The GWJ CRPG Club - Game 1: Shadowrun Dragonfall DC (Over)

Kurt Browning keeps saying "adrenaline pump" during the Olympics figure skating, so it sounds like the skaters have cyberware.

No worries on not finishing, redherring and Clockwork! It's not a college class, and thanks for giving it a try with everyone.

Honestly, I think 25% completion would be fantastic for a game club like this, and anything above 10% should be functional if we have around 20-25 people starting to play the game. We're already above 10%. (3 out of 29 have finished so far). I'm interested to see where we end up, but so far so good.

I found whom we were looking for and things got real interesting. Should wrap up soon.

Did the Bloodline mission last night, wow

I sort of feel like my rigger running dual Class A bots is just flat out overpowered in the game. I'm playing on hard, and so far virtually nothing has been a challenge. Felt like I really just wanted to get into a fight, so while I did the pre-mission to infiltrate the security company so I had the com software on the Knights Errant, I didn't feel like sneaking, I was going to go into the mission HOT

Super long mission report in the spoiler section. Seriously, I didn't intend this to turn into a novel.

Spoiler:

After sitting through all the dialog from Paul about how dangerous this mission was, how nobody would get a medical transport if they fell, and how I definitely should sneak, and if I don't the Knights will kill me, I walked up to the front door and calmly shot my way in.

Immediately on entering the building I was alerted to a 20 turn timer before the Knights arrived. Not knowing what to expect I put everyone in a good position to cover all the entrances to this first room, and decided to "get it over with" and hit End Turn 19 times.

3 knights entered the room. My support drone hit them with a concussion grenade stunning them all and lobbing mortars, while my, and Blitz's attack drones poured in damage. Eiger and Glory finished them off and I was just left with the feeling completely unimpressed. Everyone was worked up about a squad I wiped out in 1 turn? Yeah the rigger is too darn overpowered.

I ran around the upstairs finishing everything on the floor, being reminded that everything is on high alert, but not feeling like I was under any time pressure anymore for anything. I went downstairs, cleared out 2 guys down there and got Blitz into position to start opening the blast doors. Everything was going slower, because the game didn't exit out of "combat mode" after I killed the 2 downstairs, and the enemy turn seemed to take forever. I hacked the security cameras and could see the room with the test subjects and blood mages, and caught a little bit of movement as some soldiers headed towards the blast doors, but there were no cameras on the far side of the doors. I did notice the enemy turns taking forever, and lots of sounds of footsteps.

I got everyone into firing position on my side of the blast doors before sending my support drone to open the blast door, and was greeted with a literal wall of enemies. There were 9, 3 rows across by 3 deep all standing in the doorway. I hit them with a concussion grenade, stunning all, and just opened fire with everyone firing as much into the wall of stunned enemies as possible.

Without Dietrich though I didn't have much in the way of area of affect damage. So lobbed what grenades I had into the mass of enemies. Had to move Eiger from her excellent shooting position to be able to get her grenade center of the group, this left her exposed, but let me finish off several of the enemies.

What I still didn't have line of sight on was there were more enemies behind this wall, and by killing some of those that made up the wall, I allowed a path through for them. They quickly surrounded and killed my support drone which was carrying a bunch of my healing, and lit up Eiger. I worked Blitz' support drone through the vents got around back, and popped a few of the exploding barrels killing a few other clusters of enemies still in that room before it was destroyed itself.

Glory had been double slicing away at the front wall of enemies, and the first action of my next turn I wanted to pull her back to heal Eiger. Instead of selecting her however I mis clicked and since my attack drone was first to go, I had actually given it the command to move into the wall of enemies, and it consumed all 3 AP to get there. I got Glory back to Eiger, which of course took her out of range to throw her on concussive grenade on the wall, and everyone still left in that wall got their AP back and destroyed my main attack drone.

Suddenly with 3 less drones in the party, being a rigger no longer felt overpowering...

With no weapons to herself, my main character quickly became the healer. Running back and forth between Glory and Eiger using up the last of her medkits and swearing at that mis-click and the fact that I had taken more drone repair kits than healing, and hadn't had the opportunity to even repair any of my drones.

Spent a few rounds gradually whittling down the masses with Eiger rotating between shotgun, sniper rifle and AK depending on range and relying heavily on Glory's slash and kick maneuver to keep at least a few people stunned.

Saw a few more had joined the party in the back and were standing next to one last barrel. I was rotating through the characters before deciding on action, selected Glory's pistol and was going to pop the barrel. Not sure why, but I checked my unarmed character one last time to see was there something I could throw to save Glory the action point that she could use to slash a closer enemy. Seeing none, I decided to click on the barrel to shoot it with Glory and OMG I DIDN'T SWITCH BACK TO GLORY!!!!!! I'm screaming at my character as she runs across the map to dutifully punch the barrel, and I know darn well if she connects she's probably dead.

With a strength of like 2 she completely missed the barrel, and is of course all out of AP to run away. Eiger, Glory and Blitz clean up a few last up front, while my character becomes a bullet sponge dropping her HP down to 2. I'm able to get her out of there the next turn, pop that barrel killing the other enemies and pause to take a breath.

I still know there's still those blood mages up ahead so use the last of my healing to bring everyone else except my character up to at least 50% health. With no weapons and no drones, there's little reason for my character to be near the fight so I don't waste my last healing on her, she'll just have to stay at 2.

I inch forward with Eiger, sniping a couple of the blood mages, before turning her and Glory lose on the ones further in the back. They take a bunch of damage but clean out the back of the room. Oddly much of their damage has come from one blood mage right up front who Glory had stunned earlier in the combat but who I had moved both past in order take out the ones casting and spawning other summoned creatures before those creatures could do any damage.

With both Glory and Eiger under 7 HP, and only 1 blood mage left I charged, knocking the blood mage down to just a few HP.

Then it was Blitz' turn. Saw he only had a 40% chance to hit so moved him to point blank range, where he was still only at 72% to hit with his SMG. I looked through his inventory and saw a stim to give him 3 extra AP, used it, and opened fire with his 2 shot burst mode.

Miss, Miss
Miss, Miss
Reload, Kill

The game is still in "combat mode" as I start to click around the room, and the other characters keep saying that it has to be the main character to do some of these things, so I bring her out of hiding to look at things while Blitz decks in to open the doors and retrieve the other information. Since the game is still in combat mode though, Blitz gets a couple rounds decked in, and then my character gets a round back in "real time" to talk with the test subjects and free them and collect the found data.

Unfortunately that switching back and forth came back to bite me as I noticed Blitz was low on health, decided I'd heal him the next round, which of course switched to real time, then when it went back to the decker time, I of course forgot to heal. Got in one last combat with Blitz, cast the program which does damage over time, and then Blitz gets hit knocking him out of the deck, and dealing a bunch of stun damage to him knocking his real world Hit points down to 7. I wait a couple rounds for the shock to wear off, deck back in and to the game's credit apparently the damage over time program I had cast had killed the last remaining enemy while Blitz was not decked in.

The game was STILL in combat mode as I inched toward the exit. There was a turn listed as enemy turn, so I believe there was still at least one more enemy left, but I never saw them. I got out and breathed a HUGE sigh of relief with everyone on the team at 7HP or less. It was like 1:00am and I needed 45 minutes to literally unwind after I left the game because it was so intense.

I wanted action, I wanted a challenge, and wow did I ever get it.

That's some battle, Skraut. It made for a good read!

RnRClown wrote:

That's some battle, Skraut. It made for a good read!

Spoiler:

Yeah, I assume I essentially broke the game's expectations when I hunkered down in that first room and and just spammed end turn. They probably expected me to push forward as fast as possible which would have meant all those enemies would have been spawning right about the time I fought the blood mages or a little afterward.

Because I "wasted" that time, they were all spawning while I was running around upstairs and well as all the time I was downstairs before I opened the blast doors. I truly wonder if waiting like that and fighting a massed formation made it easier because they were all coming from the same direction, and had all clumped up where I could stun a large formation at once.

It probably would have been more difficult if they had spawned in groups of 2 or 3 while I was fighting them because I would have been fighting one group and they would have spawned another group behind me or something.

Wish I had some stats at the end of the mission though, I truly want to know how high the kill count was

Awesome write up, skraut! That was an epic mission.

ClockworkHouse wrote:

I'm having trouble getting into this one and sticking with it. I'll spare you all the gritty details for why, but I might be the first formal dropout of the month.

I was the first informal dropout then.
It’s just not clicking with me.

Eleima wrote:
ClockworkHouse wrote:

I'm having trouble getting into this one and sticking with it. I'll spare you all the gritty details for why, but I might be the first formal dropout of the month.

I was the first informal dropout then.
It’s just not clicking with me.

How about some gritty details?

I'm still playing it now and then, but it doesn't have me riveted or itching to play. It's not really my style of game—isometric is too removed to feel like I'm role-playing; and I hate managing anything in real life or out, let alone a party (not that the game really lets me manage my party). Come to think of it, I hate parties in real life too—but that's a totally separate matter. The story is fine, but I'm finding the writing to be [He pauses to take a long drag on his cigarette] just a little bit [He takes a long drag on his cigarette] melodramatic.

But I can tear up a room with a Smartlinked assault rifle and I don't have cybernetic legs yet, so I have reasons to keep playing. We'll see how long it sustains me.

The story is fine, but I'm finding the writing to be [He pauses to take a long drag on his cigarette] just a little bit [He takes a long drag on his cigarette] melodramatic.

I mean...it *IS* supposed to be Noir-ish in tone

I can talk about what I don't like about these games, and compare and contrast with the people looking to drop out.

The games have a highly railed, restricted path, and there's not a lot of room for deviation. There's little exploration, instead you're basically ushered from location to location. Solving quests is very point-and-click adventure like, where you point your mouse to look at the thing, or pick up the thing. Basically it's similar to old school pixel hunts, except with the hand and magnifying glass icons removing the need to even hunt. Generally, you can't progress or really do anything at all until you go Point at the Things and Click on the Things, and since you're practically dragged to them, there isn't any interesting process of discovery leading up to the clicking.

Dialogue typically falls into that trap where the options are:
(1) Say the Thing
(2) Say the Thing a Different Way
(3) Say the Thing Snarkily

Choices? There often aren't any, because there's really not a lot of room to go off path.

(To be fair, they do work a few decent choices in, including at the end, but this post is about what I don't like)

When I played through the trilogy the first time, all they made me want is a more expansive, classic Fallout style version of these games. I'd trade the entire trilogy for one of those, where you move freely between locations, set your own pace, and have a lot of optional side stories to weave around the main plotline. And with some size to those locations! Berlin is so tiny, it's just the Kreuszbasar. You can never get lost in these games, because there's nowhere to get lost.

Inventory management in Returns and Dragonfall is unacceptable. Already discussed that one.

I like the games, but I feel like the material is just crying out to be turned into a meatier CRPG.

Finished! Glad to have played this. Good choice everyone.

I'll fill in some thoughts soon.

I'm still playing, although progressing pretty slowly, lots of distractions IRL. I like the game overall and have had a hard time explaining even to myself some of the things I don't like about it, but I think *Legion* hit on pretty much every detail of the game that I don't like. Still enjoying it though, I just think I like more exploration and adventure in my RPGs. That and I don't have a lot of experience with isometric games, it's not my favorite view. And the fact that I pretty much suck at tactical combat, I've greatly improved since the start, so that's exciting!

So far take always: Drugs are good. There doesn’t seem any negatives in taking them.

Didn’t know there were unarmed weapons to buy.

If you want to spend money on your crew is very hard. What does Glory have and can she use it? Don’t know.

If you want the enemy to come to you, it ends up a staring match. (Oh well, skip skip and use the heal spell.)

Ambushes: You just can’t set them up? Premeditated them. I know there is guards in that room. Eigur should always be liking that.

The clean up mission. Pharma

Spoiler:

That was a huge jump in combat difficulty. So many knights to fight. The outcomes are counter productive. The change in heart of your crew is fast too.

Nuyen doesn’t come easily. Design wise makes sense but I need to get more med kits to survive the next run.

I haven’t done any “Shadowruning”. Loud and noisy running with all the killing I’m doing.

*Legion* wrote:

Choices? There often aren't any, because there's really not a lot of room to go off path.

(To be fair, they do work a few decent choices in, including at the end, but this post is about what I don't like)

I'm of mixed opinions as to how the choices in the game impacted the game.

Some of the choices clearly impacted what you got from a particular mission, the difficulty of the mission, and how a particular mission could be accomplished. Some choices impacted how future quests played out. The danger with a mission sequence like this and perks from quests is that if the choice rewards are too powerful, the game becomes easier and easier as you play. But if they have no impact, then the choices become meaningless. On the whole, I thought they did a solid, balanced job of having the choices you make have some impact but not too much.

Where I'm struggling a bit, though, is in the moral aspect of the choices offered. I felt that to keep the game on rails like it's built, they had to neuter a lot of the moral consequences until the end. There were a couple of missions in particular where I felt I made choices that would have turned my crew against me, but they always seemed to interpret my decision in some way so that everything turned out fine and we kept rolling along. I thought this was for the most part a weak element of the game. I get that they wanted to put me in some morally ambiguous situations, but for 80% of the game the results of those choices largely didn't impact how the game played out. That felt kind of broken.

RnRClown wrote:

Finished! Glad to have played this. Good choice everyone.

I'll fill in some thoughts soon.

Woot! Congrats! Finisher #4!

Yeah, I'm unfortunately going to have to drop this one. Definitely not feeling it at all despite giving it a couple of tries. Not sure if it's just been life (or Monster Hunter ) getting in the way or if it's just the game itself, but not really getting drawn in like I thought I would.

Despite all the fun I've had with this game so far, I hit a sour note with one of the optional side missions. I'll go back to the game, but I'm going to take a breather and play some Kerbal Space Program to get the taste out of my mouth.

Spoiler:

It's the Lodge Mission(?)

What bothered me was that while there was an option to turn it down in conversation in the cafe, and then again to just not go and do it, I feel like any SENSIBLE shadowrunner would have shown up, seen the crew they were supposed to be running with, and beat feet. That option was lacking, and I feel like it should have been possible to just leave at any time before you set the alarms off.

Frakkin' James.

steinkrug wrote:

Just reporting in... I'm currently doing the MKVI mission. Things are going smoothly so far so I know all hell will break loose any moment now.

I think I've got six or seven missions to go after this one.

Hell did indeed break loose. I finally finished MKVI this morning.

Spoiler:

I had some serious trouble with the finale battle. Took me three or four tries and Eiger and Glory both died on the attempt that I made it through with my decker, Dietrich and the prototype. I probably should have changed up Dietrich’s spells as has been recommended here but I’ve just been running with his default. I had brought some of the resurrection items (forget what they’re called) but had already used them! Given who survived, my options were to deliver the prototype or “put him out of his misery.” I chose the latter.

So far in fog of war plus tons of enemies: it is easier to set up ambushes with choke points. Set up a scout to get the enemies attention and make them come to you. Reguarding the MKIV

Spoiler:

The knights who hack the prototype are the most dangerous part of the mission.

JohnKillo wrote:

So far in fog of war plus tons of enemies: it is easier to set up ambushes with choke points. Set up a scout to get the enemies attention and make them come to you. Reguarding the MKIV

Spoiler:

The knights who hack the prototype are the most dangerous part of the mission.

I found Dietrich's Lightning Wall helpful in setting up chokepoints too. Enemies lose an AP when they run through, so it was easy at times to create a log jams in the choke points. Then Stun Grenade and let Glory and Eiger kill 'em all. Wheee!

Godzilla Blitz wrote:
JohnKillo wrote:

So far in fog of war plus tons of enemies: it is easier to set up ambushes with choke points. Set up a scout to get the enemies attention and make them come to you. Reguarding the MKIV

Spoiler:

The knights who hack the prototype are the most dangerous part of the mission.

I found Dietrich's Lightning Wall helpful in setting up chokepoints too. Enemies lose an AP when they run through, so it was easy at times to create a log jams in the choke points. Then Stun Grenade and let Glory and Eiger kill 'em all. Wheee!

Yeah, reflecting back on how that went, I need to think a little more tactically and not be so lazy about just waltzing in and shooting. I did Eiger’s mission this afternoon and applied that thinking, sort of out of necessity and was pleased at how things turned out.

steinkrug wrote:
Godzilla Blitz wrote:
JohnKillo wrote:

So far in fog of war plus tons of enemies: it is easier to set up ambushes with choke points. Set up a scout to get the enemies attention and make them come to you. Reguarding the MKIV

Spoiler:

The knights who hack the prototype are the most dangerous part of the mission.

I found Dietrich's Lightning Wall helpful in setting up chokepoints too. Enemies lose an AP when they run through, so it was easy at times to create a log jams in the choke points. Then Stun Grenade and let Glory and Eiger kill 'em all. Wheee!

Yeah, reflecting back on how that went, I need to think a little more tactically and not be so lazy about just waltzing in and shooting. I did Eiger’s mission this afternoon and applied that thinking, sort of out of necessity and was pleased at how things turned out.

That mission is waiting for me when the kids go to bed. Wife is sick so she will go to sleep as soon as she can. Yes.

One thing that is bugging me is that we had an (relatively) huge influx of Shadowrun Video Games and now nothing in the future. I wonder if it did well for the devs and for Microsoft to let other developers use the IP.

Roll credits! Finished it this afternoon. I had a great time and it's nice to finish a game for a change.

I'll post thoughts soon.

Hardek wrote:

Roll credits! Finished it this afternoon. I had a great time and it's nice to finish a game for a change.

I'll post thoughts soon.

Awesome, congrats! And yes, I agree. It felt good for me to finish an RPG as well. It'd been a while.

And you're finisher #5!

JohnKillo wrote:

One thing that is bugging me is that we had an (relatively) huge influx of Shadowrun Video Games and now nothing in the future. I wonder if it did well for the devs and for Microsoft to let other developers use the IP.

It's a pretty small studio and I believe they are currently almost done working on their BattleTech game, so maybe we'll see more Shadowrun from them in the future?

Honestly though, I just want to see more modern/near future/far future RPG's and less "Tolkien-esque / Game of Thrones" stuff in general.

pyxistyx wrote:

Honestly though, I just want to see more modern/near future/far future RPG's and less "Tolkien-esque / Game of Thrones" stuff in general.

Reminds me, I need to play UnderRail. One of my votes next time.

Did Blitz's mission to settles his debts and I really didn't enjoy it. I've found my least favorite missions are the ones where your team is changed or unavailable due to story reasons. Both this and the Lodge mission were just excruciating. In both cases, being a decker helped reduce the pain, but it still wasn't a great experience. Since you don't have your team with you, the missions feel more like a puzzle box where you have to figure out what they want you to do, rather than just tactically murder everyone. I'm guessing your character's class makes a big impact on how easy or difficult these are, but a decker with mediocre aptitude with a SMG just doesn't cut it. Blitz's mission also featured a bug that forced me to replay a hefty amount of it, further souring me on it.

My next two available missions are the MKVI side mission, and the story mission for Frau Muller. Not sure which one I want to do first.

beanman101283 wrote:

Did Blitz's mission to settles his debts and I really didn't enjoy it. I've found my least favorite missions are the ones where your team is changed or unavailable due to story reasons. Both this and the Lodge mission were just excruciating. In both cases, being a decker helped reduce the pain, but it still wasn't a great experience. Since you don't have your team with you, the missions feel more like a puzzle box where you have to figure out what they want you to do, rather than just tactically murder everyone. I'm guessing your character's class makes a big impact on how easy or difficult these are, but a decker with mediocre aptitude with a SMG just doesn't cut it. Blitz's mission also featured a bug that forced me to replay a hefty amount of it, further souring me on it.

Good humor! Different strokes, I guess! The two-person team missions were actually some of my favorites in terms of story and execution. I enjoyed the puzzle aspect of the missions as a variation, and I felt like they toned down the difficulty on those missions to compensate for only having two people. I really liked Blitz's mission and the way they integrated decking, the combat, and the automated guns.

I did wonder how they would play out if I were a decker without drones. The drones I could bring as a decker helped a lot. Without them, I thought I might have been short on firepower.

Yeah, and alternately, being a shaman would have at least let me summon some extra meat shields. Since it was just me and the accountant, it was difficult. Even the conveniently available grenade launcher didn't help much.

One thing I think I need to get a better grip on is how flanking bonuses work, since they obviously make a big difference. I just don't quite get how to reliably position my team so that a particular enemy is flanked, while avoiding being flanked.

Bloodline mission

Spoiler:

It was an awesome mission but the first decision of either get to the elevator or tell the wage slave he is f was annoying. The elf guard kept spotting you across the room. I decided to trigger the guards .

Went down the elevator with Glory, Eigur, Blitz and me Miss Troll punches a lot.
A ton of guards. Not too much problems. I get to the trapped mages and Blitz gets jacked in. The second round of guards storm in. Glory was guarding him with my loaned grenade launcher. More guys than Glory can reasonably handle.

Eigur and me rush to the generator. I’m pelted with rounds and pretty bloody. Eigur had an off day and kept missing (no aim spells for you). Finally got to the generator and activate the melt down.

Blitzy finally gets the cells open and notice a payday node. He gets greedy and rushes to it and the long trek of getting out.

7 more rounds and things are bad. More enemies rush Glory and she with Blitz run towards the exit with the rest of the team.

One final locked door with Eigur and Glory holding them behind us. I’m punching blood mages down left and right. Blitz makes it open and everyone rushes one turn before everything blows up.