Originally this was a humble comment, but slag me if I didn't get all worked up and hammer out more than a thousand characters! Figured instead of letting it go to waste, I'd start a thread in case any other long-winded players drop by. As you might guess from the need for such a thread, I liked the campaign!

Played A Stitch in Time from start to finish, and loved it more than the official story that shipped with the game! Sure, there are some minor typos, especially in the last chapter, but the core gameplay and nearly all of the writing is great. This has some cool new mechanics too! Allowing easy access to the Stash everywhere let me indulge my inner pack-rat, which came in handy when I got into a real bind and needed to start hucking grenades left and right or break out a stack of medikits to top-up before breaching and clearing that next room!

What really stuck out about this campaign was the characters. From the cigar-chomping ork behind the bar, to the slightly-insane troll shaman who enlists your help on the optional "ghostbusting" missions, the different characters were consistent and as well-developed as they could be within the limitations of the medium. Also, I loved that you could ignore some parts of the "bigger picture" if you wanted to! Instead of being drug through lore, I could just charge right ahead and shrug off most unwanted details. All a runner needs is a target and a reward, right? Alternatively, I had the option of guarding my tongue and maybe getting a bit more info that would help keep my head on my shoulders. Knowing the score is sometimes better than paydata, eh chummers?

Another cool feature was the persistence of some hireable runners. Maybe it's just because of how the original campaign was structured, but I never felt like I had a "team dynamic" with any of the other shadowrunners (aside from the main characters). They were just extra party members. Because of the numerous side quests and optional missions in A Stitch In Time, and the way that some hireable characters increased in stats and were available throughout most of the game, I felt like I was building a contact list of fellow titanium-tough runners. When I needed some sharpshooting muscle, I knew just the troll Street Samurai to bring. If the job needed a mage, I knew one who'd been with me through a bloody ambush and slung just the right spell to turn things around. If the mission needed a decker, I had one on my contact list who was twitchy on the trigger, but novahot in the Matrix. I still remember the time when I had to run across a room in the middle of a firefight, med him up with a Doc Wagon Trauma Kit, and cover him while he ran for the jack-in point!

Side missions are far more than throwaway fetch-quests. This campaign is full of surprises, from standing up for the exploited homeless when no one else will, to finding out what went (terribly) wrong in a secret megacorp R&D facility. You can take side-jobs to help other shadowrunners, find missing people (or their remains), and even join a mercenary corporation or a guild of deckers and riggers! Are there rough edges to all of these? Yeah, but far less than you'd expect. Even little "weird moments" (they're not truly random encounters) that happen during free-roaming play, like a sudden mugging attempt on you and your crew in the Barrens, worked like a charm. Best of all, moments like that helped forge the narrative. Sure, you're a gun-totin', chrome-sportin' livewire, but what are you going to do when you and your crew are on their way to exorcise a spirit in the graveyard on the other side of town and you hear a woman scream for help from an alleyway?

I enjoyed the dialog options in this game as well. Characters with a high charisma and multiple etiquettes can actually use those regularly. You can talk your way through some situations instead of shooting everyone, make a bit more money off a job by saying the right thing at the right time, or just belt out a one-liner on rare occasions to spice up dialog! "Adversity builds character? Sorry, chummer. I'm built out of titanium." It's a juicy mechanic to see implemented, especially since if things go wrong you can fall back on shooting everyone. But hey, at least you tried to be civil first, right?

There are bugs and glitches in this campaign, most of which can be solved with a quick re-load. Oddly enough, the only "serious" bugs I ran into were at the start and end. Your first "ally", Beefcake, can appear naked as a jaybird on your first mission! Reloading fixes this, but you might have to revert to a save from before the start of the mission. Also, at the very end of the game, the final text-wall where the author gives his hat-tips to those who've helped him can glitch, rendering you unable to click the "continue" button. Since it's at the end of the campaign, right before you'd usually return to the menu, that's not a killer bug in my book. Aside from that, this game's complex mechanics such as the "stealth system" work like a charm!

Bottom line, this campaign's a ton of fun if you enjoy Shadowrun's combat mechanics and want to feel like a barrens rat crawling up from the dreckheap, into the high life, and then spearheading a full-scale shadow war! It's quite the ride, and I think I've clocked about twice the hours on it that I did on the original campaign. That's taking my slow time, and searching every nook and cranny, though! If you're looking for a new campaign to run, give this a slot and see how it grabs you.

Finally, a word of thanks to the mod maker. I don't think I've had this much fun with a turn-based isometric since the last time I played Fallout 1 and 2. Mind you, I haven't played Dragonfall yet (yes, I know I'm behind the times a bit), but I'll be measuring that against your campaign rather than the other way around. Well done, consider this a thumbs-up and favorite well-earned!