Shadowrun Returns

The game features good writing, interesting characters and a charming retro style. It's fine for a couple of hours, but don't expect a lot of depth or variety: For a roleplaying game, Shadowrun Returns is exceptionally linear. Most levels consist of confined rooms or streets with no exploration elements to speak of. Character interaction is limited and most quests don't offer any freedom of choice. We have high hopes for the future though: The game ships with a powerful editor and the passionate community is already at work.

The bite-sized scope and limited choices available make me more interested to see what Shadowrun Returns will be a year from now, after the community has used the included mod tools to build on it, than in what it is today.

Vivid descriptions of the setting and the people you are talking to help to liven up the game, but never enough to make you forget that there is no voice acting. It also lacks the depth you would expect from something set in so rich a universe and, as it stands, Shadowrun Returns does not surpass a classification that goes beyond “a fun little RPG”.

Shadowrun Returns will probably please most fans if perhaps not blow anyone out of the water. The campaign is well written and serves as a good introduction for new players. The variety in combat and character creation and dialogue options is great but suffers from a badly implemented autosave system. With lots of new campaigns on the horizon Shadowrun Returns is well worth keeping an eye on.

Shadowrun Returns suffers from a few design flaws and a rather short main campaign, but it’s still an entertaining RPG. The strategic combat is interesting, but too easy even on hard difficulty. The RPG system is rather shallow, and none of the games important decisions are yours to make, even though the story is solid enough. This’ll be a nostalgic trip for older gamers and a good introduction to an old fashioned RPG for the younger ones. Sadly Harebrained rely too much on the community for new content.

Shadowrun Returns is a great role-playing game, which retrieves the features of the original representing them in a perfect title for fans.

Any person eager for the heyday of the pen & paper days of RPGs should find this a nice blast from the past.

Shadowrun Returns is enjoyable while it lasts, thanks in large part to its great writing and enthralling murder mystery.

But it's entertaining and engaging throughout, and lovingly faithful to the source material. And that, chummer, is good enough for me.

An enjoyable role-playing game with the scent of a classic, if not the essence.

Shadowrun Returns meets lots of expectations outlined during the Kickstarter campaign. It's an atmospheric story based on the Shadowrun universe and its adaptations. The game looks like a good "analog" RPG session, with a clear goal and epilogue. Unfortunately the campaign is a simple, one-shot experience, and not a deep RPG system. Don't expect a complex, multi-threaded game with lots of important decisions to make - Shadowrun Returns is not like that, but a really good story makes up for it. And there's the editor that allows to create great things, but requires suitable and talented people.

It may not last long and it may have issues with its save feature, but the time spent adventuring in this futuristic vision of Seattle will be well worth any frustrations you may encounter.

Though hindered somewhat by game-design oversights and one hell of a game-breaking bug, Shadowrun Returns remains a satisfying strategy-RPG largely defined by its world and lore, but also as a platform for more and more standalone adventures.

That’s what Shadowrun Return provides, of course: it’s not just a single tale of murder and techno-conspiracy. It’s a ruleset and a tileset, and a promise of more to come.

There are some issues with game difficultly and length, but this is one of the most successful Kickstarters so far – and an excellent retro style role-player in its own right.

A good start.

A nice first dice roll for Harebrained Schemes, but not a critical one. Shadowrun Returns boasts a solid-enough tactical gameplay, but doesn't use it fully enough on this first campaign. You won't feel threatened in combat, and the story is very linear - at least it's a good one. The atmosphere and the fantastic Shadowrun universe are its biggest strengths, so let's hope the community and Harebrained will enrich the game as much as it is worthy to be.

Despite the strange omissions and Shadowrun Returns' habitual blinking in the face of bigger gameplay ambitions, it's still an engaging return to a world and fiction that's sat dormant for far too long.

Thanks to some well-written dialogue, directing your party of four can be entertaining. However, turn-based battles sacrifice tactical depth for gadgets and gimmickry, while collision detection as well as AI behavior leave room for improvement.

As an RPG, however, Shadowrun Returns falls flat on his stomach.

Shadowrun Returns is a faithful reinterpretation (and in a vague sense, sequel) to the SNES game from 20 years ago, maybe a bit too faithful. Though most aspects of the the wild and unruly Shadowrun world is included, the promise of this game lies more in the open embrace of the mod community than the included adventure.