Shadowrun Dragonfall, a new campaign developed by Harebrained Schemes, for their crowd funded game Shadowrun returns. Featuring a full length story, a host of brand new characters and setting, new weapons and items, and the ability to save anywhere in the game, for those that played the original game this should make you very happy.
Set in Germany specifically the “Flux State” Berlin, a place where the big player’s, politicians and sometimes even the geography change on a regular basis. Dragonfall takes the player on a brand new adventure separate from Dead Man’s Switch, where a great calamity threatens Berlin and your character has stumbled right in to the middle of it. While removed from the Seattle set in the original campaign, a few of the more colourful NCP’s do make an appearance.
Dragonfall has an brilliantly told story, with enough information told upfront for those that wish to simply play the game and have an idea of what’s going on, it isn’t until you start to explore the world around you and talk to the wide variety of characters that can be found, you really find out the scope of the main story and the amount of detail that has been put in place for the back story of the NCP’s and the area as a whole. It can obviously be seen that the developers put a lot of effort and care in to creating Dragonfall’s setting and story.
Harebrained Schemes and taken steps to make sure that the criticisms that where placed on the original game is not repeated. Some thought that the original game was too liner and that a lot of the characters where two dimensional. In Dragonfall each of your party members as well as the many NCP’s that you talk to regularly have a story to tell and a personality to go with it, be it an old veteran troll, who speaks of war’s past or an Cyborg medic, with a tortured past that you have to coerce in to telling you anything. This helps the player to immerse themselves in to the game and bond with your crew, and from there makes you feel like part of the community yourself.
While the gunplay and combat haven’t changed at all, in my opinion a good thing, your ability to subvert and avoid combat has. The player is given the ability to use their speech, etiquette and ability’s to force situation into their favour or avoid a situation altogether. Within the first 20 minutes I had talked my way out of 2 fights and high-jacked an elevator to the top floor of a hotel, avoiding having to fight my way up or pay an expensive bribe. The best part about these options is that you get just as much reward as if you had participated in combat. This really opens up the world of Dragonfall and allowing player’s to play the game their way, this is obviously what Harebrained Schemes had hoped for the original game and I for one am glad to see it working so well in it’s DLC.
With the opening up of the game play and the fleshing out of the character’s players are given an even greater ability to play their character however they want, within the setting of a violent Berlin you can be however you want to be, each time you speak to a person you can decide if they see you as a violent gangster, a benevolent guardian of the people or anywhere in-between. The options for speech feel realistic to the setting and really make your character seam at home.
Now let’s talk about the weaknesses of the DLC, well first of all although adding in a whole new story and several new weapons that is about it for the DLC, for those that were hoping for brand new skill tree’s or new game mechanic’s your looking in the wrong place, of its price point of £11.99 on steam, some may find this a little too expensive for their tastes when there have been several amazingly created story’s made by the community. The campaign is long and does have re-playability in it with the choices you make and the character you role. But for some this might not be enough.
Another weakness that I have so far identified is that although there is way’s around combat though talking or ability’s most so far in my experiences have to do with hacking or drones, while I have not finished the game yet so this may change, some might find themselves having to play a role they don’t wish to if they want these options. Some options do use etiquette’s or simple bribes to allow a player though so all is not lost for those characters wish to go down other roots.
My final weakness of the game is something I have found in my research, a great many people are experiencing bugs with the new DLC, most commonly with the new save feature breaking objective flags for side missions. While I have not personally found these bug’s myself, with the amount of people I have seen talking about these bug’s this might be something to keep an eye on. Although I expect the developers to patch these soon if history can be believed.
A warning to those veterans of Shadowrun Returns you cannot port your character over from the original campaign to this new one, starting a fresh genuinely isn’t all that bad ether, and there are those on the workshop that are working for a way to do this now.
In conclusion Shadowrun Retunes Dragonfall is a great DLC that truly bring a lot to the table for those that enjoyed the original, bringing a lot of the potential of the game to light. While some might not like the price point or be dissatisfied with the the amount added, I can say that the DLC has provided me with over 6 hours of fun game time so far and I anticipate it will provide me with much more.
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Disclaimer:All scores given within our reviews are based on the artist’s personal opinion; this should in no way impede your decision to purchase the game.
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