1.5/5 ★ – Jrdotan's review of Shadowrun Returns.

I was expecting a whole lot from Shadowrun, the idea of a cyberpunk setting that evolved from a fantasy one, with multiple races living together and magic being a thing seemed amazing, something like if Arcanum's setting progressed even more towards the future, what i got however is the embodiement of dull game design. For once, the setting barely works realistically about racial tension and racism in that universe, which would be a thing considering how cyberpunk usually goes and how fantasy naturally will tackle on such subjects due to the whole different racial aspects and cultures clashing with one another. this however, ignores it completely. magic barely has any deep lore and the explanation for how it manifests is extremely lame, specially when they start to delve into shamans and such, as a whole, the setting feels like a generic cyberpunk setting in which characters do act like brothers in poverty all the time, making it feel extremely childish for a cyberpunk setting Combat is pretty simple but its most decent aspect as it is basically xcom but without the complexity of simulating destruction, instead very focused on skill and magic usage, its quite fun and you have complete party control (which is an advantage over fallout) but magic is so simple that i cant help but feel the system lost lots of chances to get way deeper than it is All the simplicity is also maintained within its system, which is dissapointing to say the least as nothing matters outside of combat and a few mostly irrelevant charisma checks, why irrelevant? because the story is surprinsingly linear for an RPG, no multiple endings nor branches, theres barely side quests in this thing and this also applies to itemization which is not only based on tiers, but has all equipment from a same class doing EXACTLY the same thing but with higher damage value from tier to tier. You add up the fact the toolset is quite dull compared to something like Neverwinter nights's toolset and you have pretty much a kintergarden roleplaying game that is almost devoid of pros, one of the very few being the pacing of its story, which is pretty good for the most part but also falls appart because of its writing, which as mentioned before, is pathetic... but suffice to say, the main plot revolves around a murder mistery and it ends in the most generic way possible. So, never play it, skip it completely and go around playing other rpgs or maybe SR dragonfall which i heard is a lot better than this one. Rank: 3/10