jackhnatejko Shadowrun Returns Review

My first foray into Shadowrun world began with playing Returns on the Steam Deck. It ran very well. No technical issues experienced, no problems with font size or any issues of this nature. It felt awesome chipping away at it, every night from the comfort of my bed. Played as a female Elf, proficient with decking (see what I did there?) and rifle. It was mostly what I expected, although it did surprise me in a good way with the quality of written dialogues; text boxes before missions during a loading screen almost felt like something taken out of the paper RPG with very detailed descriptions of a predicament your main character is currently in and his/her surroundings - it really helped in making the world just a tad more believable. The whole setting is what drawn me to Returns and I wasn't disappointed in that respect, although I would have liked the city and its regions to be a bit more open, with more optional stuff to do - so I could actually feel like I am the runner who's pulling the strings here, making my own choices, rather than being pulled by developers to finish the main quest only, by completing a sequence of linear missions and locations. I've enjoyed the combat, it was balanced well, but not particularly deep or difficult; and very much enjoyed upgrading my character - there are no boundaries here after you pick your class and race which is fantastic (although a few limitations may occur). It is an approach that I wish more RPG games would implement, where you're not really limited by your chosen race/class, and you can still become whatever you want if you invest an x amount of points in y profession. Story wise it was pretty good and fun to follow how the events unfolded in the main campaign - it's the ending that sort of spoiled it for me to be honest, it'd be interesting to see how probable would be this scenario within the realm of the original table top RPG - because here, it almost felt out of place and it really brought down the overall feeling of a pretty solid game for me... at one point I just couldn't believe what was going on, it was such a drastic shift in tone and flavour. It is a solid experience, took me about 19hrs or so in total. However I would recommend it to others only with the above caveats taken into consideration. I also bought Dragonfall which I believe is the second entry in Harebrained Schemes' Shadowrun Trilogy & from what I've been hearing so far it improves on Returns in almost every possible way, so I am quite thrilled about playing it later this year.