I actually only started playing Shadowrun Returns with the Dead Man's Switch campaign a week ago, after this had already dropped. As such I cannot tell you how the Director's Cut compares to the original Dragonfall. I can, however, tell you that the new interface is such a huge improvement over the old one. Seriously, there's no contest at all here, everything is right there for you to access with just one click. It's so much better than having to bring up menus to do anything, especially later in the game when you often wind up using multiple different abilities per turn. Also you can now just click on a weapon you want rather having to cycle through them, which relieves one of the minor annoyances of actually making use of your three weapon slots. The whole thing also takes up a lot less screen space, the better to ogle the game's beautiful artwork.Harebrained Schemes wrote:NOTE: The Director’s Cut is free to existing owners of the Dragonfall expansion for Shadowrun Returns. It will be automatically added to your Steam Library when the game is released.
New in the Director’s Cut
Standalone: Due to popular demand, Dragonfall is now a completely standalone title!
Five All-New Missions: The Director’s Cut features five all-new original missions, including three related directly to the personal stories of your team members. These missions take you to previously-unseen locales – both within the Flux State and beyond – where you’ll have to face challenging enemies and make tough choices in order to help your team members prevail.
Revamped Combat System: The Dragonfall combat system has received a major overhaul. An all-new armor system adds another tactical layer to the experience, while refined cover and damage mechanics emphasize the importance of battlefield positioning. Complementing these improvements is an upgraded AI system which reacts more intelligently and accurately to your actions.
Redesigned Interface: The Dragonfall in-game interface has also been rebuilt. Spells, items and abilities are now much easier to access, while improved combat feedback allows you to fully understand the tactical situation in any given encounter.
Customize Your Team: Guide your team members as they progress in each of their unique roles, choosing between different focus options to grant them new items and abilities. In addition, if you don’t like a team member’s default spell, item or weapon loadout, you can now customize what they bring on each mission.
Ten New Pieces of Original Music: Fan-favorite composer Jon Everist brings ten new tracks of moody cyberpunk music to the Dragonfall experience, including compositions based on the stories of individual members of your team.
The Complete Dragonfall Soundtrack: As a free bonus, the Director’s Cut includes the entire soundtracks from both Dragonfall AND our previous title, Shadowrun Returns. This also includes the brand new tracks exclusive to the Director’s Cut. Featuring music from the composers of the classic Shadowrun SEGA and SNES games, this exciting cyberpunk soundtrack pays homage to the past with a modern sentiment.
And Much More:
Steam Achievements!
Steam Trading Cards – collect your favorite Dragonfall characters
All-new alternate endings to the main campaign
Enhanced visual effects including splatter and dismemberment, improved animations, and optional post-processing effects
New bioware augmentations provide an extra edge on the battlefield… if you’ve got the nuyen
A variety of new items, cyberware & spells
Additional player customization options
Expanded character development for several side characters
Writing and design tweaks and polish throughout!
Apparently armour can now be stripped or lost, as the character portraits now have dots above the HP bar keeping track of your current armour. I'm not sure if that will make things interesting or annoying, but it does make sense, armour degrades after all. Also the game now makes cover use more intuitive by clearly stating when you do and do not have cover. If you are benefiting from cover, but it's not protecting you from fire coming at an off angle, the game will now say that you're flanked, and the same for enemies. It's pretty cool because before hand it was difficult to judge whether cover was doing anything. And... that's about it for my comments, but all in all it seems like a pretty solid update, especially given you don't have to pay extra for it.
Also since I'm already talking about Shadowrun Returns, I might as well talk about my experiences with Dead Man's Switch here:
My first playthrough was as an elven shaman named Liara. She had long purple hair and used the dark-haired fur-coated elven women with yellow eyes as her portrait. The original intent had been a charismatic and refined gunbunny, but as I was raising charisma it occurred to me that if I was going to go charisma heavy I might as well invest on the charisma based skills, so shaman. I then proceeded to go all in on the idea, giving me these amusingly lopsided starting stats: Body 1, Quickness 1, Dodge 1, Strength 1, Intelligence 1, Charisma 6, Spirit Summoning 3 (Cat Totem), Spirit Control 3, Conjuration 2.
That's right, I built a character with minimum HP and no direct combat abilities to speak of. I learned pretty quickly Body 1 is pretty much suicidal, I kept dying on that first fight after the morgue, so I bought Body 2 as soon I got the Karma, followed immediately by Intelligence 2 because I hate being dumb. I boosted Intelligence to 3 at the BTL den in Pike's Place, which was worth it, and to 4 some time after that, which wasn't.
By the time of the NTSB warehouse raid, I still had zero points in Ranged Weapons, though I did get Quickness 3, Dodge 3, and Body 3 by then. This meant that I hit the warehouse still using the Beretta Model 70 SMG with no back-up piece. On top of that I only hired a single runner for the raid, and he was a decker, granted it was the Nephlim Network combat decker, but still! Oh, and I had zero spirit totems. My plan was to just summon environmental spirits. Let's just say the first part of the raid was a bit tough. Got easier once I got access to a spirit deeper in the warehouse though, because there's a spirit summon point. Far as I can tell, there's no reason to not give a spirit 4 AP a turn every turn, so they just fuckmurder everything in sight. Even if they go feral, they'll usually just attack the nearest targets, which if you're smart will be your enemies. Also, they're disposable, which means strain damage is no problem.
Still, it the NTSB raid was perhaps more difficult a run than it should have been for lack of serious offensive capability. For the next run, the asylum, I made sure to put karma into Ranged Weapons, upgrade my SMG, get a revolver as a back-up piece, and buy some spirit totems. Though I found I didn't actually use them much, they're expensive and are used up after you buy them, which made me prefer environmental spirits over them. I was still using Level 3 and 4 Spirits when Level 6 ones became available pretty much entirely because I had yet to go through the ones I'd bought. I only actually used the Level 6 ones on the final mission.
Anyway, Liara really came into her own as a character in the mental asylum run. She could finally seriously contribute directly to combat, and between the lightning barrier and her buff spells we pretty much slaughtered everything there. I took the human decker as my third team mate for that one, so it was two shamans and a decker, which is kind of a funny group if you think about it. I actually stuck to three team mates until the Telestrian Industries run, I just didn't feel the need for a fourth until then, and I have no idea why I've seen people complaining you can't take a fifth, there's just no point. After the the asylum my team mates were Coyote and the elf decker girl. For hitting Telestrian I added the Dodger guy, and switched the decker for the elf mage girl. Then on the final run I took Coyote and the Ghost.
Unlike what I've heard others say about the subject, I had a lot of fun on the final mission. Sure it was pretty much all combat and no story, but I liked the combat, and the combination of bugs and cultists made for interesting enemies. I was packing both Haste IV (+2 AP for 3 rounds) and Haste III (+1 AP for 4 rounds) which meant that I could either give someone 6 AP, or give one character 5 AP and another 4 AP. I usually went with Haste IV for Liara, and Hate III for Harlequin, then boosting Harlequin further with his aiming spell and and the Stride power. He wasn't as good as a better optimized character, but I found him plenty deadly, and healing spells are incredibly useful. My final stats going into the final mission were: Armour 6, Body 4, Quickness 6, Ranged Weapons 6, Dodge 4, Intelligence 4, Willpower 3, Charisma 8, Spirit Summoning 7+1, Spirit Control 7+1, Conjuration 8. The armour and two +1 were from the Totem Coat I was wearing.
I played the game on normal all the way to the end. In retrospect a mistake, since I think hard would have been more up my alley. On account of that I decided to replay the final mission on very hard, and I definitely enjoyed it more, though it wasn't significantly more challenging. Some parts were actually easier, probably because I playing smarter. The final boss fight did prove noticeably more difficulty the second time around, though. I still finished it on the first try on very hard, just like I did on normal, but it was close. It didn't help that the air elemental I called up went rogue immediately after I summoned it, while it was right next to my team, meaning I had two bugs, the bug shaman, and an angry air elemental hammering us at the same time while we were all out in the open. I just shrugged, summoned a fire elemental, and kept focusing the shaman. I think anybody who finds this fight difficult failed to realize that the shaman is the only worthwhile target. The pillars are a red herring and a waste of time, while the bugs are easy to clean up after the shaman's dealt with.
Outside of combat, I roleplayed Liara as a sarcastic and manipulative runner with a hidden soft side, though not so soft that she ever hesitated to demand payment for her services. Being understanding in the dialogue with the final boss is honestly more satisfying than being dismissive, got under her skin it did. On account of her loads of Charisma, Liara had Shadowrunner, Corporate, Socialite, and Academic etiquettes, which unfortunately did not come into play as much as I would have liked. On the other hand, Dead Man's Switch gave me plenty of chances to be a sarcastic jerk, which was just the best.
Overall it was a pretty fun game, and I enjoyed it. I felt the game had a very good pacing and an interesting storyline with its share of twists and turns, albeit nothing particularly shocking. A lot of plot points were telegraphed ahead of time, but I'm not one to complain about good foreshadowing. Combat is fairly enjoyable, with no aspects I found particularly frustrating, and enough complexity to feel like tactics actually matter. My main complaint is that cover seems to only protect you from attacks coming from a 45 degree angle in front of you instead of a 90 degree angle, which is stupid when you can only get cover along four axes. Also matrix combat has no tactics of finesse to it, so it tends to get dull quickly. You just call in your ESPs and focus fire on the IC from nearest to farthest until they're all dead, then repeat ad nauseaum. In general though, it's pretty good, not as deep as a more dedicated tactical game like Xcom, but it's nevertheless deep enough for me to have a lot of fun with it. The cemetery fight in particular made for a very interesting tactical scenario. Where it really shines, though, is when it combines fun tactical situations with good storytelling, and doing that well is why the Telestrian Industries run was just a lot of fun on so many levels and easily my favourite part of the whole game.
I look forward to Dragonfall, I hear it's even better.
