time for RPGs anymore

Surprised that blobber fanatic aweigh is a disciple of Dragonfall? Perhaps you shouldn't be. One big draw of blobbers is that they're fast-paced and responsive. In its own way, Dragonfall is like that too, with its quick episodic missions that are timed to deliver a COOL TWIST once every 2 hours, minimal character management downtime, etc. And the main reason why Shadowrun: Hong Kong disappointed people is that it lost that sense of pacing.

 

[Lacrymas]

Shadowrun in general is like that, though, you go on a run that doesn't last forever and stuff happens. And no, D:OS is not the best new RPG, far, far, faaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaar from that. It's annoying, classless (as in it lacks class) and childish. Pointless is also an adjective people have been throwing around. If an RPG with those qualities is the best RPG that has come out recently, even if we limit the selection to only AA RPGs, then I fear for the future. Might as well drop RPGs from the list of your interests.

 

[V_K]

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 means you always have a consequence-free bag of goodies to fall back on that can carry you through the entire game.

I don't exactly disagree with your other points, but here I would actually say it's the other way around: given how small the inventories are, and how few opportunities you usually have to restock during a mission, DF actually has a much more robust resource management than most modern RPGs. Just not on a game-wide scale, but on a dungeon-wide scale. Of course, sometimes the companions' inventories get replenished between different levels of the same mission, which does kinda break it.
And anyway, it's not like DOS fairs any better in any of the aspects you mentioned. Particularly not in resource management, given that all skills, including healing, cost nothing at all.