Blade Runner: Enhanced Edition Reviews
Many will see the score at the bottom of this review and immediately write off Blade Runner: Enhanced Edition. However, there is something genuinely brilliant buried deep inside this Switch release, beneath the lingering issues with pacing and narrative design as well as the myriad painful "enhancements" Nightdive Studios has dumped on top. To cut through all that, you will need a great love for Blade Runner and cyberpunk, saintly patience, a walkthrough on hand, a strict requirement to play on console rather than PC, and a pair of rose-tinted glasses. If you have all those things then you may still see life in this game's eyes, but we don't need a Voigt-Kampff machine to tell this version from the real thing.
Blade Runner EE is a remaster in the strictest sense of the word: if you don't expect an abysmal jump in the graphics (softened backgrounds, the same models...) you won't be disappointed. It is still a great adventure, and although not all the novelties are equally successful and has failures, for 9.29 euros do not even think about it if you like the genre.
Review in Spanish | Read full review
It’s great to see this game getting a second life. Who would have believed it possible for this game to be playable on consoles? The mood is still great, and the game is very replayable because of the randomization of who is human or replicant. I very much enjoyed this retro-future trip back to 2019.
Honestly, I feel like I can't do anything but completely pan Nightdive's efforts on Blade Runner Enhanced Edition: from a technical standpoint, the game is indefensible, with plenty of bugs, and certainly doesn't feel "Enhanced" compared to the original (luckily still available on GOG). Undoubtedly the lack of chunks of the source code and the format of the original assets did Nightdive no favors, but this is still a poor tribute to Westwood's legacy.
Review in Italian | Read full review
Between the poor, blocky visuals, the array of glitches and bugs, the sub-standard UI and lack of any attention given to making the game more accessible to a contemporary audience, it saddens me to admit that Blade Runner: Enhanced Edition should be avoided at all costs. Tragically, this is because under all of this scarred and badly implemented design, there's a roundly excellent and atmospheric detective yarn just bursting to come out, but is now seemingly condemned to be lost to time, like tears in the rain.
Judging Blade Runner Enhanced Edition is a difficult job. If it is true that the comparison trailers with the graphics of the original version had shown a very faithful approach, more of reconstruction and exaltation of the Los Angeles atmospheres than of real revision, one cannot fail to notice several defects that affect the final result.
Review in Italian | Read full review
If you are really into the Blade Runner franchise and can put up with the shortcomings, I suppose you can get some enjoyment from Blade Runner: Enhanced Edition. Everyone else should take a pass on this remastered adventure game. Maybe if the studio comes out with a "More Enhanced" edition, with plenty more fixes in place, it may be worth another look.
Blade Runner: Enhanced Edition is a misnomer since it downgrades a classic.
Some features like improved legibility and pathfinding are coming, but these are all technical shortcomings that should have been addressed before released. Despite all these flaws, Blade Runner: Enhanced Edition is still worth playing and with Dightdive promising to continue support the game with updates, this version could live up to being the “enhanced” edition.
If gameplay is all that is of importance, Blade Runner: Enhanced Edition remains one of the finest examples outside of a Lucasarts' title, bringing together a great story and interesting mechanics. If you want the whole package however, it may be best to look elsewhere for a definitive version. The Nintendo Switch of course does have that major advantage of gaming on the go and on a smaller screen, it may just look that little bit more appealing.
Finding anything positive about the new (sic) Blade Runner is almost impossible. The time-honored legend didn't age well in the remastered edition after 25 years, and perhaps it would be better if it remained only in our memories.
Review in Slovak | Read full review
I can't recommend Blade Runner: Enhanced Edition, at least not in its present form. There are too many annoyances, too many unexplained systems, and not nearly enough lighting. If you really must check this out, I suggest leaving a FAQ open on your phone.
Whenever I see re-releases of games with a descriptor like "Enhanced Edition" I tend to be a bit nervous about what that may mean...
The game has had twenty five years to be transformed into something to wow fans of the series. Instead, it just feels like a lazy port with ugly character models, awkward controls, and an assumption you’ve played it before. Perhaps one for the hardcore Blade Runner fans, but not the newcomers.
The story, the music, and the interface are all great. You can spend way too long trying to work out the details yourself, or find a fast track to solving the crimes and getting the best ending possible. Again, I have to stress this, I didn’t get a crash, just general disappointment over the terrible menus and the janky performance. But I can’t promise you won’t, and I don’t want anyone to be disappointed in this game.
Blade Runner: Enhanced Edition has managed to ruin the unique aesthetic and feel of the original largely thanks to an inaccurate AI-upscaling method and some questionable design choices. To be honest, the only ‘upgrade’ in the remaster over the original is the addition of cutscenes and controller support. The decision to de-list the original from GOG was also a crappy move. But, as an apology, Nightdive is giving away the original, titled Blade Runner Classic when you purchase the Enhanced Edition on Steam (it was limited to GOG at launch). Both of these classic versions are powered by the ScummVM project and there is even an option to play a version with cut content. If you ask me, you’re better off playing the original than this so-called “Enhanced Edition”. But, if the only selling point of your remaster is the ability to play the unaltered version, then what’s the point of remastering it in the first place? That being said, Nightdive has a good record of patching their remasters until they’re in an acceptable state (reference: Blood: Fresh Supply). I do not know how much they can salvage from this messy launch but until then, it’s better to stay away from Blade Runner: Enhanced Edition. But if you’re desperately itching to revisit the classic, you can buy it for a reasonable $9.99 and play the original with ScummVM.