Full of game-breaking bugs. Amazing how the devs can make you lose progress by having bugs that make things that moves the game forward unclickable which I got TWICE in one playthrough, the first one I could do a quick, the second one, I couldn't. Also the dialogues were pretty cringeworthy tbh.

Good game initially, but bug 2/3 way in makes the game unfinishable

These games, while scratching a certain nostalgic itch, are a bit slow and cumbersome. Added to that, and the single most annoying factor which drove me to leave a negative review, is the inability to save the game. I've read through a few online sites regarding this issue and have yet to find anyway to get around this issue.

This basically requires you to leave the game on and system running constantly. Once you hit a bug, and you will hit a bug, you basically need to shut down and start over again.

2/10 for me

There's a bug in the game where you get stuck in combat and it's always in the same spot. If you go to the forums, you'll see a bunch of threads talking about it. I haven't been able to progress past this part of the game because none of the fixes work.

I flush more enjoyable experiences down the crapper than the last update.

The gameplay is alright, but the story is too linear and boring. There are no choices to make, there's probably like two sidequests in total. The character portraits look ugly as ♥♥♥♥. The levels look good, only problem is that there's literally nothing to explore. I also enjoyed listening to the same 3 tracks during my playthrough. I don't recommend this game at all

Score: 2/10

SR:R brings up one of the more important questions related to adaptation - does improvement to existing material, that comes at the cost of style adherence, benefit or hinder the experience? I have no background on the Shadowrun lore space. And yet, I'm left wondering by Returns if the source was painfully generic in its characterizations, undeveloped in regards to the setting, and drab in its interpretation of a cyberpunk Seattle. I believe the responsibility of an adaptation is to understand the strengths of the source material and hone in on those - what were the strengths emphasised? The... metahumans are referenced as character appearances, but this isn't expanded on ever, or utilized ever. The Matrix is boiled down to unpleasant combat sections in a "blue" room. The Scooby-Doo mystery that sees the Emerald Ripper taunt the protagonist, then run and hide in the bushes, resolves in a single tap on the shoulder conversation ("Hey! Noticed some evidence." "YA GOT ME"). And for the love of god, censoring naughty words with Playdoh-ass standins when referring to a scene where a woman is assaulted in order for the assaulter's memory to be rewatched by sociopathic viewers. The dialogue doesn't assist the story whatsoever, it's just word vomit. Some mild enjoyment in being snarky, as is the bare minimum for story-heavy games. And then the actual gameplay! That's awful too. Levels are designed with chokepoints and trigger-based enemies, so in order to trigger combat, you need to breach rooms at point blank range and just tank damage. Luckily, at the Normal difficulty (which I regard as the intended), the enemies are about as useful as square wheels and can't hit drek (heehee what does this mean! We may never know!). There's no real flavor to the special moves or spells, just some basic fireball and lightning blast, summon a spirit, slow, what have you. The combat is functionally completely interchangeable with any other setting's system, nothing about it really utilizes the cyberpunk setting. And then the last levels just exacerbate all of this - enemies with a short window of vulnerability can only be killed with a certain gun, which has two shots before requiring a reload. However, the enemies require three hits to kill. You functionally cannot kill them with one person, but this also means that if two shots are missed (which happens at 80% frequency way more than my senses say it should), the whole interaction is reset, because the special health heals every time they return to invincibility. As a result, every encounter with these enemies can take up to an extra 2-3 rounds, and there are a crapton of these guys as the end plays out. It's just a poor game, through and through, with no redeeming qualities for me. Shadowrun-away from this one.

your team of deadly assassins will miss the majority of their attacks even at point blank range

The game keeps crashing. Usually it takes a few minutes, but sometimes even when just starting the game up. Frozen screen, or some controls don't work, or game simply closes. With a RTX 4090 and updated drivers, this is definitely not an issue with the GPU. The game is maybe too old for proper Windows 11 support? Don't know. Even downloaded the Windows 2010 Redist and didn't work. Just too painful to keep trying to make it work.

gotta be honest, it was a huge waste of time
there's literally not enough content