I have mixed feelings on this game. I love Shadowrun (it’s an rpg), but this is an xcom-lite tactical game with a Shadowrun theme. The big question: ‘is it fun and worth the sticker price?’ Yes its fun, but that might be my Shadowrun allegiance speaking. I don’t think it’s worth the sticker price, due to the lack of replayability and the stale co-op. There are better and cheaper tactical games out there, and for that matter, Shadowrun games as well. SR Chronicles has no offline single player mode, and had a horrible rollout because of it. I wrote two other reviews before this and the devs asked me to reevaluate each time, so I’ve put in more than a hundred hours playing multiple characters start to finish getting a good feel for the game. I’d pass on this game for a couple of months in hopes that they get their act together; even then this should only be a $15-20 game.

Likes:
-The community
-The graphics in the tactical map
-The music: Mass Effect 1 meets the original Shadowrun '93 game
-The theme

Gripes:
-Thumbnailed character portrait at creation.
-Character names aren’t unique – I’ve been in matches that had multiple people with the same name.
-I've had up to 8 people stuck in a party, which can only handle 4, and we all had to restart the game to get a mission to work.
-Broken character clothing as loot, with no way to sell the 20+ pairs of blue jeans, etc.
-Skills/gear max about midway through the game, making the skills kinda boring.
-No magical counterpart to cyberware – initiation would be nice.
-Low essence cyberware is no longer available midway through the game, so if you install something early on that you don’t like later on, you’re potentially stuck with it (if you already have 3/4 slots filed).
-Lack of variety in music.
-Voice acting is flat - tone is always the same, so in combat people won’t sound frantic, or are overly bubbly, etc.
-Many missions share the same maps, and in many cases you start and finish in the same spot.
-Graffiti seems a bit bubblegum and usually looks like it was done with a giant sharpie marker.
-Character conversations in the hub: low-res character models, terrain that normally looks good, but is zoomed in so much it becomes a pixilated mess. To top it off the objects in the setting are high-resolution.
- Occasionally when you kill someone they’ll become obnoxiously clipped to their gear as it rolls away (most notably flamethrower users).
-There needs to be a message system for the in-game friends list to make sense.
-Co-op needs an initiative log or something along those lines to fix the cache click problem – so you don't worry about attacking the same guy or moving on top of each other, stealing each others melee kills, and potentially losing multiple turns to actions you didn't know you took (I frequently lost 1 or 2 turns this way, but I've lost as many as 4).
-Co-op incentive just isn’t there: If you get together with all your friends and try to run through together it’s fun-ish (but needs voice chat to coordinate), but you really can’t play with anyone else in the interim unless you want to continuously go through the same levels. If you get left behind, trying to co-op with your now higher level friends is even more difficult, because you could be stuck doing 3-6 damage while the guys you’re with are doing 20+ and they are sporting 20+ points of armor and 3x your hp, making you a flimsy target that can’t get better gear and is only getting a fraction of the karma. While your group may go back and redo all the missions to catch you up the rewards make it more like grinding for the sake of grinding.
-If you run this game solo the npc’s only come with a single skill and sometimes their skills will unlevel between missions, and they don’t otherwise keep good pace with the karma level of the story.

The devs have already drastically changed how the game was balanced since it released (abilities, damage, etc), and this is a game coming out of early access. They have whole portions of the game that aren’t even developed yet, that are part of the core game. The bugs are frequent and atrocious. You’ll find yourself having to logout of the game every few runs. Set pieces in the background will attach to the foreground, and trolls horns will disconnect and float in the next square over. Uncontrollable screen spinning is also a problem every now and again, as well as broken cursors. Critical hits will often cause the screen to zoon into the backside of a wall, instead of on the action. Frequently the End Turn button will disappear or move somewhere else on the screen. I think my biggest gripe is that the ability buttons don’t have enough of a click box (or it changes randomly) and when you go to click an ability you instead move to the space below the ability box. There are so many bugs that it’s not uncommon to run into people grumbling about something that should have worked (e.g. over 100% chance to succeed at a skill only to fail). If early access was closed beta, then the release is open beta. This is not a completed game and from day-to-day you wonder when they will reset your skills and what major nerf or tweak is going to happen next. All games get rebalancing, but this game gets totally retooled every time a patch comes out, especially with things like pets being added before fixing the bugs, making you feel like the devs still don’t know where they wanna go with it.

For everyone who loves subscription services and DRM systems let this be an example of our bright future.

Company closed, servers closed.

Not even possible to even start this game anymore in SP mode.

A dead game in my library I never played and will never play in the future.

First off, this game was not developed by Harebrain Studio, but another developer, Cliffhanger. While not a bad thing in itself, I did expect their own take on the Shadowrun title. After hours of playing Shadowrun Chronicles, it seem the games from each developer share little in common other than the Shadowrun universe. So I make the opinion of if you wanted another Shadowrun Returns/Dragonfall, you should wait for Hongkong otherwise you'e getting a more action oriented Shadowrun with a linear story. It's not exactly worth its price tag right now.

Chronicles is a stripped down version of Shadowrun Returns in almost every aspect. What I can say about the story is that they released the first chapter for the game and I think it is somewhat bare bones. The chapter has set up a pretty good premise with a decent plot revolving around a mysterious infliction and a dragon. Unfortunately I believe it falls flat on developing any good antagonists or story companions at all. What pieces of characterizing is through nodes you click on and read while doing a mission, which seems lazy to me. What I also feel I need to say is that there are no dialogue options at all. There's little to no decision making throughout the game so replay value relies solely on trying out different character play styles.

There is a hub of npcs like Shadowrun Return, which they're placed just as merchants, offer main quests and side quests or adding a small amount of context to the world. Currently, there is one major hub for the game and you don't really travel beyond that. Perhaps we will able to travel to different locations in future content.

What is different is that the game is unlike its predecessor is fully online. Meaning you are playing on server and requires to have an internet connection. It also means that if the server is lagging, there will be time delay in your actions in and out of a mission.

The real divergence is in the skill system. There are no attribute scores like Shadowrun Return of any sort instead skills are packaged into different sections: Mind, Body, Blade, Blunt, Hacking, Rigger, Pistol, Automactic, Shotgun, Spellcasting and Summoning. You invest skill points or Karma into these skill sections. Investing point grant abilities and passives of sorts. There are some synergy between abilties and passives, but not much depth to it. It seems right now there is no cap limit to amount of karma you can earn, but there is no way to get a refund on your karma or respec unfortunately.

I want to mention that there is no matrix combat in this game. Hacking is now apart of other "unlocking" abilites (Organ Harvesting, Picking Locking and Demolition) that allows you to open doors to loot random items while doing a mission. Also there is only right now a very crude character stats page showing only what tier of skills you invested, but no details in what your hit percentage, critical strike, and such.

The combat is where the meat of the game is. It's a turn base strategy game with usually four teammates. These characters can be henchmen of your choosing from a random list of mooks. who are not customizable at all. It can also be someone you can invite a player from either a friend list or out of the chat channels. Unfortunately, there is no quick start or looking for group system in the game making it not so much user friendly for those who are shy or whatnot.

The gameplay itself is often described to be similar to XCOM games where your characters are relatively fragile and getting hit by anything can be lethal or at least very damaging. So the game revolves around getting your character into a good placement to flank or take cover from your enemies. I like mention there is no types of cover in this game such light, medium or heavy cover. It just cover now.

The enemy AI is pretty solid in that they'll try to on the most part get into cover and flank. Also they will try to focus fire, which can be good and bad.

The missions themselves get rather repetitive and bland as you go along. It so far consists mostly eliminating all enemies or defending an area or character with some minor nuances. The same could be said about mission environment as you sometimes play the same map with different objective at times. As for enemies variety is pretty decent in what you fight as you progress with occasional boss fight.

Since this game is considered a "MMO" or Massive Multiplayer Online and with that end game content should be discussed. As of right now, there's literally none. You cannot do anything after finishing the chapter, but you can join other player's story progress to garner more karma. Making end game content into a grind fest of sorts. Cliffhanger have announced they are going to release end game content soon though.

What is missing though, if you have played XCOM or other Shadowrun games, is Overwatch. Overwatch allows you act against any enemy that enter your view range. It is considered to be one of the key elements for this genre that helps your charactes from being rushed by the enemy.

What I wish it had as well is cover/environment destruction like in XCOM. It has little to none of it this game, which was rather disappointing in hindsight. I believe it would made battles more dynamic and more complex than its simple current form.

Bottomline is that there is more work to be done for Shadowrun Chroncicle if it going to be more of an action packed game. In its current state is a very mediocre game that like other co op games gets somewhat better if played with a chummer or a friendly community player. I feel so far I have not gotten my money worth out of the game so I am inclined to not recommend it right now.

Don't buy this game!

GAME WILL CLOSE DOWN NOVEMBER 30th!

Read the full announcement:
https://steamcommunity.com/app/267750/discussions/0/3276824488727589349/

What could have been a great game was made a forced always-on pseudo MMO title which is entirely unplayable by one's own, grindy beyond comparison and absolutely mindbogglingly frustrating considering its endgame content.

The mechanics themselves play very similar to the newer XCOM titles, but there's simply so much less to do as well as a 98% dead playerbase except for a few diehard fans who still keep grinding.

I had a few hours of fun with this but due to more and more dwindling player numbers and the fact that starting from midgame it is paramount to actually play with real people, as the npc bots only have very basic skillsets and only one instead of several skilltrees like players, which on top cannot be customized by the player at all. To add insult to injury, their loadout cannot be changed either and which npcs are able to be brought to a mission is entirely randomized.

The developers have basically done everything they could to force people to play together, which is pretty radical, considering close to no one is playing it anymore. It has become an absolutely frustrating experience which I cannot recommend to anyone anymore. Go play the other Shadowrun singleplayer titles instead which were developed by someone entirely different. Their gameplay is similar, but without all the limitations and without the abysmal grind this game offers.

It has actually become so hard to get a group going that I, being a diehard completionist, have given up on ever completing it, as you cannot even replay missions you lost out on achievements but would have to start an entirely new campaign, for which you have to get a group going once more. It would currently take hundreds of hours of waiting with dozens of hours of playing to just have one shot at one particular mission again to complete it with its achievement description. There's just no way I can be bothered with this anymore.

I love Shadowrun. I used to GM a tabletop game when I was younger, the new Shadowrun Returns -> Hong Kong are great. Look at my Profile, I built up the Level 5 Badge for two of them! That said... Shadowrun Chronicles is just not good. It's a turn based game akin to X-Com, but don't expect half the quality of that sort of game. This does just enough to qualify as a game and that's it.

So what's my issue with it? Firstly, it doesn't stick to anything Shadowrun, it doesn't have the statistics, it doesn't have the skills, it doesn't care about what your character can do, it doesn't care what your character background is. It lets you select two weapons and go from there.

Decking is a weapon. Don't expect any Matrix, it doesn't exist.

So okay, we have a game with orks and trolls, weapons and magic, in a futuristic X-Com style setting, right? Sound good? It's not. You can move, you can shoot, that's it. There's no overwatch, no covering angles, you can sit in cover and watch the enemy run around you and shoot you in the back, even though you had a turns worth of actions left to do something about it. There's no tactics here, it's all about kill or be killed.

It's a shame because, as I said at the start, I love Shadowrun and a multi-player game where you take on runs sounds awesome, but unfortunately.. it's not.

I bought this on a Steam sale so I'm not that annoyed, but if I paid full price I'd be feeling pretty annoyed about now. Avoid. Seriously.

It was great while it lasted.

"The game servers have been shut down Since november 2018.
This store page should not exist."

While this is by far the best co-op turn based game I've ever played (in terms of making turn based and co-op not suck when put together). But it suffers from some extreme problems, and is ultimately not very fun. The devs are having trouble with fixing some of these issues due to the way the game is coded, and it's creating some various serious problems for a small portion of their player base (like me).

All in all, it's a great idea that's ruined by poor planning and it's just not very fun. You'll see all this game has to offer in the first 10-15 hours, and then you'll repeat that same 1-trick poney 100 more times over the next 100-200 hours needed to get a character that is actually capable of doing the end game content.

If you do decide to buy this game, do your homework before you make a character. Certain aspects of character creation can permenently make your character garbage at end game AND some of the weapon skills are DRASTICALLY underpowered (with no proper balance changes in sight, due mostly to technical limitations). So don't end up sinking 50-60 hours into the game like I did only to find out that your character is completely worthless at end game and if you want to be useful/have fun, you need to start over again from scratch.

Alas, the game's dead. It needs a constant link to game dev's server, and it's unavailable now.

Being a huge Shadowrun universe fan, I grieve. I'm trying to not get involved in server-based stuff, but in that case, I was not made a proper check before buying the piece of junk with some trailers and the proud banner, but no actual gameplay after the devs hit the road.

Shadowrun Chronicles is essentially just a cyberpunk MMO someone slapped a Shadowrun sticker on. Truth be told I got it on sale for a mere $12 or so, and honestly I feel that's probably a fair price for what I did get. It's playable, I can see myself sinking some time into it just to get a turn-based squad combat fix.

The game itself is extremely linear, you have no dialogue options which kills immersion. Playing a Summoning character, it baffles me that any time an NPC mentions something magic related my character responds like he's never summoned a spirit in his life.

On top of that skill trees are treated less like Shadowrun build options and more like shoe-horned generic MMO. For example, my character is a summoner. I can summon a bear... that's my only option. In a true shadowrun game i'd be summoning all manner of spirits. I'd also not be a 'Summoner' I'd be either a mage or shaman who also summon spirits, not so much here.

Basically everything that the Shadowrun Returns series has done absolutely correct the team behind Shadowrun Chronicles has decided to not do at all.

My suggesiton? If you haven't purchased Shadowrun Returns, Dragonfall, or Hong Kong, use your money for those. They'll give you a more genuine Shadowrun experience.

If you want a game where the developers clearly didn't know anything about the Shadowrun universe... go with this game and you too can own an Ares Predator pistol with an ammo capacity of 4...