The biggest improvement, though, is an added sense of intimacy to the action, provided by a shift from being a solo operator to the new leader of a band of veteran shadowrunners with their strong team dynamic baked in from the start. Many more situations now make use of character elements like etiquettes (social options when you need to try and pull rank on a guard or call out a gangbanger) and character skills for forcing open doors, figuring out puzzles, or simply opening an alternate path with the help of a hefty shoulder-slam. The illusion of freedom is much stronger, however, and the story more satisfying for it. It's still primarily of the 'adventure with combat' style, and is ultimately quite linear. Those problems duly marked, Dragonfall isn't just a far better campaign than Dead Man's Switch, but a really enjoyable indie RPG in its own right. Ich bin ein Kruzbasarer! What? No, it definitely is not a jam doughnut! The most notable core change is that you can now save whenever you like, though that feature can be buggy. The environments are still static, and the RPG side is much shallower than the complex world regularly cries out for it to be. Both magic and firearms still aspire to having the heft and raw destructive power of water pistols. The basic systems are the same, so if you bounced off the original campaign for those reasons rather than its story or linearity, expect similar problems here. It's an expansion rather than a whole new game, so some obvious caveats apply and we may as well get them out of the way now. I mention this not to belatedly put the boot in but because Dragonfall has proved to be such a pleasant surprise - exactly the kind of adventure that I was hoping the original would be, for the most part. I know, however, that I'm not alone in having been deeply underwhelmed. Your mileage on this may vary, and if you dug its Dead Man's Switch campaign, great. Its original campaign ranks as one of my bigger disappointments in recent years, feeling more like a Neverwinter Nights-style glorified engine demo than a game in its own right its title ultimately sounded like a promise that one day Shadowrun might Return, even if it took the fans breaking open the included editor and Steam Workshop functionality to make it happen. I wanted to love it but didn't even like it - not much, anyway. Shadowrun Returns was a frustrating game for me.
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