Blade Runner: Enhanced Edition Reviews

All of the negative reviews for this game are just old men complaining that its a remaster while in the game there is literally a button you can press at any time that reverts the game to the original. the original is 27 years old, a remaster is not automatically a bad thing.

The Enhanced Edition is actual garbage; there's noticeable latency when moving the mouse in the menus, and the "updated" textures look awful. However, the original game is included and is worth playing. It's a very interesting take on the Blade Runner series and was clearly made by fans of the original movie. I even noticed a few references to PKD novels via character / place names. I'd recommend it to any sci-fi fan who can get past the past the quite dated gameplay

As a person who loves Blade Runner and its world and atmosphere, I'm really glad I found this game. Great experience for me but let's be real here. This is not a game that I recommend to someone random. I should know that the person loves older games with deep story telling and great dialog no matter how clunky the game-play maybe sometimes. Blade Runner 1997 is a great game if you are the person I described above. You need to capacity to appreciate the beauty, atmosphere and story telling of this game. In this case, you can go to this adventure and imagine yourself just like a blade runner who is in danger in every corner of a city which is at the verge of complete destruction. Just remember to play the original first, grasp the experience and then play Enhanced edition just for achievements. The enhancements aren't there at all and will make the game look bad.

I only bought it so that I could enjoy the "Original edition with restored content" in multiple languages and switch between them at will. I have never even run the "Enhanced Edition", so I can't comment on Nightdive's remaster. What follows is a [b]no-spoilers[/b] review of the 1997 game. The game is [b]excellent[/b]. Well, actually, it's [i]groundbreaking[/i] by 1997's standards and [i]good[/i] by today's standards. The main selling point, to me, is the immersion. It was easy for me (almost unavoidable, really) to get sucked in into the world, limited as it is. I'm a sucker for Blade Runner's atmosphere, and this game recreates it to a T (that's IF you can get pass the outdated graphics, though they have their own charm to them.) It's a detective-themed point-and-click adventure in the Blade Runner universe. You play as blade runner Ray McCoy, who is tasked with investigating an animal murder case where the suspects are replicants. At the beginning, the mechanics are that of a detective game: you talk to people, investigate murder scenes, collect clues, etc. Luckily, there's almost none of those classic point-and-click adventure trappings, like having to apply dream logic to combine items in your inventory in a specific way in order to progress; you don't even have an inventory in this game. The closest thing to one is the database where all the clues you've collected are stored, for you to review whenever you like, while you're in the process of trying to reason about the cases. The iconic blade runner tools from the movie make their appearance: the police spinner takes you through the city, you can make some characters take Voight-Kampff test to detect whether they're a replicant, and you can use the Esper machine allows to obtain seemingly-impossible information from photographs, both by zooming in and "enchancing" them, as well as changing the angle from which it was taken to observe some tiny detail not present originally. They're all faithful recreations of their movie versions, and they feel great to use. Literally, I was joyous whenever I got a new photograph to scan with the Esper machine. You also have a gun, which provides an interesting array of interactions with the world. Mostly killing people, but also sometimes destroying things. Quite often characters react to your raising or lowering it, in a way that feels very authentic. The gun adds some variety to the otherwise very simple gameplay. Over the course of your investigation, you'll visit plenty of the locations from the movie, and they're adapted impressively well. And, like I said, they've perfectly recreated the [b]atmosphere[/b] of the movie, which to me is the strongest aspect of this game. So much so, that I found myself roleplaying without even realizing it. Staring out of the balcony of McCoy's apartment, pondering the details of the case, while watching spinners fly by under the rain, hearing blimp advertisements for an Off-World vacation and Vangelis' soundtrack played in the background. That's when the game shines. I was constantly surprised by the things this game let me get away with. Without spoiling anything, on my first playthrough I managed to play the entire game as if I was siding with the replicants, because the version of McCoy I roleplayed thought that it would be most efficient way to get to them, only to double-cross them at the last possible moment. On further playthroughs, I took different decisions at different points and the game never failed to surprise me with what the consequences for each of those were. After solving a couple of interrelated cases, there's a twist and the pace picks up dramatically during the last two "acts" of the game (there's five of them). By then, you're still trying to figure out what happened, but your character is actively involved in the story now and not a mostly passive detective analyzing evidence. This could not be for everyone, since it almost plays like a different game. Your understanding of the world (both of the literal game map and of the more abstract social relations between characters) will be tested. There'll be a lot of intrigue and some difficult decisions. Sadly, this is also the part of the game where I found the most difficulties in figuring out how to proceed due to the aforementioned point-and-click adventure quirks. In this second part of the game there were also certain situations in which I felt the game was too limiting in how it let me react to them, compared to the freedom it had given me up until that point. See examples in the comments of this review. If by this point the game and its story managed to grip you, wanting to find out what happens next (which is in part decided by your actions) will make you keep going, regardless of the problems I mentioned. I was already sucked-in. If not, I can see how some people will want to stop playing at that point, or check out a guide on the internet. Luckily, those moment are few (in my experience.) The game randomizes certain details at the beginning of each game; mostly, who's a replicant and who's human. But that informs how those characters interact with you and the world, so those are somewhat big changes. This randomization is very much welcome, and let me enjoy different playthroughs even though the main story beats are always the same. Those changes, along with the variability that came from making different decisions, made it fun to replay it to completion multiple times. For almost every replay, what I changed was the way I roleplayed McCoy, whether he'd be more empathetic or clumsier or faster-to-anger. That lead to different experiences, different decisions and ultimately different endings. It always felt organic, unlike those game where there's two possible paths and one is the goody-two-shoes path and the other one is the baby-murderer evil path. This is Blade Runner, everything is morally grey and nuanced, nobody's perfect nor innocent, and the game manages to transmit that feeling. Speaking of endings, there's around 12 different ending cutscenes, which are more like 3 or 4 "types" of endings, each of which with little variations depending on certain decisions taken during that playthrough and who were replicants and who humans. It gives the game quite a range of possible outcomes, and it feels like it reacts adequately to the way you played it and the decisions you took. The endings are not the strongest point of the game at all, but I guess they're alright. The emphasis is put on the journey, not the ending. One thing I forgot to mention is that the voice acting is for the most part extremely good (and in many cases, they used actors from the movie). The Ray McCoy's VA's performance is kinda meh, but it's good enough. Well, that's it. If this was 1997, I'd tell you to get it, end of discussion. It being 2025 and all, if anything of what I said resonated with you, and if you like the atmosphere of the original movie, give it a try. I found it unexpectedly enthralling, though YMMV. It has a certain charm to it, and it is somewhat cerebral. Recommendations if you decide to play this game: 1. Play the "original edition with restored content". It reincorporates tons of stuff that shipped with the original game CDs but was left out of the game because the developers ran out of time to playtest them. It adds a lot to the feeling of an expansive and reactive world. 2. When playing, open the KIA and select "User Choice" for McCoy's demeanor. That option allows you to select what McCoy tells/asks people, instead of the game deciding for you automatically. 3. See comments below. [REVIEW CONTINUES IN COMMENTS]