Shadowrun Returns Reviews

I loved Returns, Dragonfall and Hong Kong. Feel like replaying right now so I'm downloading. Hoping it holds up.

I've played the ShadowRun trilogy and I think this one is definitely the most forgettable, there isn't much here and the ending just felt okay.

A barebones, but enjoyable conversion of the Shadowrun tabletop system into PC gaming. The story is interesting although quite short, but the game serves as a good springboard as it dovetails nicely into Shadowrun: Hong Kong, and my personal favorite, Shadowrun: Dragonfall. I'd get this game again, mainly for the sake of the main story, but there's potentially endless content included with the Steam workshop available for this game.

Really satisfies the need for a good dystopian setting. good variety of quests, very compelling main story, and things can and do go off the rails in great ways. plus, if you know your Shadowrun lore, there's a great nod to the SNES game from 1995

Basic story, workable tactics, interesting choices. Everything that you could want out of a computer version of Shadowrun.

My first time playing Shadowrun in any form. I really like the game and the setting. Looking forward to playing the other games now, and maybe dipping my toes into the TTRPG. Definitely worth the price for an excellent party based RPG.

The spiritual successor to Shadowrun for SNES from the 90s. It's a fun little nostalgia trip.

I got this game for cheap in a bundle. It's worth what I paid for it. If you want a tactic's RPG it's good enough I guess. There's some interesting set pieces and ideas in the story, and Shadowrun deserves some praise for combining fantasy elements with a more modern sci-fi setting regardless of this game. Honestly, I only bought it because everyone hated the first person shooter of Shadowrun on 360 and that was one of my favorite games, so I figured this would be way better. It's not. But I don't play competitive shooters anymore so that's fine. It's good enough for what it is. Some of the writing is pure trash. Whoever wrote the script thought repeating statements was a good way to end conversations. And they end every conversation that way. Every fraggin one.

For an adaptation of the TTRPG, this is actually pretty faithful. Even though it has Jake Argent from the less-than-faithful SNES title. The story has that grim, cyberpunk feel, it uses the slang that was abandoned in the Fourth Edition, and the mechanics are pretty close to the game itself even if I take issue with some of them. What should be just an investigation into a friend's mysterious death leads you into much more expansive events involving the Universal Brotherhood and their insect shaman masters, key events in Second Edition and the [i]Bug City[/i] book in particular. Even Harlequin makes an appearance and he's just as maddeningly obtuse and hard to pin down here as he is in the game and novels. I just wish the magic system had been better fleshed out. Foci, an actual Magic attribute, and more somatic powers and them selected from a list based on Power Point costs instead of "bought" like spell formulae. There's also no way to access the Matrix without a datajack, which isn't the case in the RPG thanks to electrode nets letting even those without one into VR.

The combat is pretty basic but I had a lot of fun with it.