The game's biggest problems though, aren't in its design but in how it (potentially) runs. There has been numerous technical issues relating to how the game plays on different hardware. Despite my PC being perfectly capable of meeting the system requirements, there were frequent stutters and drops in frame-rate whenever the screen got cluttered. As a result, the performance got worse as the game progressed, as missions became more complex, the frame-rate suffered even more.
Like the game's performance, the campaign's story starts off strong but descends into several repetitive encounters. The biggest mistake is revealing the culprit far too early, shredding the need for any detective work to be done and removing any sense of intrigue. About two thirds of the way in, each mission begins to look similar to the last, with your goal almost always being "clear the room of enemies". What's more, despite having a robust level up system, once you've settled on a few choice strategies, the game never makes much of an attempt to subvert them or catch you off guard. There's some moments where you have to do some pretty hefty multi-tasking, like managing a hack into a server whilst also keeping actual security guards at bay, but these unique encounters are too few and far between.
It's clear from the developer's blog that the team is keen to improve on Dead Man's Switch with their next campaign. With several user-generated stories now proving to be popular maybe they'll turn out to be more engaging in the long-term.. As it stands, Shadowrun Returns is an enjoyable, but somewhat limited, addition to the role-playing genre. However, it's difficult to come up with a definite conclusion, since it's the user-generated content that will test the gameplay mechanics and determine whether or not they can stand the test of time.
Shadowrun Returns was released on July 25th for PC and Mac. A Linux, iOS and Android version are also in development.
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