Somewhere in the future, different realms collided on Earth, bringing forth a world, where elves, orcs, trolls and dwarves among other fantastical beings came to exist among humans. They soon adapted the human technology but also bonded their magic to Earth, thus creating a world, where high technology coexists with high magic. That's the world of Shadowrun in a nutshell, a sci-fi setting with fantasy creatures doing sci-fi stuff blended with magic. Oh, and it's actually a cyberpunk setting, with megacorporations running to show.
Shadowrun itself got its start in the late 1980s as a tabletop RPG and like so many other tabletop RPGs, it found its way to the digital realm as well when something of a cult classic game titled simply Shadowrun was released on SNES. Shadowrun Returns, while being designed by the original creator of the tabletop RPG; is kind of a spiritual successor to the SNES game, but as such, it doesn't require any knowledge of the SNES game nor the tabletop RPG either.
As a side note, the 2017 Netflix movie Bright is a pretty unapologetic pastiche of the Shadowrun setting. So if you've seen that, you might have a pretty solid idea of what the game world is like even if you don't know the setting at all.
You jump in the shoes of a Sahdowrunner, a special brand of mercenaries, who do all kinds of legal and less legal jobs for corporations and for whoever is willing to pay for their services. Your days of doing nothing at all are distributed when an old teammate of yours, Sam Watts, contacts you. Or maybe it would be better to say, that the safeguarding message he set in the eventuality of his death contacts you. A dead man's switch, that tasks you to find out whoever killed him. There's even a reward at the end of the line if you ain't doing it for the sake of old times.
As it wouldn't be much of a game if you'd say no to the main quest, you end up in Seattle, where Sam was keeping it low. At the local coroners' office, you soon learn, that Sam night has been a victim of the Seattle Ripper, as he was missing internal organs the killer takes as a souvenir from his victims. So, now the question becomes if Sam was just a random victim or if there's something more behind the gnarly serial killer. And why does the killer collect internal organs?
Now, Dragonfall, you might be wondering why I decided to review it with Shadowrun Returns. Well, simply, because it was originally released as a DLC for Returns, but it was later turned into a standalone release. It doesn't continue the story of Returns, it is actually set in the free city of Berlin in Germany and has a brand new line of characters for you to toil with.
Dragonfall's story begins on a run that goes wrong. The leader of the gang you run with, Monika, is killed when a power surge fries her brains. To everyone's surprise, she leaves her mercenary outfit for you, as you were old friends, or perhaps even more than that, depending on what you decide. The obvious main story revolves around you leading a misfit pack of Shadowrunners in the search of those responsible of killing your old leader. A good bulk of Dragonfall is running entirely unrelated missions in order to collect enough money to pay an information broker fee for more information about the people behind the failed mission.
Just as the SNES Shadowrun, Shadowrun Returns and Dragonfall are isometric, RPGs focused on world exploration, simple puzzles and turn-based tactical combat. As I've not played the SNES game, I can't really compare are there more similarities in the gameplay besides the isometric worldview.
The main beef of the games is the turn-based combat, which is relatively well realised. In both games, you can control a team of up to 4 runners, of which 3 are your companions, either story companions, making them free or hired hands, who cost varying amounts of money depending on their skills. You get your basic armed combatants with different guns, like shotguns or pistols, spellcasters, deckers who can hack the security systems to fight for you and so on. Your main character can be customized with different kinds of cyberpunk mods that make their stats better, but those have an effect on how much you can cast spells. So, depending on what kind of character you want to play, you might want to steer modifications afar.
The combat system itself is pretty fluent. The surroundings can be used to your advantage like you can lead the enemies into a trap where your squad attacks on sight by using overwatch or you can try and use various obstacles as cover. So, all in all, mixed with the various squad compositions, it is a fun system, that more or less holds the games together.
The writing isn't terribly strong. It's fine for what it is, a means of leading you through different battle scenarios. If you expect more than that, you'll be disappointed. In both games, the story is sprung by the death of an old friend, which takes you on a road of either revenge or means of making money. The Framing narrative in Dragonfall is perhaps a bit more interesting, but that's perhaps more on its mission being almost entirely separate affairs from the main story, allowing more diverse settings on the way to the final battle. Furthermore, Dragonfall utilizes the deckers characters better, as they can really change the flow of the battle by successfully infiltrating the enemy systems.
Like it's rather common in modern RPGs, the character system is relatively free form. While you do choose an archetype character, in the beginning, you can divide the experience points very freely among the way. As the experience pool is limited, it's not possible to be an expert in everything, so you do need to choose carefully in what direction you want to take the character. You don't have to take care of your minions' development in Returns, in Dragonfall you do have a small way of affecting how your regular team members evolve.
If you've ever wondered which of the two games you should play, I can wholeheartedly recommend Dragonfall. Not that Returns is a bad game, but because Dragonfall is a bit more interesting as well as it has a bit more refined UI. But you can always play both of them, in what order you do that, matters very little.
Dragonfall and Returns can be bought from GOG and Steam. If you like turn-based combat, they are a decent choice.
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