The Technomancer (2016)

The Technomancer (2016), Developed by Spiders SARL, published by Focus Home Interactive

The Technomancer is a kind of a sequel to a 2013 Mars: War Logs. It doesn't feature the same main cast, but it is set in the same universe, where Mars has been inhabited for centuries and is now in the hands of competing corporations, which wage war against each other. The focus is on the most interesting aspect of the first game, the Technomancers, who can shoot electric sparks from fingers. You play the game as Zachariah Rogue Mancer, a young Technomancer, whose initiation to the corps is the first task at hand. During this initiation, he learns the biggest secret of the Technoancers, passed to every new member: they are mutants, originally created by the fabled Earthlings, who were the first settlers of Mars.

After his initiation, things begin to go wrong. A ruthless military leader of Abundance begins to tighten his grip on the corporation, imprisoning the Technomancers in their temple at the city of Ophir. Zachariah manages to flee the city with a help of some friends and ends up in a fabled city of the merchants, Noctis, where the leader of the free folk gives his aid to the man. The first thing is to help his fellow Technomancers flee the city of Ophir, the next is to find the means of getting rid of Victor. This happens by gathering allies and turning the popular opinion against him. 

The Final confrontation happens at an old outpost at the south pole of Mars. The means of contacting the Earth is hidden in the old building, so it becomes a race against time when Zachariah and his companions try to get there before Victor. 

The main story is pretty straightforward, really. It's more or less enough of an excuse for the game to happen and you are, most of the time, just running through all kinds of side missions to fill the gaps. Besides the missions given to you by the various people around the locations, you can also get missions from your companions, which will help you come along better with them. There's even romance in the air with those you get along well enough.

Mars: War Logs wasn't a great game. It was somewhat intriguing, but it suffered from clunky controls and bland scenery. The Technomancer is a bit of an improvement, especially as far controls go. As a good bulk of the game is fighting, it is a good thing, that the combat mechanics have been greatly improved from the previous entry. You can choose freely between three different combat modes: guardian with heavy weapons and a shield, warrior skills based around staffs and rogue combat with daggers. You can also use a gun, which can fire a limited amount of bullets before it has to cool off and electric Technomancer spells, like lightning and power fist. Other usable are explosive traps and vials that restore the health and power needed to cast spells. All in all, the mechanics have been greatly improved from the previous game.

The character progression is done by providing points in different skills. With each level, you get skill points you can distribute in Warrior, Rogue, Guardian and Technomancer skill trees. In a couple of levels in between them, you get points to distribute for attributes, such as strength and technomancy power and talents, which determine how well you can speak or pick locks. It's overall a decent system, but you do have to keep in mind in what direction you want to take the character, as at some point, you'll only receive skill points for combat skills. As far I can tell, the points for attributes and skills are limited, so it's not possible to max the character in every area.

The biggest weakness in the UI design is the inventory system, which feels plain cumbersome. In the basic inventory screen, you can see only your usable, like health items and so on. To see the armour and weapons you are carrying, you have to go to the character equip view of the item in question, like armour. This is an odd system, which reeks of poor design and is unnecessarily gimmicky. 

As with the first game, the equipment you get can be improved with a crafting system. While you do get more stuff than in the previous game, you probably end mostly tinkering your armour better instead of completely swapping it out. This goes on all, your character as well as your companions. Weapons are a bit of a different deal, but depending on your attributes, you might get locked out from some stuff, especially if they need strength or dexterity. It's yet another system, that works well enough for what it is. You just have to keep looting the enemies and taking the looted stuff apart for building materials. And you do need to purchase blueprints and have a high enough skill level in order to be able to build the highest level of improvements.

Speaking of combat, you do spend quite a lot of time doing that. On each day cycle, the trash mobs you've beaten re-spawn. Basically, this means, that you can swap the floors with the enemies several times during your missions in the same location. A good part of the missions actually does take place in the city of Ophir, from where you escaped, as that is by far the biggest location in the game. Ophir consists of the main city, the slums and the underworks. You get to fight to your heart's content in each of the places. The enemies are mostly humans, but you do get to beat up several Martian critters as well.

Besides Ophir, the other main locations are the city of the Merchants, Noctis and the Mutant Valley. Noctis is, easily the second biggest location in terms of things you can do there, as it is the second place you find. The Valley of the Mutants, on the other hand, feels more of an afterthought and while that becomes your base of operations for the last part of the game, you do spend the least time there. There's just not that much to do there. The other locations are just some random locations between these places and exist to be battlegrounds for a duration of a handful of missions. Beyond that, they hold no particular interest. 

Being a somewhat modern RPG, you spend some time talking with the various people of the game, be they your companions or just other NPCs. As luck has it, the voice acting is mostly bland, which is something I've come to expect from these relatively unknown RPG games, which have been bizarrely lucky enough to have big enough of budgets to actually secure some voice acting. Some of the dialogue clearly sounds, and reads for the matter, like it was translated by someone who knew English but wasn't necessarily perfect with it grammatically, so some lines come out a tad odd structurally.

The Technomancer is one of those baffling titles. On one hand, it's a game that has improved quite a bit from its predecessor and has had at least seemingly a proper budget behind it, as it does look relatively nice, some odd character models notwithstanding. On the other hand, it's a game, that is filled with padding and it definitely feels like it drags on a bit too long for what it is. Mars: War Logs was a relatively short game for an action RPG, The Technomancer is hellbent on trying to be grander in scale, but doesn't manage to add anything to the mix besides endless streams of repetitive fights.

I'm not gonna claim The Technomancer is a bad game. It's more of a run in the mill, middle ground mediocre title you can play if you don't have anything better to do. It's a title, you can play once in a while and then suddenly notice, you've done all but the final mission and then you do just that and see the end credits scroll. But beyond that, it offers very little. For some, I'd suspect, it offers nothing at all.

Those, who want to give being a Martian Technomancer a spin, can get the game from GOG and Steam. And surprisingly enough, it has been ported for PS4 as well. I honestly wouldn't be surprised if the 3rd game for this series would pop up from somewhere.