The Technomancer Reviews
The developer's ambition to make a triple-A title without the resources of a larger studio gets the better of them.
Developer Spiders’ Technomancer had the potential to be a great role playing experience if it weren’t for its many problems. The combat, while plentiful and entertaining when using technomancy, feels stiff with an over reliance on dodging and ineffective stance system.
Derivative setting, dull NPCs, and clunky combat make The Technomancer an exemplar of lost potential
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.
Fans of Mars: War Logs might enjoy exploring more of Spider’s dystopian Mars, but I honestly couldn’t recommend The Technomancer to newcomers looking for a sci-fi RPG. Its poor combat balance, dated animations, and predictable storyline result in a game that really could have been so much more, but ends up being uninspiring.
I highly recommend playing this game with a controller of some kind, especially if you are playing on the PC like I did, as it makes the game feel more fluid as the combat system is generally just a serious of non-sensical button mashing, think Tekken but with customisable boots.
The Technomancer’s not even actively terrible. It’s just completely forgettable. Come for the Brutalist architecture, stay because you’ve got nothing better to do with seventeen hours of your life. And that’s a low bar, here.
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.
Just what the world needed, a sequel to Mars: War Logs!
Honestly, I’m disappointed that The Technomancer couldn’t deliver. I want to like it so much! The seeds of an excellent game are there, but they just haven’t been tended to a level that really needs to be played. Hopefully Spiders will patch the game to improve some of the difficulty wall issues and this will become a more enjoyable experience, but I don’t think it’s a must-play for now. Overall it feels like an atmospheric step forward for the developer, but a mechanical trip backwards. Until that gets sorted, the red planet can wait.
Although The Technomancer is full of promise and seems like a pretty cool game at first, it all falls apart when you actually play it.
All the little reasons The Technomancer is worth experiencing, all the little moments where the vision of a better game shines through, aren’t quite enough to justify choking down its shortcomings.
The Technomancer is an overwhelmingly average title, filled with questionable design choices, and agonizingly painful, roller coaster-like difficulty.
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 has plenty to offer for fans looking to return to the world of Mars: War Logs but for anyone looking for a AAA experience, The Technomancer isn’t worth a $60 price tag.
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.
Good for a fight, dull for everything else
An uneven slab of Mars adventuring, The Technomancer carefully straddles the line between never really being good while never falling into being bad.
The Technomancer offers up a couple of highs and a few too many lows. Its approach to open ended gameplay is appreciated and its combat is fun enough for the first ten hours, but the game eventually loses steam and its story is nothing worth shouting about. To make matters worse, technical problems harm the experience to the point where you'll find it hard to care about the characters during what are supposed to be emotional scenes. There's certainly something here for forgiving RPG fans, but for everyone else, we can only advise caution when it comes to this rough Martian adventure.