Shadowrun: Dragonfall significantly improves upon the shortcomings of its predecessor, Shadowrun: Returns. While I enjoyed Shadowrun: Returns, the combat felt overly simple, with a lack of skills and class differentiation, lacking the depth of the original tabletop ruleset. The story also felt too linear, with limited impact from player choices. Additionally, the game lacked some basic UI elements, such as the ability to trade items between characters during missions or allowing another character to lead the party. Which Dragonfall still has not implemented...

Dragonfall, originally intended as an expansion, offers a much richer experience, standing as a separate game. It's approximately twice as long as Returns, providing a more intricate and balanced gameplay experience. While it still doesn't fully capture the complexity of the tabletop version, it introduces more skills and a wider variety of story approaches, allowing players to tackle main and side missions in different ways.

The story in Dragonfall is as strong as in Returns, featuring a few twists and maintaining engagement throughout. However, one aspect I didn't enjoy as much was the predetermined backstory for your character. Unlike in Shadowrun: Returns, where your past was more ambiguous and served mainly to kickstart the story, Dragonfall delves deeply into your character's history. This pre-set backstory shapes much of the narrative, which can feel restrictive compared to the more open-ended character backgrounds in the previous game.

Similarly, the game assigns you a set team of characters instead of allowing you to hire from a pool of diverse runners for each mission, as in the first game. While there are still some non-main character runners, they are fewer in number and offer less variety, often being inferior to the main side characters. This approach, while enriching the game's dialogue and character interactions, limits your options for assembling a team and makes the game feel more linear again. It sacrifices some of the flexibility and choice found in the first game for the sake of more narrative content, which the game already has in abundance.

Overall, Shadowrun: Dragonfall is a marked improvement, offering a more robust and engaging experience. However, it still leaves room for growth in terms of complexity, basic UI elements, and player choice with the runners you take a long and some aspects of dialog and story choices. It's still a solid CRPG in a fantastic universe.

Shadowrun: Dragonfall significantly improves upon the shortcomings of its predecessor, Shadowrun: Returns. While I enjoyed Shadowrun: Returns, the combat felt overly simple, with a lack of skills and class differentiation, lacking the depth of the original tabletop ruleset. The story also felt too linear, with limited impact from player choices. Additionally, the game lacked some basic UI elements, such as the ability to trade items between characters during missions or allowing another character to lead the party. Which Dragonfall still has not implemented... Dragonfall, originally intended as an expansion, offers a much richer experience, standing as a separate game. It's approximately twice as long as Returns, providing a more intricate and balanced gameplay experience. While it still doesn't fully capture the complexity of the tabletop version, it introduces more skills and a wider variety of story approaches, allowing players to tackle main and side missions in different ways. The story in Dragonfall is as strong as in Returns, featuring a few twists and maintaining engagement throughout. However, one aspect I didn't enjoy as much was the predetermined backstory for your character. Unlike in Shadowrun: Returns, where your past was more ambiguous and served mainly to kickstart the story, Dragonfall delves deeply into your character's history. This pre-set backstory shapes much of the narrative, which can feel restrictive compared to the more open-ended character backgrounds in the previous game. Similarly, the game assigns you a set team of characters instead of allowing you to hire from a pool of diverse runners for each mission, as in the first game. While there are still some non-main character runners, they are fewer in number and offer less variety, often being inferior to the main side characters. This approach, while enriching the game's dialogue and character interactions, limits your options for assembling a team and makes the game feel more linear again. It sacrifices some of the flexibility and choice found in the first game for the sake of more narrative content, which the game already has in abundance. Overall, Shadowrun: Dragonfall is a marked improvement, offering a more robust and engaging experience. However, it still leaves room for growth in terms of complexity, basic UI elements, and player choice with the runners you take a long and some aspects of dialog and story choices. It's still a solid CRPG in a fantastic universe.