I'm not quite sure how I came across this game. But I'm really glad I did. I think somewhere along the line I got a recommendation from +Kamel al-Tamimi that pushed me to buy it, but it wasn't until the stand alone edition of Dragonfall finally came out that I finally decided to play it.
Dragonfall started off as an expansion to the Shadowrun Returns game, but a year after it came out the developers-publishers who are Harebrained Schemes decided to turn it into its own stand alone game at the tail end of 2014 and putting out on the same platforms that Shadowrun had come out on (PC, Andriod and iOS).
The thing that pushed me away the most but then really one me over in the game was the narrative. I have built up a pretty strong baias against the fantasy genre as a whole, which I feel it deserve, since it hasn't changed much since Tolkien pretty much formalized modern fantasy. There are always elves, dwarves, humans, orcs, goblins and standard msytical creatures like Dragon and Ents and even the classes in the world are always so predictable. I ended up giving it a chance though because it had mixed in sci-fi to its overall world theme and narrative. Together the merging of the two genres created a refreshing and interesting world that I really enjoyed exploring. The addition of the gritty modern setting also made the game amusing and interesting as you had to deal with sewer dwealing ghouls and crack addled orcs. This is all just about the overall world building though, not the narrative driving the story itself which I was surprised was of an extremely high quality. Its just littered with character developed for not only the team that you control but the various NPC's that you might come across here and there creating not only a compelling experience that will keep you guessing right up until the end but also fleshing out the world. I genuinely don't want to mention much about the story itself as I would not want to spoil the experience for you, but you really do have to trust me about the fact that it is a great and well written story that could have had a bit more room for free exploration but still didn't feel to linear.
Beyond the story I was more confident that I would enjoy the game as it is a tactical roleplaying game. But I wasn't ready for how actually intricate the system in the game is. The standard character creation stuff is there, gender, race of which there are five (Humans, Orcs, Trolls, Elves and Dwarves) in the game and classes are all there and they mostly follow your standard game tropes regarding classes. The complexity here comes from the fact that not all the races are created equal and they have limitations regarding their abilities that will hinder you during the game if you then incorrectly match them with a specific class. The question of classes isn't that simple either as aside from picking a main class you are also tasked with picking a secondary sub class allowing for dozens of potential variants to appear based on your choices and taste in playstyle. I personally choose a Dwarf adept/street samurai which enabled me to experience the world of Dragonfall knowing that if a fight ever broke out I would easily be able to smash any crotch that came my way as I smashed any ween and vajayay that opposed me during my adventure.
Putting my fantasties to one side, the classes and class mixing was really refreashing as you could mix fantasy and sci-fi classes to create some pretty cool and bad ass hybrids. I am personally going to try and pull off a mage/weapons expert on my second run so that I could spend my game time throwing fireballs and capping asses. However, I did feel that the classes were not that balanced and certain classes felt more powerful than others. There is a lack of control over the party the player is given in the game as you are only given total control over your own character with the rest of the team being automatically manged by the game itself. This system changed the entire party into cogs in a machine and they weren't exchangable as every party member had to have a specific role and if they didn't it was actively going to hurt your enjoyment of the game and this ended up causing me to play with a single uniform party the whole way through the game and benching specific members of the team for the entire game. Experience and leveling up in the game also isn't free as its directly tied to the story and your progress in it. This is a good thing as it means you won't need to farm and the game is balanced and there is never a need to grind, but it also means that you won't be able to unlock your characters full potential until very specific parts of the game are complete even if you do qualify for being able to select those character traits.
Moving on to the combat itself I felt it was engaing and strategic due to the choice of going with a turn based grid combat system. I do concede that these systems are not realistic, but they do create a very structured system that emphasizes straegic choices of not only being able to use specific character to their maximum potential but also positioning yourself on the combat map in way that balanced both your defensive and offensive position. The fluidity of battles was also quite impressive as you had to ensure you were always in the best position possible by moving around in relation to your enemies and it served as another factor that kept the fights interesting.
Leaving behind those pretty substantial and impressive aspects of the game we move on to the grahphics and sound design. I don't know if it was a deliberate choice by the developers or a cost cutting attempt in order to have smaller kickstarter objectives but the game isn't that big or flashy when it comes to either the sound or graphics department. The entire story is conveyed through still pictures and walls of text as is dialouge between the characters which could alienate some potential players, I personally didn't mind and it didn't keep me from getting into the story as the writting was pretty good in my opinion. The art style in the game was fairly tuned down in order to convey a dark future sci-fi setting with color being the exception as opposed to the rule in the game. This left the game feeling pretty uniform to me, but then again that might be because most of the game's level and combat is done within buildings which are by default uniform locations to some extent. This wasn't a total turn off, but I did feel that game could have added a larger varity of locations and a bit more color to it all. The music in the game wasn't that memorable either, but music never was the first thing that catches my attention in games. It didn't get in the way which is good enough for me. Don't take all this criticism to mean that the game is an ugly monotone world because that isn't what I am trying to convey. Its a live uniform world that is a bit dark with some break of vibrant color and sound, it just isn't pushing the envelope in either department and won't be causing your CPU to overheat anytime soon.
The director's cut version of Dragonfall is pretty much the strongest Shadowrun game that is currently out there and will most likely remain so until Shadowrun: Hong Kong comes out. Its combat and class system is one of the most engaging thing I've played since XCOM: Enemy Unknown and due to its narrative merging of both science fiction and fantasy I felt it has one of the most creative class systems in any tactical role playing game. While, the game isn't that approachable due to the plethora of choices and potential room for you to make a mistake in the game when building your character its most likely going to give you a very rewarding experience thanks to to its narrative and combat mechanics.
The thing that pushed me away the most but then really one me over in the game was the narrative. I have built up a pretty strong baias against the fantasy genre as a whole, which I feel it deserve, since it hasn't changed much since Tolkien pretty much formalized modern fantasy. There are always elves, dwarves, humans, orcs, goblins and standard msytical creatures like Dragon and Ents and even the classes in the world are always so predictable. I ended up giving it a chance though because it had mixed in sci-fi to its overall world theme and narrative. Together the merging of the two genres created a refreshing and interesting world that I really enjoyed exploring. The addition of the gritty modern setting also made the game amusing and interesting as you had to deal with sewer dwealing ghouls and crack addled orcs. This is all just about the overall world building though, not the narrative driving the story itself which I was surprised was of an extremely high quality. Its just littered with character developed for not only the team that you control but the various NPC's that you might come across here and there creating not only a compelling experience that will keep you guessing right up until the end but also fleshing out the world. I genuinely don't want to mention much about the story itself as I would not want to spoil the experience for you, but you really do have to trust me about the fact that it is a great and well written story that could have had a bit more room for free exploration but still didn't feel to linear.
Beyond the story I was more confident that I would enjoy the game as it is a tactical roleplaying game. But I wasn't ready for how actually intricate the system in the game is. The standard character creation stuff is there, gender, race of which there are five (Humans, Orcs, Trolls, Elves and Dwarves) in the game and classes are all there and they mostly follow your standard game tropes regarding classes. The complexity here comes from the fact that not all the races are created equal and they have limitations regarding their abilities that will hinder you during the game if you then incorrectly match them with a specific class. The question of classes isn't that simple either as aside from picking a main class you are also tasked with picking a secondary sub class allowing for dozens of potential variants to appear based on your choices and taste in playstyle. I personally choose a Dwarf adept/street samurai which enabled me to experience the world of Dragonfall knowing that if a fight ever broke out I would easily be able to smash any crotch that came my way as I smashed any ween and vajayay that opposed me during my adventure.
Putting my fantasties to one side, the classes and class mixing was really refreashing as you could mix fantasy and sci-fi classes to create some pretty cool and bad ass hybrids. I am personally going to try and pull off a mage/weapons expert on my second run so that I could spend my game time throwing fireballs and capping asses. However, I did feel that the classes were not that balanced and certain classes felt more powerful than others. There is a lack of control over the party the player is given in the game as you are only given total control over your own character with the rest of the team being automatically manged by the game itself. This system changed the entire party into cogs in a machine and they weren't exchangable as every party member had to have a specific role and if they didn't it was actively going to hurt your enjoyment of the game and this ended up causing me to play with a single uniform party the whole way through the game and benching specific members of the team for the entire game. Experience and leveling up in the game also isn't free as its directly tied to the story and your progress in it. This is a good thing as it means you won't need to farm and the game is balanced and there is never a need to grind, but it also means that you won't be able to unlock your characters full potential until very specific parts of the game are complete even if you do qualify for being able to select those character traits.
Moving on to the combat itself I felt it was engaing and strategic due to the choice of going with a turn based grid combat system. I do concede that these systems are not realistic, but they do create a very structured system that emphasizes straegic choices of not only being able to use specific character to their maximum potential but also positioning yourself on the combat map in way that balanced both your defensive and offensive position. The fluidity of battles was also quite impressive as you had to ensure you were always in the best position possible by moving around in relation to your enemies and it served as another factor that kept the fights interesting.
Leaving behind those pretty substantial and impressive aspects of the game we move on to the grahphics and sound design. I don't know if it was a deliberate choice by the developers or a cost cutting attempt in order to have smaller kickstarter objectives but the game isn't that big or flashy when it comes to either the sound or graphics department. The entire story is conveyed through still pictures and walls of text as is dialouge between the characters which could alienate some potential players, I personally didn't mind and it didn't keep me from getting into the story as the writting was pretty good in my opinion. The art style in the game was fairly tuned down in order to convey a dark future sci-fi setting with color being the exception as opposed to the rule in the game. This left the game feeling pretty uniform to me, but then again that might be because most of the game's level and combat is done within buildings which are by default uniform locations to some extent. This wasn't a total turn off, but I did feel that game could have added a larger varity of locations and a bit more color to it all. The music in the game wasn't that memorable either, but music never was the first thing that catches my attention in games. It didn't get in the way which is good enough for me. Don't take all this criticism to mean that the game is an ugly monotone world because that isn't what I am trying to convey. Its a live uniform world that is a bit dark with some break of vibrant color and sound, it just isn't pushing the envelope in either department and won't be causing your CPU to overheat anytime soon.
The director's cut version of Dragonfall is pretty much the strongest Shadowrun game that is currently out there and will most likely remain so until Shadowrun: Hong Kong comes out. Its combat and class system is one of the most engaging thing I've played since XCOM: Enemy Unknown and due to its narrative merging of both science fiction and fantasy I felt it has one of the most creative class systems in any tactical role playing game. While, the game isn't that approachable due to the plethora of choices and potential room for you to make a mistake in the game when building your character its most likely going to give you a very rewarding experience thanks to to its narrative and combat mechanics.
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