This honestly reminds me of ye olde PC RPGs. In particular one I remember fondly was Septera Core (which I actually can't run anymore because it demands versions of Quicktime that don't exist anymore). It was fairly generic as far as RPG elements go, the screen and movement virtually identical to Shadowrun Returns. That is to say, somewhat 'static' and 'sterile' map assets, with very particular clickable items.
In the default campaign, I'd expect this to be a free game, given the quality. The dialogue is generally incredibly dry and friendly - honestly WAY too friendly for anything you'd expect for this sort of scene. I walked out of the morgue, encountered a stranger who gave me a gun and a drone, a bum who thanked me for telling him to stop panicking about nothing, a prostitute, a man who asked for help and to pay me for it, and a young woman who gave me fair warning about some gang members in the next street! Following that, the cops let me into an active crime scene after a little friendly talk, the Mistress of a brothel let a stranger into her girl's room, the bouncer had no problem with me walking into a strange bar armed to the teeth with an active gunbot following, and everyone patiently described exactly what a gun is and how to shoot people. After that I got a free tour of their secret anti-culture lair, armory, and bootleg medical clinic!
Aside from the downright cordial people who live in the asshole of the slums, there's no real dialogue options. No matter what you do it either progresses the plot or shuts down a small side-plot. It's extremely linear in its pushing you from one story element to another (politely talking your way through troublesome contacts, of course) and prevents any amount of free-roam or real side-jobs.
The combat is just about the same lack-luster. All classes and forms of combat quickly melt down to the same battle - move somewhere, fire gun. You take your rifle and you stand behind a box and shoot guys, or take your shotgun and stand next to someone and shoot them, or take your magic and stand wherever you want and shoot them with fireballs. Adding drones doesn't really change it, it just changes how many characters are moving and shooting. Available options hardly matter - sure you can try and shoot their kneecaps, but it does just as much damage and makes no visible difference to an enemy who can only survive two shots anyways!
Then there's the problem that there's NOTHING free-roam. I wanted to pick up a step-van, some drones for delivery, and pretend to be a delivery man! Turns out, you cannot purchase a vehicle, cannot modify a vehicle, cannot purchase civilian drones, cannot lie about your job, cannot try to sneak into a place claiming to be delivery, and cannot make money on a day job. For that matter you cannot modify weapons or cyberwear so you can't use a smartgun, dual-mags, sniper mods, gun-arms, magnifying eyes, hydraulic legs... Every item is identical and has one set of stats, so you either get Pistol A or Pistol B, and there's no real balance between them or differences.
As far as being based off a tabletop, pen-and-paper RPG, it fails spectacularly. But if you enjoy some original grade 90's RPG gameplay, then it's decent.
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Topic: Shadowrun Returns - Let's Kickstart this into space (Read 52437 times)