I’m not much of an RPG gamer. I’ve managed to stay away from The Elder Scrolls, and tabletop D&D has never entered my life. Something about the combination of cyberpunk and magic found in Shadowrun has always sparked an interest for me. No, not that FPS tripe that made its way onto the Xbox 360 and PC, the isometric RPG adventure that arrived on the SNES all those years ago.

Shadowrun Returns is more than a return to roots, it’s a rebirth of the aging franchise for a new generation.

Funded by backers on Kickstarter, Shadowrun Returns delivers a gorgeous turn-based experience, striking the perfect balance between the star building of its tabletop roots, and the accessibility and tactical nature of games such as XCOM: Enemy Unknown.

man, your writing feels like the start of a review... not that it's bad, no, in fact, it was pretty good writing. I am strangely excited about this game even though I didn't jump in on the Kickstarter. The presence of the return of Jake Armitage, X-com style tactic combat, and the same guy that composed the music for the first Shadowrun on the SNES (citation probably needed) are very exciting to me.

Also, ew, "just the tip".

I do love their crazy character classes and I do love the world they have built. I think it's going to be a fairly short game thoguh, but the modders will hopefully make some really cool stuff down the line.

I still to this day dunno why I backed this, I'm usually very cautious and critical of games, and it's not easy to get me excited.

But for some reason I'm really excited for this one. I think the fact that there's no publisher dick to be found anywhere up this game, and the fact that it's oldschool and created by veterans, made it sound really promising to me. I also have recently gotten into complex old school games and this seemed like a perfect go-to title.

i NEED this game to be good, it looks amazing (for me)

Looks great! I understand there's custom quests and whatnot available. Still, I think I'll wait for some word about the length of what comes with it.

@unclebenny - Thanks for your kind words. I'm actually a reviewer for a bunch of places such as Game Informer, GameFront, MSN and my own site Pixels for Breakfast. As for Just The Tip, it's a reference to the awesome show Archer.

@morningstar - A few people have asked me to make more videos of the playthrough, so I'll be doing that over the next week or so. I'll have an idea of how long it is and I can let you know.

@rhaknar - Glad you're liking it. As I said in the OP, I'm not usually an RPG guy but I'm really loving Shadowrun.

@theht - Yeah, user created content is a big thing for HBS, I'm actually thinking about creating my very own quest line. Perhaps we could all make a Giant Bomb campaign :P

im not liking it because I dont have it (well I do but its not unlocked on steam). I just need it to be good because, for me, it looks amazing and its right up my alley :) the content creator sounds amazing

Ahhhh, just unlock already! I can't wait to play this game!

I'd love to see a Quicklook up for this one to get the word out even more. This game deserves as much attention as possible. I want publishers to know that intelligent gamers do exist who will pay money for games like this which they believe no longer has a market.

Agreed about a quicklook for this, after reading the eurogamer review for this, it seems like quite a solid game. Kept looking at it during the steam sale but wasn't sure about how it'd turn out, looks like a gem for rpg games.

I've played a reasonable amount of the 3rd and 4th editions of Shadowrun over the last 10 years, but I missed the old console games. This looks pretty good, and I'm interested to hear more impressions from folks, though I'll probably wait until the Linux version is released before picking it up.

The combat is real slow and that bugs me for some reason.

It sounds as if it's hardly even worth buying until there's some user made content, based on the reviews.

Apparently there's already some user made content out that clocks in around 12 hours. I saw the start of an LP on it, but didn't watch much because I really want to see it for myself.

Based on early impressions of the content creation tools, I'm really excited to play around with them. They're supposedly a little clunky, but I like messing around with obtuse systems.

I am biased to like it I suppose because I backed this project, but the reviews so far have been pretty good. I won't know until I get home later today to actually play it.

The one thing I do know from their updates is that they've already started working on the Berlin campaign. They haven't put an ETA out for a completion time, but I hope before the end of the year.

I was tempted to purchase then found out about no manual saving. LOL no. Just lost a sale there. And of course people will damage control that to death.

Been playing it for about 2 hours so far. Loving the game, hating the save system.

yeah, it's a bummer. i find myself just leaving it open if i want to take a break but not potentially replay anything.

Call this damage control if you want, but it's pretty clearly a design choice. It's meant to be played like an old school pen & paper game, so they don't want people to be able to say "oh, I don't like the outcome of that choice, lets try again" or save scumming their way through the combat, XCOM style.

It probably wasn't the best design decision, but I can see why they did it.

Game is pretty fun so far. Not amazing, but still a good RPG.

@theht said:

The saves are pretty frequent so far, I'm not bothered by it yet. Although Bioshock: Infinite never bothered me either. It tells you when the game save In the top left corner (It's after every mayor loading screen). It's a turn-based game so I just leave it on if I want to take a break.

Those excuses don't really play, you can restart the current mission if you don't like the outcome of a choice (nor are there a whole bunch of choices) and the combat is a breeze so there is no need to save-scum.

The auto-save system is adequate, I have no complaints about it so far. Provided that it doesn't bug out at some point, I don't see the big deal.

The devs have said it's not a conscious decision but it was "too hard" to code in manual saves in the engine. So don't go calling it a call back to P&P. Especially when you could stop playing that and pick it back up at any time.

The lack of manual saves and extreme linearity of the first 90 minutes do not bode well.

@arbitrarywater: The saves are a bummer, true, but the campaign the game comes with is more like an extended, professionally produced demo of what the game is capable of. It's a fun ride along some very focused rails and it would be disappointing if it weren't for the fact we're going to start seeing hundreds of new campaigns to play in the very near future.

@tangmcgame: Having played a bit more, yeah. It seems like the original Neverwinter Nights, inasmuch as the campaign itself is more to show off the creation tools and ruleset than actually be interesting on its own merits. Oh, it's enjoyable as a RPG-lite sort of thing, but given the various shortcomings of the campaign itself I wonder how flexible the creation tools actually are, or if the mechanics are necessarily deep enough to support a dedicated community.

I wonder if it's something they'll implement in the future. Either way I'm sure I'll pick it up eventually, but I'd rather wait and see for now. Cool to see everyone's digging it thus far though.

I'm one of the biggest advocates of manual saving... This is what I get for backing this game I guess. It's the equivalent of pre-ordering a game, and I know that's a stupid thing to do.

Oh well, almost done downloading on Steam.

Can someone explain the user content for me? I watched the quicklook and the first thing that hit me is that you can't reuse your character. This is ok if the user content is set up in a way that you have packs and chapters. So, if I create some content pack, I release chapter one. In a couple months, I release chapter two and you can use the same character you used on chapter 1. Same thing for the main quest content.

Or will every single module created force you to start over with a new character?

Ok - reply to my own question. I did some searching and I can't find an official answer - but there is this

Not sure about how saves work but as for importing the character:

The content creator can choose three options for their module - let the player import a character, let them make a brand new character, or use a pre-generated one of the creator's design better tailored to the module's story. Or some combination thereof.

So you can import - which sounds good - although now I wonder about balancing. As interested as I am in this game, I'm going to wait a while before jumping in. I want to see what happens with the user created content. If I'm going to get into a game like this, where lore and dialog is so key - I like having 100 hours of content at my disposal.

I'm new to Shadowrun, and I'm loving it. The cyberpunk setting really appeals to me, and the writing is compelling enough that I don't mind the linearity. Shame that it's apparently so short, as I'm already rather invested in the characters.

I hope the custom modules deliver in both quantity and quality, because I can imagine some great stories in this universe.

For those who are interested, I'm posting a playthrough of the main campaign in 30-40 minute episodes. The next episode can be viewed here - http://www.pixelsforbreakfast.net/2013/07/the-chummer-chronicles-episode-01-detective-carlos/

Why 30 minutes? I think that's the perfect amount of time that is easily digestible for you to view, but also for me to play. I do a lot of writing for other sites, so I don't have a lot of time to do things like this.