The Technomancer Reviews
The Technomancer is, after all, a video game. It had time, energy, heart and soul put into it. It never feels lazy, and it never feels like a cash grab. It just never manages to feel inspired or fun. In fact, it manages to be frustrating more than it is fun. Perhaps you'll find a nugget of charm underneath all the tedium. Unfortunately, The Technomancer only really manages to feel bland, if not devoid of life all together.
The Technomancer had aspirations to become a noteworthy RPG, but fell short due to some poor decisions in key areas. Good ideas were muddled by poor execution, and the result is an experience that won’t keep players tuned in for very long.
Spiders Studio has escaped its own shadow with The Technomancer. While the game is not perfect, and isn't a match for the kings of the genre llike Mass Effect of The Witcher, it still can be enjoyable.
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Good for a fight, dull for everything else
In fairness to The Technomancer it is consistent and by that I mean consistently disappointing.The Technomancer ticks all the boxes of a AAA game, but lacks the polish of its peers and does little to stand out as an RPG. Yes, at times the game can really shine. Mainly when you're admiring scenery from afar. This is the part that annoyed me the most. Obviously time was spent to make the game pretty, but at what cost? The writing is predictable and cringe worthy and the combat is boring and dry. Somewhere beneath its surface lies a polished game. Its unfortunate the flaws are so deeply ingrained within the game that they cannot be ignored and it breaks the immersion.
Not good but not awful, The Technomancer serves more as a showcase for the future potential of Spiders than a game worth playing on its own merit.
It’s hard to surmise whether The Technomancer and its faults come by way of financial or otherwise creative pitfalls, because there are some interesting and rather enjoyable moments to take out of both the game’s easy-to-access combat system and the rather nostalgic return of a colonized Mars seen through the eyes of an 80’s motion picture.
With The Technomancer, we have a game trying to be a sprawling sci-fi adventure while paradoxically not trying much at all.
The setting is great, but weak combat and limited choices stop this RPG from going anywhere fun.
It�s far from great, but sometimes just being good really is good enough.
The Technomancer isn’t anything to write home about, but if you’re willing to overlook its flaws, this is Spiders’ most compelling world to date. Their vision of Mars is one that would be worth exploring even with its rough edges, if not for the sheer imbalance of a combat system that persistently drags the experience into the dregs of frustration. Spiders isn’t short on interesting ideas, it’s just the execution.
The Technomancer is a jack of all RPG trades, master of none.
The team writes intelligent, worthy scenarios and narratives, and then they do the best they can to build gameplay to support that concept. Spiders never quite gets there with executing to vision, but I don’t mean this as a backhanded complement; I genuinely appreciate what this team does, because it’s unique and interesting and I wish more developers had the gumption to try something like The Technomancer.
And every now and then, the feeling of playing a classic BioWare RPG from a decade or so rises to the surface.
The Technomancer is the equivalent of a cheesy 90's sci-fi action flick mashup; think Steven Seagal's Under Siege meets Jesse Ventura's Abraxas: Guardian of the Universe all set in the dusty red planet of yesteryear's classics like Total Recall or Dune. For as grand as that sounds, fans of past Spiders titles may be a bit disappointed in the lack of varied gameplay between titles. Others that are new to the universe may be a bit let down by the lack of depth, yet carried along by a decent supporting cast, an interesting and fun if trope-y story, and stellar world-building. While Technomancer may not be deep, overly fulfilling, or entirely sophisticated, it does contain an abundance of charm. Charm not unlike your favorite campy films of years gone by.
I honestly believe that the team at Spiders wanted to deliver the very best game that they are capable of producing and sadly I think that is exactly what they have done. The Technomancer is not a bad game, but it is devastatingly mediocre.
'The Technomancer' is not without its merits, but can’t quite find a place for itself in the RPG/action field. It is clear what Spiders was trying to do and I don’t fault them for it - their creation has the potential to be something special. In this current form that’s all it is though, just potential.
The Technomancer isn’t necessarily a bad game, it just isn’t a good one.
All in all The Technomancer is a fun little adventure which will definitely grow on you. It’s from the school of RPGs which are engrossing despite their laundry list of flaws. There’s much to be said for a small team like Spiders chipping away at a hideously involving and expensive genre, and for that they should be congratulated. It doesn’t have the polish of a Mass Effect 3 or Deus Ex: Human Revolution, but The Technomancer sure has a lot of heart.
The developer's ambition to make a triple-A title without the resources of a larger studio gets the better of them.